Horse racing
Negative Advertising and the Dynamics of Candidate Support
Kevin Banda & Jason Windett
Political Behavior, September 2016, Pages 747-766
Abstract:
Scholars have spent a great deal of effort examining the effects of negative advertising on citizens’ perceptions of candidates. Much of this work has used experimental designs and has produced mixed findings supporting one of two competing theories. First, negative ads may harm candidates who sponsor them because citizens tend to dislike negativity. Second, negativity may drive down citizens’ support for the targeted candidate because the attacks give people reasons to reject the target. We argue that the mixed findings produced by prior research may be driven by a disregard for campaign dynamics. We present a critical test of these two theories using data drawn from 80 statewide elections — 37 gubernatorial and 43 U.S. Senate contests — from three election years and public opinion polling collected during the last 12 weeks of each campaign. We find that a candidate’s support declines as her advertising strategy includes a higher proportion of negative ads relative to her opponent and that this process unfolds slowly over the course of the campaign.
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Santosh Anagol & Thomas Fujiwara
Journal of Political Economy, August 2016, Pages 927-991
Abstract:
Exploiting regression discontinuity designs in Brazilian, Indian, and Canadian first-past-the-post elections, we document that second-place candidates are substantially more likely than close third-place candidates to run in, and win, subsequent elections. Since both candidates lost the election and had similar electoral performance, this is the effect of being labeled the runner-up. Selection into candidacy is unlikely to explain the effect on winning subsequent elections, and we find no effect of finishing in third place versus fourth place. We develop a simple model of strategic coordination by voters that rationalizes the results and provides further predictions that are supported by the data.
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Backfire: The Unintended Consequences of Partisan Gerrymandering
Dahyeon Jeong & Ajay Shenoy
University of California Working Paper, July 2016
Abstract:
Every 10 years, U.S. states must redraw their Congressional districts. It is widely believed that political parties redraw districts to favor their own candidates. We test this claim by exploiting the discontinuous change in a political party's control of redistricting triggered when its share of seats in the state legislature exceeds 50 percent. We find evidence of gerrymandering, but it has the opposite effect from that intended. Gerrymandering creates districts with narrow majorities of supporters. These majorities are ultimately eroded by demographic shifts and the response of opposing interest groups. Republicans actually win fewer elections when they control redistricting.
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The Pseudoparadox of Partisan Mapmaking and Congressional Competition
Nicholas Goedert
State Politics & Policy Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why are fewer congressional elections competitive at the district level when the national electoral environment is at its most competitive? This article explores this “pseudoparadox,” and argues that the answer can be found in partisan redistricting. Through an analysis of 40 years of congressional elections, I find that partisan gerrymanders induce greater competitiveness as national tides increase, largely due to unanticipated consequences of waves adverse to the map-drawing party, particularly in seats held by that party. The phenomenon anecdotally coined by Grofman and Brunell as the “dummymander” is thus actually quite common and has significant effects on rates of congressional competition nationally. In contrast, bipartisan maps are shown to induce lower competition, while nonpartisan maps induce higher competition, under all electoral conditions and competitiveness measures. But the effects of partisan gerrymanders on competition, though strong, can only be seen in interaction with short-term national forces.
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Weekly Fluctuations in Risk Tolerance and Voting Behaviour
Jet Sanders & Rob Jenkins
PLoS ONE, July 2016
Abstract:
Risk tolerance is fundamental to decision-making and behaviour. Here we show that individuals’ tolerance of risk follows a weekly cycle. We observed this cycle directly in a behavioural experiment using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (Lejuez et al., 2002; Study 1). We also observed it indirectly via voting intentions, gathered from 81,564 responses across 70 opinion polls ahead of the Scottish Independence Referendum of 2014 (Study 2) and 149,064 responses across 77 opinion polls ahead of the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum of 2016 (Study 3). In all three studies, risk-tolerance decreased from Monday to Thursday before returning to a higher level on Friday. This pattern is politically significant because UK elections and referendums are traditionally held on a Thursday — the lowest point for risk tolerance. In particular, it raises the possibility that voting outcomes in the UK could be systematically risk-averse. In line with our analysis, the actual proportion of Yes votes in the Scottish Independence Referendum was 4% lower than forecast. Taken together, our findings reveal that the seven-day weekly cycle may have unexpected consequences for human decision-making. They also suggest that the day on which a vote is held could determine its outcome.
