Crafting Political Image and Voter Perception

This is the third installment of the 538 Politics podcast mini-series, “Campaign Throwback.” Across three episodes, we're taking a look back at campaign tropes from past elections such as, “it’s the economy, stupid,” or “soccer moms” or that question about which candidate you’d rather share a beer with. We’ll ask where those tropes came from, whether they were actually true at the time and if they still hold up today.

In our third installment: "the beer question." After the 2000 and 2004 elections, political observers remarked that Republican George W. Bush defeated his Democratic opponents in part because he was the candidate who voters would rather "have a beer with." The phrase quickly became a cliche for evaluating a candidate's likability or relatability. But is it really how voters choose their presidents?

This episode originally aired in May 2024.

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