Entering the race
What Do I Need to Vote? Bureaucratic Discretion and Discrimination by Local Election Officials
Ariel White, Noah Nathan & Julie Faller
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do street-level bureaucrats discriminate in the services they provide to constituents? We use a field experiment to measure differential information provision about voting by local election administrators in the United States. We contact over 7,000 election officials in 48 states who are responsible for providing information to voters and implementing voter ID laws. We find that officials provide different information to potential voters of different putative ethnicities. Emails sent from Latino aliases are significantly less likely to receive any response from local election officials than non-Latino white aliases and receive responses of lower quality. This raises concerns about the effect of voter ID laws on access to the franchise and about bias in the provision of services by local bureaucrats more generally.
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True Colors: White Conservative Support for Minority Republican Candidates
M.V. Hood & Seth Mckee
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although the vast majority of minority candidates run under the Democratic label and minority voters are more supportive of the Democratic Party, in recent years a nontrivial number of minority candidates have won Republican Party nominations in high-profile elections (i.e., governor and US Senate). In this study, we assess the level of support that white conservative voters give to minority Republican candidates. We are interested in seeing whether these voters are less supportive of the Grand Old Party (GOP) standard-bearer when the candidate is not white, since the vast majority of Republican candidates and Republican identifiers are non-Hispanic whites. Our data come from the 2006, 2010, and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) surveys-election years with minority Republican nominees for governor and US Senate. Controlling for various factors, we consistently find that white conservatives are either more supportive of minority Republicans or just as likely to vote for a minority as they are a white Republican (a null result). Although we hesitate to dismiss the presence of racial prejudice in voting behavior, in the case of white conservatives our analyses suggest that the base of the GOP does not discriminate against minority nominees in high-profile contemporary general elections. At a minimum, the level of ideological polarization in American politics masks racially prejudiced voting behavior, and at a maximum, it renders it inoperable, because white conservatives view recent minority Republican nominees as at least as conservative as white GOP nominees and their level of support reflects this.
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Race and the Tea Party in the Old Dominion: Split-Ticket Voting in the 2013 Virginia Elections
M.V. Hood, Quentin Kidd & Irwin Morris
PS: Political Science & Politics, January 2015, Pages 107-114
Abstract:
In 2013, Virginia Republicans nominated two Tea Party conservatives for statewide office: Ken Cuccinelli and Earl Walker Jackson, Sr. They differed in two significant respects: (1) Cuccinelli has more political experience, and (2) Cuccinelli is white and Jackson is black. For this article, we used this quasi-experimental opportunity to examine the racial resentment explanation for Tea Party support. We found no evidence of voting patterns consistent with this characterization of Tea Party supporters. There was no significant gap between Tea Party support for Cuccinelli and Jackson, and Tea Party supporters were far more likely to cast ballots for both candidates than they were to choose one or the other. In fact, we found that racial resentment is positively associated with support for Jackson. In this election, neither Tea Party support nor racial resentment negatively affected support for the black Republican candidate for lieutenant governor.
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Ailing voters advance attractive congressional candidates
Leslie Zebrowitz, Robert Franklin & Rocco Palumbo
Evolutionary Psychology, January 2015, Pages 16-28
Abstract:
Among many benefits of facial attractiveness, there is evidence that more attractive politicians are more likely to be elected. Recent research found this effect to be most pronounced in congressional districts with high disease threat - a result attributed to an adaptive disease avoidance mechanism, whereby the association of low attractiveness with poor health is particularly worrisome to voters who feel vulnerable to disease. We provided a more direct test of this explanation by examining the effects of individuals' own health and age. Supporting a disease avoidance mechanism, less healthy participants showed a stronger preference for more attractive contenders in U.S. Senate races than their healthier peers, and this effect was stronger for older participants, who were generally less healthy than younger participants. Stronger effects of health for older participants partly reflected the absence of positive bias toward attractive candidates among the healthiest, suggesting that healthy older adults may be unconcerned about disease threat or sufficiently wise to ignore attractiveness.
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Jowei Chen & Andrew Healy
University of Michigan Working Paper, December 2014
Abstract:
Why do voters often reward incumbents when they receive government spending? We develop a model in which distributive spending provides voters not just with a financial benefit, but also an opportunity to observe and judge the appropriateness of government decisions. Empirically, we test the model's predictions using individual-level data on FEMA disaster relief matched to voter turnout records, precinct-level election returns, and geographic data on hurricane severity. In accordance with the model, voters in areas experiencing severe hurricane conditions respond to the receipt of FEMA disaster aid with significantly higher turnout and electoral support for the incumbent administration. In contrast, voters show little response to aid in areas that experienced little damage and that audits identified as having received undeserved FEMA spending. Politicians thus appear to be constrained in their ability to use distributive spending to win elections since voters account for the merit of the aid they receive.
