Sorry, OP, but this poll is unlikely to bear much resemblance to the voting influences on the huddled masses. Dopers in general and regular participants in this forum in particular, are considerably more likely to fall into the “highly informed/political junkie” category, and thus less likely to be affected by anything on your list other than debates.
*Nobody *thinks they are affected by these things; *everybody *thinks that they are above this crass manipulation. It works at some level on all of us.
None of the listed elements have affected my VOTING choice. But I will admit that certain yard signs or bumper stickers will affect my opinion of the vehicle/house owner.
In a sense, I would say yes to all, except maybe spin doctors who I tend to find tedious and avoid.
The influence would be mainly for down ticket type elections where I was generally not familiar with the issues or contestants. This year, for example, I saw an early lawn sign for a family court judge. I investigated a bit and discovered one of the candidates was a nearby neighbor of mine, much admired by other folks around.
An ad might get me interested enough in a race or an issue to investigate further. Generally, I cannot think of a single instance where the only influence was one of the items mentioned, but they do tend to get my attention.
The OP didn’t specify what sort of election. None of those things have ever swayed my decision in a Presidential general election, as I would have voted the same way for all of those regardless. However, several of them have swayed me for other elections, such as primaries and local races.
And my “other” was those postcards they send out with their background, platform, etc.
Only if you bother to look at them; I don’t. I don’t watch campaign commercials. I don’t bother watching debates; first because politicians are liars, so there’s nothing to be learned from them, and second because I always just vote against the Republican anyway.
Anything else I forgot
Policy positions, proposed legislation, interviews, speeches and public statements, public record on the issues.
I generally vote for one party over the other, but there are occasions when I will deviate from the party line. In the current election, I will be voting for the other party in a statewide race. I know the guy running on my party’s ticket personally, and so am voting against him.
Nope, I liked how Stockdale could answer questions short and sweet, not long and weasel worded like Gore and Quayle.
when it came to abortion rights Stockdale simply answered “I believe that what a woman does with her body is her business, period.” Whether or not you agreed with him, you knew where he stood.
I seldom for for I pick the least objectionable. So I vote against
For local races, I often base my vote off of the local paper’s voting guide. The candidates write the answers themselves, so I just pick the least illiterate one.
There are newspapers whose editorial staff I respect and I will take their endorsements into consideration. Generally, it’s a party line for me.
Campaign ads have affected me, but only in who NOT to vote for. I.e., they did not have the effect the candidate intended.
If the spin was done correctly I would not have known it happened, so I didn’t check that, although it probably occurred.
I guess it depends on what you mean by “based your vote on”. I doubt anyone has voted for someone because they saw a bumper sticker. But, I think it’s reasonable to say that they influence people’s awareness of candidates at least. For instance, if you move to a new area and start seeing a lot of bumper stickers for a local candidate you never heard of that helps your name recognition of them and you can go ahead and do some further research on your own about the candidate.
I usually pay very little attention to the non-partisan judgeships on the ballot, butthis commercial has moved me to pay attention, read up, and vote Bridget Mary McCormack.
So I voted “campaign commercial.”
You know the “voters’ guide” that shows up in your mailbox sometime in October, with a paragraph or two written by each local candidate? I’ve relied pretty heavily on those.
Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I’ve based a LOT of my voting for local politicians on those statements.
I’m a news junkie, so I go with policy postions on the national races. For the state and local races, I try to find League of Women Voters summaries or whatever the local online newspaper equivalents have up there. It can be pretty sketchy stuff. And in Georgia, that can be a problem because we have stealth fundie candidates for school board who won’t tell you they want on the school board so they can make kids learn about Jebus horses instead of bad old evolution. Plus we have out and out nuts like the ones in Acworth Georgia who once voted in a law requiring all citizens to own a gun. So I tend to vote for incumbents when information is low, figuring that if I have not already awakened to read about my city’s schools teaching how Jebus and the cavemen tamed the dinosaurs 6,000 years ago, I am not likely to with that incumbent. It’s not so much conservatism as fear.
I still get suckered by campaign promises.
Voted “campaign commercials” and “lawn signs” because, to echo another poster, some have clarified or reinforced my resolve to vote against the advertised candidate.
Certain phrases or rhetorical usages bug the hell out of me (and are clearly intended to fire up the candidate’s base or resonate with a segment of the electorate other than mine 
so I’m not saying the candidate made a mistake from a wholly strategic POV) and television ads and lawn signs are the most likely to have such simplistic negative sound bites.
I’ve seen bumper stickers that similarly pissed me off, but they weren’t for political candidates. 
How DO I decide to vote? Well, for judges I use the various bar association ratings* and for the lower executive/legislative offices I look at the newspaper endorsements. If two or more of the three major Chicago-area newspapers (Tribune, Sun-Times, suburban Herald) with their different editorial viewpoints endorse the same candidate, it’s a good sign. 
For Congress I’ve been willing in the past to vote for the best candidate regardless of party, but I’ve had my fill of the Tea Party and now vote for Dems for the U.S. House & U.S. Senate even if the GOP candidate is a moderate (sorry, Senator Kirk ;)) so that the chamber as a whole goes (or stays) Dem. I’ll reconsider this stance if and when the craziest inmates are no longer in charge of the asylum. :rolleyes:
*C’mon Chicago Bar Ass’n, join with all the other Chicago-area bar associations on the voteforjudges.org website instead of standing alone. :smack: It’s a pain in the tukhus to have to print out both lists and compare them, and there’s more than one judicial candidate who got negatives from all or most of the combined bars but a qualified from the CBA, or vice versa. :dubious: