Attitudes Towards a Fallen Leader: Evaluations of Olof Palme Before and After the Assassination

British Journal of Political Science

Volumn 26, Issue 3, 1996, Pages 429-439

  Esaiasson, Peter ^a   Granberg, Donald ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GOTHENBURG   (Sweden)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84992932725     PISSN: 00071234     EISSN: 14692112     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0007123400007535     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. Lennart Weibull, Rutger Lindahl and Karl Erik Rosengren, ‘News Diffusion in Sweden: The Role of the Media’, European Journal of Communication, 2 (1987), 143-70.
2. Thorvald Kallstad, Lennart Ejerfeldt and Jorgen Straarup, Religiosa Reaktionerpa Olof Palmes Dod (Stockholm: Religionssociologiska Institutet, 1986).
3. Peter Esaiasson, ‘Folket Tycker om Partiledarna’, in Mikael Gilljam and Soren Holmberg, eds, Ron Blatt Gront: En Bok om 1988 Ars Riksdagsval (Stockholm: Bonniers, 1990), pp. 164-85.
4. In January 1986, the Social Democratic Party polled 42.5 per cent in the party barometer of Sifo, Sweden's leading polling institute. Within a few weeks, the party had increased its standing by 6 percentage points, one of the largest short-term increases ever recorded for a party in Sweden.
5. Leon Festinger, Henry Riecken and Stanley Schacter, When Prophecy Fails (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1956); Leon Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (Evanston, III.: Row, Peterson, 1957); Donald Granberg and Timothy Nanneman, ‘Attitude Change in an Electoral Context as a Function of Expectations Not Being Fulfilled’, Political Psychology, 1 (1986), 753-65.
6. Philip H. Pollock, ‘Issues, Values, and Critical Moments: Did “Magic” Johnson Transform Public Opinion on AIDS?’ American Journal of Political Science, 32 (1994), 426-46, p. 428; Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, Issue Evolution (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989).
7. John Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley, 1973).
8. Peter Esaiasson, Svenska Valkampanjer 1866-1988 (Stockholm: Allmanna Forlaget, 1990).
9. Peter Esaiasson and Donald Granberg, ‘Hidden Negativism: Evaluation of Swedish Parties and Party Leaders Under Different Survey Methods’, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 5 (1993), 265-77.
10. Soren Holmberg, ‘Election Studies: The Swedish Way’, European Journal of Political Research, 25 (1994), 309-22.
11. Esaiasson, ‘Folket Tycker om Partiledarna’.
12. The three-year lagged correlations (measuring the same thing at two points in time) averaged 0.69 for political parties and 0.62 for party leaders in Sweden. These correlations tend to be somewhat higher for the Social Democratic party, Sweden's largest political party, and its leader. See Donald Granberg and Soren Holmberg, The Political System Matters: Social Psychology and Voting Behaviour in Sweden and the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
13. Donald Granberg, ‘A Contextual Effect in Political Perception and Self-Placement on an Ideology Scale: Comparative Analyses of Sweden and the USA’, Scandinavian Political Studies, 10 (1987), 39-60.
14. On the left-right dimension in Swedish politics, see Mikael Gilljam and Sbren Holmberg, Vdljarna infor 90-talet (Stockholm: Norstedts, 1993).
15. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion, p. 260.
16. The only comparable drop that has been documented in feeling thermometer ratings was the case of Gary Hart who was rated at 62.2 after a creditable though losing effort at winning the Democratic party's nomination in 1984. Then he got caught up in scandals regarding his personal life ending with a rating of 39.3 prior to the Super Tuesday primary election of 1988.
17. If these ratings do not seem particularly high, it may be noted that they are higher than the ratings of the nominee of the Democratic party in 1972, George McGovern. Ratings of McGovern averaged 49.1 before the 1972 election and.45.6 after that election. 20Cf. Pollock, ‘Issues, Values, and Critical Moments’.
18. Norman Miller and Donald T. Campbell, ‘Recency and Primacy in Persuasion as a Function of the Timing of Speeches and Measurement’, Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59 (1959), 1-9; Muzafer Sherif and Carolyn Wood Sherif, Social Psychology (New York: Harper & Row, 1969).
19. Donald Granberg, ‘Political Perception’, in Shanto Iyengar and William McGuire, eds, Explorations in Political Psychology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), pp. 70-112; Soren Holmberg, The Impact of Party on Nuclear Power Attitudes in Sweden (Stockholm: Statens Karnbransle Namd, 1991).
20. Benjamin Page and Robert Shapiro, The Rational Public: 50 Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).