The Excerpt podcast: Politicians' personal lives matter to voters. Should they?

On a special episode of The Excerpt podcast: What do voters really need to know to pick a candidate? Beyond whether they are qualified for the position, do voters really need to know their family histories, who their partners are, what they eat and drink? Jacob Neiheisel, associate professor of political science at the University of Buffalo, joins the podcast to dig into why likability is still so important to a successful campaign.

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Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Thursday, November 9th, 2023, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. When it comes to politicians, what do we as voters really need to know? Whether or not they can do the job? Sure, but what about their family history, their marriage, their eating or drinking habits? Well, it turns out those details are pretty influential for voters too, and should they be? Here to dig into it is Jacob Neiheisel, Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences. Jacob, thanks for joining me.

Jacob Neiheisel:

It's my pleasure. Thanks for having me on.

Dana Taylor:

Okay, so let's start with the beer question. The beer question is a thought experiment in politics that attempts to measure a candidate's authenticity and likability, and is thought to have first been used in the 2000 election of George W. Bush versus Al Gore. The question is generally phrased something like this, with which candidate would you rather have a beer? So why was likability so important then and is it still that way today?

Jacob Neiheisel:

I think likability at some level has always been important for candidates. It's really hard to go all the way back to the beginning of political time and see what's happening, but I think this stems from the fact that a lot of voters don't pay a ton of attention. They have other things going on. They're not inherently interested in politics or only become interested in the last couple of weeks of the campaign. So they're really looking for something, anything to connect with one side or another and make the decision easier for them, and personality, these traits that we might think are unimportant, or someone like me might think is unimportant, matter to people and they act as the fancy word to be heuristic, right? There're a shortcut for other kinds of things and allows people to make a decision more efficiently.

Dana Taylor:

When it comes to the person lives of candidates, what is considered in bounds and what is out of bounds and is that different for candidates versus the voters?

Jacob Neiheisel:

I think what's in bound and what is out of bounds has changed greatly over time. There are stories from the political past where there were things that other candidates knew about each other and they just didn't want to go there. It wasn't something that they wanted to bring up. I think increasingly though with the internet and with all of our personal lives out there for the world to see, probably more than we know or care to know, I think that everything is increasingly in bounds. Voters want to know these things, again, because it's additional information that they might be interested in, whereas their policy positions and other kinds of things that maybe someone like me would say they should be interested in simply aren't to them, and it's a way they can make a decision in a way that's more efficient.

Dana Taylor:

A viral video or post can rack up millions of views in just a few minutes. How important is social media in deciding what characteristics are important for a candidate?

Jacob Neiheisel:

I think social media is very important, just like television was important in an earlier era. There's the story about the Nixon-Kennedy debates where those who listened to it thought that Nixon had done better, but those who saw it thought that Kennedy had done better and Nixon didn't look very good. He had a gray suit against a gray background and was sweating, hadn't shaved that day. So these personal evaluations of looking at Nixon and saying, "Well, he really didn't care enough to kind of bring his best appearance to the debate, why should I care what he says about policy terms?" So I think that any kind of medium we have that allows us to see lots of the candidates and we have lots of opportunities to do that now is going to be something that spreads this evaluation far and wide.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. So let's talk about specific candidates and issues that have recently made headlines. The question of whether South Carolina senator and Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott has a girlfriend. What role does a politician's marital status play in voters' minds and why?

Jacob Neiheisel:

I don't know exactly, but if we can speculate a bit here, it lends itself to the idea that there's stability there, that somebody can stand them, so maybe the voter could as well. So these kinds of personal evaluations vary from voter to voter, what they look for, what they think is interesting or what they think is important, but ultimately it's the voter's decision. Just about anything can be something that tips the evaluation one way or another for a voter.

Dana Taylor:

So we can't have a conversation about the personal lives of candidates without talking about Hillary Clinton's candidacy in the 2016 election. Jennifer Palmieri, that's Hillary's communications director for presidential run, has shared that winner team asked voters why they didn't care for Hillary, the answer would often come back as it's just something about her. How did Hillary's sex play a role in her election loss? Is it likely that Nikki Haley could see a similar fate? What was going on there?