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David Schultz
PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2016, Pages 420-425
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom pervades presidential politics, and there is no doubt that this will again be true in 2016. First among “old politicians’ tales” is that a political party’s placement of a national convention in a specific state can affect presidential voting there, swinging or flipping it to its presidential candidate. Second, the selection of a vice-presidential candidate as a favorite son (or daughter) will deliver a state’s electoral votes to a presidential ticket. Is either of these pearls of wisdom true? This article tests the truth of both the convention location and favorite-son claims and finds little evidence of their efficacy.
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The abilities and decisions of regular and irregular voters in American presidential elections
Steven Nawara
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, forthcoming
Abstract:
While most of the voter turnout literature focuses on the differences between voters and nonvoters, scant attention has been paid to what separates regular voters from the “irregular voters” who move in and out of the electorate. This article shows that citizens who regularly vote will be more knowledgeable and involved in the political system than voters who turnout irregularly. In addition, the article supports the existing claim that it is easier for voters to understand social policies than economic policies. These two principles lead to the hypothesis that economic and social policy preferences will predict the decisions of regular voters while the decisions of irregular voters will be predicted by social policy preferences but not economic preferences. American National Election Studies data from 1988 to 2008 provide support for these hypotheses. Though poor economic conditions may bring irregular voters out to the polls, their ballots are cast for candidates with similar social policy preferences, not necessarily similar economic stances.
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Agency Problems in Political Campaigns: Media Buying and Consulting
Gregory Martin & Zachary Peskowitz
Emory University Working Paper, May 2016
Abstract:
The vast majority of advertising expenditures in congressional campaigns are made not directly by campaigns themselves but indirectly though specialist intermediary firms. Though their revenue ultimately derives from contributions to public campaigns, these firms are privately owned and operated on a for-profit basis. Using a new dataset that includes both revenues and costs of these firms, we examine the profitability of political media consulting. We investigate both whether firms are able to extract economic rents from their intermediary position and whether firms’ pecuniary incentives cause them to make strategic recommendations that deviate from their principals’ interests. We find significant differences across the two major parties: firms working for Republican candidates charge higher prices, exert less effort, and induce less responsiveness in their clients’ advertising expenditures to electoral circumstances than do their Democratic counterparts. We connect this observation to the (left-leaning) distribution of ideology among individual consulting firm employees, arguing that these higher rents serve as an incentive to induce consultants to work against their intrinsic ideological motivations. The internal organization of firms reflects an awareness of and an attempt to mitigate this potential for conflict of interest; firms are made up of ideologically homogeneous partners, and are much more likely to work for ideologically close rather than distant clients.
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David Havas & Christopher Chapp
Frontiers in Psychology, June 2016
Abstract:
How does language influence the emotions and actions of large audiences? Functionally, emotions help address environmental uncertainty by constraining the body to support adaptive responses and social coordination. We propose emotions provide a similar function in language processing by constraining the mental simulation of language content to facilitate comprehension, and to foster alignment of mental states in message recipients. Consequently, we predicted that emotion-inducing language should be found in speeches specifically designed to create audience alignment – stump speeches of United States presidential candidates. We focused on phrases in the past imperfective verb aspect (“a bad economy was burdening us”) that leave a mental simulation of the language content open-ended, and thus unconstrained, relative to past perfective sentences (“we were burdened by a bad economy”). As predicted, imperfective phrases appeared more frequently in stump versus comparison speeches, relative to perfective phrases. In a subsequent experiment, participants rated phrases from presidential speeches as more emotionally intense when written in the imperfective aspect compared to the same phrases written in the perfective aspect, particularly for sentences perceived as negative in valence. These findings are consistent with the notion that emotions have a role in constraining the comprehension of language, a role that may be used in communication with large audiences.
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Dustin Carnahan, Kelly Garrett & Emily Lynch
Human Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Politically motivated selective exposure has traditionally been understood through the lens of long-standing attitudes and beliefs, but the role of environment in shaping information exposure practices merits further consideration. Citizens might respond to the political environment in their information-seeking behavior for numerous reasons. Citizens who believe their position is politically vulnerable have specific cognitive and affective needs that may make them uniquely attuned to counterattitudinal information. In the context of a presidential election, this means that as the defeat of a supported candidate appears more likely, attention to counterattitudinal content will increase. Data collected in the 2008 and 2012 U.S. Presidential elections support this prediction, although this relationship was observed primarily among supporters of the Republican candidate in both elections.
