In Line to Vote
Intraparty Polarization in American Politics
Eric Groenendyk, Michael Sances & Kirill Zhirkov
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We know that elite polarization and mass sorting have led to an explosion of hostility between parties, but how do Republicans and Democrats feel toward their own respective parties? Have these trends led to more cohesion or more division within parties? Using the American National Election Studies (ANES) time series, we first show that intraparty polarization between ideologically extreme and ideologically moderate partisans is on the rise. Second, we demonstrate that this division within parties has important implications for how we think about affective polarization between parties. Specifically, the distribution of relative affect between parties has not become bimodal, but merely dispersed. Thus, while the mean partisan has become affectively polarized, the modal partisan has not. These results suggest polarization and sorting may be increasing the viability of third party candidates and making realignment more likely.
Candidate Ideology and Vote Choice in the 2020 US Presidential Election
David Broockman & Joshua Kalla
University of California Working Paper, February 2020
Abstract:
Canonical theories predict that moderate candidates perform better in general elections. 2020 Presidential election polling ostensibly challenges this prediction: Bernie Sanders performs as well as more moderate Democratic candidates in many head-to-head polls against Donald Trump. To understand this pattern, we analyze a large national survey we conducted (n = 40, 153) with head-to-head questions between the leading Democratic candidates and Trump. In this data, approximately 11% of Democrats and Independents under 35 answer as if they will only turn out if Sanders is nominated but would not if a more moderate Democrat were nominated, increasing Sanders’ estimated vote share against Trump. However, Trump also receives more votes in a head-to-head against Sanders than against more moderate Democrats: ≈2% of Republicans in this data answer as if they would vote for Trump if Sanders were nominated but not if a more moderate Democrat were nominated. As a result, we find that Sanders performs similarly to more moderate Democrats against Trump in our survey only when assuming that (1) young people vote at much higher rates than they usually do and (2) young Sanders supporters who claim they will only vote if he is nominated are answering accurately. However, when we do not make these assumptions and instead (1) weight our data to the 2016 electorate (downweighting young people) and (2) disregard self-reported turnout intentions by imputing votes to partisans who currently refuse to express a preference, the more moderate candidates win more votes against Trump than Sanders does by a statistically significant ≈2 percentage points. These patterns are robust to showing attacks against the Democratic candidates and in battleground states. These results raise caution about dismissing long-standing findings regarding more moderate nominees’ electoral advantage based on Sanders’ polling in the 2020 election.
Get Information or Get in Formation: The Effects of High-Information Environments on Legislative Elections
Marc Trussler
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does the changing information environment affect the degree to which voters make independent decisions for different offices on their ballots? Leveraging the gradual roll-out of broadband internet across the United States and across congressional districts, this study uses within-district variation over four election cycles to examine the effects of internet access on voting behavior in US legislative elections. The results show that the expansion of broadband resulted in less split-ticket voting and a lower incumbency advantage because voters exposed to increased high-speed internet voted in a more partisan fashion. Consistent with work demonstrating the effect of the internet on local news consumption, the results suggest that the change in the information environment resulting from enhanced internet access led voters to prioritize national considerations over local considerations. This has important consequences for not only how voters act, but the resulting incentives that elected officials confront.
A Certain Type of Descriptive Representative?: Understanding How Skin Tone and Gender Influences Black Politics
Camille Burge, Julian Wamble & Rachel Cuomo
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although sociologists and psychologists have repeatedly demonstrated that colorism shapes how Black Americans evaluate members of their racial group, the literature on colorism in electoral politics remains curiously and ironically bereft of studies of Black Americans. We fill this lacuna in our paper by asking how and in what ways might the skin tone and gender of Black candidates shape Blacks’ vote intention along with perceptions of representativeness? Using an original survey experiment with 1,260 Black Americans (of which we analyze 839) that varies the gender and skin tone of political candidates, we find that darker skinned candidates are evaluated more favorably than lighter skinned candidates. Our results advance the research on colorism in electoral politics and have sweeping implications for the vast body of literature on descriptive representation.
