Let's get ready to rumble
Daniel Romero et al.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
The current research used the contexts of U.S. presidential debates and negotiations to examine whether matching the linguistic style of an opponent in a two-party exchange affects the reactions of third-party observers. Building off communication accommodation theory (CAT), interaction alignment theory (IAT), and processing fluency, we propose that language style matching (LSM) will improve subsequent third-party evaluations because matching an opponent's linguistic style reflects greater perspective taking and will make one's arguments easier to process. In contrast, research on status inferences predicts that LSM will negatively impact third-party evaluations because LSM implies followership. We conduct two studies to test these competing hypotheses. Study 1 analyzed transcripts of U.S. presidential debates between 1976 and 2012 and found that candidates who matched their opponent's linguistic style increased their standing in the polls. Study 2 demonstrated a causal relationship between LSM and third-party observer evaluations using negotiation transcripts.
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David Clementson
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Politicians have a reputation for deception. Instead of blaming the politicians themselves, equivocation theory directs our attention to the situation in which politicians are asked questions. We draw on recent theories of deception detection - truth-default theory and information manipulation theory 2 - to propose that a reason we think politicians are so evasive might be because, ironically, we believe them when they accuse their opponents of evasiveness in equivocal situations. We perform a content analysis of the question-answer sequences (N = 810) in U.S. presidential debates 1996 to 2012. Our results indicate that politicians accuse each other of evasion to a significant degree. Meanwhile, they are not necessarily dodging questions to the extent that their overt allegations suggest. This study demonstrates how the predictions of equivocation theory and deception detection theories apply to the domain of U.S. presidential debates.
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Systemic Effects of Campaign Spending: Evidence From Corporate Contribution Bans in U.S. State Legislatures
Andrew Hall
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, I examine the systemic effects of campaign spending, looking at outcomes at the level of the legislature rather than the individual seat. Using a difference-in-differences design, I show that state-level corporate campaign contributions bans have a large effect on electoral outcomes at the legislature level. A one percentage-point increase in the Democratic (or Republican) party's share of all contributions in an electoral cycle is estimated to increase its share of the legislature by roughly half a percentage point. Policy outcomes as well as campaign finance reforms occur at the legislature level; understanding the systemic rather than individual-level effect of campaign spending is therefore directly relevant. Aggregating estimated effects of individual-level campaign finance would not produce this same estimate due to spillovers and other strategic dynamics. Taken together, the analyses suggest that contribution bans have important electoral effects and thus point to the systemic effects of campaign spending.
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Marshmallows and Votes: Childhood Non-Cognitive Skill Development and Adult Political Participation
John Holbein
Duke University Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
Recent research has shown that the "non-cognitive" skills children develop - such as the ability to self regulate or to interact in social settings - are critically important for success in school and in the labor force. Do non-cognitive skills also promote active participation in politics? In this paper I use multiple data sources to show that children who develop non-cognitive skills are more likely to participate in politics in adulthood than those who do not. Further, I explore whether non-cognitive skills are malleable and whether exogenous improvements in these increase participation downstream. To do so I use a unique 20-year field experiment. Matching participants to voter files, I show that this early-childhood intervention increased participants' adult turnout substantially: by 11-14 percentage points. These results suggest a refocusing of political socialization models on early childhood. During this critical early period, children develop the non-cognitive skills that encourage political participation later in life.
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The Ground Game in the 2012 Presidential Election
Seth Masket, John Sides & Lynn Vavreck
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Relatively little research has examined the effects of campaign-led field activity in a competitive election. In this article, we leverage a unique data set containing the location of every Barack Obama and Mitt Romney field office and county-level data on the presidential vote to understand how communication with voters in the field may have affected the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. We find that the presence of Obama field offices was associated with greater Obama vote share at the county level, although we cannot detect a similar relationship for Romney field offices. We conduct additional robustness tests to address the potential limitations of these observational data. Ultimately, we conclude that even if Obama's field organization out-performed Romney's, the aggregate impact of Obama's field organization was not large enough to determine the outcome of the 2012 presidential election.
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Regular Voters, Marginal Voters and the Electoral Effects of Turnout
Anthony Fowler
Political Science Research and Methods, May 2015, Pages 205-219
Abstract:
How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? This article develops a method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors and applies it to two sources of variation in turnout in the United States - weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over 20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular voters - a significant divide. The findings suggest that the expansion or contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences of the citizenry, because the marginal citizens who may stay home have systematically different preferences than those who participate. Finally, the methods developed in the article may enable future researchers to compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many different electoral settings.
