Deciding vote
Unemployment and the Democratic Electoral Advantage
John Wright
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article calls into question the conventional wisdom that incumbent parties are rewarded when unemployment is low and punished when it is high. Using county-level data on unemployment and election returns for 175 midterm gubernatorial elections and 4 presidential elections from 1994 to 2010, the analysis finds that unemployment and the Democratic vote for president and governor move together. Other things being equal, higher unemployment increases the vote shares of Democratic candidates. The effect is greatest when Republicans are the incumbent party, but Democrats benefit from unemployment even when they are in control. The explanation for these findings is that unemployment is a partisan issue for voters, not a valence issue, and that the Democratic Party "owns" unemployment. When unemployment is high or rising, Democratic candidates can successfully convince voters that they are the party best able to solve the problem.
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A 61-million-person experiment in social influence and political mobilization
Robert Bond et al.
Nature, 13 September 2012, Pages 295-298
Abstract:
Human behaviour is thought to spread through face-to-face social networks, but it is difficult to identify social influence effects in observational studies, and it is unknown whether online social networks operate in the same way. Here we report results from a randomized controlled trial of political mobilization messages delivered to 61 million Facebook users during the 2010 US congressional elections. The results show that the messages directly influenced political self-expression, information seeking and real-world voting behaviour of millions of people. Furthermore, the messages not only influenced the users who received them but also the users' friends, and friends of friends. The effect of social transmission on real-world voting was greater than the direct effect of the messages themselves, and nearly all the transmission occurred between 'close friends' who were more likely to have a face-to-face relationship. These results suggest that strong ties are instrumental for spreading both online and real-world behaviour in human social networks.
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Voter Partisanship and the Effect of Distributive Spending on Political Participation
Jowei Chen
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do distributive benefits increase voter participation? This article argues that the government delivery of distributive aid increases the incumbent party's turnout but decreases opposition-party turnout. The theoretical intuition here is that an incumbent who delivers distributive benefits to the opposing party's voters partially mitigates these voters' ideological opposition to the incumbent, hence weakening their motivation to turn out and oust the incumbent. Analysis of individual-level data on FEMA hurricane disaster aid awards in Florida, linked with voter-turnout records from the 2002 (pre-hurricane) and 2004 (post-hurricane) elections, corroborates these predictions. Furthermore, the timing of the FEMA aid delivery determines its effect: aid delivered during the week just before the November 2004 election had especially large effects on voters, increasing the probability of Republican (incumbent party) turnout by 5.1% and decreasing Democratic (opposition party) turnout by 3.1%. But aid delivered immediately after the election had no effect on Election Day turnout.
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Souls to the Polls: Early Voting in Florida in the Shadow of House Bill 1355
Michael Herron & Daniel Smith
Election Law Journal, September 2012, Pages 331-347
Abstract:
Over the past 30 years an increasing number of American states have made it more convenient for voters to cast early ballots. Despite the rapid diffusion of what is known as early in-person voting and praise for this practice by voting rights advocates and election administrators alike, a new Florida law in 2011 truncated the state's early voting period from a total of 14 days to eight, eliminated early voting on the Sunday immediately preceding Election Day, and reduced the total number of hours that early voting polling stations were required to be open. We assess the effects that these changes might have on Florida voting by analyzing early voting patterns from the 2008 General Election in this state. By merging a Florida voter file with county-level records of approximately 2.6 million early voters, we are able not only to identify which types of voters cast early ballots in the run-up to the 2008 General Election, but also to determine the precise days of the two-week early voting period in which various voter types cast their ballots. We find that Democratic, African American, Hispanic, younger, and first-time voters were disproportionately likely to vote early in 2008 and in particular on weekends, including the final Sunday of early voting. We expect these types of voters to be disproportionately affected by the recent changes to Florida's voting laws that altered the practice of early voting across the state.