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Doug Chung & Lingling Zhang
Harvard Working Paper, October 2014
Abstract:
Firms increasingly use both mass-media advertising and targeted personal selling to successfully promote products and brands in the marketplace. In this study, we jointly examine the effect of mass-media advertising and personal selling in the context of U.S. presidential elections, where the former is referred to as the "air war" and the latter the "ground game." Specifically, we look at how different types of advertising ― candidates' own ads vs. outside ads ― and personal selling ― in the form of utilizing field offices ― affect voter preferences. Further, we ask how these various campaign activities affect the outcome of elections through their diverse effects on various types of people. We find that personal selling has a stronger effect among partisan voters, while candidates' own advertising is better received by non-partisans. We also find that personal selling accounted for the Democratic victories in the 2008 and 2012 elections and that advertising was critical only in a close election, such as the one in 2004. Interestingly, had the Democrats received more outside advertising in 2004, the election would have ended up in a 269-269 tie. Our findings generate insights on how to allocate resources across and within channels.
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Talking About Congress: The Limited Effect of Congressional Advertising on Congressional Approval
Krista Loose
MIT Working Paper, September 2014
Abstract:
Public opinion of Congress is historically low: approximately 15 percent expressed approval of the job Congress is doing in the latest Gallup poll (Jones 2014). While political science research has shed light on a variety of causes (Durr, Gilmour and Wolbrecht 1997; Hibbing and Theiss-Morse 1995; Ramirez 2009) and consequences (Jones and McDermott 2009; Lipinski 2004; Wolak 2007) of low congressional approval, many open questions remain. One classical explanation for the public's attitude is that members of Congress are critical of their own institution. Indeed, Fenno's (1978) classic statement that politicians run for Congress by running against Congress has long been taken as fact by both political scientists and practitioners. However, neither the actions of congressmen nor the public's reactions to such statements have been empirically tested in a thorough manner. This study combines new data on congressional advertising during the 2000s with survey data from the same period to speak directly to Fenno's conjectures. I find that candidates only mention Congress in approximately 9 percent of their advertisements, and many do so in a neutral way. Moreover, there do not appear to be strong or long-lasting effects on congressional approval as a result of such critical ads. These observational results are born out by an experiment where I show subjects one of three mock advertisements: one critical of Congress, one supportive of Congress, and one that does not mention Congress. Subjects viewing the ad supportive of Congress were less likely to support the ad sponsor relative to the control ad, but there were no effects of either treatment on respondent's attitudes toward Congress.
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Joshua Ambrosius
Journal of Urban Affairs, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Red/Blue dichotomy describing presidential elections, while criticized, is ubiquitous: Red states vote Republican, Blue states Democratic. Locally, suburban and rural counties are often Red, urban counties Blue. This overgeneralization misses the Republican share of urban centers. This study analyzes the 2000-2012 presidential elections in core counties of metropolitan areas with populations over 250,000. Possible explanations for urban election outcomes cover three theoretical groupings: sociodemographics, culture, and economics. Several prominent explanatory variables from each are compared. Changes from 2000-2004 to 2008-2012 are highlighted given the 2008 economic crash and President Obama's race and urban identity, which permitted him to cut President Bush's core county share in half. Regression analyses find that sociodemographic and cultural features account for most variation for all elections, while economic indicators add little explanatory power. In contrast to conventional thinking, economics mattered most in 2004, culture increased in importance in 2008-2012, and urban foreclosures positively influenced McCain in 2008.
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Preference Dynamics in the 2014 Congressional Midterm Elections
Costas Panagopoulos
The Forum, December 2014, Pages 729-737
Abstract:
The vote intentions of Americans experienced meaningful change over the course of the 2014 campaign, largely to the detriment of Democrats and in favor of the GOP. Vote intention trajectories generally followed sensible and predictable patterns, reflecting forces and developments that unfolded over the course of the campaign cycle. Specifically, changes in voter sentiments were fueled primarily by assessments about the president and, relatedly, about the condition of the national economy. Higher levels of Obama approval helped Democratic contenders over the course of the 2014 midterm cycle, while Republicans appeared to benefit from improvements in the economy. Political events and assessments of congressional performance were unrelated to vote intentions in 2014.
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Balancing Act? Testing a Theory of Split-Party U.S. Senate Delegations
Christopher Donnelly
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do some states elect split-party U.S. Senate delegations? Fiorina (1992) suggests that his own "balancing" theory might account for the emergence of such opposite-party pairs of Senators. Due primarily to data limitations, previous empirical assessments of whether balancing can appropriately explain the emergence of mixed delegations in the Senate have been limited to aggregate-level analysis. This paper builds on previous scholarship by offering the first individual-level examination of whether balancing theory can appropriately explain divided Senate delegations. We find that individual-level balancing is limited and that when controlling for individual and contextual factors thought to influence vote choice, there is no discernible evidence that voters are considering the makeup of their state's overall Senate delegation when choosing between Senate candidates on offer. Ultimately, our results suggest that candidate-centered campaigns, heterogeneous electorates, and idiosyncratic electoral forces are better explanations for split-party Senate delegations than is any type of strategic, non-proximate voting on the part of citizens.
