June 29, 2008

Top VPs had Positive Impact on
Presidential Ticket Image

The concept of a presidential candidate’s ‘brand’ has received attention this election year. This study demonstrated the impact top VPs can have on a ticket’s brand character.

The OPTIMIZE*08 initiative mapped the key image differences between the two presidential nominees according to their respective supporters,  Though a majority from both groups described their candidate as ‘intelligent’, ‘confident’, ‘strong leader’, ‘responsible’, ‘competent’, and ‘professional’, Senator Barack Obama was also viewed by a majority of his supporters as ‘visionary’ and ‘energetic’ while Senator John McCain received majority agreement on the character of ‘dependable’ from his supporters.  Among the shared majority traits, Obama scored higher marks for Intelligent (72% vs. 64%) while McCain scored higher marks for Strong Leader (67% vs. 60%), and ‘Professional’ (59% vs. 53%).

The interesting question that the study addressed is: how can the addition of VP candidate affect the overall image of the presidential ticket?  Here are the findings for the top VP candidates:

Colin Powell gave a significant bump to both tickets on 'Leadership' and 'Dependable' aspects while lifting the Obama ticket's rating for 'Professional' (+13 points) and the McCain ticket's ratings for 'Confident' (+13 points) , 'Diplomatic' (+23 points), and 'Historic' (+11 points). 

The VP candidate with the broadest ticket impact was John Edwards who significantly increased seven different Obama image characteristics including ‘Confident’, ‘Energetic’, ‘Professional’,  ‘Modern’, ‘Friendly’, ‘Exciting’, and ‘Attractive’.  Among other top Democratic VP candidates, Hillary Clinton improved Obama’s ratings for ‘Strong Leader’ and ‘Aggressive’ (+10 and +12 points respectively) while Al Gore improved ‘Dependable’ and ‘Familiar’ ratings (+11 and +16 points).

On the Republican side, Condoleezza Rice had the broadest impact on McCain’s image with a boost to his ‘Professional’ rating (+10 points) and an even stronger impact on many lower rated McCain characteristics including ‘Visionary’ (+13 points), ‘Worldly’ (+11 points), ‘Energetic’ (+16 points), ‘Historic’ (+14 points), and ‘Exciting’ (+11 points).  Though Mike Huckabee improved McCain’s ratings for ‘Intelligent’ and ‘Caring’ (+10 and +12 points respectively), he had a negative impact on McCain’s ‘Diplomatic’ rating (-12 points).

Methodology:

The optimization exercise identifies top pick presidential tickets for each respondent based their responses to twenty evolving choice sets, each containing three tickets concepts.  Voters were then shown their individual top pick ticket and asked to select which words from a list of twenty three describe the featured ticket.
By averaging the responses for all top picks containing the same presidential nominee, the study derives a nominee’s image among their own supporters.  These ratings can then be compared to those of a specific president/VP ticket to measure the impact of individual running mates.