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Race and the Politics of Close Elections
Tom Vogl
NBER Working Paper, August 2012
Abstract:
Elections between black and white candidates tend to involve close margins and high turnout. Using a novel dataset of municipal vote returns during the rise of black mayors in U.S. cities, this paper establishes new facts about turnout and competition in close interracial elections. In the South, but not the North, close black victories were more likely than close black losses, involved higher turnout than close black losses, and were more likely than close black losses to be followed by subsequent black victories. These results are consistent with a model in which the historical exclusion of Southern blacks from politics made them disproportionately sensitive to mobilization efforts by political elites, leading to a black candidate advantage in close elections. The results contribute to a growing body of evidence that the outcomes of reasonably close elections are not always random, which suggests that detailed knowledge of the electoral context is a precondition to regression discontinuity analyses based on vote shares.
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Does Public Financing Chill Political Speech? Exploiting a Court Injunction as a Natural Experiment
Conor Dowling et al.
Election Law Journal, September 2012, Pages 302-315
Abstract:
In 2011, the Supreme Court struck down the matching provisions in Arizona's campaign finance law on the grounds that they violate free speech by chilling private spending. In this article, we explicitly test the effects of Arizona's matching provisions in two ways. First, we find that privately funded state legislative candidates do not strategically cluster their spending below the threshold that would trigger money to their opponents. Second, we exploit a 2010 Court injunction as a natural experiment. When Arizona's matching provisions were removed, private spending did not increase relative to other states. Contrary to the view of the Court, we find no empirical evidence that campaign finance laws chill private political speech. More generally, our analysis demonstrates the value of exploiting court injunctions as natural experiments to assess the causal effects of laws.
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Strategic Politicians, Partisan Roll Calls, and the Tea Party: Evaluating the 2010 Midterm Elections
Jamie Carson & Stephen Pettigrew
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The 2010 midterm elections were politically and historically significant in several respects. This article offers a concise narrative of the congressional elections beginning with a discussion of the factors influencing the outcome of the historic election. We briefly consider established research on congressional elections and analyze the degree to which these theories apply to the specific circumstances in 2010. Throughout the article, we compare the 2010 midterms to two other recent elections, 2006 and 2008. We also examine several idiosyncratic aspects of the 2010 elections, relative to the historic midterm elections of 1994 and 2006, as well as the effects of the stimulus and healthcare reform bills and the Tea Party movement. We find strong effects for member votes on the individual roll calls, but little evidence of Tea Party influence on electoral outcomes.
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The Incumbency Advantage in the US Congress: A Roller-Coaster Relationship
Daniel Stockemer & Rodrigo Praino
Politics, October 2012, Pages 220-230
Abstract:
While every student in American politics knows that the incumbency advantage grew post-1965, it is less clear as to whether or not this growth has been sustainable throughout the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s. Focusing on the last three decades, we show that the electoral margins of sitting members of the House of Representatives have not linearly grown over the past 60 years. On the contrary, the constant increase in incumbents' vote shares between the 1960s and 1980s could not be sustained in the 1990s. In fact, in the 1990s, the incumbency advantage dropped sharply to levels experienced in the 1960s. In recent years, the electoral margin of sitting House members seems to have grown again to levels comparable to those in the 1970s.
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Mind the Gap? Political Advertisements and Congressional Election Results
Michael Jones & Paul Jorgensen
Journal of Political Marketing, Summer 2012, Pages 165-188
Abstract:
Do political television advertisements influence congressional election results? We test a hypothesis that candidates increase their vote share by increasing their advertisement airings relative to their opponent's airings (i.e., "mind the gap"). Using aggregate advertising data over three election cycles, we employ a two-stage least squares estimation with a rank-order instrumental variable, finding that the advertisement gap explains shifts in vote share after controlling for variables standard to congressional election modeling and advertisement volume. This methodological approach mitigates the endogenous relationship between advertisement airings and election results.