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National Service and Civic Engagement: A Natural Experiment
Ryan Garcia
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Nearly all studies that seek to uncover the effects of military service on the individual are plagued with the self-selection bias that comes with studying the all-volunteer force. To solve this problem, this paper takes advantage of the natural experiment afforded by the suspension of the French National Service program to produce unbiased causal analyses of the effect of national service on a range of civic engagement measures. Results generated using Instrumental Variables estimation indicate that there is little difference in individual-level civic engagement between service participants and their non-serving peers. However, when potential mediators are taken into account, the ensuing results imply that the substantial increase in the likelihood of having children associated with national service participation has a suppressive effect on service participants' overall level of civic engagement.
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The Effect of Political Uncertainty on the Cost of Corporate Debt
Maya Waisman, Pengfei Ye & Yun Zhu
Journal of Financial Stability, February 2015, Pages 106-117
Abstract:
In this paper we bring new empirical evidence that political uncertainty is associated with higher corporate debt financing costs. Controlling for all bond and firm characteristics that could affect a firm's cost of debt financing, the uncertainty associated with the outcome of US presidential elections leads to a 34 basis point increase in corporate bond spreads, with closer campaign years associated with additional costs. Similar results hold when we use the continuous measure of the Political Uncertainty Index by Baker, Bloom and Davis (2012). The uncertainty associated with gubernatorial elections, on the other hand, has no effect on the pricing of corporate bonds.
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Election administration and perceptions of fair elections
Shaun Bowler et al.
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars of democracy proposes an important relationship between the quality of elections and democratic legitimacy, but there are few studies of how the conduct of elections affects perceptions of elections being fair. We examine how election administration and individual-level demographic traits affect public perceptions of fair elections in the US. Since administration of US elections is largely the responsibility of individual states we are able to exploit variation in the quality of how elections are conducted to assess effects of electoral administration on public perceptions. We find evidence that administrative performance is positively and significantly related to perceptions of elections being fair. Voter identification laws, in contrast, are not associated with greater confidence in elections. We also find some evidence that speaks to the limits of these findings, as individual-level factors such as partisanship and minority status have larger effects than administration on perceptions of electoral fairness.
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Michael Franz
The Forum, December 2014, Pages 685-712
Abstract:
Interest groups now play a prominent role in the air war. Their collective investment in election campaigns has skyrocketed in the aftermath of Citizens United. Yet questions remain about whether interest group advertising affects the content of the specific issues being discussed. Do groups enter campaigns and engage voters on the same issues as their candidate allies? Or does the presence of more advertisers introduce competitive issue streams? This paper examines ad buys in Senate elections between 2008 and 2014 and the presidential elections of 2008 and 2012. A primary goal of the paper is to uncover the effect of high and low levels of "issue convergence" on election outcomes. Strategists often express concern that too many voices on behalf of a candidate can weaken the impact of ads. One might expect that as convergence between a candidate and his or her allies goes up (meaning the issue content of the ad buys overlaps across advertisers), the impact of ads on votes will increase. Ad effects should be weaker when a candidate's ads discuss different issues from allied groups and party committees. The results, however, suggest that high rates of issue convergence are only weakly related to election outcomes (and not always in consistent ways).
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More Misinformed than Myopic: Economic Retrospections and the Voter's Time Horizon
Timothy Hellwig & Dani Marinova
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Retrospective voting is often considered representative democracy's saving grace. But just how long is the retrospective voter's time horizon? Do voters make decisions by taking into account evidence accruing over the policy maker's full term in office? Or do they rely on information from the recent past alone? We address these questions through a unique survey design which leverages real-world heterogeneity in economic outcomes prior to the 2012 U.S. presidential election. Contrary to conventional wisdom, our findings do not support claims that voters are myopic. Although they are able to distinguish between short- and long-term benchmarks, voters are no more accurate in assessing the former than they are the latter. The choice of time horizon also has no consistent effect on the decision to hold the incumbent to account. Our results question assumptions of voter myopia, revealing voters to be more misinformed than short-sighted.
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Primary Elections and the Quality of Elected Officials
Shigeo Hirano & James Snyder
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Fall 2014, Pages 473-500
Abstract:
In this paper we argue that the literature underestimates the value of primaries because it focuses on overall average effects. We argue that primary elections are most needed in safe constituencies, where the advantaged party's candidate can usually win the general election even if she is low quality. If the main role of elections is to select good candidates, then advantaged party primaries in open seat races are particularly consequential. We provide evidence that these primaries are especially effective at selecting high quality types. This appears to be driven both by differences in the proportion of high quality candidates competing in the primaries and also by voter behavior.
