Candidate Evaluation Model

A candidate evaluation model represents how voters form overall assessments of political candidates as a latent function of perceived traits (competence, leadership, integrity, empathy), partisanship, issue proximity, and affect. It spans the trait-based factor models of Kinder et al. (1980) and the online-processing tally model of Lodge, Steenbergen and Brau (1995), which describes evaluation as a running summary updated as information arrives.