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Parties and Electoral Performance in the Market for Political Consultants
Gregory Martin & Zachary Peskowitz
Legislative Studies Quarterly, August 2015, Pages 441-470
Abstract:
We investigate whether the hiring relationships of candidates and political consulting firms better resembles the predictions of the "adversarial" or "allied" models of consultant-party interaction. We find that the highest-quality consultants are not allocated to the most competitive races, consultant-candidate relationships persist even as candidates' electoral prospects change, and firms who work for challengers face a higher risk of market exit than firms working for incumbents. The market focuses entirely on win-loss records and ignores the information on consultant performance available in candidates' vote shares. These findings depict a market driven by individual candidate, rather than aggregate party, goals.
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Precinct Closing Times in Florida During the 2012 General Election
Michael Herron & Daniel Smith
Election Law Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
The Supreme Court's decision in Shelby County v. Holder to strike down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act has spurred a search for measures of election performance that extend beyond race-based registration and turnout rates. We contribute to this endeavor by studying patterns of precinct congestion in Florida during the 2012 General Election. With precinct closing times as proxies for congestion, our study covers 5,302 total Election Day precincts in Florida. We show that there was tremendous variance in closing times in Florida on Election Day in 2012 and that precincts with greater proportions of Hispanic voters closed disproportionately late. This finding holds even controlling for the number of pollworkers per precinct. Broadly speaking, voting place congestion in the 2012 General Election appears not to have affected all Floridians equally, and most notably the post-Shelby electoral environment in the United States continues to reflect racial disparities. With the loss of the Voting Rights Act's retrogression standard, our analysis illustrates how precinct congestion data can be used to assess whether different racial/ethnic groups face different barriers to voting.
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How Politicians Discount the Opinions of Constituents with Whom They Disagree
Daniel Butler & Adam Dynes
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We argue that politicians systematically discount the opinions of constituents with whom they disagree and that this "disagreement discounting" is a contributing factor to ideological incongruence. A pair of survey experiments where state and local politicians are the subjects of interest show that public officials rationalize this behavior by assuming that constituents with opposing views are less informed about the issue. This finding applies both to well-established issues that divide the parties as well as to nonpartisan ones. Further, it cannot be explained by politicians' desires to favor the opinions of either copartisans or likely voters. A third survey experiment using a sample of voters shows that the bias is exacerbated by an activity central to representative governance - taking and explaining one's policy positions. This suggests that the job of being a representative exacerbates this bias.
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Heuristics, Heterogeneity and Green Choices Voting on California's Proposition 23
Harold Clarke, Euel Elliott & Marianne Stewart
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
Ballot initiatives and referendums are increasingly popular methods for addressing important political issues. Studies of voting in these events has found that people rely on party leader and candidate image heuristics when deciding how to cast their ballots. Some analysts have argued that these effects are heterogeneous, being larger for people with lower levels of political knowledge. However, research in experimental economics and political psychology suggests that the impact of heuristics may be greater among more knowledgeable individuals. This paper investigates these rival hypotheses using survey data on voting in a ballot initiative to repeal California's climate change legislation. Analyses using methods appropriate for studying interaction effects in nonlinear multivariate models demonstrate that candidate heuristics are stronger among more knowledgeable people.
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"A Mom First and a Candidate Second": Gender Differences in Candidates' Self-Presentation of Family
Brittany Stalsburg & Mona Kleinberg
Journal of Political Marketing, forthcoming
Abstract:
Parenthood carries different consequences for men and women in politics. While the conventional wisdom is that motherhood is a liability for women candidates and fatherhood an asset for men, recent elections have called this idea into question. Specifically, Sarah Palin's candidacy and her cadre of "Mama Grizzlies" suggest that there may be times when motherhood can be an asset. We analyze how men and women present their families to voters by examining the campaign websites of congressional contenders in 2008 and 2010. The results indicate that despite the proliferation of mother candidates, women still tend to de-emphasize their children compared to their male colleagues, who are more likely to showcase their families, most notably in pictures. Moreover, we find that other factors like parental status, age of children, party, chamber, incumbency, and opponent gender also affect differences in candidates' propensity to use their families in campaigns.
