Connecting with voters
Craig Garthwaite & Timothy Moore
Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
Identifying the effects of political endorsements has historically been difficult. Before the 2008 Democratic presidential primary, Barack Obama was endorsed by talk show host Oprah Winfrey. In this article, we assess the impact of this endorsement using, as measures of Winfrey's influence, subscriptions to her magazine and sales of books she recommends. We find that her endorsement increased Obama's votes and financial contributions, and also increased overall voter turnout. No connection is found between the measures of Oprah's influence and previous elections, nor with underlying political preferences. Our results suggest that Winfrey's endorsement was responsible for approximately 1 million additional votes for Obama.
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Dodging the vote? Military conscription and U.S. voter participation, 1948-2006
Richard Cebula & Franklin Mixon
Empirical Economics, February 2012, Pages 325-343
Abstract:
This study investigates the impact of ending the military draft on voter turnout in the U.S. The main study period runs from 1948 through 2006. After controlling for the unemployment rate, the degree of labor force unionization, the U.S.-Iraq War, the impact of voting in presidential elections, the female labor force participation rate, the percent of the adult population with a college degree, income, and a variable to reflect strong approval or disapproval of the U.S. President, compelling empirical evidence is found that ending the military draft in the U.S. acted to significantly reduce the aggregate voter participation rate.
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Achieving Validation: Barack Obama and Black Turnout in 2008
Seth McKee, M.V. Hood & David Hill
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, March 2012, Pages 3-22
Abstract:
In this study we examine black voting in the 2008 presidential election. Recognizing the significance of having an African American win the presidency, we evaluate black political attitudes in 2008 vis-à-vis 2004, place black turnout in historical context, and discuss the problem of vote overreporting. The issue of vote overreporting plagues surveys, and this is particularly notable among African American respondents. The momentousness of Barack Obama's candidacy and subsequent election may further complicate black turnout responses. On the one hand, an African American Democratic presidential nominee is expected to mobilize blacks, but on the other hand this situation is also expected to increase the social desirability to misreport voting. To get around this intractable problem with surveys, we evaluate validated black turnout in the state of Georgia, which provides individual-level data on the population of registered voters. The validated black turnout numbers are much lower than those reported in national studies like the Current Population Survey, but our analysis indicates that compared to 2004, African American registration and voting in Georgia were markedly higher in 2008.
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The Impact of Election Day Registration on Voter Turnout and Election Outcomes
Jacob Neiheisel & Barry Burden
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Voter registration is widely viewed as a barrier to voter participation in general, and especially so for likely Democratic voters. A popular remedy for both turnout effects is election day registration (EDR), which eliminates the closing date by permitting registration at the polls. Following earlier research we posit a small positive effect of EDR on turnout. But contrary to conventional wisdom, we theorize that individuals most likely to take advantage of EDR are in fact Republican voters. To investigate these causal effects we make use of a natural experiment in Wisconsin. When EDR was implemented in Wisconsin in 1976, only municipalities that already required registration were affected by the change in the law. Analysis of this intervention shows that EDR did increase turnout in Wisconsin but actually decreased the Democratic share of the two-party vote for president.
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A Turn Toward Avoidance? Selective Exposure to Online Political Information, 2004-2008
Kelly Garrett, Dustin Carnahan & Emily Lynch
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars warn that avoidance of attitude-discrepant political information is becoming increasingly common due in part to an ideologically fragmented online news environment that allows individuals to systematically eschew contact with ideas that differ from their own. Data collected over a series of national RDD surveys conducted between 2004 and 2008 challenge this assertion, demonstrating that Americans' use of attitude-consistent political sources is positively correlated with use of more attitudinally challenging sources. This pattern holds over time and across different types of online outlets, and applies even among those most strongly committed to their political ideology, although the relationship is weaker for this group. Implications for these findings are discussed.
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They Just Do Not Vote Like They Used To: A Methodology to Empirically Assess Election Fraud
M.V. Hood & William Gillespie
Social Science Quarterly, March 2012, Pages 76-94
Objectives: In contemporary U.S. elections there is no shortage of allegations concerning election fraud. These claims are, however, based in large part on anecdotal evidence, unsubstantiated assertions, or the study of reported complaints. The absence of a general methodology to actively search for evidence of election fraud has resulted in policy arguments devoid of empirical data and systematic analyses.
