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National Party Division and Divisive State Primaries in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948–2012
Paul-Henri Gurian et al.
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
In presidential nomination campaigns, individual state primaries and a national competition take place simultaneously. The relationship between divisive state primaries and general election outcomes is substantially different in presidential campaigns than in single-state campaigns. To capture the full impact of divisiveness in presidential campaigns, one must estimate both the impact of national party division (NPD) and the impact of divisive primaries in individual states. To do so, we develop a comprehensive model of state outcomes in presidential campaigns that incorporates both state-level and national-level controls. We also examine and compare several measures of NPD and several measures of divisive state primaries found in previous research. We find that both NPD and divisive state primaries have independent and significant influence on state-level general election outcomes, with the former having a greater and more widespread impact on the national results. The findings are not artifacts of statistical techniques, timeframes or operational definitions. The results are consistent — varying very little across a wide range of methods and specifications.
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Race, Interracial Families, and Political Advertising in the Obama Era: Experimental Evidence
Ethan Porter & Thomas Wood
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Across two studies of race and interracial families in political advertising, this article finds that significant benefits accrue to Black candidates who present themselves as part of interracial families. These findings suggest Black candidates are more likely to succeed when they engage in displays of “racial novelty,” or counter-stereotypical behavior, provided that behavior signals closer affinity to White voters. For Study 1, we tested four original advertisements for a fictitious political candidate, in which we varied only the candidate’s race and the race of his son. The Black candidate with the White son prevailed over all other combinations, with respondents finding him the most trustworthy, most qualified for office, most likely to share their values, and most likely to care about people like them. For Study 2, we tested four new original advertisements for a fictitious Black candidate, varying only the candidate’s profession and the race of his son. We find, again, that Black candidates who display non-Black children do significantly better than Black candidates who display racially homogeneous families. However, we observe much more modest benefits for a Black candidate who practices a racially novel profession. We view these results as demonstrating that Black candidates are more likely to reap the rewards of racial novelty only when they are willing to provide a personal, rather than professional, signal of their affinity for Whites. As Study 2 shows, White voters in particular are responsive to personal (rather than professional) demonstrations of racial novelty. This affirms the logic of “New Racism,” whereby Blacks are looked favorably upon if they exhibit behavior associated with Whites, but penalized otherwise.
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Why the Sky Didn't Fall: Mobilizing Anger in Reaction to Voter ID Laws
Nicholas Valentino & Fabian Neuner
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Since 2002, 26 U.S. states have passed laws that enhance restrictions on voters who intend to register and vote. Most have been sponsored by Republican legislators and passed by states with large Republican majorities. Proponents of such identification requirements argue that they are necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral system by reducing voter fraud. Many Democrats have cried foul, arguing these laws are motivated by crass partisanship at best, and racial bias at worst, because they disproportionately disenfranchise minorities. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for significant demobilization, either in the aggregate or among Democrats specifically, has thus far failed to materialize. We suspect strong emotional reactions to the public debate about these laws may mobilize Democrats, counterbalancing the disenfranchising effect. We find support for this conjecture in a nationally representative survey and an experiment where news frames about voter identification (ID) laws are carefully manipulated.
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Hans Hassell
Cornell College Working Paper, January 2016
Abstract:
Current demographic trends suggest that in less than 30 years the United States will have a majority non-white population. Previous work has shown that racial demography has real consequences on political attitudes and private voting behaviors. In this paper I find that the racial makeup of an individual’s neighborhood also affects public political behaviors. Using data from a congressional primary campaign, I examine the responses of white Republicans when asked to display the yard sign of a white Republican candidate in a primary race against a Latino Republican. I find that individuals in higher density Latino areas are more likely to be willing to post a sign. Using a field experiment run by the campaign, I show that the use of symbolic racism has the biggest influence on the behavior of whites living in high density Latino areas. Specifically, I show that racial demography changes the influence of implicit racial appeals and that implicit racial appeals are most influential in areas where whites are in the minority. These results show that racial diversity plays a significant role in the public political behaviors of white Americans and how the racial environment affects underlying behavioral motivations.
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Run, Jane, Run! Gendered Responses to Political Party Recruitment
Jessica Robinson Preece, Olga Bogach Stoddard & Rachel Fisher
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many researchers point to gender inequities in party recruitment practices to explain women’s underrepresentation on the ballot. However, there has been little systematic research about how men and women respond to recruitment, so we do not know whether gender-balanced recruitment would actually lead to gender-balanced outcomes. We conduct two studies to address this question. First, in cooperation with a county Republican Party, we identically recruited 5510 male and 5506 female highly active party members to attend a free candidate training seminar. Republican women were half as likely to respond to the invitation as men. Second, we conducted a survey experiment of 3960 voters on the Utah Colleges Exit Poll. Republican men’s level of self-reported political ambition was increased by the prospect of elite recruitment significantly more than Republican women’s, thereby increasing the gender gap vis-à-vis the control. The gender gap in the effect of recruitment on political ambition among Democrats was much smaller. Together, these findings suggest that to fully understand the role recruitment plays in women’s underrepresentation, researchers must understand the ways in which men and women respond to recruitment, not just whether political elites engage in gendered recruitment practices.