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Nicholas Stephanopoulos
Harvard Law Review, June 2012, Pages 1903-2010
Abstract:
Why do Supreme Court opinions denounce some districts as political gerrymanders but say nothing about other superficially similar districts? Why does the Court deem some majority-minority districts unnecessary under the Voting Rights Act, or even unconstitutional, but uphold other apparently analogous districts? This Article introduces a concept - "spatial diversity" - that helps explain these and many other election law oddities. Spatial diversity refers to the variation of a given factor over geographic space. For example, a district with a normal income distribution is spatially diverse, with respect to earnings, if most rich people live in one area and most poor people live in another. But the district is spatially homogeneous if both rich and poor people are evenly dispersed throughout its territory. Spatial diversity matters, at least in the electoral realm, because it is linked to a number of democratic pathologies. Both in theory and empirically, voters are less engaged in the political process, and elected officials provide inferior representation, in districts that vary geographically along dimensions such as wealth and race. Spatial diversity also seems to animate much of the Court's redistricting case law. It is primarily spatially diverse districts that have been condemned (in individual opinions) as political gerrymanders. Similarly, it is the spatial heterogeneity of the relevant minority population that typically explains why certain majority-minority districts are upheld by the Court while others are struck down. After exploring the theoretical and doctrinal sides of spatial diversity, the Article aims to quantify (and to map) the concept. Using newly available American Community Survey data as well as a statistical technique known as factor analysis, the Article provides spatial diversity scores for all current congressional districts. These scores are then used: (1) to identify egregious political gerrymanders; (2) to predict which majority-minority districts might be vulnerable to statutory or constitutional attack; (3) to evaluate the Court's recent claims about various districts and statewide plans; and (4) to confirm that spatial diversity in fact impairs participation and representation. That spatial diversity can be measured, mapped, and applied in this manner underscores the concept's utility.
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Ecologies of Unease: Geographic Context and National Economic Evaluations
Andrew Reeves & James Gimpel
Political Behavior, September 2012, Pages 507-534
Abstract:
Assessment of the nation's economic performance has been repeatedly linked to voters' decision-making in U.S. presidential elections. Here we inquire as to where those economic evaluations originate. One possibility in the politicized environment of a major campaign is that they are partisan determinations and do not reflect actual economic circumstances. Another possibility is that these judgments arise from close attention to news media, which is presumably highlighting national economic conditions as a facet of campaign coverage. Still a third explanation is that voters derive their national economic evaluations from living out their lives in particular localities which may or may not be experiencing the conditions that affect the nation as a whole. Drawing upon data from the 2008 presidential election, we find that varying local conditions do shape the economic evaluations of political independents. Moreover, unemployment is not the only salient factor, as fuel prices and foreclosures also figured prominently. Local economic factors, what we call geotropic considerations, shape national economic evaluations especially for those who aren't making these judgments on simple partisan grounds.
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Macroeconomic time consistency and wartime presidential approval
Gerald Fox
Journal of Macroeconomics, September 2012, Pages 891-902
Abstract:
A comparative analysis on the influence of war and the macroeconomy upon incumbent approval during the Korean, Vietnam, and Iraq/Afghanistan conflicts. Inflation, unemployment, war rallies, and soldier casualties are systematic factors upon popularity in each of the three wartime periods. The casualty effect upon approval is greatest during the Vietnam Conflict, while economic influence is greatest during the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. The median citizen's macroeconomic preference is approximately time consistent in all three episodes, with an inflation target of zero and an unemployment target close to the natural unemployment rate. This implies that wartime macroeconomic overheating likely causes popularity to decline.
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The Effect of Social Networks on the Quality of Political Thinking
Elif Erisen & Cengiz Erisen
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article we investigate the effect of social networks on the quality of political thinking. First, the article introduces new social network concepts into the literature and develops the corresponding measures. Second, the article explores the quality of political thinking as a concept and develops its measures based on the volume and the causality of thoughts, and their integrative complexity. We make use of a survey to collect information on social networks and the experimental manipulation controls for the effect of policy frames. Our findings consistently show the significant negative impact of cohesive social networks on the quality of policy-relevant thinking. We conclude that close-knit social networks could create "social bubbles" that would limit how one communicates with others and reasons about politics.
