News Reading and the Formation of Preferences for Local Candidates

The literature on candidate selection has found that voters favour local candidates, as they are thought to be more apt to represent their constituents. An important caveat is that it requires for a voter to have knowledge of the candidates’ characteristics, and to value localism. Previous research concentrates on candidate characteristics, leaving unanswered the question of how preferences for local candidates are formed and shaped. This research contributes to fill the gap by showing that preferences for a local candidate are shaped in great degree by newspaper readership. We build on previous research in communications that have shown that newspapers have an effect on agenda setting and public opinion formation to argue that the type of issues covered and the emphasis on a national or local agenda positively or negatively covered in the news are related to opinions about each candidate. We test this argument analysing data from the British Election Survey 2015 using multilevel models. Results show that issues receiving extensive media attention were more likely to affect judgments for heavy newspaper readers than for light newspaper readers.