In this chapter, we describe the context of the 2020 presidential election campaign, including the COVID-19 pandemic, racial justice protests, a highly contentious debate, and challenges to the integrity of the election. We review the state of the literature, showing that messages from the candidates, political parties, and the news media inform voters about the candidates’ policy positions, policy priorities, and personal characteristics. And campaign messages, via the candidates or the news media, can alter the criteria voters consider when evaluating the competing candidates. Finally, aspects of the campaign can encourage or discourage participation in the election. We turn next to presenting the citizen-centered theory of campaigns. We argue that people’s predispositions (i.e., political and psychological) drive the procurement and assimilation of information, which influence how individuals evaluate campaign events and campaign issues, and ultimately these evaluations influence their views of the competing candidates and their voting decisions. Finally, we discuss our three-way panel study where we gather information from the same individuals at different points during the 2020 campaign, allowing us to model how campaign events change people’s attitudes about the presidential candidates.

In this chapter, we highlight the impressive evidence for the citizen-centered theory of campaigns. We find that psychological predispositions do not simply reinforce partisan orientation. Instead, these predispositions tap distinct characteristics, influencing how people view the events and issues of the campaign. We also make suggestions about how to study campaigns in the future. While the electoral context of 2020 highlighted particular psychological predispositions, future elections are likely to put a premium on alternative psychological predispositions (e.g., benevolent racism, need for affect). We encourage researchers to be more exhaustive, systematic, and consistent in exploring the impact of people’s psychological predispositions during campaigns. We also review and speculate about how candidates’ campaign strategies may have helped shape the outcome, especially when we consider the razor thin vote margins in a few key states. Specifically, it appears Trump’s actions worked to his detriment both in who voted and in who people supported. Finally, given the events and rhetoric associated with the 2020 campaign, we conclude by assessing the health of our representative system of government where elections play a vital role.

The 2020 presidential campaign occurred in the midst of the first worldwide pandemic in 100 years. The pandemic engulfed the United States for the entire length of the campaign and the incumbent president was hospitalized with the virus at the height of the fall campaign. In this chapter, we show that people’s concern about the coronavirus pandemic increased significantly after Trump contracted COVID-19. Furthermore, and consistent with the citizen-centered theory of campaigns, we find that psychological predispositions, along with political and demographic characteristics, substantively and significantly predict changes in worry about the coronavirus from September to October. For instance, people high in authoritarianism and conflict avoidance become significantly more worried about the coronavirus pandemic from September to October. Finally, we show that people are more likely to consider assessments of the candidates’ competence for dealing with the coronavirus when developing overall evaluations of the candidates in October – after Trump’s COVID-19 diagnosis – compared to September.

The citizen-centered theory of campaigns improves our understanding of participation in the 2020 election. In this chapter, we show that people who dislike conflict participate at a much higher rate than people who are more tolerant of conflict. We also show that people who watched the September presidential debate, people who have higher levels of confidence in the election results, and people with more polarized views of the social justice movement are significantly more likely to vote in the general election. The citizen-centered theory of campaigns also informs our understanding of convenience voting. People who are more sympathetic to Trump are more likely to heed his message of forgoing mail voting and going to the polls on Election Day. Further, people who dislike conflict are significantly more likely to rely on mail voting compared to voting on Election Day. Finally, views about the important issues of the campaign affect how people choose to cast a ballot; people who are more concerned about the COVID-19 pandemic and people with more confidence in the integrity of the election are more likely to vote by mail than in person on Election Day.

In this chapter, we develop a comprehensive model where we include assessments of each campaign event (e.g., September debate) and issue (e.g., election integrity, worries about COVID-19) when predicting overall evaluations of Biden and Trump in November as well as changes in feeling thermometer scores from September to November. These models show that views about the first presidential debate and attitudes toward major campaign issues (i.e., election integrity, COVID-19, social justice protests) explain views of the candidates in November and predict shifts in evaluations over the length of the campaign. Finally, we estimate changes in vote preference from September to November and we find that elements of the campaign (e.g., views about the presidential debate, support for social justice protests) produce important changes in vote preferences. In other words, we find strong evidence that the 2020 campaign mattered.

Presidential debates are now a fixture in the landscape of fall campaigns for the presidency. They attract worldwide media attention, as well as the interest of tens of millions of potential voters, and are held in close proximity to Election Day. In 2020, the first general election debate was a donnybrook. In this chapter, we show that citizens develop clear opinions about who won the debate and who performed well; more people viewed Biden as the winner of the first debate and his performance ratings were significantly higher than Trump’s ratings, except among Republicans. We also demonstrate that people who have low tolerance for conflict develop significantly more negative views of Trump’s performance and are significantly more likely to consider Biden the winner of the debate. Furthermore, people’s level of racism and conspiratorial thinking shape views of Trump’s and Biden’s performances during the first presidential debate. Finally, evaluations of the candidates’ performance in the debate as well as people’s views of who won the debate influence overall evaluations of Trump and Biden and produce significant changes in the ratings of Trump and Biden from September to October.