Get ready to rumble
Did Jon Stewart elect Donald Trump? Evidence from television ratings data
Ethan Porter & Thomas Wood
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
To identify the effects of televised political comedy on the 2016 presidential election, we leverage the change in hosts of two popular shows, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, and both shows' subsequent ratings declines. By combining granular geographic ratings data with election results, we are able to isolate the shows' effects on the election. For The Daily Show, we find a strong positive effect on Jon Stewart's departure and Trump's vote share. By our estimate, the transition at The Daily Show spurred a 1.1% increase in Trump's county-level vote share. Further analysis suggests that the effect may be owed more to Stewart's effects on mobilization, not his effects on attitudes. We also find weaker evidence indicating that the end of The Colbert Report was associated with a decline in 2016 voter turnout. Our results make clear that late-night political comedy can have meaningful effects on presidential elections.
Political Consequences of the Endangered Local Watchdog: Newspaper Decline and Mayoral Elections in the United States
Meghan Rubado & Jay Jennings
Urban Affairs Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Newspapers have faced extreme challenges in recent years due to declining circulation and advertising revenue. This has resulted in newspaper closures, staff cuts, and dramatic changes to the ways many newspapers cover local government, among other topics. This article argues that the loss of professional expertise in coverage of local government has negative consequences for the quality of city politics because citizens become less informed about local policies and elections. We test our theory using an original data set that matches 11 local newspapers in California to the municipalities they cover. The data show that cities served by newspapers with relatively sharp declines in newsroom staffing had, on average, significantly reduced political competition in mayoral races. We also find suggestive evidence that lower staffing levels are associated with lower voter turnout.
Political Moderation and Polarization in the Heartland: Economics, Rurality, and Social Identity in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election
Ann Oberhauser, Daniel Krier & Abdi Kusow
Sociological Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The 2016 U.S. presidential election was a watershed event that signaled decreasing political moderation and increasing partisan polarization, authoritarianism, and ethno-nationalism. Iowa, located at the center of the American Heartland, swung to the political right more than any other state. Multivariate regression analysis of county-level data is used to determine the relative contribution of factors reputed to have caused voters to support Trump: rurality, economic distress, and social identity. We find that rurality and social identity, but not economic distress, were significantly correlated with Iowa’s swing to Trump. Polarization along these social divisions must be addressed if the Heartland is to return to political moderation.
Demographic Change, Threat, and Presidential Voting: Evidence from U.S. Electoral Precincts, 2012 to 2016
Seth Hill, Daniel Hopkins & Gregory Huber
Yale Working Paper, March 2019
Abstract:
Immigration and demographic change have become highly salient in American politics, partly because of the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump. Previous research indicates that local influxes of immigrants or unfamiliar ethnic groups can generate threatened responses, but has either focused on non-electoral outcomes or has analyzed elections in large geographic units such as counties. Here, we examine whether demographic changes at low levels of aggregation were associated with vote shifts toward an anti-immigration presidential candidate between 2012 and 2016. To do so, we compile a novel, precinct-level data set of election results and demographic measures for more than 26,000 precincts in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. We employ regression analyses varying model specifications and measures of demographic change. Our estimates uncover little evidence that influxes of Hispanics or non-citizen immigrants benefitted Trump relative to past Republicans, and in fact suggest that these changes helped his opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Reevaluating Competition and Turnout in U.S. House Elections
Daniel Moskowitz & Benjamin Schneer
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, April 2019, Pages 191-223
Abstract:
Does electoral competitiveness boost turnout in U.S. House elections? Using an individual panel of turnout records compiled from the voter files of all 50 states, we exploit variation in district competitiveness induced by the 2012 redistricting cycle to provide credible estimates of the effect of competitiveness on turnout. When tracking the same voters across time under differing levels of competitiveness, we precisely estimate the effect on turnout to be near zero. Although past cross-sectional research reports a link between competitiveness and turnout in House elections, we demonstrate that residents in competitive districts differ markedly from those in uncompetitive districts along a number of observable characteristics correlated with turnout, and we argue that this induces bias in most cross-sectional estimates. Secondary evidence tracking voter perceptions of competitiveness and campaign behavior provides support for our finding. Voters have scant awareness of competitiveness in House elections, and, while campaign spending is strongly related to competitiveness, it is directed into avenues that do not appreciably increase turnout. Our findings have important implications for the competitiveness--turnout relationship in other electoral settings with geographically compact, single-member districts.
