Online Tally Shifts: How Dominant Candidates Gain Perceived Competence During Political Conflict

Online tallies—impressions of candidate dominance—are stored durably in citizens' long-term memory. These tallies are context-sensitive, retrieved differently depending on whether the political environment is conflict-ridden or not.

🔍 Data & Methods: Population-based panel surveys with embedded experiments

🧠 Key Findings:

• Citizens store extremely durable online impressions of candidate dominance
• In conflict contexts, negative evaluations quickly shift to positive associations with dominance

⚖️ Context Matters: The existence of context-sensitive online tallies can favor dominant candidates even if they are unappealing or disagree on policy issues. This suggests that online impressions interact dynamically with political environments.

💡 Why It Matters: Revisits the original notion of online tallies in voting behavior while revealing a previously unknown dimension—candidate dominance appears to enhance perceived competence during periods of conflict.