Election Season
Do Voters Care about the Age of their Elected Representatives?
Damon Roberts & Jennifer Wolak
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
On average, members of Congress are significantly older than the constituents they represent, while young people remain under-represented in elected office. Is this because people prefer older politicians and fail to see young people as viable candidates? Drawing on survey and experimental evidence, we explore how the age of a politician affects both candidate evaluations and incumbent approval. We find that people tend to see younger candidates as less experienced, less qualified, and less conservative than older candidates. However, we find few differences in people’s willingness to support a younger candidate than an older candidate. In fact, when looking at patterns of approval in Congress, people report more negative ratings of older members of Congress rather than younger ones. The over-representation of older voices in Washington likely reflects structural factors like incumbency that favor the success of older politicians, rather than the demands of the electorate.
Online engagement with 2020 election misinformation and turnout in the 2021 Georgia runoff election
Jon Green et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 23 August 2022
Abstract:
Following the 2020 general election, Republican elected officials, including then-President Donald Trump, promoted conspiracy theories claiming that Joe Biden’s close victory in Georgia was fraudulent. Such conspiratorial claims could implicate participation in the Georgia Senate runoff election in different ways — signaling that voting doesn’t matter, distracting from ongoing campaigns, stoking political anger at out-partisans, or providing rationalizations for (lack of) enthusiasm for voting during a transfer of power. Here, we evaluate the possibility of any on-average relationship with turnout by combining behavioral measures of engagement with election conspiracies online and administrative data on voter turnout for 40,000 Twitter users registered to vote in Georgia. We find small, limited associations. Liking or sharing messages opposed to conspiracy theories was associated with higher turnout than expected in the runoff election, and those who liked or shared tweets promoting fraud-related conspiracy theories were slightly less likely to vote.
Serving Democracy: Evidence of Voting Resource Disparity in Florida
Gérard Cachon & Dawson Kaaua
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Florida, an important state in presidential elections in the United States, has received considerable media coverage in recent years for long lines to vote. Do some segments of the population receive a disproportionate share of the resources to serve the voting process, which could encourage some or dissuade others from voting? We conduct the first empirical panel data study to examine whether minority and Democrat voters in Florida experience lower poll worker staffing, which could lengthen the time to vote. We do not find evidence of a disparity directly due to race. Instead, we observe a political party effect — all else equal, a 1% increase in the percentage of voters registered as Democrat in a county increases the number of registered voters per poll worker by 3.5%. This effect appears to be meaningful — using a voting queue simulation, a 5% increase in voters registered as Democrat in a county could increase the average wait time to vote from 40 minutes (the approximate average wait time to vote in Florida in 2012 and the highest average wait time across all states in that election per the Cooperative Congressional Election Study) to about 115 minutes.
Disclosure in Democracy
Matthew Denes, Madeline Scanlon & Florian Schulz
Carnegie Mellon University Working Paper, July 2022
Abstract:
Using hand-collected data on political contributions from undisclosed sources, we document novel stylized facts on "dark money" and its role in elections and politician type. Over the past decade, dark money has become a major source of campaign financing and currently comprises the largest source of capital from special interest groups. Consistent with evading disclosure, dark money is spent just before an election and often transferred to other special interest groups. We show that dark money is more likely to support candidates in competitive races and in areas with reduced information environments, lower education, greater inequality, and less poverty. Exploiting variation in exposure to television advertisements, we find that candidates supported by dark money advertisements receive an increase in votes and are more likely to win elections. While politicians supported by dark money organizations are more likely to engage in the political process by voting for and sponsoring legislation aligned with business interests, they are also more likely to be subsequently voted out of office, suggesting that they may enact an agenda focused on their donors rather than their constituents. Taken together, our results provide the first systematic evidence on the rise and impact of dark money in U.S. congressional elections, contributing to the ongoing debate about disclosure requirements of political spending.
Vote Early and Vote Often? Detecting Electoral Fraud from the Timing of 19th Century Elections
Francesco Ferlenga & Brian Knight
NBER Working Paper, August 2022
Abstract:
This paper develops a new approach to detecting electoral fraud. Our context involves repeaters, individuals voting in multiple states in the U.S. during 19th Century Congressional Elections. Given high travel times, and the associated difficulties of voting in multiple states on the same day, we exploit the staggered introduction of holding federal elections on the first Tuesday after the first Monday in November (1T1M). The key finding is that county-level turnout rates fell when the closest neighboring state coordinated on 1T1M. This result is consistent with 1T1M adoption making repeating more difficult. In terms of mechanisms, the pattern is stronger in states that had not yet adopted the secret ballot, consistent with the secret ballot itself reducing voter fraud. The pattern is also driven by smaller population counties, consistent with repeaters particularly inflating turnout rates in these places.