Driving a Wedge? Republicans, Immigration, and the Impact of Substantive Appeals on African American Vote Choice
Tatishe Nteta & Douglas Rice
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recently, a number of prominent Republican elites have argued that the economic plight of African Americans is attributable to undocumented immigration to the United States. Have these arguments concerning the link between black economic well-being and undocumented immigration become commonplace in the rhetoric of Republican elites, and if so, does exposure to these appeals impact black vote choice? Employing data from over forty years of congressional speeches, the campaign speeches and public addresses of President Donald Trump, televised campaign advertisements from the Wisconsin/Wesleyan Advertising Projects, and a survey experiment embedded in the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that Republican elected officials have increasingly made substantive appeals to blacks on the issue of immigration reform, that exposure to this type of substantive appeal leads blacks to more strongly support a fictional Republican candidate, and that this support is moderated by a respondent’s level of linked fate. These findings challenge existing scholarship that Republican elites ignore the concerns of the black community and suggest that Republicans may be using the issue of immigration to drive a wedge in the Democratic electoral coalition by targeting the Democratic Party’s strongest constituency.
Generational Replacement and the Impending Transformation of the American Electorate
Patrick Fisher
Politics & Policy, February 2020, Pages 38-68
Abstract:
Contemporary American politics is marked by an unusually substantial generation gap. This has important implications for the future of American politics as an overwhelmingly white and conservative generation, the Silent Generation, is being replaced in the electorate by much more diverse and liberal generations: the Millennial Generation and Generation Z. To project potential partisan changes in the American electorate with generational replacement, simulations were calculated estimating what the electorate may look like, using the 2016 presidential election as a baseline. Hypothesizing the same generational dynamics of vote choice and turnout for 2020 that existed in 2016, with generational replacement alone the national plurality of 2.1 percent for the Democratic candidate increases to 4.8 percent if Generation Z votes the same as Millennials. For elections beyond 2020, the potential partisan swing toward the Democrats based on generational replacement become even much more considerable. By 2032, Millennials and Generation Z combined are projected to consist of almost one‐half of the entire electorate. Even if Generation Z is not distinct from the rest of the electorate politically, given how strongly Democratic the Millennials are, the simulated gain for the Democrats in 2032 is 5 percent; and, if Generation Z becomes as Democratic leaning as Millennials are, the simulated swing toward the Democrats is greater than 7 percent.
Does Local Journalism Stimulate Voter Participation in State Supreme Court Elections?
David Hughes
Journal of Law and Courts, Spring 2020, Pages 95-126
Abstract:
I gather new data on local media coverage of state supreme court elections and examine its effects on voter participation. I find that, even when controlling for campaign expense and advertising, media coverage can increase voter engagement in state supreme court contests. While some of this effect is attributable to salient campaigns themselves, content and statistical analyses show that the media provide voters with unique information such as candidate qualifications that can also stimulate their participation.
A Choice‐Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate
Chris Hanretty, Benjamin Lauderdale & Nick Vivyan
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Measuring how much citizens care about different policy issues is critical for political scientists, yet existing measurement approaches have significant limitations. We provide a new survey‐experimental, choice‐based approach for measuring the importance voters attach to different positional issues, including issues not currently contested by political elites. We combine information from (a) direct questions eliciting respondents' positions on different issues with (b) a conjoint experiment asking respondents to trade off departures from their preferred positions on those issues. Applying this method to study the relative importance of 34 issues in the United Kingdom, we show that British voters attach significant importance to issues like the death penalty that are not presently the subject of political debate and attach more importance to those issues associated with social liberal–conservative rather than economic left–right divisions.
Projecting confidence: How the probabilistic horse race confuses and demobilizes the public
Sean Jeremy Westwood, Solomon Messing & Yphtach Lelkes
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent years have seen a dramatic change in horserace coverage of elections in the U.S. — shifting focus from late-breaking poll numbers to sophisticated meta-analytic forecasts that emphasize candidates’ chance of victory. Could this shift in the political information environment affect election outcomes? We use experiments to show that forecasting increases certainty about an election’s outcome, confuses many, and decreases turnout. Furthermore, we show that election forecasting has become prominent in the media, particularly in outlets with liberal audiences, and show that such coverage tends to more strongly affect the candidate who is ahead — raising questions about whether they contributed to Trump’s victory over Clinton in 2016. We bring empirical evidence to this question, using ANES data to show that Democrats and Independents expressed unusual confidence in a decisive 2016 election outcome — and that the same measure of confidence is associated with lower reported turnout.
Guns In Political Advertising Over Four US Election Cycles, 2012–18
Colleen Barry et al.
