Landslide
Rafael Di Tella & Julio Rotemberg
NBER Working Paper, December 2016
Abstract:
We present a simple model of populism as the rejection of “disloyal” leaders. We show that adding the assumption that people are worse off when they experience low income as a result of leader betrayal (than when it is the result of bad luck) to a simple voter choice model yields a preference for incompetent leaders. These deliver worse material outcomes in general, but they reduce the feelings of betrayal during bad times. We find some evidence consistent with our model in a survey carried out on the eve of the recent U.S. presidential election. Priming survey participants with questions about the importance of competence in policymaking usually reduced their support for the candidate who was perceived as less competent; this effect was reversed for rural, and less educated white, survey participants.
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Does negative advertising affect giving behavior? Evidence from campaign contributions
Sarah Niebler & Carly Urban
Journal of Public Economics, February 2017, Pages 15–26
Abstract:
This paper contributes to a growing literature that explains why individuals contribute to political campaigns. We build a panel dataset that follows contributors from primary to general elections to quantify the persistence of giving in political contests. Those who gave to winning candidates in the primary were most likely to contribute again in the general election. Next, we use an instrumental variable strategy to document that within party negative advertising decreases the probability that individuals contribute to their preferred party in the general election, regardless of whether they initially contributed to a winning or losing primary candidate.
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How Do Female Candidates Affect Voter Turnout? Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Approach
Daniel Jones
University of South Carolina Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
How does the presence of a woman on the ballot impact election outcomes, aggregate turnout, and the voting behavior of particular groups of voters? Using a regression discontinuity approach, I exploit quasi-random variation in the presence of a female candidate in US House elections stemming from narrowly won primary elections between candidates of different genders. I find that the presence of a female candidate leads to lower overall turnout, but otherwise has no bearing on the outcome of the election. The change in turnout is driven entirely by male voters, which falls uniformly for (male) voters of both parties.
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The Impact of Gender Stereotypes on Voting for Women Candidates by Level and Type of Office
Kathleen Dolan & Timothy Lynch
Politics & Gender, September 2016, Pages 573-595
Abstract:
Previous research has documented that the public often views women candidates through the lens of gender stereotypes. However, as much of this work draws on experimental designs and hypothetical candidates, we have less information about whether and how voters employ stereotypes in the face of real candidates for office. This project examines one important aspect of the impact of stereotypes on the fate of actual women candidates: whether gender stereotypes have a different influence on elections for different levels and types of offices. Previous research suggests that voters are more likely to apply male stereotypes and evaluate candidates differently as the level of office increases and as we consider executive versus legislative office. The research reported here draws on new data that capture voter attitudes and behaviors in real-world elections to test a series of hypotheses related to when and how gender stereotypes affect candidates for the U.S. Congress and governorships. In general, we find little evidence to support claims that voters stereotype women candidates differently when they seek different kinds of offices.
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John Holbein & Jerome Pablo Schafer
Princeton Working Paper, December 2016
Abstract:
In this article, we show that many citizens fail to vote because they are too tired. To do so, we leverage multiple approaches, including a unique natural quasi-experiment that exploits discontinuous decreases in sleep times on the eastern side of U.S. time zone boundaries. Our preferred model specification indicates that these exogenous decreases in sleep times depress county-level turnout in Congressional elections by about 2 percentage points. This effect is magnified in areas where obstacles to voting are greatest. Moreover, tiredness appears to exacerbate participatory inequality — depressing turnout in low propensity communities most — and push election outcomes towards Republicans. Supplementing this analysis, we conduct an observational study validating the direct relationship between tiredness and turnout. Our findings have important theoretical implications for the study of political participation. They suggest that many citizens hold the precursors to participation but lack the general, rather than expressly political, motivation to act on their intentions.
