Download or read book A Candidate You Can Believe In? Voter Perceptions of Candidate Character in the 2008 Presidential Elections written by Charles L. Prysby and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study examines voter perceptions of the character traits of the presidential candidates in 2008. We find that voters were influenced by their perceptions of these traits. We find that perceptions of optimism and leadership were quite important in 2008. Optimism has not been investigated very much by previous research, so these findings suggest that more work might be done on this trait. Overall, Obama did better than McCain on trait perceptions. In particular, McCain had only a slight lead on leadership, which normally is a trait that the Republican candidate has a big advantage on.