Palmetto Postmortem: Examining the Effects of the South Carolina Voter Identification Statute
M.V. Hood & Scott Buchanan
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 2011, South Carolina passed a government-issued photo identification (ID) statute. We examine the effects of this law on overall turnout, as well as for minority turnout in particular. A series of difference-in-difference tests are specified using individual-level population data on registrants with and without ID, comparing the 2010 (pre-implementation) and 2014 (post-implementation) election cycles. The results of our analysis indicate that the voter ID statute did dampen overall turnout. These findings comport with recent scholarship which has found evidence that voter ID laws can lower turnout rates. The size of the effect, however, is quite diminutive. We estimate that initial implementation of the South Carolina statute decreased turnout in the 2014 general election by 0.19 percent. In addition, the evidence gathered on the question of racial effects indicates that there is no discernible racial impact from the state’s voter ID law.
Terrorism, gender, and the 2016 U.S. presidential election
Mirya Holman et al.
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The 2016 U.S. election provides the opportunity to assess how gender, party, and experience shape candidate evaluations when terrorist threat is elevated. The presidential contest featured the first woman major party nominee (Hillary Clinton), a major party nominee without political experience (Donald Trump), and terrorism was salient. We argue that security threats dampen public confidence in Democratic women running for office, yet an experience advantage could countervail against those tendencies. We test expectations using the 2016 ANES and two experimental studies. We first affirm that individuals worried about terrorism held lower evaluations of Clinton and higher evaluations of Trump. We then test an active manipulation of the salience of national security experience and find that it mitigates Clinton's disadvantage, but only in the absence of a counter-message. The results underscore the difficulty that Democratic women face in overcoming the negative influence of party and gender stereotypes when running for office in times of terrorist threat.
The Noisy Neighbor Effect: How Negative Advertising in One State Influences Viewers Next Door
Stan Oklobdzija
University of California Working Paper, February 2019
Abstract:
The Supreme Court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC unlocked a flood of new political advertising at all levels of government, leaving voters to decipher an unprecedented level of information before eventually casting their ballots. How competent are voters at sorting through all this information and shaping opinions based on relevant information? I exploit variations in state-election law and the timing of gubernatorial races to create a natural experiment testing whether seemingly irrelevant information can shape voter attitudes. I find that, all else equal, those living in multi-state media markets who were exposed to negative television ads for a gubernatorial race taking place in a neighboring state were more disapproving of their own governors than other residents of their state. This same exposure to out-of-state gubernatorial ads also led residents to rate their own governors as more ideologically distant from them. In a crowded landscape of political information, the ability of voters to sift through and accurately process political messaging is vital to the functioning of democracy. These results call that ability into question and raise new implications for the regulation of political advertising in American elections.
Having Their Say: Authority, Voice, and Satisfaction with Democracy
Eric Merkley et al.
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
As studies using macrolevel evidence have shown, citizens are more satisfied with democracy when they feel that their instrumental preferences are represented in government, and this feeling is more likely in nonmajoritarian institutional contexts. Scholars have given less attention to whether such institutions also increase satisfaction by providing more inclusive political discourse. Citizens may value having their voice represented in politics, regardless of the resulting authority. This article presents the first microlevel evidence of this mechanism by having subjects experience a simulated election campaign that manipulates both the political discourse and the outcome independently. We find that subjects were less satisfied with democracy when their party lost the election, but this effect disappeared when the campaign discourse featured thorough discussion of an issue that they felt was important. The findings suggest that institutions and party systems that provide more diverse voices may soften the blow of losing elections.
Waiting to Vote in the 2016 Presidential Election: Evidence from a Multi-county Study
Robert Stein et al.
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper is the result of a nationwide study of polling place dynamics in the 2016 presidential election. Research teams, recruited from local colleges and universities and located in twenty-eight election jurisdictions across the United States, observed and timed voters as they entered the queue at their respective polling places and then voted. We report results about four specific polling place operations and practices: the length of the check-in line, the number of voters leaving the check-in line once they have joined it, the time for a voter to check in to vote (i.e., verify voter’s identification and obtain a ballot), and the time to complete a ballot. Long lines, waiting times, and times to vote are closely related to time of day (mornings are busiest for polling places). We found the recent adoption of photographic voter identification (ID) requirements to have a disparate effect on the time to check in among white and nonwhite polling places. In majority-white polling places, scanning a voter’s driver’s license speeds up the check-in process. In majority nonwhite polling locations, the effect of strict voter ID requirements increases time to check in, albeit modestly.
