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The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether voters consider a candidate’s brand image when evaluating election alternatives. That is, how prominent a role does the candidate brand image have in the decision-making process? As election outcomes are behavior-driven, the goal is to examine the potential relationship between the candidate brand image, the self-brand image and voting intention.

Data were collected for the third week of October 2012 and again for the same time in 2016 – three weeks prior to the US presidential election each year. An online-based nationwide survey was leveraged, followed by correlation, regression and mediation analysis.

Candidate brand image has a role in US presidential elections. In addition, candidate brand image and self-brand image are significantly related to voting intention. In both elections, the losing candidate’s brand image was more of a factor when it came to voting intention, as both candidates’ brand image mediated the relationships between self-brand image and voting intention for all voters.

A link between candidate brand image and voting intention was demonstrated for perhaps the first time. With results showing candidate brand image does relate to the voter’s self-brand image and voting intention, future research should investigate what other brand elements are a factor. There are undoubtedly other factors – some branding-related, others not branding-related – that go into voter decision-making. Because results were stronger for a losing candidate than a winning one, research should also examine whether this occurrence was coincidence or consistent voter behavior.

When voters considered who might best represent themselves, the brand image of the candidate enhanced the likelihood of voting for, or against, the candidate. Therefore, it is highly recommended that campaign managers understand not only the importance of their candidate’s brand image to develop and maintain a positive image among their supporters but also how to highlight what their supporters view as the negative aspects of the opposing candidates’ brand image to increase the lack of affinity for competitors.

This research demonstrates, for the first time, that candidates’ brand image is considered by voters in a US presidential election. In addition, it discovers the role candidate brand image plays in voting intention. Finally, it provides direction for campaign managers to conduct research into candidates as brands to build brand relationships with the electorate.

The 1896 presidential election between William Jennings Bryan and William McKinley has new salience in the wake of the 2016 presidential contest. We provide the first systematic analysis of presidential voting in 1896, combining county-level returns with economic, financial, and demographic data. We show that Bryan did well where interest rates were high, railroad penetration was low, and crop prices had declined. We show that further declines in crop prices or increases in interest rates would have been enough to tip the Electoral College in Bryan’s favor. But to change the outcome, the additional changes would have had to be large.

The purpose of this paper is to examine perceptions of the “Ideal President” (IP) and presidential candidates in the 2016 US presidential election in relation to gender stereotypes and leader prototypes.

In all, 378 business students assessed perceptions of either the IP or a particular candidate on measures of masculinity and femininity. Androgyny (balance of masculinity and femininity) and hypermasculinity (extremely high masculinity) scores were calculated from these measures.

The IP was perceived as higher in masculinity than femininity, but less similar to the male (Donald Trump) than the female (Hillary Clinton) candidate. IP perceptions were more androgynous than in the 2008 US presidential election. Respondents’ political preferences were related to their IP perceptions on hypermasculinity, which in turn were consistent with perceptions of their preferred candidate.

Trump’s high hypermasculinity scores may explain why he won the electoral college vote, whereas Clinton’s being perceived as more similar to the IP, and IP perceptions’ becoming more androgynous over time, may explain why she won the popular vote.

The study extends the literature on the linkages between gender stereotypes and leader prototypes in two respects. Contrary to the general assumption of a shared leader prototype, it demonstrates the existence of different leader prototypes according to political preference. The hypermasculinity construct, which was introduced to interpret leader prototypes in light of Trump’s candidacy and election, represents a valuable addition to the literature with potentially greater explanatory power than masculinity in some situations.

This paper aims to investigate the effect of the political risk on Bitcoin return and volatility during the 2016 US pre-election and post-election periods.

A daily composite political risk index is calculated by using the principal component analysis and Google Trends. A quantile regression approach is adopted to assess the effect of the political risk index on Bitcoin return and volatility for both periods subject to market conditions.

Findings reveal that the political risk index tends to increase when moving from the pre-election period to the post-election one. This is mostly attributed to the new challenges faced by the new elected government. During the pre-election period, the quantiles regression shows that the political risk index negatively affects Bitcoin return when the market is bearish, whereas a positive impact on volatility is found in bearish and bullish markets. When the political situation becomes severer during the post-election period, the quantiles plots show that the increase of the political risk index leads to a significant increase of Bitcoin return, whereas Bitcoin volatility remains relatively stable. This means that Bitcoin can be adopted as a hedging tool when the political situation becomes severer.

