ABSTRACT
THE EFFECTIVENESS OF THE PROCESS One issue that dogged media consultants for years was whether media campaigns had any effect on elections. The entire approach of the limited effects model argued that the media had little, if any, effect on elections. According to this approach, most voters have either partisan attitudes that will guide their voting decisions regardless of what political ads might be aired. Although most limited effects models can be traced to the 1940s and 1950s, this approach was still considered viable by some observers into the 1970s. In an analysis of the 1972 presidential election, for example, Patterson and McClure (1976) argued that the candidates’ ads had little effect, influencing only 3 percent of the total electorate. They did, however, argue that early ads might be important because it reaches the voters before they have made voting decisions.
