The relationship of attitude measurement with the political campaign process provides the problem area that this study considers. The purpose of this political communication study is to explore in detail and describe various "attitude" profiles of voters and resulting candidate "images" of the 1972 presidential election. These "attitudes" and "images" are determined through the use of three primary research instruments: the semantic differential scale, the Method of Ordered Alternatives, and the political philosophy continuum. In addition to these, a record of actual voting behavior serves as validating support of the measured attitudes. This study deals with "attitudes" toward and candidate "images" of George McGovern, R. Sargent Shriver, Richard M. Nixon, and Spiro T. Agnew, the Democratic and Republican candidates for President and Vice-President in 1972. This descriptive investigation unfolds into three major problem areas: 1. to report and describe "panoramic images" of Nixon,. McGovern, Agnew, and Shriver, as measured by the semantic differential scale. 2. to give an account of voter preferred positions A through I as measured by the Method of Ordered Alternatives in connection with "attitude" as measured by the evaluative factor of the semantic differential scale, and subsequently aligned with actual voting behavior. 3. to determine the relationship between voters' own political philosophies and their perceived political philosophies of the four candidates as measured by the political philosophy continuum. The remainder of this chapter overviews the historical mileau of the 1972 presidential campaign, explains the research design and procedures, and offers an organizational preview of the remaining five chapters.

The objective of this study is to investigate how the phenomenon called the strategic vote is manifested in the legislative elections in France and Sweden. In order to gain knowledge in this domain of study, recent studies and well-established theories within the political science have been observed. The theory of the psychological factor, composed by the French political scientist Maurice Duverger lays the basis of the theory of the strategic vote, which is the central theory for this thesis, mostly defined by Gary W. Cox in Making votes count: strategic coordination in the world’s electoral systems (1997). The main question of research is as follows: “How does the strategic vote manifest itself amongst the voters in the legislative elections of the proportional electoral Swedish system and the majority electoral French system?” The following questions are follow-up questions to complement the main one: “Which are the effects of the strategic vote?” “Which are the differences in the French and Swedish legislative elections that are revealed throughout the interviews?” and “Is the validity of votes under the influence of the phenomenon of the strategic vote questionable?” The method used to obtain answers to the questions above is qualitative interviews with two groups of respondents: one group of respondents of French nationality and another group with respondents of Swedish nationality. The results of the study show that strategic voting in France is mostly due to the two-ballot system that is applied in the French electoral system, where the second ballot is the source to most of the strategic voting in France. The Swedish voters, however, first and foremost vote strategically by reason of the electoral threshold of 4 % that is employed in the Swedish electoral system. The effects of the strategic voting in the concerning states, found in this study are identical: an overrepresentation of the bigger political parties and an underrepresentation of the smaller political parties. Differences in the legislative elections of the countries, France and Sweden, which were revealed during the interviews are differences in electoral participation due to the structure of elections on the various levels, such as municipal, regional and legislative and so forth. The third follow-up question, being of a more philosophical nature, lead to two positions: an idealist and a realist one. Through the results found in this study, the idealist position is the preferred position, in order to respect and achieve the democratic ideals on which the democratic states France and Sweden are based.