Gerrymander this
Can Violent Protest Change Local Policy Support? Evidence from the Aftermath of the 1992 Los Angeles Riot
Ryan Enos, Aaron Kaufman & Melissa Sands
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Violent protests are dramatic political events, yet we know little about the effect of these events on political behavior. While scholars typically treat violent protests as deliberate acts undertaken in pursuit of specific goals, due to a lack of appropriate data and difficulty in causal identification, there is scant evidence of whether riots can actually increase support for these goals. Using geocoded data, we analyze measures of policy support before and after the 1992 Los Angeles riot - one of the most high-profile events of political violence in recent American history - that occurred just prior to an election. Contrary to some expectations from the academic literature and the popular press, we find that the riot caused a marked liberal shift in policy support at the polls. Investigating the sources of this shift, we find that it was likely the result of increased mobilization of both African American and white voters. Remarkably, this mobilization endures over a decade later.
The Group Basis of Partisan Affective Polarization
Joshua Robison & Rachel Moskowitz
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
What explains rising partisan animosity in the United States? We argue that mass partisans’ feelings toward the social group coalitions of the parties are an important cause of rising affective polarization. We first leverage evidence from the American National Election Study (ANES) Time Series to show that partisans’ feelings toward the social groups linked to their in-party (out-party) have grown more positive (negative) over time. We then turn to the 1992-96 and 2000-2004 ANES Panel Surveys to disentangle the interrelationship between partisan polarization and social group evaluations. Individuals with more polarized social group evaluations in 1992 or 2000 report substantially more polarized party thermometer ratings and more extreme, and better sorted, partisan identities four years later. Notably, these variables exerted little reciprocal influence on group evaluations. Our study has important implications for understanding affective polarization and the role of social groups in public opinion.
“France's (Kinder, Gentler) Extremist”: Marine Le Pen, Intersectionality, and Media Framing of Female Populist Radical Right Leaders
Alexandra Snipes & Cas Mudde
Politics & Gender, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although the populist radical right is generally seen as a particularly masculine and misogynist phenomenon, several of its parties have female leaders. The most prominent is Marine Le Pen, president of the French National Rally (formerly the National Front) and unofficial leader of the European populist radical right. Using insights from intersectionality theory, we posit that Marine Le Pen, as a female populist radical right politician, faces qualitatively different media coverage than both her female and her radical right counterparts. In this study, we analyze her media framing in two French (Le Figaro and Le Monde) and two U.S. (New York Times and Wall Street Journal) newspapers, focusing on the application of gender and populist radical right frames. We find that the “harder” populist radical right frame dominates the “softer” gender frame in all four newspapers, but, paradoxically, the combination of the two frames leads to overall less biased coverage of Marine Le Pen compared with both other female and other populist radical right politicians. In the conclusion, we discuss some of the consequences of the findings for the broader study of female politicians, most notably, theories of intersectionality and the double bind for women in leadership.
Are Moderates Better Representatives than Extremists? A Theory of Indirect Representation
John Patty & Elizabeth Maggie Penn
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Few, if any, elected representatives are capable of unilaterally implementing their platforms. Rather, they choose between options generated by other actors and/or external events. We present a theory of voters’ preferences over representatives who will cast votes on their behalf, and show that in this setting voters’ preferences over candidates’ platforms will not look like voters’ preferences over policies. We demonstrate that these induced preferences for representation tend to favor more extreme representatives, and we present two models of electoral competition in which induced preferences over representatives lead to elite polarization.
Tales of conflict: Narrative immersion and political aggression in the United States
Bryan McLaughlin
Media Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Instances of political incivility and aggression are becoming increasingly common in the United States. This manuscript contributes to our understanding of why partisans increasingly condone verbal aggression and antagonism by examining how immersion into media narratives about political conflict can affect a citizen’s feelings of political efficacy. Three experimental studies were designed to test the expectations that when partisans are immersed in a news narrative about political battles, media depictions in which their party is likely to lose the battle should lead to lower levels of political efficacy, which then leads to increased acceptance of verbal aggression and support for political antagonism. Results in all three studies provided support for the moderated mediation model.
Ideology and Polarization Among Women State Legislators
Tracy Osborn et al.