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Competition and the Dynamics of Issue Convergence
Kevin Banda
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Issue convergence theory suggests that candidates should respond to their opponents by discussing the same issues whereas issue divergence theory posits that candidates should instead ignore each other and discuss different issues. Recent studies tend to find evidence in favor of issue convergence, but these results may be inaccurate because the analyses that generated them tested dynamic campaign behavior using cross-sectional methods. Using a dynamic modeling strategy along with television advertising data drawn from 93 U.S. Senate campaigns in 44 states, 5 election years, and on 51 issues, I show that candidates increase the attention they devote to issues as their opponents' emphasis of these same issues increases and that candidates do so to a greater extent in competitive than in noncompetitive elections. This analysis is the first to account for the dynamic nature of issue emphasis and provides support for issue convergence theory.
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Incorporating Health into Studies of Political Behavior: Evidence for Turnout and Partisanship
Julianna Pacheco & Jason Fletcher
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We argue that research on political behavior, including political participation, public opinion, policy responsiveness, and political inequality will be strengthened by studying the role of health. We then provide evidence that self-rated health status (SRHS) is associated with voter turnout and partisanship. Using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and General Social Survey (GSS), we find that people who report excellent health are more likely to vote and more likely to identify with the Republican Party. Moreover, the effects of health on voter turnout and partisanship appear to have both developmental and contemporaneous components. Taken together, our findings suggest that health inequalities may have significant political consequences.
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Brian Weeks & Kelly Garrett
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Winter 2014, Pages 401-422
Abstract:
Using national telephone survey data collected immediately after the 2008 U.S. presidential election (N = 600), this study examines real-world consequences of inaccurate political rumors. First, individuals more willingly believe negative rumors about a candidate from the opposing party than from their party. However, rumor rebuttals are uniformly effective and do not produce backfire effects. Second, the probability of voting for a candidate decreases when rumors about that candidate are believed, and believing rumors about an opposed candidate reinforces a vote for the preferred candidate. This belief-vote link is not a result of the spurious influence of party affiliation, as rumor belief uniquely contributes to vote choice. The evidence suggests political rumoring is not innocuous chatter but rather can have important electoral consequences.
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Anthony Fowler & Andrew Hall
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Fall 2014, Pages 501-531
Abstract:
Although the scholarly literature on incumbency advantages focuses on personal advantages, the partisan incumbency advantage - the electoral benefit accruing to non-incumbent candidates by virtue of being from the incumbent party - is also an important electoral factor. Understanding this phenomenon is important for evaluating the role of parties vs. individuals in U.S. elections and the incentives of incumbents and their parties in the legislature, among other things. In this paper, we define the partisan incumbency advantage, explain its possible role in elections, and show how it confounds previous estimates of the personal incumbency advantage. We then exploit close elections in conjunction with term limits in U.S. state legislatures to separately estimate the personal and partisan incumbency advantages. The personal advantage is perhaps larger than previously thought, and the partisan advantage is indistinguishable from zero and possibly negative.
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Sponsorship, Disclosure, and Donors: Limiting the Impact of Outside Group Ads
Travis Ridout, Michael Franz & Erika Franklin Fowler
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This research examines how an attack ad's sponsorship conditions its effectiveness. We use data from a survey experiment that exposed participants to a fictional campaign ad. Treatments varied the ad's sponsor (candidate vs. group), the group's donor base (small donor vs. large donors), and the format of the donor disclosure (news reports vs. disclaimers in the ads). We find that ads sponsored by unknown groups are more effective than candidate-sponsored ads, but disclosure of donors reduces the influence of group advertising, leveling the playing field such that candidate- and group-sponsored attacks become equally effective. Increased disclosure does not, however, advantage small-donor groups over large-donor groups.
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Power to the People? Psychological Mechanisms of Disengagement From Direct Democracy
Ellie Shockley & Amir Shawn Fairdosi
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The goal of direct democracy is to bring power to change laws to ordinary citizens. However, it may alienate citizens because policy language is often complex, perhaps impacting citizens' voting likelihood and support for policies. We invoke theory on processing fluency and compensatory control motivations to explain voting likelihood and policy attitude formation. Using experiments and mediational analyses, we tested theorized links between policy language complexity and these outcomes. Findings suggest that policy language complexity motivates compensatory trust in policy institutions but this does not likely explain decreased voting likelihood. We also found that low processing fluency associated with reading a complexly worded policy or a policy presented in a disfluent font led to lower voting likelihood and less positive policy attitudes, consistent with predictions. Thus, the form direct democracy often takes manipulates the amount of support garnered for policies and ironically encourages citizens to outsource legislation to institutional elites.