Jacob Neiheisel:

I think it absolutely does play a role. There's some really great research out there by Lindsey Meeks at the University of Oklahoma that suggests that a lot of these personal traits are viewed through a very gendered lens. In many ways, women candidates really just can't get a break. So if they appear tough for someone who is willing to be a hard negotiator, that's a kind of counter stereotypical narrative that we could tell about them that doesn't fit with stereotypes of women as being more caring or nurturing. So they kind of get it both ways, right? If you do this counter stereotypical thing, trying to look more like a guy on the campaign trail, that can be difficult as well. But at the same time, if you showcase the other kinds of traits, it might be difficult for you to break through as a serious candidate.

Dana Taylor:

In 2008, when the story broke that former Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards had fathered a child outside his marriage while his wife Elizabeth was dying of cancer, it ended his political career. Yet JFK famously cheated on his wife Jackie in the 1960s with Marilyn Monroe. In fact, the press likely knew but chose to look the other way. How do extramarital scandals impact voters' preferences?

Jacob Neiheisel:

That's a great question, and I think there is an issue of time here. The difference between JFK and more recent scandals we've seen, or even FDR and more recent scandals that we've seen, there was questions swirling around him as well at the time. I think with someone like Edwards, there actually is a performance component to that. It's more than just the affair. It's kind of the things surrounding it, it's the coverup, if you will, rather than the crime, and questions of whether he had improperly funneled money from his campaign to the individual with whom he was having an affair. So sometimes these things that on the surface level seem like they're just about a personal life or they're just about something that's outside the realm of politics, have a way of creeping into the performance realm or even to the policy realm.

Dana Taylor:

Well, America's 29th President Warren G. Harding once told the press, "It's a good thing I'm not a woman. I would always be pregnant. I can't say no." Fast forward to 2019, we all heard a leaked tape of Donald Trump saying, "We're on a woman's body. It was okay to grab them by." That comment was brushed aside by some as locker room talk. Are there any patterns in the types of personalities who despite scandals maintain their ability to connect with voters?

Jacob Neiheisel:

There's a fair amount of research out there on what's the optimal strategy to deal with scandal? Is it an apology? Is it doubling down? My recollection of this kind of nascent literature is that it often helps to double down and copping to the error and the mistake really don't net to you the kinds of plots that you think that they might. So given that these experiments that I've seen are representative of what happens in real life and what happens when people are reasoning through these issues, the optimal candidate strategy seems to be doubling down. That's something that Donald Trump is very, very good at. Issuing an apology is somewhat foreign to him.

Dana Taylor:

Well, recent USA Today, Suffolk University poll revealed that support for independent RFK Jr., scion of the nation's most revered democratic family is costing Trump his lead over Biden. Are there common denominators that make candidates more appealing to voters across party lines? Is it his name recognition, his position as an anti-vaxxer? Why are people willing to support a candidate from a different party?

Jacob Neiheisel:

All of the above, potentially. We don't think, particularly in this very polarized era, that there's an awful lot of party switching going on. But at the same time, we know that there are what we would call persuadable voters out there. Oftentimes these are single issue voters for whom their party is not perfectly representative of their desired position on that issue and then they're tempted to perhaps bolt the party. So they do exist probably in greater number than we sometimes appreciate in this polarized era, but tends to be kind of a single issue that really grabs their attention, and that's the one on which they threaten to and ultimately made bolt the party for.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. Then Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who got into a legal feud with Walt Disney World and even floated the idea of building a state prison near Disney property, got married at Disney World. What happens when a politician's carefully crafted public image collides with their legislative agenda?

Jacob Neiheisel:

There oftentimes are these questions surrounding hypocrisy in politics, and I'm not exactly convinced that they're really the negative kind of trait that we might think they are because those traits get thrown around all the time, or those charges get thrown around all the time. So I've not seen great direct evidence that hypocrisy and politics really is the kind of negative that we might think it is.

Dana Taylor:

Okay. Then finally, what's your biggest piece of advice to the candidates at this stage?

Jacob Neiheisel:

I'm going to have to channel some local political consultants with whom I've talked to, and that is to tell your consultants absolutely everything you would tell your priest as well, because they're going to be the ones who are going to be managing your image. If they can't be out front of anything, they're not going to be able to do that very effectively. So I have to channel somebody who's working in real politics, so to speak, but I think it's good advice, which is to be prepared for absolutely anything that might come about because image matters. We could argue all day from political science perspective whether image should matter in politics, but it absolutely does, and allowing your campaign consultant to be out front of that is really kind of the job one.

Dana Taylor:

All right, Jacob, thanks for being on the show.

Jacob Neiheisel:

My pleasure. Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green for production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [email protected]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.