Legislative Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In early work on women in Congress, scholars consistently identified a tendency among women legislators to be more liberal roll‐call voters than male copartisans. Recent changes in Congress point to the polarization of women, where Democratic women remain more liberal than Democratic men but Republican women are no different from, or more conservative than, Republican men. We use newly available state legislative roll‐call data to determine whether women state legislators are more liberal or polarized than male copartisans. We find that while Democratic women state legislators remain consistently more liberal than male copartisans in most state chambers, Republican women legislators are growing more conservative. Thus, women state legislators are increasingly polarized in most U.S. states. Legislator replacement and increasing polarization among state legislators in office contribute to this effect. We argue that polarization among women legislators has implications for the representation of women in the states.
Political Considerations in Nonpolitical Decisions: A Conjoint Analysis of Roommate Choice
Richard Shafranek
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research shows the increasing tendency of partisan considerations to influence decisions outside the context of politics, including residential choice. Scholars attribute this tendency to affective distaste for members of the other party. However, little work has investigated the relative influence of political and nonpolitical factors in these situations - and it has not sufficiently ruled out alternative explanations for these phenomena. Do people mainly choose to socially avoid members of the other party for political reasons, or is partisanship simply perceived to be correlated with relevant nonpolitical considerations? In some settings, political affiliation may serve primarily as a cue for other factors. As a result, studies that manipulate partisanship but fail to include other individuating information may exaggerate partisanship’s importance in these decisions. To address this shortcoming, I assess the impact of political and nonpolitical considerations on roommate selection via conjoint analysis. I find that partisanship strongly influences this social decision even in the presence of nonpolitical-but-politically-correlated individuating information. Partisan preferences are also moderated by roommates’ perceived levels of political interest. Finally, other social traits do matter, but how they matter depends on partisanship. Specifically, partisans report increased willingness to live with counter-stereotypic out-partisans. This suggests that partisan social divides may be more easily bridged by individuals with cross-cutting identities.
Moralized memory: Binding values predict inflated estimates of the group’s historical influence
Luke Churchill, Jeremy Yamashiro & & Henry Roediger
Memory, forthcoming
Abstract:
Collective memories are memories or historical knowledge shared by individual group members, which shape their collective identity. Ingroup inflation, which has previously also been referred to as national narcissism or state narcissism, is the finding that group members judge their own group to have been significantly more historically influential than do people from outside the group. We examined the role of moral motivations in this biased remembering. A sample of 2118 participants, on average 42 from each state of the United States, rated their home state’s contribution to U.S. history, as well as that of ten other states randomly selected. We demonstrated an ingroup inflation effect in estimates of the group’s historical influence. Participants’ endorsement of binding values - loyalty, authority, and sanctity, but particularly loyalty - positively predicted the size of this effect. Endorsement of individuating values - care and fairness - did not predict collective narcissism. Moral motives may shape biases in collective remembering.
Nonpartisans as False Negatives: The Mismeasurement of Party Identification in Public Opinion Surveys
Andy Baker & Lucio Renno
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We argue that most survey measures of partisanship are misclassifying many respondents as nonpartisans. Common wordings, especially those in major cross-national surveys, violate well-established best practices in questionnaire design by reading aloud a nonpartisanship option. This is akin, we show, to the taboo of inviting no-opinion responses. Consequently, most wordings produce high rates of false negatives, meaning respondents with partisan leanings who nonetheless choose the nonpartisan response. Our analysis of experimental and observational data from four countries (Brazil, Mexico, Russia, United States) shows that nearly a quarter of respondents are false negatives when read an easy nonpartisan opt out. More importantly, we demonstrate, using item response theory and other measurement checks, that wordings that remedy this problem by not inviting nonpartisan responses have greater measurement validity. Our findings show that scholars are underestimating the prevalence of partisanship and that harbors for false negatives can exist in unexpected forms.
Partisan Conformity, Social Identity, and the Formation of Policy Preferences
Benjamin Toff & Elizabeth Suhay
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Summer 2019, Pages 349-367
Abstract:
While much is known about the influence of partisan elites on mass opinion, relatively little is known about peer-to-peer influence within parties. We test the impact of messages signaling political parties’ issue stances on citizens’ own professed policy preferences, comparing the influence of party elites to that of co-partisan peers. Using an online experiment conducted with a quasi-representative sample of Americans, we demonstrate across two policy domains (education and international trade) that the opinions of co-partisan peers are just as influential on citizens’ policy preferences as the opinions of party elites. Further, the mechanisms underlying elite and peer influence appear to differ, with conformity to peers - but not elites - driven almost exclusively by strength of social identification with the party.