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Social Pressure on Social Media: Using Facebook Status Updates to Increase Voter Turnout
Katherine Haenschen
Journal of Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
The widespread adoption of the Internet offers tangible potential for increasing political participation through disseminating digital reminders to vote. This study presents three experiments in which confederates mobilize members of their networks to vote by tagging them in Facebook status updates. Relying on the technological affordances of Facebook, treatments publicize individuals' past participation or failure to vote in an ongoing election. The results show substantial increases in turnout greater than that which is usually produced by face-to-face methods. Findings suggest that digital media offer citizens the potential to generate tremendous gains in voter participation, and address concerns that our increasingly digitally networked society may prove harmful to democracy.
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Face Value? Experimental Evidence that Candidate Appearance Influences Electoral Choice
Douglas Ahler et al.
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to numerous studies, candidates’ looks predict voters’ choices — a finding that raises concerns about voter competence and about the quality of elected officials. This potentially worrisome finding, however, is observational and therefore vulnerable to alternative explanations. To better test the appearance effect, we conducted two experiments. Just before primary and general elections for various offices, we randomly assigned voters to receive ballots with and without candidate photos. Simply showing voters these pictures increased the vote for appearance-advantaged candidates. Experimental evidence therefore supports the view that candidates’ looks could influence some voters. In general elections, we find that high-knowledge voters appear immune to this influence, while low-knowledge voters use appearance as a low-information heuristic. In primaries, however, candidate appearance influences even high-knowledge and strongly partisan voters.
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Incumbency effects in U.S. presidential campaigns: Language patterns matter
Christian Leuprecht & David Skillicorn
Electoral Studies, September 2016, Pages 95–103
Abstract:
Incumbent U.S. presidential candidates have been overwhelmingly successful over the past 150 years. Attempts to explain this success rate have examined both structural advantages enjoyed by incumbents and differences in rhetorical and linguistic style in campaigning, although it is less clear why incumbency conveys an advantage here. This article finds that the language used by U.S. presidential candidates over the past twenty years has an underlying structure associated with electoral success: 1. speech patterns of incumbents differ notably from those they used in their first-term campaign; and 2. speech patterns of winners are different from those of losers. Both differences are consistent, and can therefore be postulated to indicate strength of influence. The resulting inductive model of influential language is characterized by: increased positivity, complete absence of negativity, increased abstraction, and lack of reference to the opposing candidate(s). The greatest intensity of model language is used by incumbents in their second campaign and the least by losers in a first-cycle open campaign. Language improvement by incumbents occurs rapidly, suggesting that it is the result of changing self-perception rather than a conventional learning process. This finding has broader implications, suggesting that both success, and the presence of competing groups trying to make similar arguments, improve the quality of the influencing language used.
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Three Tests for Practical Evaluation of Partisan Gerrymandering
Samuel Wang
Stanford Law Review, June 2016, Pages 1263-1321
Abstract:
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s Davis v. Bandemer ruling in 1986, partisan gerrymandering for statewide electoral advantage has been held to be justiciable. The existing Supreme Court standard, culminating in Vieth v. Jubelirer and LULAC v. Perry, holds that a test for gerrymandering should demonstrate both intents and effects and that partisan gerrymandering may be recognizable by its asymmetry: for a given distribution of popular votes, if the parties switch places in popular vote, the numbers of seats will change in an unequal fashion. However, the asymmetry standard is only a broad statement of principle, and no analytical method for assessing asymmetry has yet been held by the Supreme Court to be manageable. This Article proposes three statistical tests to reliably assess asymmetry in state-level districting schemes: (1) an unrepresentative distortion in the number of seats won based on expectations from nationwide district characteristics; (2) a discrepancy in winning vote margins between the two parties; and (3) the construction of reliable wins for the party in charge of redistricting, as measured by either the difference between mean and median vote share, or an unusually even distribution of votes across districts. The first test relies on computer simulation to estimate appropriate levels of representation for a given level of popular vote and provides a way to measure the effects of a gerrymander. The second and third tests, which can be used to help evaluate redistricting intent, rely on well-established statistical principles and can be carried out using a hand calculator without examination of maps or redistricting procedures. I apply these standards to a variety of districting schemes, starting from the original “Gerry-mander” of 1812, up to modern cases. In post-2010 congressional elections, partisan gerrymandering in a handful of states generated effects that are larger than the total nationwide effect of population clustering. By applying these standards in two recent cases, I show that Arizona legislative districts (Harris v. Arizona Independent Redistricting Commission) fail to qualify as a partisan gerrymander, but Maryland’s congressional districts (Shapiro v. McManus) do. I propose that an intents-and-effects standard based on these tests is robust enough to mitigate the need to demonstrate predominant partisan intent. The three statistical standards offered here add to the judge’s toolkit for rapidly and rigorously identifying the partisan consequences of redistricting.
