Grand Finale
Who Voted for Trump? Populism and Social Capital
Paola Giuliano & Romain Wacziarg
NBER Working Paper, August 2020
Abstract:
We argue that low levels of social capital are conducive to the electoral success of populist movements. Using a variety of data sources for the 2016 US Presidential election at the county and individual levels, we show that social capital, measured either by the density of memberships in civic, religious and sports organizations or by generalized trust, is significantly negatively correlated with the vote share and favorability rating of Donald Trump around the time of the election.
(Un)happiness and voting in U.S. presidential elections
George Ward et al.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
A rapidly growing literature has attempted to explain Donald Trump’s success in the 2016 U.S. presidential election as a result of a wide variety of differences in individual characteristics, attitudes, and social processes. We propose that the economic and psychological processes previously established have in common that they generated or electorally capitalized on unhappiness in the electorate, which emerges as a powerful high-level predictor of the 2016 electoral outcome. Drawing on a large dataset covering over 2 million individual surveys, which we aggregated to the county level, we find that low levels of evaluative, experienced, and eudaemonic subjective well-being (SWB) are strongly predictive of Trump’s victory, accounting for an extensive list of demographic, ideological, and socioeconomic covariates and robustness checks. County-level future life evaluation alone correlates with the Trump vote share over Republican baselines at r = −.78 in the raw data, a magnitude rarely seen in the social sciences. We show similar findings when examining the association between individual-level life satisfaction and Trump voting. Low levels of SWB also predict anti-incumbent voting at the 2012 election, both at the county and individual level. The findings suggest that SWB is a powerful high-level marker of (dis)content and that SWB should be routinely considered alongside economic explanations of electoral choice.
Trump Is Not a (Condorcet) Loser! Primary Voters’ Preferences and the 2016 Republican Presidential Nomination
Jonathan Woon et al.
PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2020, Pages 407-412
Abstract:
Many commentators argued that if elites and voters had coordinated on an alternative candidate, Donald Trump could have been defeated for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination. This claim rests on the implicit assumption that Trump would have been defeated in a head-to-head contest against another candidate—that he was a Condorcet loser. Conventional pre-election polls, however, do not provide enough information about voters’ preferences to assess the plausibility of this claim. Relying on novel data to construct individuals’ complete preferences over the set of leading Republican candidates, we find that no other candidate strictly defeats Trump in pairwise majority-rule comparisons and — far from being a Condorcet loser — that Trump is a member of the majority-rule core. Our results question the plausibility of the coordination narrative because Trump’s support was wider than political observers believed: it came from a broad base of the Republican primary electorate rather than a small but intense minority.
The downstream consequences of long waits: How lines at the precinct depress future turnout
Stephen Pettigrew
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers have increasingly paid attention to the impact that the administrative component of elections has on voter behavior. Existing research has focused almost exclusively on the effect that legal changes--such as voter identification laws--have on turnout. This paper extends our understanding of the electoral process by exploring how one aspect of the precinct experience -- standing in line to vote -- can shape the turnout behavior of voters in subsequent elections. I demonstrate that for every additional hour a voter waits in line to vote, their probability of voting in the subsequent election drops by 1 percentage point. To arrive at these estimates, I analyze vote history files using a combination of exact matching and placebo tests to test the identification assumptions. I then leverage an unusual institutional arrangement in the City of Boston and longitudinal data from Florida to show that the result also holds at the precinct level. The findings in this paper have important policy implications for administrative changes that may impact line length, such as voter identification requirements and precinct consolidation. They also suggest that racial asymmetries in precinct wait times contribute to the gap in turnout rates between white and non-white voters.
Voting Lines, Equal Treatment, and Early Voting Check-In Times in Florida
David Cottrell, Michael Herron & Daniel Smith
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Lines at the polls raise the cost of voting and can precipitate unequal treatment of voters. Research on voting lines is nonetheless hampered by a fundamental measurement problem: little is known about the distribution of time voters spend in line prior to casting ballots. We argue that early, in-person voter check-in times allow us identify individuals who waited in line to vote. Drawing on election administrative records from two General Elections in Florida — 1,031,179 check-ins from 2012 and 1,846,845 from 2016 — we find that minority voters incurred disproportionately long wait times in 2012 and that in-person voters who waited excessively in 2012 had a slightly lower probability — approximately one percent — of turning out to vote in 2016, ceteris paribus. These individuals also had slightly lower turnout probabilities in the 2014 Midterm Election, ceteris paribus. Our results draw attention to the ongoing importance of the administrative features of elections that influence the cost of voting and ultimately the extent to which voters are treated equally.
But Can She Make America Great Again? Threat, Stability, and Support for Female Candidates in the United States
Elizabeth Simas
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on the literature on system justification, I argue that the fate of female candidates in the U.S. is tied to whether the election is occurring in relatively good or bad times. Using an original experiment embedded in the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, I show that exposure to low vs. high threat messages led to higher evaluations of Hillary Clinton. These findings are complimented by a vote choice model that shows that the likelihood of supporting Clinton over Trump was significantly higher when perceived threat (as captured by economic assessments) was lower. A second original experiment better isolates the effects of candidate sex and generalizes these findings beyond the 2016 case. These results highlight the importance of including campaign context in studies of candidate evaluation and suggest that overt sexism is not the only hurdle facing women running for office in the U.S.
