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This project seeks theoretical and methodological advances in the study of political advertising effects during election campaigns. On the theoretical side, we hypothesize that racial cues embedded in standard political advertising appeals, involving taxation and government spending, boost opinion constraint by priming global political ideology. On the methodological side, we replicate a lab experiment in face-toface interviews with a probability sample of a large metropolitan area. Results suggest that subtle race cues do increase issue constraint for "racialized" issues such as welfare, affirmative action, crime policy, and the overall size of government. Constraint of opinions about issues less relevant to race, such as abortion, spending on public schools, universal health care, and raising the minimum wage, does not increase as a result of exposure to racial cues. Global ideology is powerfully primed by implicit racial cues embedded in typical political appeals. Finally, though demographic differences in the samples moderate some effects, the general pattern is highly consistent across the two research settings. Implications for strategic communication during campaigns, group centrism in American elections, and the benefits of methodological pluralism in the study of media effects are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Journalists rely on polls as they cover public opinion. In order to provide perspectives within the news stories, journalists frequently quote pundits – expert and partisan – who evaluate the methodological quality and implications of the numbers. While partisan pundits might attack unfavorable polls as biased and even fake, experts typically provide rational assessments of methodological quality; news readers may also encounter critiques of the reliability of polls in general in op-eds. How do Americans evaluate polls when they come accompanied with such commentaries? Building on evidence that individuals perceive polls in biased ways, this study examines whether and how individuals react to pundit commentary and whether such commentary can increase or decrease partisan bias in evaluations. In a nationally representative survey experiment fielded during the 2016 U.S. presidential election, we exposed 2,078 individuals to news stories about polls that included various expert or partisan comments. Although commentaries shifted perceptions of the polls, they did little to mitigate or amplify news readers' biases. We conclude that poll commentary is not an effective tool for mitigating bias. Implications for public perceptions, corrective attempts against biased processing of statistical information in news reports, and journalistic coverage at large are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]