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Reprecincting and Voting Behavior
Brian Amos, Daniel Smith & Casey Ste. Claire
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite the expansion of convenience voting across the American states, millions of voters continue to cast ballots at their local precincts on Election Day. We argue that those registered voters who are reassigned to a different Election Day polling place prior to an election are less likely to turn out to vote than those assigned to vote at the same precinct location, as a new precinct location incurs both search and transportation costs on reassigned voters. Utilizing voter file data and precinct shape files from Manatee County, Florida, from before and after the 2014 General Election, we demonstrate that the redrawing of precinct boundaries and the designation of Election Day polling places is not a purely technical matter for local election administrators, but may affect voter turnout of some registered voters more than others. Controlling for a host of demographic, partisan, vote history, and geospatial factors, we find significantly lower turnout among registered voters who were reassigned to a new Election Day precinct compared to those who were not, an effect not equally offset by those voters turning to other available modes of voting (either early in-person or absentee). All else equal, we find that registered Hispanic voters were significantly more likely to abstain from voting as a result of being reassigned than any other racial group.
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William Hicks, Seth McKee & Daniel Smith
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Online voter registration (OVR) is an election reform that has recently taken hold in more than half of the American states. Election administration observers have marveled at both the rapid diffusion and bipartisan support associated with legislative passage of OVR. We examine the likelihood a lawmaker voted in favor or against OVR in legislatures approving the reform. Despite the leading narrative of both parties overwhelmingly embracing OVR, we find that lawmaker support is clearly rooted in political calculations. Most prominent is a partisan divide, with Republicans in polarized legislatures with a Democratic majority decidedly less supportive of OVR. In addition, a host of contextual factors tied to the variation in partisan and electoral power affect the probability a state legislator votes in favor of this reform. We argue that the near-consensus position of Democrats (more than 90% voted “yea” on OVR) and the impressive supermajority of Republicans backing OVR (greater than 70%) have diverted attention from the reasons why there is opposition to this seemingly noncontroversial reform.
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Changing the Clock: The Role of Campaigns in the Timing of Vote Decision
Michael Henderson & Sunshine Hillygus
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Time of vote decision research has shaped our understanding of the nature and influence of campaigns. Traditionally, time of decision has been viewed primarily as a reflection of individual-level characteristics, especially political interest or attentiveness. We use eight waves of panel survey data to evaluate how campaign context interacts with attentiveness to affect time of decision in the 2008 US presidential election. Our data show that less politically interested respondents living in locations where campaigning was most intense made up their minds earlier than those living elsewhere, but there is no such difference among the most interested. Rather than time of decision simply constraining campaign effects, these results suggest that campaigns structure the time of decision.
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Strafing, Spats, and Skirmishes: Social Dynamics of Negative Campaigning on Twitter
Justin Gross & Kaylee Johnson
University of Massachusetts Working Paper, June 2016
Abstract:
What drives candidates to “go negative” and — in the case of multiple candidates — against whom? Using a unique dataset consisting of all tweets made by the seventeen Republican presidential candidates in the 2016 contest, we assess predictors of negative affect in online interactions with other candidates. Twitter is a free platform, and candidates therefore face no resource limitations when using Twitter; this makes Twitter a wellspring of information about the sort of campaigning candidates might do given unlimited resources. We find that tweet negativity within the network increases as the election approaches. In virtually none of the candidate pairs characterized by asymmetric negativity are attacks waged by a higher-status on a lower-status candidate. We also find support for the idea that tightening competition leads to increased negativity among all candidates (even and especially among frontrunners). Finally, we demonstrate that overall inter-candidate tweeting intensifies as the field narrows, with tweets per dyad per week increasing by orders of magnitude at each stage of the race.