Methods: In this article, we present a general methodology to study contemporary election fraud based on the Knowledge Discovery in Databases (KDD) process. We then apply this approach to a case study of a particular type of fraud.
Results: After examining approximately 2.1 million votes cast during the 2006 general election in Georgia, we find no evidence that election fraud was committed under the auspices of deceased registrants.
Conclusion: In this article, we have introduced a general methodology for the scientific study of election fraud. We urge social scientists to make use of such a framework to investigate the prevalence of different types of fraud across varying election cycles and jurisdictions.
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Negative Advertising and Political Competition
Amit Gandhi, Daniela Iorio & Carly Urban
University of Wisconsin Working Paper, October 2011
Abstract:
Why is negative advertising such a prominent feature of competition in the political market? We propose an explanation that is based on the "fewness" of competitors in a political race. The typical election in the United States is a two-candidate race. In such duopoly contests, there is a simple economic rationale for "going negative" relative to nonduopoly contests: when the number of competitors is greater than two, engaging in negative ads creates positive externalities for opponents that are not the object of the attack. In contrast, positive ads benefit only the advertiser. To empirically investigate the hypothesis that the number of competitors can explain the volume of negative advertising in an election, we focus on US non-presidential primary contests in 2004, where the nature of primaries provides us with a cross section of independent races and large variation in the number of entrants. Our estimation employs novel data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project, which contains information on all political advertisements aired in the top 100 media markets in 2004 races. We find that duopolies are twice as likely to air a negative ad when compared to non-duopolies, and that doubling the number of competitors drives the rate of negative advertising in an election close to zero. These results are robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls and instruments for entrants in the race.
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Attack Advertising, the White Decision, and Voter Participation in State Supreme Court Elections
Melinda Gann Hall & Chris Bonneau
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This project evaluates whether televised attack advertising and less restrictive campaign speech codes brought about by Republican Party of Minnesota v. White (2002) have had adverse effects on citizen participation in state supreme court elections. The authors' specific focus is on partisan and nonpartisan races from 2002 through 2006. Overall, they find that attack ads and liberalized speech codes actually mobilize rather than demobilize the electorate. These findings highlight the striking similarities between supreme court elections and elections to other important offices. These results also raise questions about the validity of normative accounts of the relationship between citizens and the bench.
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It's about Time: The Lifespan of Information Effects in a Multiweek Campaign
Dona-Gene Mitchell
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
I advance a theoretical and empirical framework that puts time and thus the temporal dynamics of candidate evaluation front and center in order to advance our understanding of the lifespan of information effects while enhancing the external validity of our experimental approaches. With these temporal properties in mind, I designed a "panel experiment" with research conducted over 12 weeks. This represents the first experimental approach to combine control over information exposure with attention to information processing throughout the course of a multiweek campaign. Against the backdrop of partisanship, empirical tests assess the ability of transient exposure to issue and character information to produce effects that endure beyond the moment the information is encountered either via memory-based or on-line processes. Findings reveal a remarkably limited role for enduring information effects and suggest a "rapid displacement" model of information processing where new information quickly displaces the accumulated stockpile of old information.
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Dollars on the Sidewalk: Should U.S. Presidential Candidates Advertise in Uncontested States?
Carly Urban & Sarah Niebler
University of Wisconsin Working Paper, October 2011
Abstract:
Presidential candidates in the United States do not intentionally advertise in states without rigorous competition for electoral votes. However, in some areas of non-competitive states, media markets overlap with battleground states, exposing these regions to political ads. These spillover advertisements allow us to examine the relationship between advertisements and individual campaign contributions, with data from the Wisconsin Advertising Project and the Federal Elections Commission. Using propensity score matching within uncontested states, we find that 2008 aggregate giving in zip codes exposed to political ads was approximately $6,800 (31.3% of mean contributions) more than in similar zip codes without advertisements.
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A Wuffle, Craig Leonard Brians & Kristine Coulter
PS: Political Science & Politics, January 2012, Pages 78-82
Abstract:
We consider the neglected importance of temperature as an explanatory variable. We show that: (1) colder states have turnout that is high relative to the national average; (2) the coldest states in the United States were more likely to adopt Election Day Registration (EDR) than other states, and very hot states never did so; and (3) those who live in colder states live longer.
