Fighting the Last Election
Party Realignment, Education, and the Turnout Advantage: Revisiting the Partisan Effect of Turnout
Spencer Goidel, Thiago MQ Moreira & Brenna Armstrong
American Politics Research, January 2024, Pages 23-29
Abstract:
Party realignment is occurring along the lines of education in the United States. As college-educated voters increasingly align with the Democratic Party, it is necessary to revisit the partisan effect of turnout. We predict that, since 2016, the Democratic Party no longer benefits from higher turnout. Using validated voter turnout from the Cooperative Election Study (CES), we simulate election results across turnout rates for the 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections. Our findings show that increases in turnout greatly benefit the Democratic Party in the pre-Trump era. However, this pattern has drastically changed. In 2016, 2018, and 2020, the Democratic Party sees a much smaller gain in vote share as simulated turnout increases, but also a large vote share advantage when voter turnout is extremely low. These results indicate that continued party realignment along the lines of education could lead to a persistent reversal in the expected partisan effect of turnout -- where Democrats perform better in low-turnout local or primary elections and Republicans perform better in high-turnout general elections.
The (in)effectiveness of populist rhetoric: A conjoint experiment of campaign messaging
Yaoyao Dai & Alexander Kustov
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Is populism electorally effective and, if so, why? Scholars agree that populism is a set of people-centric, anti-pluralist, and anti-elitist ideas that can be combined with various ideological positions. It is difficult, yet important, to disentangle populism from its hosting ideology in evaluating populism's effectiveness and its potential conditional effects on the hosting ideology. We conduct a novel US conjoint experiment asking respondents to evaluate pairs of realistic campaign messages with varying populism-related messages and hosting policy positions given by hypothetical primary candidates. Although party-congruent policy positions are expectedly much more popular, we find that none of the populist features have an independent or combined effect on candidate choice.
Understanding public attitudes toward restrictive voting laws in the United States
Katherine Clayton
Research & Politics, October 2023
Abstract:
Existing research on voting legislation argues that Republican lawmakers enact strict voting laws as part of a racialized, partisan electoral strategy-they believe that the laws will reduce minority turnout and benefit Republicans electorally. Yet, the empirical effects of strict voting laws on turnout are mixed, with some studies finding that restrictive legislation can actually increase minority turnout due to counter-mobilization effects. I leverage this empirical finding to study the foundations of public attitudes toward voting laws, specifically testing whether exposure to information that restrictive voting laws can boost minority turnout impacts Republicans' or Democrats' attitudes. My results show that Republican support for restrictive voting laws generally does not change in response to information about the consequences of the laws, but Democrats are significantly less opposed when they become aware of the laws' potential impact on minority turnout. These results pose challenges for building majorities that will defend the franchise in the United States.
Do we only have narcissists to choose from?
Tuba Sendinc & Peter Hatemi
Electoral Studies, December 2023
Abstract:
In a large nationally representative study in the United States, we provide novel evidence that the greater pool of candidates who run for political office are higher in narcissism. Prior research has found that those who would like to run for office, but don't actually run, are higher in grandiose narcissism. Here, using the SINS measure of narcissism, which asks respondents if they are a narcissist, we find that narcissistic individuals have greater expressive political ambition and are more likely than others to not only be interested in political office, but to actually run for political office.
Messages Designed to Increase Perceived Electoral Closeness Increase Turnout
Daniel Biggers, David Hendry & Gregory Huber
American Politics Research, January 2024, Pages 11-22
Abstract:
The decision-theoretic Downsian model and other related accounts predict that increasing perceptions of election closeness will increase turnout. Does this prediction hold? Past observational and experimental tests raise generalizability and credible inference issues. Prior field experiments either (1) compare messages emphasizing election closeness to non-closeness messages, potentially conflating changes in closeness perceptions with framing effects of the voter encouragement message, or (2) deliver information about a particular race's closeness, potentially altering beliefs about the features of that election apart from its closeness. We address the limitations of prior work in a large-scale field experiment conducted in seven states and find that a telephone message describing a class of contests as decided by fewer, as opposed to more, votes increases voter turnout. Furthermore, this effect exceeds that of a standard election reminder. The results imply expected electoral closeness affects turnout and that perceptions of closeness can be altered to increase participation.
Gendered Self-Promotion: Differences in How Voters Evaluate Women and Men Who Highlight Their Legislative Accomplishments
Nichole Bauer
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom suggests that women can face a punishment from voters for engaging in self-promotion. Self-promotion, highlighting your accomplishments, can be detrimental to women because such behavior violates feminine stereotypic expectations that women be modest and humble. I argue and show that voters do not punish women for engaging in self-promotion but there are different styles of self-promotion that are more beneficial to women than others. I argue that women will be most successful when they use a communal style of self-promotion that emphasizes feminine stereotypic qualities, such as compromise. Conversely, I argue that agentic forms of self-promotion, which draw on masculine qualities, will be less successful for women because agency violates feminine expectations for women. I test the effects of communal and agentic self-promotion using two experiments. The result shows two key findings. First, voters do not punish women incumbents for using agentic styles of self-promotion, but women receive more positive evaluations with communal self-promotion. Second, voters are slightly more likely to reward men for communal self-promotion relative to women legislators.
"You Had Better Mention All of Them:" Race and Gender Effects in Election Loss Narratives
Pavielle Haines & Seth Masket
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
A common explanation for Hillary Clinton's loss in the 2016 presidential election was that she catered to minorities at the expense of the broader electorate. How does such a loss narrative influence voters' interpretation of subsequent elections? In a conjoint experiment, white and Black Democratic respondents were randomly exposed to a vignette that ascribed Democrats' 2016 losses to their focus on identity politics. This narrative had an asymmetric effect on attitudes toward the 2020 election based on both race and gender. While it had no impact on white men's or Black women's understanding of why the Democrats lost the last presidential election or their candidate preferences for the next, it had a substantial impact on the electoral attitudes of white women and a moderate impact on those of Black men. Specifically, it shifted their support away from candidates committed to gender and racial equity and toward those emphasizing broad economic policies. The identity politics loss narrative thus may have acted as a self-fulfilling prophecy that advantaged white male candidates in the 2020 election.
Extending the Referendum Model of Presidential Election Outcomes: Both Candidates Matter
Benjamin Highton & Walter Stone
American Politics Research, January 2024, Pages 3-10
Abstract:
We offer a candidate-centered amendment to incumbent-referendum models of presidential election outcomes that dominate the literature on post-WWII presidential elections. Our argument is that incumbent-challenger differences in character qualifications and issue concerns of the electorate should be included. These differentials, which recognize the advantage or disadvantage of the incumbent relative to the challenger party candidate have strong effects on election outcomes independent of the state of the economy, the number of years the incumbent party has held the White House, and presidential approval. Properly understood, in addition to the state of national affairs, presidential election outcomes are about the choice presented to the mass public. This added element means that candidates matter for election outcomes and electoral change in ways that have not been properly appreciated in existing scholarship.