It’s All Relative: Perceptions of (Comparative) Candidate Incivility and Candidate Sympathy in Three Multiparty Elections

While growing attention has been devoted to candidates’ use of incivility in campaigns, its role in informing voters’ feelings toward candidates is still debated. This study embraces a constructionist perspective on incivility and focuses on the relationship between perceptions of candidate incivility and candidate sympathy. Its contribution is twofold. First, it extends incivility research generalizability by testing the association between voters’ perceptions of candidate incivility and candidate sympathy during three election campaigns beyond the US context. Second, it builds upon the notio... Mehr ...