So far, Grossmann said, the strategy seems to be working. Both McCain and Obama are unusually popular with voters, he said.

“The candidates have more positive images than usual at this point in the election,” he said. “In the past, dissatisfaction of both candidates would be higher.”

Candidates spend a large part of their campaigns establishing a persona that is relatable to the American people.

McCain spokeswoman Sarah Lenti said McCain’s willingness to butt heads with his party and his history as a prisoner of war are both indicators of his personality.

“At the end of the day, people are going to vote on character as opposed to a single issue,” she said.

A spokesperson from the Obama campaign did not respond to attempts at contact by The State News.

Microbiology freshman Ingrid Folland said if campaign slogans and candidate personas are a strategy to get inside America’s head, it is working on her.

Since Obama and McCain adopted the words “maverick” and “change” as identifiers for their campaigns, Folland said she can’t hear the words without thinking about the election.

“They are a way of remembering the candidates,” she said.

“I think of change, I think of Obama. I think of maverick, I think of McCain.”

Folland’s reaction is just what the candidates are hoping for when they create campaign slogans, communication professor Charles Atkin said.

“Those types of one- or two-word descriptors can be quite important … Having these handy, bite-sized pieces of information that (are) easy to store away and use as a way of labeling,” he said.

Atkin said the way voters identify with a candidate can make the difference for undecided voters who don’t want to delve into issues. According to the most recent Gallup poll, that could be as much as 6 percent of voters.

“It’s a shorthand that makes it much easier than when you have to sit down and decide,” he said.

Although many students said issues should come first in deciding the next president, construction management senior Jonathan Conte said most people focus more on the candidates’ images.

“I don’t think people even really look at what they stand for,” he said. “They think ‘Oh, this guy looks cooler than that guy, this guy sounds like he can talk a little bit more fluent.’”

Although Atkin said most people have made up their minds by this point in the campaign, Grossmann said Obama and McCain will continue to pay political consultants millions of dollars to create an image that relates their political decisions to positive personality traits.

“They don’t just want you to remember the words first,” Grossmann said. “They want you to remember the biography that goes with it.”