A panel study of registered voters around the time of the 1980 presidential election, compared with the conditions and results of a similar study of the 1976 race, reveals that features of a particular campaign environment exert an impact both on the various phases during the campaign when different voters decide for whom to vote and on the mass communication uses and effects associated with different voter types and campaign phases. The study reinforces the earlier finding that different parts of the electorate use the media differently across the course of the campaign, and it demonstrates to what extent these different patterns are campaign-specific.
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