Get a cue already! How election campaigns matter in different informational environments

For decades, the role of campaign communication in individual vote choice and electoral outcomes has been deemed minimal. Recently, there has been a renewed effort among political communication scholars to explore the role of campaigns in voters\u27 preferences and electoral outcomes. I add to this growing body of research by focusing on how campaigns affect citizens\u27 voting behavior differentially based on the environment in which an election occurs. Most research on campaign effects has focused on high-information elections. With this in mind, I ask: how do campaigns affect voting behavior in low-information elections? Low-information elections also provide an excellent test of the larger question of how campaigns matter since the campaign environment differs between high- and low-information elections. Thus, I also ask, Do campaigns affect voting behavior differently in low- than high-information elections? And if so, what does this say about how campaigns in different contexts influence the crucial process by which citizens come to vote choices? My two main sources of data include a three-wave panel-experiment conducted during the 2007 Pennsylvania judicial elections and a survey fielded immediately following the 2010 midterm general elections in Pennsylvania. I find that citizens are more engaged with high- than low-information election campaigns. Voters rely more on simple vote cues (e.g. party) in low-information elections, but rely more on certain campaign-specific information (i.e. issues and candidate traits) and make higher quality vote decisions in high-information elections. Importantly to my argument, greater campaign exposure increases the use of simple voting cues in low- but not high-information elections, while it increases the use of candidate traits as vote criteria and increases one\u27s vote decision quality in high- but not low-information elections (though contrary to my expectations, increased exposure increases the use of issues as vote criteria at the same rate across campaign contexts). Finally, I find that campaign exposure increases turnout more so in low- than high-information elections. By looking at these two distinct campaign environments, this dissertation shows that campaigns matter in citizens\u27 voting behavior. More importantly, my findings provide compelling evidence that the environment in which elections occur can influence how campaigns matter