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Economic Insecurity and Political Trust in the United States
Andrew Wroe
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Extant research demonstrates that citizens' evaluations of national economic performance play an important role in determining trust in politicians and political institutions, whereas evaluations of their own economic situation play a lesser or even negligible role. Utilizing American National Election Studies data and more apposite measures of personal economic privation during an age of globalization and de-industrialization, this article finds that the extent to which citizens perceive themselves and their families to be economically insecure has a statistically significant and substantial negative effect on political trust. Indeed, the effect at least matches those of macro-economic evaluations and party identification. This article therefore adds a new dimension to our understanding of the economy-trust nexus and contributes to the small but growing body of scholarship on insecurity's effects on political behavior.
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The Nationalization of Special Elections for the U.S. House of Representatives
Gibbs Knotts & Jordan Ragusa
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars and political commentators have argued that special elections to the U.S. House of Representatives are national contests, serving as a referendum on the president's party and a predictor of future election outcomes (Sigelman 1981; Smith and Burnnell 2010). But the empirical record is mixed, with one leading study demonstrating that candidate and district characteristics alone explain special election outcomes (Gaddie, Bullock, and Buchanan 1999). We investigate this disagreement by comparing special election and open-seat results using new data for the period 1995-2014. We find that while candidate characteristics affect special election outcomes, presidential approval is predictive of special election outcomes as well. Furthermore, we find that the effect of presidential approval on special election outcomes has increased in magnitude from 1995 to 2014, with the 2002 midterm representing an important juncture in the nationalization of special elections. We conclude that special elections have developed into national contests since the 1970s and situate this development within broader electoral trends.
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The search engine manipulation effect (SEME) and its possible impact on the outcomes of elections
Robert Epstein & Ronald Robertson
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 18 August 2015, Pages E4512-E4521
Abstract:
Internet search rankings have a significant impact on consumer choices, mainly because users trust and choose higher-ranked results more than lower-ranked results. Given the apparent power of search rankings, we asked whether they could be manipulated to alter the preferences of undecided voters in democratic elections. Here we report the results of five relevant double-blind, randomized controlled experiments, using a total of 4,556 undecided voters representing diverse demographic characteristics of the voting populations of the United States and India. The fifth experiment is especially notable in that it was conducted with eligible voters throughout India in the midst of India's 2014 Lok Sabha elections just before the final votes were cast. The results of these experiments demonstrate that (i) biased search rankings can shift the voting preferences of undecided voters by 20% or more, (ii) the shift can be much higher in some demographic groups, and (iii) search ranking bias can be masked so that people show no awareness of the manipulation. We call this type of influence, which might be applicable to a variety of attitudes and beliefs, the search engine manipulation effect. Given that many elections are won by small margins, our results suggest that a search engine company has the power to influence the results of a substantial number of elections with impunity. The impact of such manipulations would be especially large in countries dominated by a single search engine company.
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Selling to a Moving Target: Dynamic Marketing Effects in US Presidential Elections
Doug Chung & Lingling Zhang
Harvard Working Paper, June 2015
Abstract:
We examine the effects of various political campaign activities on voter preferences in the domain of US Presidential elections. We construct a comprehensive data set that covers the three most recent elections, with detailed records of voter preferences at the state-week level over an election period. We include various types of the most frequently utilized marketing instruments: two forms of advertising - candidate's own and outside advertising, and two forms of personal selling - retail campaigning and field operations. Although effectiveness varies by instrument and party, among the significant effects we find that a candidate's own advertising is more effective than outside advertising, and that advertising and retail campaigning work more favorably towards Republican candidates. In contrast, we find field operations to be more effective for Democratic candidates, primarily through get-out-the-vote efforts. We do not find any between-party differences in the effectiveness of outside advertising. Lastly, we also find a moderate but statistically significant carryover effect of campaign activities, indicating the presence of dynamics of marketing efforts over time.
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Seeing Spots: An Experimental Examination of Voter Appetite for Partisan and Negative Campaign Ads
John Henderson & Alexander Theodoridis
Yale Working Paper, July 2015
Abstract:
We utilize a novel experimental design to assess voter selectivity to political advertising. We randomly expose respondents to comparable positive or negative ads aired by Democratic or Republican candidates from the 2012 Presidential race and the 2013 Virginia Gubernatorial contest. The experiment closely mirrors real consumption of campaign information by allowing subjects to skip ads after five seconds, re-watch and share ads with friends. Using these measures of ad-seeking behavior, we find little evidence that negativity influences self-exposure to election advertising. We find partisans disproportionately tune out ads aired by their party's opponents, though this behavior is asymmetric: Republican-identifiers are more consistent screeners of partisan ads than Democrats. The results advance our understanding of selectivity, showing that party source, and not ad tone, interacts with partisanship to mediate campaign exposure. The findings have important implications about the role self-exposure to information plays in campaigns and elections in a post-broadcast era.