The Gendered Politics of Congressional Elections
Sarah Fulton & Kostanca Dhima
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are female candidates less likely than male candidates to attract votes or win elections? We conduct a large-n longitudinal analysis employing survey and observational data from every two-party congressional race over a 12-year period (2006–2018) and connect individual-level theory and evidence with aggregate-level results. We demonstrate that candidate gender significantly influences congressional vote-choice and election outcomes. Holding other variables constant, we show that male Republican and male independent voters are significantly less likely to vote for female Democratic candidates, but do not assess a similar penalty on female Republican candidates. Perceived ideological distance does not explain the lack of support for female Democrats — however, variation in candidate quality does: Female Democratic candidates can attract the support of male Republican and male independent voters when they have a qualifications advantage, but are penalized when they are merely “as qualified.” At the aggregate-level, female Democratic candidates with a qualifications advantage are as likely as males to win elections; but are significantly less likely than males to win when qualifications are held constant. The proportion of male Republicans and male independents in a district determines the extent of the penalty, with women’s electoral prospects declining as this proportion increases. Women can win, but they need to be highly qualified and strategic about the races in which they emerge. These findings contribute to our understanding of the micro- and macro-level factors that shape women’s electoral fortunes; and advance the goal of representational equality by helping candidates and campaigns concentrate their efforts on the most winnable voters and districts.
Strategic Opposition Research
Benjamin Ogden & Alejandro Medina
Texas A&M University Working Paper, June 2020
Abstract:
We develop a model of strategic opposition research within a campaign. A candidate faces an opponent of unknown relative quality. After observing an unverifiable private signal (e.g., rumor of a scandal), the candidate chooses whether to undertake opposition research, attempting a costly search for verifiable bad news, and then whether to reveal what the research found to the voters. Increasing the ex-ante quality of an opponent deters opposition research, but also increases voter response to any given revelation in equilibrium because the voter knows the (unobserved) private signal was sufficient to launch research. This "Halo Effect" can explain both why voters seem to react more to relatively smaller scandals by high-quality officials compared to low-quality ones, and why even high-quality challengers may want to raise the cost of searching their backgrounds, despite their expected lack of scandal. This effect may be sufficiently strong that parties prefer lower expected quality candidates on average. These results also rationalize the mixed empirical literature showing that exogenously generated negative information about candidates (i.e., experiments) tend to show smaller effects on voter behavior than endogenously generated negative information over the course of campaigns (i.e., surveys).
The Power of the State: How Postcards from the State Increased Registration and Turnout in Pennsylvania
Lisa Bryant et al.
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Unlike citizens in nearly all other democracies, most U.S. citizens bear the responsibility for registering to vote. We test whether states can help citizens overcome the barriers to registration and turnout using a simple postcard. To do this, we leverage a new program that brings states together to improve the quality of their voter registration rolls and generate lists of eligible but unregistered citizens. Using a unique list of eligible but unregistered citizens from the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, we partnered with the Pennsylvania Department of State’s Office to conduct a large-scale voter registration field experiment prior to the 2016 election. We provide new tests of traditional theories related to lowering the costs of registration as well as new theories related to promoting government responsiveness. We find that contact in the form of a single postcard from the Department of State led to a one percentage point increase in registration and a 0.9-point increase in turnout, regardless of the content of the postcard. Registration effects were strongest among young, first-time voters. Importantly, new registrants voted at a rate far exceeding rates found in previous registration drives.
Voting and Political Participation in the Aftermath of the HIV/AIDS Epidemic
Hani Mansour, Daniel Rees & James Reeves
NBER Working Paper, July 2020
Abstract:
This is the first study to examine the effect of experiencing a widespread, deadly epidemic on voting behavior. Using data on elections to the U.S House of Representatives and leveraging cross-district variation in HIV/AIDS mortality during the period 1983-1987, we document the effects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic on votes received by Democratic and Republican candidates. Beginning with the 1994 elections, there is a strong, positive association between HIV/AIDS mortality and the vote share received by Democratic candidates. Congressional districts that bore the brunt of the HIV/AIDS epidemic also saw substantial increases in Democratic voter turnout and contributions made to Democratic candidates.
Media Influence on Vote Choices: Unemployment News and Incumbents' Electoral Prospects
Marcel Garz & Gregory Martin
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does news about the economy influence voting decisions? We isolate the effect of the information environment from the effect of change in the underlying economic conditions themselves by taking advantage of left‐digit bias. We show that unemployment figures crossing a round‐number “milestone” cause a discontinuous increase in the amount of media coverage devoted to unemployment conditions, and we use this discontinuity to estimate the effect of attention to unemployment news on voting, holding constant the actual economic conditions on the ground. Milestone effects on incumbent U.S. governor vote shares are large and notably asymmetric: Bad milestone events hurt roughly twice as much as good milestone events help.
