Politicking with evidence: examining evidence-based issues in electoral policy narratives.

The construction, influence, and strategic use of narratives to influence policy decisions have garnered increased scholarly attention over the past decade as the Narrative Policy Framework (NPF) has matured within the policy studies field. Our prior analysis extended the NPF scholarship to examine electoral policy narrative construction during the 2018 elections. We found that the NPF can apply to electoral politics, but there are differences in how electoral policy narratives are constructed according to candidate party, gender, and electoral outcomes. Analyzing the narratives from both Republican and Democratic campaigns in U.S. House swing districts, here we assess whether policy issues can be differentiated based on their use of evidence and examine narratives to understand if there are systematic differences of construction according to policy issue type. The findings suggest that narrative use of evidence by congressional campaigns varies strategically and systematically by policy issue. Overall, the article presents a novel application of NPF analysis across policy domains while proposing a relationship between evidence and the setting and moral of the story element of narrative form based on issue type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]