Comparing to the existed studies in the field, this paper considers Google trends as a main source to assess the daily composite political risk index during the 2016 US presidential election.

Social media platforms are highly visible platforms, so politicians try to maximize their benefits from their use, especially during election campaigns. On the other side, people express their views and sentiments toward politicians and political issues on social media, thus enabling them to observe their online political behavior. Therefore, this study aims to investigate user reactions on social media during the 2016 US presidential campaign to decide which candidate invoked stronger emotions on social media.

For testing the proposed hypotheses regarding emotional reactions to social media content during the 2016 presidential campaign, regression analysis was used to analyze a data set that consists of Trump’s 996 posts and Clinton’s 1,253 posts on Facebook. The proposed regression models are based on viral (likes, shares, comments) and emotional Facebook reactions (Angry, Haha, Sad, Surprise, Wow) as well as Russell’s valence, arousal, dominance (VAD) circumplex model for valence, arousal and dominance.

The results of regression analysis indicate how Facebook users felt about both presidential candidates. For Clinton’s page, both positive and negative content are equally liked, while Trump’s followers prefer funny and positive emotions. For both candidates, positive and negative content influences the number of comments. Trump’s followers mostly share positive content and the content that makes them angry, while Clinton’s followers share any content that does not make them angry. Based on VAD analysis, less dominant content, with high arousal and more positive emotions, is more liked on Trump’s page, where valence is a significant predictor for commenting and sharing. More positive content is more liked on Clinton’s page, where both positive and negative emotions with low arousal are correlated to commenting and sharing of posts.

Building on an empirical data set from Facebook, this study shows how differently the presidential candidates communicated on social media during the 2016 election campaign. According to the findings, Trump used a hard campaign strategy, while Clinton used a soft strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the 2016 presidential election polls on the stock market.

The empirical model includes daily stock returns as the dependent variable and past asset prices, 10-year treasury rates, opinion polls and VIX (market uncertainty) as explanatory variables with a one-year lag. The model was estimated using two sets of daily polling data: from July 1, 2015, to November 8, 2016, and from June 1, 2016, to November 8, 2016. Additional descriptive statistics, such as means and standard deviations, were also calculated.

The estimated results did not reveal any statistically significant effects of opinion polls in favor of one candidate over another on stock returns. Simple statistical tests, however, show that the market performed better when Trump held a polling advantage over Clinton.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the only study that has examined the effects of the 2016 presidential election polls on the US stock market. This study adds value to the understanding of the relationship between election polls and the stock market in the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the ways gender influenced the 2016 presidential election, as well as ways in which the USA might progress to become a more gender-egalitarian nation.

Drawing on a combination of voter data, psychological theories – including sexism, social role theory, stereotype content model, group status threat, and system justification theory – and opinions, this paper explores the factors that drove the 2016 presidential election outcome.

This paper asserts that while there were reasons other than gender that people voted the way they did in the 2016 presidential election, these reasons were ancillary to the role that gender bias and stereotypes played. It concludes with a call to action, arguing that: more women need to enter into politics, each of us must recognize our own and make others aware of their overt sexism and subtle biases, the public must acknowledge and change the often double standards that exist for women but not men, and we must realize that a win for women is also often a win for men.

The value lies in introducing a social psychological lens focused on gender to the 2016 presidential election. This paper combines data, theory, and broader opinions to present a compelling perspective on the election in a way that, to our knowledge, has not been done before.

This study aims to understand the allure and danger of fake news in social media environments and propose a theoretical model of the phenomenon.

This qualitative research study used the uses and gratifications theory (UGT) approach to analyze how and why people used social media during the 2016 US presidential election.

