Potential Virginia voters feel that the George Allen (R) and Charles S. Robb (D), Virginia's senatorial candidates, are running honest and informative campaigns, but at the same time, they agree that the race is not very interesting.
These and other questions about the Allen-Robb race were the focus of a recent study conducted this fall by the Sorensen Institute, part of the University's Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.
The Institute will use the survey to help politicians in future races run effective campaigns.
Dale Lawton, director of the Project on Campaign Conduct, said employees of the Center for Survey Research called 814 randomly selected Virginians and asked them questions about whether they have been paying attention to the campaign.
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"The first survey was about half an hour, and we asked them questions about their demographics," said Paul Freedman, research director for the Project on Campaign Conduct,.
The CSR staffers then called the same people again and asked the same questions; 549 of the 814 original participants answered.
According to the survey, 41.9 of first wave respondents and 53 percent of second wave respondents said they felt Robb "is running a fair campaign so far" and 43.2 percent of first wave respondents and 47.2 percent of respondents felt that "Allen is running a fair campaign so far."
According to the survey, 26.2 percent of respondents from the first wave of the survey and 44.8 percent of respondents from the second wave said "the tone of the campaign has been mostly informative over the past two weeks."
Although respondents said they found the campaign informative and fair, 29.6 percent of first wave and 45.4 percent of second wave respondents thought the "tone of the campaign has been mostly discouraging over the past 2 weeks" and 59.4 percent of first wave and 61.1 percent of second wave respondents felt "the tone of the campaign has been mostly boring over the past two weeks."
Freedman said the study is unique in "not focusing on the horserace - we have a different focus and scope of interest."
He added that the survey was a "tremendous opportunity to study the [Allen-Robb] election in greater detail."
Lawton said voters might think the Allen-Robb campaign is boring, "but more people are paying attention."
"We spent months hammering out the question wording," Freedman said. "The response options, order of questions and the order in which the questions are asked make a difference."
Freedman said he was pleased with having around 800 respondents the first time around, so there would be at least 300-400 people responding the fourth and last time the callers complete another survey, after the election.
The study results may show that people's opinions of the political process are worsening, Lawton said. He also said that a majority of Virginians agree that "in terms of ethics and fair play, campaigns are getting worse over the last 20 years."
Voters view "issue positions and past business practices" as legitimate informative issues to bring up in a campaign, and "attacks focusing on personal behavior of the past and attacks on family members" are not seen as fair, Lawton said.
Lawton said the sample included a good representation of Virginia, "about the right mix of men and women, whites and non-whites, Republicans and Democrats." The pool of respondents included only eligible voters 18 and older, Lawton said.
Lawton said the project is currently in its third wave, and two final sets of calls will be made after the election, one to the same pool of respondents, the "panel component" and one to a new group of people, the "fresh cross-section."
The last group of callers will find out if the respondents voted and how they voted, according to Freedman.
As the project's research director, Freedman said he works on all aspects of research for the Institute, conducting research to help it develop its candidate training curriculum.
"I worked with focus groups who looked at ads, analyze data and report results, and after the last calls I will break the results down" by several demographic factors including race, religion, education, region, age, income, education, job, marital status and whether the respondents have children living at home.
In addition to gauging Virginian's views of the Allen-Robb campaign, Lawton said the main reason for the study was to help "develop a program for [training] first-time candidates."
There are candidate-training programs all over the country, but "most are run by parties and interest groups," Lawton said.
He said the Sorensen Institute's program offers something different because "our program is not ideological" and such programs are rare in the country.
The Institute currently offers two types of training - a broad program that trains leaders in other fields one weekend a month for 10 months, and a candidate-specific training program comprised of three-day long seminars, Lawton said.
"We have done the candidate-specific training seminars twice and they went well," Lawton said. "We received good feedback."
Wood said that Sen. Emily Couric (D-Charlottesville) was in the Institute's first training seminar in 1994. Many other participants in the program have occupied or run for office in the last several years as well.
Wood said the Institute is affiliated with the University, but raises all its own funds privately.
Lawton said a mix of academics, practitioners and politicians teach the candidate-specific training program.
"We have people who teach about direct mailings, fundraising and ethics," Lawton said.
Wood said that California, Michigan, North Carolina, Vermont and Virginia offer such candidate training programs.
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