Ballot Choice
How Partisan Is Local Election Administration?
Joshua Ferrer, Igor Geyn & Daniel Thompson
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the United States, elections are often administered by directly elected local officials who run as members of a political party. Do these officials use their office to give their party an edge in elections? Using a newly collected dataset of nearly 5,900 clerk elections and a close-election regression discontinuity design, we compare counties that narrowly elect a Democratic election administrator to those that narrowly elect a Republican. We find that Democrats and Republicans serving similar counties oversee similar election results, turnout, and policies. We also find that reelection is not the primary moderating force on clerks. Instead, clerks may be more likely to agree on election policies across parties than the general public and selecting different election policies may only modestly affect outcomes. While we cannot rule out small effects that nevertheless tip close elections, our results imply that clerks are not typically and noticeably advantaging their preferred party.
House Republicans were rewarded for supporting Donald Trump's 'stop the steal' efforts
Larry Bartels & Nicholas Carnes
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 22 August 2023
Abstract:
In early 2021, members of Congress cast a series of high-profile roll call votes forcing them to choose between condoning or opposing Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election. Substantial majorities of House Republicans supported Trump, first by opposing the certification of electoral votes from Arizona and Pennsylvania on January 6th, then by opposing the president's impeachment for inciting the attack on the US Capitol, and then by opposing a bill that would have created a national commission to investigate the events of January 6th. We examine whether the House Republicans who voted to support Trump in 2021 were rewarded or punished in the 2022 congressional midterm elections. We find no evidence that members who supported Trump did better or worse in contested general election races. However, Trump supporters were less likely to lose primary elections, more likely to run unopposed in the general election, more likely to run for higher office, and less likely to retire from politics. Overall, there seem to have been no significant political costs and some significant rewards in 2022 for House Republicans who supported Trump's undemocratic behavior.
Authoritarianism and support for Trump and Clinton in the 2016 primaries
Trent Ollerenshaw
Research & Politics, August 2023
Abstract:
Research in the wake of the contentious 2016 presidential primaries contends both Democrats and Republicans were internally divided along psychological lines. Specifically, MacWilliams (2016) finds authoritarian personality was strongly related to Trump support among Republican primary voters, and Wronski et al. (2018) finds authoritarianism was strongly related to Clinton support among Democratic primary voters. In this paper, I reassess the relationships between authoritarianism and 2016 primary candidate preferences for both Republicans and Democrats. I analyze two new large, probability-based surveys and generate random effects estimates using these surveys and two national surveys from Wronski et al. (2018). Overall, I find authoritarianism was moderately associated with support for Clinton over Sanders among Democratic primary voters, but weakly associated with support for Trump among Republican primary voters. My findings indicate authoritarianism may have played a more limited role in shaping Americans' candidate preferences in the 2016 presidential primary elections than past studies have suggested.
Does Fake News Affect Voting Behavior? An Instrumental Variable Approach Using Big College Football Games
Alden Cheng
MIT Working Paper, July 2023
Abstract:
The issue of fake news has been hotly debated in recent years, with some commentators claiming that it played a role in US presidential elections and the Brexit vote. Despite these claims, there has been limited evidence to date linking fake news directly to voting behavior. In this project, I seek to provide credible evidence on this question by using big college football games as an instrument for fake news consumption. I find that search volumes for pro-Trump fake news terms were lower in counties close to college football teams that played a big game shortly before the election, and also that these counties were less likely to vote for Trump. The magnitude of these estimates suggest that a one-standard deviation increase in search volume for pro-Trump fake news terms increased Trump's vote share by about 4.5-9 percentage points. Finally, I do not find evidence that fake news affected overall turnout rates, or that fake news resulted in down-ballot effects.
Allegations Made against Dominion Voting Systems and the 2020 Presidential Election in Wisconsin
Michael Herron
Election Law Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
One of most extensive allegations of vote manipulation in the 2020 presidential election revolved around technology manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems. In particular, then-incumbent president Donald Trump claimed in the election's aftermath that Dominion machines used across the country led to the deletion of millions of votes cast for him. Given the number of jurisdictions across the United States that rely on Dominion technology, this is conceivably a very damaging claim. To assess the allegation against Dominion, this article draws on election returns from Wisconsin, a state in which many municipalities changed voting technologies between the 2016 and 2020 general elections, some switching to Dominion technology prior to 2020 and others transitioning away from it. Holding jurisdiction features constant, there is no evidence in Wisconsin that Trump's 2020 vote share was low in jurisdictions using Dominion technology in 2020, and there is similarly no evidence that Republican congressional candidates in Wisconsin had lower vote share in jurisdictions with Dominion technology in 2020. Wisconsin thus offers no evidence that Dominion voting technology harmed Donald Trump in 2020 and thus no evidence that the allegation of vote manipulation leveled against Dominion Voting Systems was anything but a conspiracy theory.