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Weather Affects Voting Decisions
Jon Jachimowicz, Jochen Menges & Adam Galinsky
Columbia University Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
Election outcomes in democratic societies are predicated on rational choice models that require deliberate consideration of electoral options. The current research finds that an incidental feature to the electoral process – weather on Election Day – affects voting decisions. Specifically, we find that increases in wind speed enhance the chances of electoral options in favor of safety, risk-aversion, and continuation of the status quo. Theoretically, we present a causal model for how wind speed affects voting decisions: higher wind speed increases a psychological prevention focus that makes voters opt for low-risk options (status-quo) rather than high-risk options (change). Results of a series of archival analyses of actual elections (the “Brexit” vote, the Scotland independence referendum, 10 years of Swiss referendums, and 100 years of US presidential elections), two field studies, and four experiments support the idea that individuals exposed to higher wind speeds are more prevention focused and more likely to support electoral options that emphasize prevention-focus oriented themes. The findings bear importance for polling forecasts and the scheduling of elections.
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Erik Duhaime & Taylor Moulton
MIT Working Paper, October 2016
Abstract:
While political experts have long claimed that bad weather lowers voter turnout, the impact of weather on U.S. election outcomes remains unclear. The most rigorous work to date found that precipitation benefits Republicans and suggested that Florida rains influenced the outcome of the 2000 presidential election, but a more recent analysis finding that precipitation only lowers turnout in uncompetitive election states calls this claim into question. Here, we reanalyze the 1972-2000 U.S. presidential elections with a focus on supporters of non-major party candidates, an oft-overlooked contingency. We propose that bad weather affects election outcomes not through its effect on turnout — as has long been assumed — but rather, through its psychological effect on swing voters. Specifically, we find evidence that bad weather increases regret aversion among supporters of non-major party candidates in competitive elections, leading some to instead vote for their preferred two-party candidate.
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Narayani Lasala-Blanco, Robert Shapiro & Viviana Rivera-Burgos
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the rational choice reasoning that is used to explain the correlation between low voter turnout and the disruptions caused by weather related phenomena in the United States. Using in-person as well as phone survey data collected in New York City where the damage and disruption caused by Hurricane Sandy varied by district and even by city blocks, we explore, more directly than one can with aggregate data, whether individuals who were more affected by the disruptions caused by Hurricane Sandy were more or less likely to vote in the 2012 Presidential Election that took place while voters still struggled with the devastation of the hurricane and unusually low temperatures. Contrary to the findings of other scholars who use aggregate data to examine similar questions, we find that there is no difference in the likelihood to vote between citizens who experienced greater discomfort and those who experienced no discomfort even in non-competitive districts. We theorize that this is in part due to the resilience to costs and higher levels of political engagement that vulnerable groups develop under certain institutional conditions.
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Paths to victory in presidential elections: The setup power of noncompetitive states
Steven Brams & Marc Kilgour
Public Choice, January 2017, Pages 99–113
Abstract:
In US presidential elections, voters in noncompetitive states seem not to count — and have zero power, according to standard measures of voting power — because they cannot influence the outcome in their states. But the electoral votes of these states are essential to a candidate’s victory, so they do count, but in a different way. We propose a simple model that enables us to measure the setup power of voters in noncompetitive states by modeling how these states structure the contest in the competitive states, as illustrated by the 2012, 2008, 2004, and 2000 presidential elections. We define three measures of setup power — winningness, vulnerability, and fragility — and show how they pinpoint the advantages of the candidate who leads in electoral votes of noncompetitive states. In fact, this candidate won in all four elections.
