The Peripheral Presidential Campaign

The Kamala Harris campaign is unique for a number of reasons. One of them is how it illustrates the peripheral information messaging described in the Elaboration Likelihood Model.

As an academic, I tend to look at events and news with a mind on theory. Reading news about the current presidential campaign, it occurred to me that I am witnessing an example of the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) in the campaign of Kamala Harris.

It could be called the peripheral presidential campaign because of how it is executed and how people are responding to it.

Simply, ELM says that people process information through two cognitive routes. The central route is used when people are paying close attention or are highly “involved”. In this state they are seeking information and they want it in quantity and detailed specificity.

The other route is used when people have low involvement, meaning they don’t see the topic at hand as personally relevant or they are otherwise not motivated to do the focused thinking and information processing. This is called the peripheral route.

It is similar to peripheral vision, in which one sees things off to the side and not by looking directly at it.

When some describe the Harris campaign as appealing to “low-information voters,” meaning voters who do not seek detailed information, I think of low involvement voters and those who are considering the campaign via a peripheral route.

While all presidential campaigns to a degree appeal to voters with platitudes and general themes for peripheral consideration, the Harris campaign is unique in this regard for several reasons:

• She replaced her party’s candidate late in the campaign and did not receive an y primary votes;

• Since being named the candidate more than two months ago she has not held a press conference;

• She has done only three interviews, all of them brief and with reporters clearly partial to her and yet she offered little substance.

• Her campaign website for a long time had only donation appeals and little on policy. The recently added “issues” tab discusses policies but in ways that stress contrast (see below) over substance and details. As many point out, she does not answer why her future goals if elected have not been addressed currently while vice president.

Even CNN—not a conservative network—has reported that many undecided voters actually want more details about policies and positions from a campaign promoting “vibes.” Others have criticized the media at large of journalistic malpractice for enabling this peripheral campaign and not insisting on more and detailed responses. Even more troubling than allowing vagueness is not fact-checking and correcting untruths. But to peripheral voters, even truth may not matter. Oxford dictionaries made the adjective “post-truth” the word of the year in 2016. It defines it as “related to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion or personal belief.” That describes peripheral processing perfectly.

While many would say that Harris outperformed Trump in their single debate, the reality is that her debate points were also largely peripheral. Partisans cheered both debaters but the undecided voters who tuned in wanted more.

Vibes could also be called what scholars label peripheral cues, which are what people consider when they are not thinking critically or processing information in the central route. There are seven identified peripheral cues that can be persuasive to people short of detailed information and substantive argument:

• authority—people are persuaded because of someone’s position or title;

• commitment—people are persuaded by their perception of a communicator’s commitment to a cause;

• contrast—people are persuaded when someone sets up uneven points of comparison, i.,e. It’s either this or that or at least it’s not that;

• liking—people are persuaded by a stressed affinity of a person toward them;

• reciprocity—people are persuaded by a quid pro quo promise, i.e. if you do this I’ll do that

• scarcity—people are persuaded by a fear of missing out, a false sense of urgency;

• social proof—people are persuaded by the perception that others like themselves think or do something.

Again, any politician uses some or all of these peripheral cues when seeking votes. But those messages are usually part of broader appeals that do included specifics. For example, Trump has done more than 50 interviews since Harris became his opponent, and in these and other campaign events he talks about specific policies and results of his past term and details of his plan for another. Harris, meanwhile, as the CNN article and others attest, has offered only messaging that has peripheral impact.

As examples, she refers to her commitment to causes without policy specifics, and when questioned about how her commitment has changed (ion things from fracking to the border), she insists in vague terms that her values are the same. She certainly contrasts herself to her opponent, Donald Trump, albeit not always truthfully, in the hopes of earning votes not on who she is but who she is not. And she strongly stresses liking, with words such as “joy” being an emotive theme devoid of rational clarity.

One thing the theory does say about the peripheral route—it can persuade but only in the short-term. Less than two months from election day, that may be enough and actually the plan of the Harris campaign. After that, anything from rising fuel prices to an unanticipated policy to the breakout of war could make things relevant enough for peripheral voters to start processing things centrally. But at that point no amount of specific information can lead to them adapting their behavior—election day will be over.