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Does Misery Love Company? Civic Engagement in Economic Hard Times
Chaeyoon Lim & Thomas Sander
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine how economic hardship affects civic engagement. Using the Roper Political and Social Trends data, we show that the unemployed were less civically engaged throughout the period covered in the data (1974-1994). The gap in civic engagement between the employed and the unemployed is stable throughout the period. We find little evidence that national economic recession affects the overall level of civic engagement. We do find that higher state unemployment is positively related to political participation for both employed and unemployed residents, especially for political partisans. Finally, we find a strong and negative relationship between state-level income inequality and civic engagement. Our findings suggest that in terms of civic engagement: 1) the state-level economic context matters more than the national context; 2) economic recession may affect political and non-political civic participation differently; 3) economic inequality, rather than economic hardship, appears more negatively to impact civic engagement.
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Measuring efficiency in the presence of head-to-head competition
Thomas Sexton & Herbert Lewis
Journal of Productivity Analysis, October 2012, Pages 183-197
Abstract:
We develop a new DEA model that measures organizational efficiency in the presence of head-to-head competition. Our model differs from existing DEA models that ignore competition (or any other form of interaction) among the organizations under analysis. The model assumes that organizations deploy inputs for the explicit purpose of increasing its own outputs while reducing the outputs of its competitors. We apply this model to the 2002, 2004, and 2006 political campaigns in New York State for the US. House of Representatives in which candidates spent money to increase the number of votes that they received and decrease the number of votes that their opponents received. We show that campaign inefficiency can alter the outcome of an election. Specifically, a loser would have won in six of the 57 races had he or she been efficient. We also show that incumbents are more likely to spend inefficiently than are challengers. Overall, inefficiency accounts for less than 5% of campaign funding but a loss of about 9% in votes received. We find evidence that campaign efficiency has increased since the passage of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, known widely as the McCain-Feingold Act.
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Vanesa Estrada-Correa & Martin Johnson
Social Science Quarterly, September 2012, Pages 559-576
Objective: We investigate whether voters in communities with high rates of foreclosure will find it more difficult to participate in elections, given social disruptions associated with home loss in their neighborhoods.
Methods: We estimate the community-level effects of foreclosure on turnout rates in California ZIP Codes during the 2008 presidential election and an individual-level turnout model using housing data merged with California voter data.
Results: Foreclosure rates are associated with reduced participation independent of local economic conditions, rates of education, ethnic composition, or individual partisanship, age, and habitual participation.
Conclusion: Given the relationship between the foreclosure crisis and political participation, this research suggests the need for further investigation. We are especially interested in the potential that housing foreclosure further exacerbates ethnic and economic inequality due to the preponderance of subprime loans, distressed mortgages, and foreclosures in communities of color and lower socioeconomic status.
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Effect of Election Day Vote Centers on Voter Participation
Robert Stein & Greg Vonnahme
Election Law Journal, September 2012, Pages 291-301
Abstract:
In this article we study the effects of Election Day vote centers on voter turnout. Specifically we examine Texas and Colorado's experience with alternative arrangements for the number and location of Election Day voting places and its impact on voter turnout in the 2006 and 2008 elections. We test our hypotheses at both the aggregate (i.e., county) and individual levels. We find evidence that vote centers increase voter turnout in presidential and midterm elections, and particularly among infrequent voters in midterms.