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Why Won't Lola Run? An Experiment Examining Stereotype Threat and Political Ambition
Scott Pruysers & Julie Blais
Politics & Gender, forthcoming
Abstract:
Among the most well-documented and long-standing gender gaps in political behavior are those relating to political ambition, as men have consistently been shown to express a significantly higher level of political ambition than women. Although this gap is well established, the reasons for the differences between men and women remain largely unknown. One possible explanation is that negative stereotypes about women's political ability are responsible. Stereotype threat, as it is referred to in the psychology literature, is a phenomenon where individuals of a social group suffer cognitive burdens and anxiety after being exposed to negative stereotypes that relate to their identity. These disruptions have been shown to alter attitudes and behavior. In order to test this possibility, we employed an experimental design whereby we randomly assigned 501 undergraduate students into threat and nonthreat conditions. While men exhibited higher levels of political ambition in both conditions, women in the nonthreat condition expressed significantly higher levels of political ambition than those women who were exposed to negative stereotypes. The results of this study therefore suggest that the gender gap in political ambition may be partly explained by negative stereotypes about women in politics.
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Electoral Consequences of Welfare State Expansion: The Case of the Food Stamp Program
Vladimir Kogan
Ohio State University Working Paper, November 2016
Abstract:
Welfare programs are hard to reconcile with the notion that politicians are motivated primarily by electoral considerations, since these programs benefit the most politically marginalized citizens. I present evidence to resolve this apparent puzzle, documenting how welfare can indeed pay dividends at the ballot box. Taking advantage of the decade-long rollout of the American Food Stamp Program, I estimate the effect of this new benefit on election outcomes. Overall, I find that Democrats gained votes in counties where the program had been implemented, primarily through mobilization of new supporters rather than the conversion of political opponents. Reflecting the implementation challenges that plagued FSP in its early years, I also show that Democrats paid an initial electoral price when the program was first introduced, but that this penalty faded quickly as Democratic candidates began to see significant, persistent gains only a few years later.
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The Demand for Bad Policy when Voters Underappreciate Equilibrium Effects
Ernesto Dal Bó, Pedro Dal Bó & Erik Eyster
NBER Working Paper, December 2016
Abstract:
Although most of the political-economy literature blames inefficient policies on institutions or politicians' motives to supply bad policy, voters may themselves be partially responsible by demanding bad policy. In this paper, we posit that voters may systematically err when assessing potential changes in policy by underappreciating how new policies lead to new equilibrium behavior. This biases voters towards policy changes that create direct benefits — welfare would rise if behavior were held constant — even if these policies lower welfare because people adjust behavior. Conversely, voters are biased against policies that impose direct costs even if they induce larger indirect benefits. Using a lab experiment, we find that a majority of subjects vote against policies that, while inflicting negative direct effects, would help them to overcome social dilemmas and thereby increase welfare; conversely, subjects support policies that, while producing direct benefits, create social dilemmas and ultimately hurt welfare; both mistakes arise because subjects fail to fully anticipate the equilibrium effects of new policies. More precisely, we establish that subjects systematically underappreciate the extent to which policy changes affect other people's behavior, and that these mistaken beliefs exert a causal effect on the demand for bad policy.
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Are People Really Turning Away from Democracy?
Erik Voeten
Georgetown University Working Paper, December 2016
Abstract:
In an important and already influential 2016 article in the Journal of Democracy, Roberto Stefan Foa and Yascha Mounk argue that citizens in consolidated democracies in Europe and the United States have “become more cynical about the value of democracy as a political system” and “more willing to express support for authoritarian alternatives” (Foa and Mounk 2016, p.7). Moreover, millennials are especially culpable. These are important and broad claims that are worthy of a systematic follow-up analysis. My purpose is not to replicate Foa and Mounk’s findings but to examine the veracity of their substantive claims more systematically. I show that there is no evidence for the first claim. Trends in overall support for democracy and its non-democratic alternatives have been flat for the past two decades. This finding is very robust to different ways of defining the countries of interest. There is some support for the second claim. Millennials are somewhat more favorably inclined towards non-democratic ways of ruling their countries even after we account for age. Nevertheless these effects primarily come from the United States. Moreover, when we look at confidence in actual democratic institutions, then the opposite pattern emerges: older people have lost faith in U.S. Congress and the Executive to a greater extent than younger people.