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Christopher Wlezien
Comparative Political Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The cost of ruling effect on electoral support is well established. That is, governing parties tend to lose vote share the longer they are in power. Although we know this to be true, we do not know why it happens. This research examines whether the cost of ruling results at least in part from the tendency for governing parties to shift policy further away from the average voter. It first considers differences in political institutions and how they might influence cost of ruling owing to policy drift, and then tests the hypothesis focusing on U.S. presidential elections, which is an unfavorable case to find such an effect. Results confirm a clear cost of ruling effect in these elections and demonstrate that policy misrepresentation is an important mechanism. That is, the policy liberalism of presidents from different parties diverges over time as their tenure in the White House increases, and the degree to which it does matters for the presidential vote. Policy is not the only thing that matters, and other factors, in particular the economy, are more powerful. From the point of view of electoral accountability, however, the results do provide good news, as they indicate that substantive representation is important to voters. Elections are not simply games of musical chairs.
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Surprise Me If You Can: The Influence of Newspaper Endorsements in U.S. Presidential Elections
Agustin Casas, Yarine Fawaz & Andre Trindade
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
We here evaluate the heterogeneous effects of newspaper endorsements of U.S. Presidential candidates in the 100 days preceding the 2008 and 2012 elections on the probability that they win the election. Our identification strategy relies on daily variations in the winning probabilities (obtained from the Intrade prediction market) and the fact that newspapers decide their endorsements weeks before their announcement. Endorsements that are classified as surprising and consistent have the largest effect. An endorsement is surprising when the newspaper has not traditionally endorsed the candidate's party. An endorsement is inconsistent when the newspaper leans ideologically to one party but endorses a candidate from another party.
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A Partisan Model of Electoral Reform: Voter Identification Laws and Confidence in State Elections
Shaun Bowler & Todd Donovan
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose a model of public response to politicized election reform. In this model, rival partisan elites send signals on the need and consequences of a proposed reform, with partisans in public adopting those positions. We apply this to test how state use of voter identification laws corresponded with public evaluations of the conduct of a state’s elections. We find that the relationship between photo identification laws and confidence in state elections was polarized and conditioned by party identification in 2014. Democrats in states with strict photo identification laws were less confident in their state’s elections. Republicans in states with strict identification laws were more confident than others. Results suggest strict photo identification laws are failing to instill broad-based confidence in elections, and that the reform could correspond with diminished confidence among some.
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The Effects of Lawn Signs on Vote Outcomes: Results from Four Randomized Field Experiments
Donald Green et al.
Electoral Studies, March 2016, Pages 143–150
Abstract:
Although lawn signs rank among the most widely used campaign tactics, little scholarly attention has been paid to the question of whether they actually generate votes. Working in collaboration with a congressional candidate, a mayoral candidate, an independent expenditure campaign directed against a gubernatorial candidate, and a candidate for county commissioner, we tested the effects of lawn signs by planting them in randomly selected voting precincts. Electoral results pooled over all four studies suggest that signs increased advertising candidates’ vote shares. Results also provide some evidence that the effects of lawn signs spill over into adjacent untreated voting precincts.
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Information and Wasted Votes: A Study of U.S. Primary Elections
Andrew Hall & James Snyder
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Fall 2015, Pages 433-459
Abstract:
We study whether information leads voters and donors to "waste" fewer votes and donations on candidates who do not finish in first or second place. Examining U.S. primary elections featuring more than two candidates, we compare voting and contribution behavior across offices with varying levels of information. We find that voters and donors are more likely to support the top two candidates, and less likely to waste votes or donations on lesser candidates, when information levels are higher. In addition, we find that donors consistently act more "strategically" — i.e., waste fewer donations on lesser candidates — than voters. To supplement these analyses, we isolate the causal effect of information by leveraging adjacent U.S. counties that differ in their access to politically relevant information from the media. We again find that information helps voters avoid wasting votes on candidates who are unlikely to win. The results are relevant for understanding the behavior of voters and contributors, for understanding the role of information in elections, and for the evaluation of policies like runoff primaries designed to facilitate strategic voting outcomes.
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Partisan Social Pressure and Voter Mobilization
Meghan Condon, Christopher Larimer & Costas Panagopoulos
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Social voting norms persistently impel citizens to the polls. To date, most research in this field has focused on norms coming from the community at large rather than voters’ particular social groups. But pressure to conform to in-group norms may have an even stronger effect; inquiry across disciplines repeatedly demonstrates that group identity can be an important moderator in the relationship between norms and behavior. We apply this lesson to political behavior, testing the effect of partisan social pressure on turnout. We report the results of a randomized field experiment conducted during the 2012 Iowa primary election, comparing the mobilization effects of partisan and nonpartisan direct mail messages. We test the interaction between social pressure and the partisan nature of the message and find that partisan direct mail messages alone do not effectively mobilize voters. When partisan and social pressure elements are combined, turnout increases, but no more so than when communitarian and social pressure elements are combined. We conclude that simply referencing a voter’s party does not seem to render mobilization messages more effective.