The thematic analysis revealed people were gratified after using social media to connect with friends and family and to gather and share information and after using it as a vehicle of expression. Participants found a significant number of fake news stories on social media during the 2016 US presidential election. Participants tried to differentiate between fake news and real news using fact-checking websites and news sources and interacted with the social media users who posted fake news and became part of the echo chamber. Behaviors like these emerged in the analysis that could not be completely explained by UGT and required further exploration which resulted in a model that became the core of this study.

This is a small-scale exploratory study with eight diverse participants, findings should not be generalized to larger populations. Time-specific self-reporting of information from social media and fake news during the 2016 US presidential election. Upgrading public policies related to social media is recommended in the study, contributing to burgeoning policy discussions and provides recommendations for both purveyors of social media and public policymakers.

Upgrade in public policies related to social media is recommended in the study and contributes to burgeoning policy discussions and provides recommendations for both purveyors of social media and public policymakers.

Social media users are spending increased time on their preferred platforms. This study increases the understanding of the nature, function and transformation of virtual social media environments and their effects on real individuals, cultures and societies.What is original/of value about the paper?This exploratory study establishes the foundation on which to expand research in the area of social media use and fake news.

This exploratory study establishes the foundation to expand research in the area of social media use and fake news.

Facebook “likes” are often used as a proxy of users’ attention and an affirmation of what is posted on Facebook (Gerodimos & Justinussen, 2015). To determine what factors predict “likes,” the authors analyzed Facebook posts made by the campaigns of Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Donald Trump, the top three candidates from the 2016 US primary election. Several possible factors were considered, such as the types of posts, the use of pronouns and emotions, the inclusion of slogans and hashtags, references made to opponents, as well as candidate’s mentions on national television. The results of an ordinary least-squared regression analysis showed that the use of highly charged (positive or negative) emotions and personalized posts (first-person singular pronouns) increased “likes” across all three candidates’ Facebook pages, whereas visual posts (posts containing either videos or photos) and the use of past tenses were liked more often by Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders’ followers than by Trump’s followers. Television mentions boosted likes on Clinton and Sanders’ posts but had a negative effect on Trump’s. The study contributes to the growing literature on digitally networked participation (Theocharis, 2015) and supports the emerging notion of the new “hybrid media” system (Chadwick, 2013) for political communication. The study also raises questions as to the relevance of platforms such as Facebook to deliberative democratic processes since Facebook users are not necessarily engaging with the content in an organic way, but instead might be guided to specific content by the Facebook timeline algorithm and targeted ads.

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of voters’ personal and societal values on presidential candidate brand personality preference. In addition, the research examines which brand personalities are deemed most and least important. This research meets the growing demand to further understand how voters develop preferences for brandidates.

Voters ranked which presidential brand personalities they deemed most important in a candidate as well as which of the two major candidates they most associated with that trait. Data were collected weeks in advance of the 2020 presidential election from a national online panel representing a balanced mix of voters by party affiliation.

The results indicate that life satisfaction, political orientation and postmaterialism are significant and provide adequate explanatory power in understanding which brand personality traits are associated with a presidential candidate. Also, using an importance-performance matrix, the authors find which candidate is most identified with various brand personality traits and how important those traits are to voters.

Using the importance-performance matrix for assessing brand/candidate personality preference by consumers/voters provides researchers with a multidimensional method for analyzing how various dimensions influence selection preference. The explanatory power of the independent variables, i.e. political orientation, comparative life satisfaction and societal values, is very low when regressed against personality attributes in general (not assigned to a candidate); however, they provide meaningful results when regressed against personality attributes when assigned to candidates. Understanding the importance of general brand personality attributes is not as important as understanding their importance when associated with a specific brand.

The importance-performance matrix for brand/candidate personality presented in this research clearly indicated and predicted voter preference for the 2020 Presidential election; thus, this tool can be effectively used by political marketers in future elections. Political orientation so strongly influences voter perception of specific candidate brand personality dimensions that they view their preferred candidate to be universally superior to other candidates. Political marketers can appeal to voters based on their political orientation to strengthen the relationship between candidates and voters.

This research investigates how personal and societal values impact voters’ preference for brand personality traits in a presidential candidate. Voter preference for presidential brand personality traits is assessed generically, i.e. not associated with a particular candidate, as well as when they are linked to a specific candidate, i.e. Biden and Trump.