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Closed primaries versus top-two primaries
Pablo Amorós, Socorro Puy & Ricardo Martínez
Public Choice, April 2016, Pages 21-35
Abstract:
The top-two primaries recently approved in several US states eliminate closed party primaries and create instead a single ballot in which the first and second place winners pass to the general election. We conduct a theoretical analysis to compare the electoral consequences of top-two primaries with those of closed primaries. Each primary procedure induces a sequential game with three stages: candidate-entry stage, primary elections, and general election. We analyze the equilibria of these games and show that top-two primaries contribute to political moderation. In particular, when the median voter is extreme, closed primaries always generate extreme winners and, yet, top-two primaries can generate moderate winners. Furthermore, when the median voter is moderate but the partisan median voter of her party is extreme (and some additional mild conditions hold), closed primaries always generate extreme winners while top-two primaries always generate moderate winners. We also show that top-two primaries increase the number of swing states since, in certain cases, the party affiliation of the winner under top-two primaries may not coincide with the party affiliation of the median voter.
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The Timing of Partisan Media Effects during a Presidential Election
Glen Smith
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article examines when partisan media effects occur during presidential campaigns. I argue that partisan media are most likely to influence candidate impressions early in the election cycle, when voters have less crystallized impressions of the candidates and are less motivated to defend their party’s nominee. Using multiple methods and two large-scale surveys spanning 2008, I show that Fox News affected favorability toward Barack Obama during the first five months of the election year, but those effects largely disappeared over the last five months. The results varied by political knowledge, however, as Fox News affected low-knowledge viewers throughout the entire year, but only affected high-knowledge viewers early in the election cycle. These results provide important new evidence on how partisan media affect viewers and when those effects occur during a presidential election.
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The Effects of Counterstereotypic Gender Strategies on Candidate Evaluations
Nichole Bauer
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Voters do not associate female candidates with feminine stereotypes, but voters also do not associate female candidates with the qualities most valued in political leaders such as experience and knowledge. Current research offers conflicting conclusions on whether female candidates benefit from breaking with feminine norms or face a backlash for being too aggressive and not likable enough. Using a series of experiments, I show how counterstereotypic gender strategies, including women emphasizing masculine trait competencies, improve evaluations of female candidates along both masculine and feminine leadership dimensions. These results offer novel insights into how female candidates can overcome perceptual deficits among voters that they lack critical masculine leadership qualities. I also show that female candidates can overcome these biases without losing on traditional feminine strengths such as warmth and likability. However, counterstereotypic female candidates can face a “likability” backlash from out-partisan voters. These findings suggest counterstereotypes may be more beneficial for female candidates in a primary election context when voters are copartisans rather than general elections where candidates often need cross-partisan support.
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Ballot order effects in direct democracy elections
John Matsusaka
Public Choice, June 2016, Pages 257-276
Abstract:
Many political practitioners believe that voters are more likely to approve propositions listed at the top than the bottom of the ballot, potentially distorting democratic decision making, and this belief influences election laws across the United States. Numerous studies have investigated ballot order effects in candidate elections, but there is little evidence for direct democracy elections, and identification of causal effects is challenging. This paper offers two strategies for identifying the effect of ballot order in proposition elections, using data from California during 1958–2014 and Texas during 1986–2015. The evidence suggests that propositions are not advantaged by being listed at the top compared to the bottom of the ballot. Approval rates are lower with more propositions on the ballot.
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Negative Campaigning in the Social Media Age: Attack Advertising on Facebook
Zachary Auter & Jeffrey Fine
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent studies examine politicians’ decisions to use social media, as well as the content of the messages that these political actors disseminate on social media platforms. We contribute to this literature by examining how race competitiveness and a candidate’s position in the race relative to her opponent affect their decisions to issue attacks. Through content analysis of nearly 15,000 Facebook posts for tone (positive or negative), we find that while competitive races encourage both candidates to issue more negative posts, candidates in less competitive races embrace attack messages with more or less frequency depending on whether they trail or lead their opponent. We find that social media negativity is much more likely to be a desperation strategy employed by underdog candidates in less competitive races. We also run separate models examining the factors that drive policy and personal attacks. While underdog candidates are more likely to engage in issue attacks, candidates in competitive races are significantly more likely to use Facebook to make personal attacks.