Health Affairs, February 2020, Pages 327-333
Abstract:
Gun-related deaths are on the rise in the US, and following recent mass shootings, gun policy has emerged as an issue in the 2020 election cycle. Political advertising is an increasingly important tool for candidates seeking office to communicate their policy priorities. Over $6 billion was spent on political ads in the 2016 election cycle, and spending in the 2020 cycle is expected to be even higher. Tracking gun-related political advertising over time can offer critical insights into how candidates view the salience of gun policy in the context of the 2020 election and beyond. We analyzed the coverage of guns in over fourteen million candidate-related television ad airings for presidential, congressional, gubernatorial, and state legislative races over four election cycles: 2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018. The share of candidate-related ad airings that referred to guns increased from 1 percent in the 2012 cycle to over 8 percent in the 2018 cycle. Pro–gun rights content dominated but dropped from 86 percent of airings mentioning guns in the 2012 cycle to 45 percent in the 2018 cycle. Advertising in favor of gun regulation and against the National Rifle Association increased over time. These shifts offer insights into how gun issues are being framed in the 2020 election cycle.
One Person, One Vote: Estimating the Prevalence of Double Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections
Sharad Goel et al.
American Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Beliefs about the incidence of voter fraud inform how people view the trade-off between electoral integrity and voter accessibility. To better inform such beliefs about the rate of double voting, we develop and apply a method to estimate how many people voted twice in the 2012 presidential election. We estimate that about one in 4,000 voters cast two ballots, although an audit suggests that the true rate may be lower due to small errors in electronic vote records. We corroborate our estimates and extend our analysis using data from a subset of states that share social security numbers, making it easier to quantify who may have voted twice. For this subset of states, we find that one suggested strategy to reduce double voting — removing the registration with an earlier registration date when two share the same name and birthdate — could impede approximately 300 legitimate votes for each double vote prevented.
Does Campaign Spending Affect Election Outcomes? New Evidence from Transaction-Level Disbursement Data
Steven Sprick Schuster
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper uses detailed, transaction-level data on candidate disbursements and panel survey data to estimate the effect of candidate spending. Transaction-level data allows me to isolate only spending that is being used on messages to voters, while panel survey data enables me to control for unobserved candidate characteristics. I find that spending on messages to voters has a statistically significant effect on voter support for candidates. Spending is especially effective in changing the composition of voters, instead of convincing potential voters to switch their vote. Not all voters are equally affected by spending; low-information voters, members of a political party and the economically dissatisfied respond strongly to candidate spending. Finally, I provide evidence that the most commonly-used measure of candidate spending overestimates the amount of money that candidates use on their own campaigns, and regressions using this measure are less likely to find a statistically significant effect of spending.
Self-Confidence and Gender Gaps in Political Interest, Attention, and Efficacy
Jennifer Wolak
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Compared to men, women are less interested in politics, less likely to follow current events, and more pessimistic about their abilities to be influential in politics. I explore the origins of these gender gaps. I argue that feelings of self-confidence serve as a resource that encourages psychological engagement with politics. But because this resource is more likely to be possessed by men than by women, it contributes to gender gaps in political interest, attention to politics, and internal efficacy. By examining surveys of both young people and adults, I demonstrate that gender’s effects on psychological engagement with politics are partially mediated by feelings of self-confidence. While prior studies emphasize the importance of resources like education for cultivating political engagement, I show that self-confidence is an important psychological asset that promotes political interest, attention, and feelings of personal competence in politics.
Do Voters Judge the Performance of Female and Male Politicians Differently? Experimental Evidence from the United States and Australia
Roosmarijn de Geus et al.
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do gender stereotypes about agency affect how voters judge the governing performance of political executives? We explore this question using two conjoint experiments: one conducted in the United States and the other in Australia. Contrary to our expectations, we find no evidence in either experiment to suggest that female political executives (i.e., governors, premiers, and mayors) receive lower levels of credit than their male counterparts for positive governing performance. We do find evidence that female executives receive less blame than male executives for poor governing performance — but only in the U.S. case. Taken together, our findings suggest that the stereotype of male agency has only a limited effect on voters’ retrospective judgments. Moreover, the results indicate that — when performance information is presented in unframed, factual terms — agentic stereotyping by voters does not, in itself, present a serious obstacle to the re-election of women in powerful executive positions.