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Hesitation Blues: Does Minority Opinion Status Lead to Delayed Responses?
Michael Huge & Carroll Glynn
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research in public opinion and political communication indicates that those who hold viewpoints that are in the minority may be more hesitant to express their opinion when compared to those in the majority. Gauging hesitation through response latencies has been put forth as a measure of the internalization of majority pressure. In a laboratory setting, participants are asked to offer simple judgments (e.g., "like" or "dislike") for various digitized images of both political and nonpolitical persons, things, and ideas. Responses are recorded and categorized according to majority or minority status and then analyzed at both the subject and the object level in an attempt to better understand the link between the climate of opinion and response hesitancy. Overall, those in the minority take longer to offer "like" or "dislike" responses when compared to those in the majority. This relationship is positively correlated with the size of the majority. Furthermore, individual differences are found to moderate the minority slowness effect (MSE). The effect is also found to be stronger for political objects when compared to nonpolitical objects.
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Brian Gaines, Timothy Nokken & Collin Groebe
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, March 2012, Pages 43-57
Abstract:
In Illinois and Texas, senate elections return members to serve terms of different length. Because term length schedules are randomized, these states provide a natural experiment. Cross-sectional comparison of chambers requires statistical controls for myriad factors that distinguish cases (chambers or periods). These two chambers, by contrast, produce direct evidence of term length's impact on electoral behavior. We test hypotheses about term length's impact on candidacies, campaign expenditures, and voter participation with data from 1968 to 2010. Surprisingly, there is little evidence of any significant differences between contests for two-year and four-year terms.
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Daniel Biggers
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Proponents of direct democracy contend that the institution increases political knowledge, but limited evidence supports this assertion over a single election. Previous studies of the relationship, however, do not account for the heterogeneous effects of each proposition and employ political knowledge scales that insufficiently rely on information directly related to political campaigns. I address these limitations by looking at the issue content of each ballot measure and using the 2006 and 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies (CCES), which contain numerous voting-relevant and policy-oriented questions from which to construct an improved measurement of actual campaign learning. Although I find no effect attributable to the total number of measures on the ballot, those addressing social issues, because they are well known, highly salient, and tap into existing social cleavages, do exhibit the hypothesized effect on political knowledge. I discuss the implications of these findings in the conclusion.
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Elizabeth Cascio & Ebonya Washington
NBER Working Paper, January 2012
Abstract:
The Voting Rights Act of 1965 (VRA) has been called one of the most effective pieces of civil rights legislation in US history, having generated dramatic increases in black voter registration and black voter turnout across the South. We show that the expansion of black voting rights in some southern states brought about by one requirement of the VRA - the elimination of literacy tests at voter registration - was accompanied by a shift in the distribution of state aid toward localities with higher proportions of black residents, who held newfound power to affect the reelection of state officials, a finding that is consistent with models of distributive politics. Our estimates imply an elasticity of state transfers to counties with respect to turnout in presidential elections - the closest available measure of enfranchisement - of roughly one.
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Election Administration and the Pure Effect of Voter Registration on Turnout
Barry Burden & Jacob Neiheisel
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Voter registration is thought to have a substantial negative effect on American voter turnout. The authors clarify this understanding in two ways. First, using a natural experiment in Wisconsin, they estimate the pure effect of registration, stripped of aspects such as the closing date. Registration lowers turnout by about 2 percentage points. Second, the authors argue that administrative capacities of local election officials are important moderators of how much registration affects turnout. Municipalities with less capacity are associated with bigger decreases in turnout. Researchers and policy makers should consider administrative capacity as a component in the equal application of voting laws.