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Challenger Quality and the Incumbency Advantage
Pamela Ban, Elena Llaudet & James Snyder
Legislative Studies Quarterly, February 2016, Pages 153–179
Abstract:
Most estimates of the incumbency advantage and the electoral benefits of previous officeholding experience do not account for strategic entry by high-quality challengers. We address this issue by using term limits as an instrument for challenger quality. Studying US state legislatures, we find strong evidence of strategic behavior by experienced challengers. However, we also find that such behavior does not appear to significantly bias the estimated effect of challenger experience or the estimated incumbency advantage. More tentatively, using our estimates, we find that 30–40% of the incumbency advantage in state legislative races is the result of “scaring off” experienced challengers.
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Turning Out Unlikely Voters? A Field Experiment in the Top-Two Primary
Seth Hill & Thad Kousser
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Those who turn out in American primary elections are a small and unrepresentative subset of the population. Why do citizens forgo participation in nominating contests yet vote in general elections? We argue that limited contact lowers participation in primary elections. We present results from a randomized field experiment with near 150,000 letters in California’s 2014 primary. Each letter went to one of the four million Californians who had participated in recent general elections but not in primaries. We find that a single letter increased turnout by 0.5 points from a base rate of 9.3 percent. This increase is more than twice the average effect calculated in a recent meta-analysis and represents a proportional increase of 5.4 percent. Our experiment shows that registrants who typically abstain from primaries — and who are thus often ignored by campaigns — can be effectively mobilized.
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Terrorist Threat, Male Stereotypes, and Candidate Evaluations
Mirya Holman, Jennifer Merolla & Elizabeth Zechmeister
Political Research Quarterly, March 2016, Pages 134-147
Abstract:
How does the threat of terrorism affect evaluations of female (vs. male) political leaders, and do these effects vary by the politician’s partisanship? Using two national surveys, we document a propensity for the U.S. public to prefer male Republican leadership the most in times of security threat, and female Democratic leadership the least. We theorize a causal process by which terrorist threat influences the effect of stereotypes on candidate evaluations conditional on politician partisanship. We test this framework with an original experiment: A nationally representative sample was presented with a mock election that varied the threat context and the gender and partisanship of the candidates. We find that masculine stereotypes have a negative influence on both male and female Democratic candidates in good times (thus reaffirming the primacy of party stereotypes), but only on the female Democratic candidate when terror threat is primed. Republican candidates — both male and female — are unaffected by masculine stereotypes, regardless of the threat environment.
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The Populist Style in American Politics: Presidential Campaign Discourse, 1952–1996
Bart Bonikowski & Noam Gidron
Social Forces, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines populist claims-making in US presidential elections. We define populism as a discursive strategy that juxtaposes the virtuous populace with a corrupt elite and views the former as the sole legitimate source of political power. In contrast to past research, we argue that populism is best operationalized as an attribute of political claims rather than a stable ideological property of political actors. This analytical strategy allows us to systematically measure how the use of populism is affected by a variety of contextual factors. Our empirical case consists of 2,406 speeches given by American presidential candidates between 1952 and 1996, which we code using automated text analysis. Populism is shown to be a common feature of presidential politics among both Democrats and Republicans, but its prevalence varies with candidates' relative positions in the political field. In particular, we demonstrate that the probability of a candidate's reliance on populist claims is directly proportional to his distance from the center of power (in this case, the presidency). This suggests that populism is primarily a strategic tool of political challengers, and particularly those who have legitimate claims to outsider status. By examining temporal changes in populist claims-making on the political left and right, its variation across geographic regions and field positions, and the changing content of populist frames, our paper contributes to the debate on populism in modern democracies, while integrating field theory with the study of institutional politics.
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Daniel Kreiss & Christopher Jasinski
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Drawing on theories in organizational sociology that argue that transpositions of people,/ skills, and knowledge across domains give rise to innovations and organizational foundings that institutionalize them, we conducted a mixed-methods study of the employment biographies of staffers working in technology, digital, data, and analytics on American presidential campaigns, and the rates of organizational founding by these staffers, from the 2004 through the 2012 electoral cycles. Using Federal Election Commission and LinkedIn data, we trace the professional biographies of staffers (N = 629) working in technology, digital, data, or analytics on primary and general election presidential campaigns during this period. We found uneven professionalization in these areas, defined in terms of staffers moving from campaign to campaign or from political organizations to campaigns, with high rates of new entrants to the field. Democrats had considerably greater numbers of staffers in the areas of technology, digital, data, and analytics and from the technology industry, and much higher rates of organizational founding. We present qualitative data drawn from interviews with approximately 60 practitioners to explain how the institutional histories of the two parties and their extended networks since 2004 shaped the presidential campaigns during the 2012 cycle and their differential uptake of technology, digital, data, and analytics.