Todd Makse, Associate Professor, Florida International University
Email: tmakse@fiu.edu
Anand Edward Sokhey, a political science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder and co-author of “Poitics on Display: Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces,” said people are turning to humor to ease tensions.
Election yard signs are expressions of people’s identity, Sokhey said. “And, against that dynamic, you have people who are saying, ‘I want to do something else here that’s going to break this up a bit,’” he said.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/11/05/election-signs-make-america-laugh-again/75969604007/
Compared with other forms of advertising, campaign signs “mostly tend to serve the people that put them out” said Scott Minkoff, a political scientist and co-author of “Politics on Display: Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces.”
Minkoff said voters tend to put up yard signs for two primary reasons: to motivate others to vote for their candidate, and as a means of personal expression.
“It’s like a public display of politics, which is not something that we really get to do in a lot of areas,” Minkoff said. “Everybody is grasping for ways to feel like they have a little bit of say.”
Campaign signs often end up clustered in a few locations, Minkoff said. In their book, Minkoff and co-authors Todd Makse and Anand Sokhey reviewed geographic, survey and election data to explore why voters feel compelled to put up signs.
“Signs beget more signs. And we saw this very consistently,” Minkoff said. “Areas with signs tended to produce more signs coming up, and areas without signs were less likely to add some.”
https://www.pressherald.com/2024/11/02/campaign-signs-are-everywhere-but-are-they-any-use/
Putting out a sign can have an effect on neighborhood dynamics long past campaign season, said Anand Edward Sokhey, a political science professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder and co-author of “Politics on Display: Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces.”
“They are very much a person signaling ‘This is me. This is who I am.’ And other people are reacting,” he said. “You may not always know that neighbor’s name, but you remember — for years — that house had a Trump sign, that house had a Harris sign.”
Most of these candidates “already have near universal name recognition,” Dr. Todd Makse, a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University told Nexstar.
Regardless, it’s all about expression, which Makse, a co-author of “Politics on Display: Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces,” called “the most important motive for displaying a sign.” Crouse explained that yard signs may allow someone who doesn’t “get deeply involved in any sort of campaigning” to not only express their opinion but feel involved in the election.
But what about the yard near you with multiple campaign signs?
According to Makse and his co-authors, there are two main factors that can predict the displaying of multiple signs: “difference in affect toward the candidates (i.e., how much you like your candidates versus how much you dislike the other candidate) and whether you live on a busy street.”
“In some cases (e.g., when people start posting five or more signs for the same candidate), I think this is just the nonverbal equivalent of shouting,” he explained.
Yard signs can even serve another purpose, known as “permission structures.”
“[It’s] the idea that in communities dominated by one party, a small number of signs supporting the other candidate — especially in races where the locally dominant party’s candidate is deeply flawed in some way — can signal to ambivalent voters that it’s OK this one time to vote against their party,” Makse said. “In an era of such deep polarization, this could actually influence voting in presidential races for a specific subset of people.”
Roughly 1 in 10 Americans display yard signs for a presidential candidate, according to Florida International University professor Todd Makse, who found that those who display them are primarily interested in showing their political allegiances, rather than swaying undecided neighbors.
Some political consultants say “yard signs don’t vote,” but neither do television commercials, radio ads, or Facebook posts. Research shows that yard signs do matter. They help with name recognition, influence turnout, influence candidate vote share, and reflect enthusiasm. Todd Makse, Scott Minkoff, and Anand Sokhey, in their 2019 book,“ Politics on Display, Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces,” make the case that yard signs are uniquely social. Donating and voting are done in private and are invisible, while yard signs are public statements.
From Anand Sokhey's Interview with Rebecca Onion: "We asked people in the survey components of our study about emotional reactions; we were limited in the kinds of things we could ask, but we asked about a set of emotions like anxiety, anger, and pride. And we saw a relationship between the sign prevalence right around a person and the triggering of these kinds of emotions. That aligns with the idea that we have an emotional reaction to them, when we’re walking around or going past them. The thing that’s interesting about anger is that it’s an action-oriented emotion, and so when we’re angry about something, putting our politics on display is something that we feel like we can do. We can put a sign out; we can think and talk about what we might do if somebody took the sign. So it’s just fitting that, with these kinds of dynamics in politics right now, people are doing this."
https://slate.com/human-interest/2020/10/political-yard-sign-get-off-my-lawn.html
As Election Day approaches, there is no shortage of signage. Whether advocating for a presidential candidate, a judgeship, or proposition, signs have become an increasingly familiar marketing strategy and can be found in most residential areas during election cycles. We speak with Anand Sokhey... who researches how citizens experience campaigns, why many still insist on airing their view in public, and what happens when social spaces become political spaces.
People take it personally when their signs—a public display of their identity—are stolen, said Anand Sokhey, co-author of the book “Politics on Display: Yard Signs and the Politicization of Social Spaces.” That draws people to file police reports or post footage of the event on social media, said Mr. Sokhey, a political-science professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, even if it’s unlikely that the culprit will be caught.
“There is at least a deterrence that people are trying to go for,” he said.
Rather than candidates, Todd Makse, a political science professor at Florida International University who’s co-authored a book on campaign yard signs due for publication this spring, focuses on people who display signs and their motives. 'Mostly, it’s about people expressing themselves – I think that’s one of our big takeaways,' Makse says. 'Signs become this kind of identity marking, both in terms of displaying how people feel and how they see other people. Instead of the guy with the yappy dog, it’s the guy who likes Trump. It’s a label.'
https://illinoistimes.com/article-20979-sign-sign-everywhere-a-sign.html
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