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Media Advertising and Ballot Initiatives: The Case of Animal Welfare Regulation
Timothy Richards, William Allender & Di Fang
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Spending on political advertising increases with every election cycle, not only for congressional or presidential candidates, but also for state-level ballot initiatives. There is little research in marketing, however, on the effectiveness of political advertising at this level. In this study, we conduct an experimental analysis of advertisements used during the 2008 campaign to mandate new animal welfare standards in California (Proposition 2). Using subjects' willingness-to-pay for cage-free eggs as a proxy for their likely voting behavior, we investigate whether advertising provides real information to likely voters, and thus sharpens their existing attitudes toward the issue, or whether advertising can indeed change preferences. We find that advertising in support of Proposition 2 was more effective in raising subjects' willingness-to-pay for cage-free eggs than ads in opposition were in reducing it, but we also find that ads in support of the measure reduce the dispersion of preferences and thus polarize attitudes toward the initiative. More generally, political ads are found to contain considerably more "hype" than "real information" in the sense of Johnson and Myatt [Johnson, J. P., and D. P. Myatt. "On the Simple Economics of Advertising, Marketing and Product Design." American Economic Review, 96, 2006, 756-84].
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Ellen Quintelier & Marc Hooghe
International Political Science Review, January 2012, Pages 63-81
Abstract:
The expectation that participation entails socialization effects on political attitudes is not routinely tested in a longitudinal manner. In this article, we report on a two-year panel study among 4325 late adolescents in Belgium. By means of a cross-lagged structural equation model, it was ascertained that the relationship between participation and attitudes is reciprocal. The relationship between participation (at Time1) and attitudes (at Time2) was significantly stronger than the relationship between attitudes (at Time1) and participation (at Time2). Therefore, the current study supports the socialization perspective. Individual and collective forms of participation have equally strong socialization effects.
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Do voters reward rebellion? The electoral accountability of MPs in Britain
Nick Vivyan & Markus Wagner
European Journal of Political Research, March 2012, Pages 235-264
Abstract:
To hold their Members of Parliament individually accountable for their legislative behaviour, British voters would need to base their decision to vote for an MP at least partially on the extent to which the MP's legislative voting behaviour deviated from that of the MP's party leadership. Voters should evaluate this deviation contingent on their views of the party leadership. MP rebellion can signal that voter-MP congruence is greater than that of the voter and the MP's party leadership. In this article it is found that only constituents with negative attitudes toward the Labour government reward rebellious Labour MPs, albeit to a limited extent. A similar conditional association is not observed on a single issue: Iraq. The policy accountability of MPs is relatively weak and general rather than issue-specific.
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Partisan Discord in the Family and Political Engagement: A Comparative Behavioral Analysis
Jennifer Fitzgerald & Amber Curtis
Journal of Politics, January 2012, Pages 129-141
Abstract:
What happens to a person's level of political engagement when he is surrounded by partisan disagreement? Previous work offers a mixed picture; in certain circumstances political discord promotes engagement while in others it has the opposite effect. This analysis tests existing theories by looking at the implications of disagreement within the family. We leverage panel data to trace effects over time, and we examine this dynamic across political units. Household data from Britain, Germany, and Switzerland reveal that those whose parents are divided politically tend to become more, not less, engaged in politics. Comparatively, these effects appear stronger in some countries than in others, but the three-country analysis only suggests reasons why. Therefore, we take advantage of Swiss subnational political variation to further investigate the conditioning role of institutions. This step confirms that proportional representation elections moderate the relationship between parental disagreement and interest in politics.
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Length of compulsory education and voter turnout - evidence from a staged reform
Panu Pelkonen
Public Choice, January 2012, Pages 51-75
Abstract:
This study estimates the impact of education on voter turnout. The identification relies on a reform, which increased the length of compulsory schooling in Norway from seven to nine years. The impact is measured both at the individual, and the municipality level. Both sets of analysis suggest that additional education has no effect on voter turnout. The impact of education on various measures of civic outcomes is also estimated. Of these, only the likelihood of signing a petition is found to be positively affected by education.
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Scott Campbell & Nojin Kwak
Journal of Communication, December 2011, Pages 1005-1024
Abstract:
In recent years, mobile communication has emerged as a channel for political discourse among network ties. Although some celebrate new possibilities for political life, others are concerned that it can lead to network insularity and political detachment. This study examined how mobile-mediated discourse with strong ties interacts with characteristics of those ties to predict levels of political participation. Findings revealed that mobile-based discourse is positively associated with political participation, but that this relationship is moderated by the size and heterogeneity of one's network. Participation increases with use of the technology in large networks of like-minded individuals, but declines with use of the technology in homogeneous networks that are small. Implications and future research considerations are offered in the discussion.