Leveraging Peer‐to‐Peer Connections to Increase Voter Participation in Local Elections
Lindsey Cormack
Politics & Policy, April 2019, Pages 248-266
Abstract:
In local elections, outcomes can turn on just hundreds of voters. Small‐scale political entrepreneurs find it increasingly difficult to wage effective turnout campaigns relying on traditional, costly methods of outreach. Yet a growing literature on social pressure indicates that recasting voting as a socially motivated act increases the likelihood that voters participate. In this article, I present matching analyses of the impact of a new platform that relies on peer‐to‐peer voter outreach. I find that the intervention is responsible for significant increases in the likelihood that a voter casts a ballot in low‐information elections across different sorts of voters.
Polarization and the Top-Two Primary: Moderating Candidate Rhetoric in One-Party Contests
Steven Sparks
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Top-two primaries reshape the electoral process by changing the mix of opponents that candidates face, thus altering the electorate to which they must respond. Specifically, when top-two primaries produce two same-party opponents for the general election, candidates cannot simply rely on party-based voting to win. Advocates of the top-two primary system contend that if safe districts offer voters the choice between ideologically extreme and moderate candidates of the same party in the general election, voters should choose the more moderate option. Research to date suggests that this is not the case. If the top-two primary does invoke moderation, I argue that it should be because it is self-imposed by candidates in response to new electoral incentives. The change in primary rules should cause candidates to self-moderate in hopes of broadening the range of potential voters that they may capture. I test this proposition by examining the rhetoric found on state legislative candidate websites during the 2016 election. Results show that those facing same-party opponents use more moderate, bipartisan, and vague messaging when compared to those facing opponents of the opposite party.
Rule by Violence, Rule by Law: Lynching, Jim Crow, and the Continuing Evolution of Voter Suppression in the U.S.
Brad Epperly et al.
Perspectives on Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although restricting formal voting rights - voter suppression - is not uncommon in democracies, its incidence and form vary widely. Intuitively, when competing elites believe that the benefits of reducing voting by opponents outweigh the costs of voter suppression, it is more likely to occur. Internal political and state capacity and external actors, however, influence the form that voter suppression takes. When elites competing for office lack the ability to enact laws restricting voting due to limited internal capacity, or external actors are able to limit the ability of governments to use laws to suppress voting, suppression is likely to be ad hoc, decentralized, and potentially violent. As political and state capacity increase and external constraints decrease, voter suppression will shift from decentralized and potentially violent to centralized and mostly non-violent. We illustrate our arguments by analyzing the transition from decentralized, violent voter suppression through the use of lynchings (and associated violence) to the centralized, less violent suppression of black voting in the post-Reconstruction South. We also place the most recent wave of U.S. state voter suppression laws into broader context using our theoretical framework.
When campaigns call, who answers? Using observational data to enrich our understanding of phone mobilization
Marisa Abrajano et al.
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
For decades, campaigns have used phone calls to move voters to the polls. Political scientists have made great strides using field experiments to study whether campaign calls effectively increase turnout. However, due in part to limited access to observational data, some of the most basic questions about this mobilization strategy have gone overlooked. In this paper, we take a step back to provide a rich descriptive analysis of a novel dataset of millions of campaign phone calls made in California during the 2016 election. We use this dataset to shed light on three important questions: Whom do campaigns call? When campaigns call, who answers? Are those who answer more likely to turn out to vote? Our analysis reveals patterns consistent with previous theories, but also sheds light on new patterns. For example, we find that about two-thirds of campaign calls are to landlines, but those who are called on a mobile phone are twice as likely to answer. We conclude by using a matching analysis to examine the relationship between answering the phone and turning out to vote. We find that those who answer the phone are 5.9-6.8 percentage points more likely to turn out to vote. The rich descriptive analysis included in this paper provides empirical validation of prior theories of campaign mobilization, and opens avenues for future field experiment research.