Electoral College and Election Fraud
Georgy Egorov & Konstantin Sonin
NBER Working Paper, July 2023
Abstract:
One frequently overlooked aspect of the U.S.-style electoral college system is that it discourages election fraud. In a presidential election based on the popular vote, competing political parties are motivated to manipulate votes in areas where they hold the most significant influence, such as states where they control local executive offices, legislatures, and the judiciary. However, with the electoral college system in place, the incentives for fraud shift to swing states where the local government is politically divided, and fraud is therefore more difficult and costly. Our theoretical model elucidates why the electoral college system provides more effective protection against election fraud compared to the popular vote system. While polarization makes fraud more likely, it does not affect the superiority of the electoral college system.
Why Compete for Firms? Electoral Effects of Corporate Headquarters Relocation
Joonseok Yang
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why do local and state governments in the United States compete to attract and retain corporations in their jurisdictions even by offering generous incentives, which can jeopardize public spending on other needs? This research shows that the answer can lie in the electoral effects of headquarters (HQ) relocation. Using an original data set of interstate HQ relocation cases covered in the news media from 1995 to 2015, this research finds that interstate business location decisions affect gubernatorial election outcomes. However, empirical analyses provide evidence that voters use different attribution processes when considering HQ relocation-in versus relocation-out cases: HQ relocation-out results in greater support for Republican candidates, whereas HQ relocation-in increases support for the incumbent party. Supplementary analyses suggest that the perceptual effects and symbolic value of HQ relocation, rather than its immediate local economic effects, drive electoral outcomes. The findings have implications for electoral accountability and the political economy of business-government relationships.
Reshares on social media amplify political news but do not detectably affect beliefs or opinions
Andrew Guess et al.
Science, 28 July 2023, Pages 404-408
Abstract:
We studied the effects of exposure to reshared content on Facebook during the 2020 US election by assigning a random set of consenting, US-based users to feeds that did not contain any reshares over a 3-month period. We find that removing reshared content substantially decreases the amount of political news, including content from untrustworthy sources, to which users are exposed; decreases overall clicks and reactions; and reduces partisan news clicks. Further, we observe that removing reshared content produces clear decreases in news knowledge within the sample, although there is some uncertainty about how this would generalize to all users. Contrary to expectations, the treatment does not significantly affect political polarization or any measure of individual-level political attitudes.
How do social media feed algorithms affect attitudes and behavior in an election campaign?
Andrew Guess et al.
Science, 28 July 2023, Pages 398-404
Abstract:
We investigated the effects of Facebook's and Instagram's feed algorithms during the 2020 US election. We assigned a sample of consenting users to reverse-chronologically-ordered feeds instead of the default algorithms. Moving users out of algorithmic feeds substantially decreased the time they spent on the platforms and their activity. The chronological feed also affected exposure to content: The amount of political and untrustworthy content they saw increased on both platforms, the amount of content classified as uncivil or containing slur words they saw decreased on Facebook, and the amount of content from moderate friends and sources with ideologically mixed audiences they saw increased on Facebook. Despite these substantial changes in users' on-platform experience, the chronological feed did not significantly alter levels of issue polarization, affective polarization, political knowledge, or other key attitudes during the 3-month study period.
How Women Attack: Candidate Reliance on Feminine and Masculine Traits in Campaign Negativity
Nichole Bauer, Caley Hewitt & Pamela Labbe
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We develop a framework to identify how women use negative messages in political campaigns. We argue that women will be more likely to use contrast negativity, messages that include a negative message against an opponent and a positive message about the candidate sponsoring the ad, rather than attack negativity, messages that only criticize an opponent. We also identify how feminine and masculine traits emerge in negativity -- a strategy we call gendered trait negativity. We analyze gendered trait negativity in television ads from the Wesleyan Media Project (WMP) for House, Senate, and gubernatorial races from 2010 to 2018. Using logistic regression models, we find that women use contrast messages more than attack messages when running against a man. Second, we find that women are more likely to highlight feminine traits over masculine traits in negative messages when their opponent is a man relative to when their opponent is a woman.