Aspect-Level Personality Characteristics of U.S. Presidential Candidate Supporters in the 2016 and 2020 Elections
Xiaowen Xu & Jason Plaks
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
With two studies (N=1,257), we examined the aspect-level personality predictors of support for major U.S. presidential candidates in 2016 and 2020. U.S. residents completed measures of aspect-level personality, overall political orientation, and support for each candidate. The profile that predicted support for each candidate diverged from the profile that predicted generic liberalism/conservatism. Moreover, differences emerged between supporters of different candidates within the same party. For example, preference for Clinton was predicted by higher Openness, but lower Intellect, Politeness, and Volatility, whereas preference for Sanders was predicted only by higher Openness and lower Volatility. Preference for Trump was predicted by lower Openness and higher Volatility in 2016, but lower Compassion and higher Industriousness in 2020. Support for Biden was predicted by higher Compassion, Intellect, and Withdrawal. This work provides a more nuanced understanding of how the psychology of generalized political orientation may deviate from the psychology behind support for specific candidates.
Reconsidering Bellwether Locations in U.S. Presidential Elections
James Gimpel, Andrew Reeves & Sean Trende
Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2022, Pages 509-534
Abstract:
We examine the notion of a “bellwether” location in the electoral political context. Bellwethers are thought to have predictive power because they supposedly signal how the entire electorate will move on election day. We consider how the number of bellwether counties — defined in several ways — has fluctuated since the 1930s. We also explore the extent to which bellwethers successfully predict future elections. With the proliferation of geographic polarization, few counties can successively and successfully pick the winner of presidential elections. Other bellwether measures fare slightly better or worse, but as Tufte and Sun (1975) found nearly half a century ago, bellwethers today continue to be poor predictors of future performance.
Americans discount the effect of friction on voter turnout
Asaf Mazar et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 23 August 2022
Abstract:
Whether or not someone turns out to vote depends on their beliefs (such as partisanship or sense of civic duty) and on friction — external barriers such as long travel distance to the polls. In this exploratory study, we tested whether people underestimate the effect of friction on turnout and overestimate the effect of beliefs. We surveyed a representative sample of eligible US voters before and after the 2020 election (n = 1,280). Participants’ perceptions consistently underemphasized friction and overemphasized beliefs (mean d = 0.94). In participants’ open-text explanations, 91% of participants listed beliefs, compared with just 12% that listed friction. In contrast, turnout was shaped by beliefs only slightly more than friction. The actual belief-friction difference was about one-fourth the size of participants’ perceptions (d = 0.24). This bias emerged across a range of survey measures (open- and close-ended; other- and self-judgments) and was implicated in downstream consequences such as support for friction-imposing policies and failing to plan one’s vote.
Do house prices affect campaign contributions?
Rebecca Lessem, Sarah Niebler & Carly Urban
Economics & Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Individual campaign contributions are the largest source of financing for U.S. presidential and congressional candidates, though the body of research examining why people give remains small. To help understand these decisions, we estimate the causal impact of house prices on donations across campaigns and parties using an instrumental variables strategy. Our results indicate that an increase in house prices increases ZIP code-level donations to Democratic presidential and congressional candidates, with minuscule or no effect for Republican candidates. The effects in areas with a greater proportion of renters are larger than areas with more homeowners. Since this population is likely to experience higher rents as a result of house price increases, this suggests that pleas for policy may inspire giving. Further, areas with the highest fraction of college educated residents also see the largest effects, when compared to less-educated areas, suggesting a wealth effect exists as well.
The Party Replies: Examining Local Party Responsiveness to Prospective Campaign Volunteers
Lee Hannah, Kevin Reuning & Anne Whitesell
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine the role that local parties play in responding to and equipping local volunteers to work during campaign seasons. We use a field experiment during the 2020 U.S. general election to investigate whether local parties are more likely to respond to certain types of volunteers and to examine what factors are associated with local parties’ responsiveness. We find that both Democratic and Republican local parties in competitive counties are more likely to respond to volunteers. Moreover, we find that both parties are more likely to respond to white volunteers and Democratic parties are more likely to respond to women. These differential response rates may be contributing to the increased demographic sorting between the parties.