Ballot Cues, Business Candidates, and Voter Choices in Local Elections
Brian Adams, Edward Lascher & Danielle Joesten Martin
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
American voters commonly express abstract support for candidates with a business background, yet there is minimal systematic evidence about whether it advantages candidates in actual electoral contests. We examine this question using observational data, drawing on a California law allowing candidates to designate their occupational background on the ballot, and experimental data. Candidates with a business background are prevalent in California. However, neither of our studies indicate that business candidates enjoy atypical overall electoral success (although Republican leaning constituencies have a notably more favorable view of such candidates). A political background predicts electoral success far more effectively. Further, “small business owners” have more success than other business candidates, suggesting that voters consider the specifics of a candidate’s business experience. These results advance our knowledge of decision making in low-information elections, how voters weigh private-sector versus political experience, and how they filter occupational information through a partisan lens.
Does Property Ownership Lead to Participation in Local Politics? Evidence from Property Records and Meeting Minutes
Jesse Yoder
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Homeowners and renters have participated in politics at different rates throughout American history, but does becoming a property owner motivate an individual to participate in local politics? I combine deed-level property records in California and Texas with an original dataset on individual comments in local city council meetings to study the role of property ownership in shaping costly forms of political behavior, and I document large inequalities in who participates at city council meetings. I also link property records to individual-level contribution records and administrative voter files and find that becoming a property owner increases an individual’s political activity. Over and above voting in local elections, property ownership motivates individuals to participate in local city council meetings and donate to candidates. These findings illustrate how the experience of homeownership leads property owners to become much more active in local politics.
Resisting Broken Windows: The Effect of Neighborhood Disorder on Political Behavior
Jacob Brown & Michael Zoorob
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Concurrent housing and opioid crises have increased exposure to street-crime, homelessness and addiction in American cities. What are the political consequences of this increased neighborhood disorder? We examine a change in social context following the relocation of homelessness and drug treatment services in Boston. In 2014, an unexpected bridge closing forced nearly 1000 people receiving emergency shelter or addiction treatment to relocate from an island in the Boston Harbor to mainland Boston, causing sustained increases in drug-use, loitering, and other features of neighborhood disorder. Residents near the relocation facilities mobilized to maintain order in their community. In the subsequent Mayoral election, their turnout grew 9% points while participation in state and national elections was unchanged. However, increased turnout favored the incumbent Mayor, consistent with voter learning about candidate quality following local shocks. Voters responded to neighborhood changes at the relevant electoral scale and rewarded responsive politicians.
Do Campaign Finance Reforms Insulate Incumbents from Competition? New Evidence from State Legislative Elections
Jordan Butcher & Jeffrey Milyo
PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2020, Pages 460-464
Abstract:
Variations in state campaign finance regulations across states and over time provide an opportunity to test the effects of reforms on the electoral success of incumbent state legislators. We use the most recent state legislative election returns dataset to test whether state campaign finance reforms help or hinder incumbents. Our analysis of nearly 66,000 contests in 33 years reveals that campaign contribution limits and partial public financing have little impact on incumbent reelection prospects. However, full public financing and prohibitions on corporate independent expenditures significantly increase the probability of incumbent reelection.
Bitchifying Hillary: Trump Supporters’ Vilification of Clinton during the 2016 Presidential Election
Kristen Erichsen et al.
Social Currents, forthcoming
Abstract:
Based on fieldwork and interviews during the run-up to the 2016 election, we examine how Trump supporters vilified Hillary Clinton as a bitch. We first analyze how Trump rally attendees collaborated to bitchify Clinton (e.g., through displays, chants, speaker–audience exchanges) in ways that fostered emotional bonding, a politically incorrect situational definition, and shared identities as Trump supporters. We then examine how interviewees constructed narratives that more subtly rooted her alleged posturing for power, profiteering, and evading justice in her bitch-like personality. To distinguish between explicit bitchifying — which was common at the rallies — and implicit characterization — which was common during the formal interviews — we develop the concept of “bitch-whistling,” which frames but not names women as bitches. We conclude by exploring how this study contributes to understanding Trump’s 2016 victory, research on gender and politics, and political narratives more generally.
Political Trust and Native American Electoral Participation: An Analysis of Survey Data from Nevada and South Dakota
Jean Schroedel et al.
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: This research analyzes the impact of political trust on Native American electoral participation, using survey responses from roughly 1,500 Native Americans living in South Dakota and Nevada.
Method: The in‐person survey taking was conducted at locations in Native communities and with the support of tribal leaders, allowing us to overcome many of the methodological issues that have hampered previous studies.
Results: We found much higher levels of electoral participation in tribal elections than in non‐tribal elections. Respondents expressed high levels of distrust in nontribal government and voting methods, and this distrust has a surprisingly powerful impact on the decision to participate in nontribal elections.