Striking a Chord with Voters: Investigating the Effects of Political Advertising Music on Candidate Evaluation Open Access

Abstract

Considered to be one of the most effective tools of communication and persuasion, music is used in nearly every modern political advertisement. Noted for its ability to evoke emotions and engage viewers, campaign strategists have utilized music for decades to help sell political candidates. Very few studies to date, however, have empirically examined whether the music in political advertisements actually impacts candidate evaluations. This thesis attempts to answer this question of political advertisement music’s influence using an online survey experiment conducted in February 2026. In particular, I investigate whether an advertisement’s original advertisement music impacts viewers’ affect, candidate evaluations and recall. I also test the effects of popular music with both in-party and out-party cues on these variables. Contrary to theoretical beliefs of affective priming, conditioning, and heuristic processing, I find that music, both generic and popular, did not produce statistically significant effects on viewer response.

Table of Contents

Introduction 1

Chapter 1. An Overview of Music and Political Advertising Response 6

Chapter 2. Does Music Matter? Testing for the Effects of Original Advertisement Music on Candidate Evaluation 13

Chapter 3. Does the Type of Music Matter? Testing the Effects of Partisan Popular Music 45

Chapter 4. Conclusions 75

Appendix A: Chi Square Tests 79

Appendix B: Age Interaction Models 80

Appendix C: Survey Materials 82

References 86

About this Honors Thesis

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School	Emory College
Department	Political Science
Degree	B.A.
Submission	Honors Thesis
Language	English
Research Field	Multimedia Communications Political Science, General
Keyword	Survey Experiment Political Advertising Candidate Evaluation American Politics Regression Models
Committee Chair / Thesis Advisor	Alan Abramowitz, Emory University Andra Gillespie, Emory University
Committee Members	Kiela Crabtree, Emory University

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