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Perceptions Vs. Actual Exposure To Electoral Competition And Effects On Political Participation
Michael McDonald & Caroline Tolbert
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Few scholars have examined perceptions of electoral competition, and those who have (Ferejohn and Fiorina 1974) find no link between perceptions and voting behavior. We find that individuals' perceptions of electoral competition are related to exposure to a close race in their U.S. House district but do not match reality. This is because perceptions are colored by "wishful thinking" in that individuals believe their favored candidate will win a close election (Uhlaner and Grofman 1986). Once we control for wishful thinking, we find that perceptions of electoral competition are associated with political participation, while actual levels of competition in one's House district are not. Although numerous studies find that higher levels of actual electoral competition are associated with increased turnout, this is the first to find evidence of links between actual electoral competition, perceived electoral competition, and voting behavior. Measuring perceptions - and understanding how they differ from reality - may be important for scholars of public opinion and political behavior.
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Minority Group Size, Unemployment, and the Extreme Right Vote: The Crucial Case of Latvia
Stephen Bloom
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objectives: I test the importance of demographic and economic contextual variables for the success of extreme right parties.
Methods: I employ subnational data from the crucial case of Latvia to capture the effects of minority group size and economic change on the extreme right vote. Ethnic Latvians constitute a bare majority of the Latvian population and GDP dropped by 18 percent in 2009.
Results: I find that localities with high or rising unemployment were less likely to support extreme right parties. The dampening effect of unemployment on the extreme right was greater in localities with large minority populations.
Conclusions: These counterintuitive findings raise questions about the logic and generalizability of existing explanations of extreme right voting. The study of the extreme right is hampered not only by ill-suited measures of group size and economic conditions, but also by overarching theories that predict group-based outcomes.
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The integration hypothesis: How the European Union shapes economic voting
Marina Costa Lobo & Michael Lewis-Beck
Electoral Studies, September 2012, Pages 522-528
Abstract:
Whereas economic perceptions influence the national vote in Western European countries, globalization, or international openness, conditions the influence of economic perceptions on that national vote. But how do attitudes toward the EU itself influence the economic vote? After establishing the presence of a national economic vote in Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Greece and Portugal) we test the hypothesis that heightened perception of European Union economic responsibility reduces the magnitude of the national economic vote coefficient. These tests are carried out on current (2009) survey data, via logistic regression analysis of fully specified voting behavior models, estimated country-by-country and in a data pool. Clearly, the national economic vote diminishes, to the extent the EU is held responsible for the economy.
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The Effect of Prepaid Postage on Turnout: A Cautionary Tale for Election Administrators
Melissa Michelson et al.
Election Law Journal, September 2012, Pages 279-290
Abstract:
In collaboration with local election officials, we conducted a randomized field experiment in which postage-paid envelopes were provided to a random sample of 10,000 permanent vote-by-mail (VBM) voters in San Mateo County, California, in advance of the November 2, 2010, general election. We find that the treatment generated statistically significant but unexpected effects: postage-paid envelopes increased the probability that voters cast their ballots in person and decreased the probability that they cast their ballots by mail. These offsetting effects meant that the intervention produced no net change in voter turnout. We find that this pattern of countervailing effects is strongest among voters who frequently voted by mail in the past, those potentially most susceptible to disruptions in routine. Post-election interviews support the idea that the postage-paid envelopes created confusion for some voters. The results suggest that reforms designed to increase turnout by decreasing voting costs may have the unintended effect of disrupting routines.
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Local Political Knowledge and Assessments of Citizen Competence
Lee Shaker
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article contrasts the national and local political knowledge of a random sample of 993 Philadelphians with the aim of enhancing the scholarly understanding of citizen competence. Empirical study of citizen competence extends back more than fifty years, but the survey data that have been brought to bear upon the topic are almost exclusively focused on national-level politics. Consequently, sweeping conclusions about the competence of the American public rest upon a narrow foundation. The comparisons in this article depict a slew of differences in the distribution of knowledge across national and local politics, many of which challenge established notions of who is politically knowledgeable. This, in turn, has implications for which members of society are seen as politically competent and how competent the public as a whole is thought to be.