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Martin Wattenberg & Sierra Powell
Presidential Studies Quarterly, September 2015, Pages 540-557
Abstract:
In a replication of Miller and Wattenberg's (1985) coding of American National Election Studies open-ended likes/dislikes questions, respondents' evaluations of candidates and parties are found to be especially policy oriented in 2008 and 2012. Compared to earlier elections without an incumbent, prospective policy evaluations were far more prevalent in 2008. Furthermore, voters' comments about the candidates in 2012 were more policy oriented than the elections of 1964 and 1972 in which challengers offered a stark policy choice to an incumbent president. We also find the public's likes and dislikes of the political parties focused heavily on policy considerations in the two Obama elections.
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Casey Klofstad , Rindy Anderson & Stephen Nowicki
PLoS ONE, August 2015
Abstract:
Voters prefer leaders with lower-pitched voices because they are perceived as stronger, having greater physical prowess, more competent, and having greater integrity. An alternative hypothesis that has yet to be tested is that lower-pitched voices are perceived as older and thus wiser and more experienced. Here the relationships between candidate voice pitch, candidate age, and electoral success are examined with two experiments. Study 1 tests whether voters discriminate on candidate age. The results show that male and female candidates in their 40s and 50s, the time in the lifecycle when voice pitch is at its lowest, are preferred over candidates in their 30s, 60s, and 70s. Study 2 shows that the preference for leaders with lower-pitched voices correlates with the perception that speakers with lower voices are stronger, more competent, and older, but the influence of perception of age on vote choice is the weakest of the three.
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Kingmakers or Cheerleaders? Party Power and the Causal Effects of Endorsements
Thad Kousser et al.
Political Research Quarterly, September 2015, Pages 443-456
Abstract:
When parties make endorsements in primary elections, does the favored candidate receive a real boost in his or her vote share, or do parties simply pick the favorites who are already destined to win? To answer this question, we draw on two research designs aimed at isolating the causal effect of Democratic Party endorsements in California's 2012 primary election. First, we conduct a survey experiment in which we randomly assign a party endorsement, holding all other aspects of a candidate's background and policy positions constant. Second, we use a unique dataset to implement a regression discontinuity analysis of electoral trends by comparing the vote shares captured by candidates who barely won or barely lost the internal party endorsement contest. We find a constellation of evidence suggesting that endorsements do indeed matter, although this effect appears to be contingent upon the type of candidate and voter: endorsements matter most for candidates in their party's mainstream, and for voters who identify with that party and for independents. The magnitude of their impact is dramatically smaller than might be estimated from research designs less attuned to recent advances in causal inference.
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Obama, race, and the Republican landslide in 2010
Matthew Luttig
Politics, Groups, and Identities, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the 2010 midterm elections Republicans won in a landslide, making major gains in the Senate and winning the majority in the House. In this article, I assess one factor that contributed to the Republican Party's landslide in 2010: the political salience of racial animosity in the Obama era. In a historical analysis of voting in midterm elections, I find that racial animosity had a substantially larger effect on vote choice in 2010 than in past midterm elections. This effect persists in the face of many short-term factors and regardless of the race of the candidates themselves. I also show that racial animosity affected voter turnout in 2010, stimulating turnout among Republicans and diminishing turnout among Democrats. Consistent with research on presidential voting and opinion formation in the Obama era, these results suggest that one consequence of Obama's presidency was to increase the relevance of racial animosity in American politics.
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The American Public's Attention to Politics in Conflict and Crisis, 1880-1963
Robert Urbatsch
Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Autumn 2015, Pages 225-244
Abstract:
Parental naming practices in the United States have much to reveal about public attitudes, preoccupations, and reactions to current events. Evidence from the 2011 version of the Social Security Master Death File - a database that includes nearly all of the Americans who were alive between World War II and 2011 - reveals that newborns are more likely to acquire the name of a president after elections, assassination attempts, and declarations of war. Regression analysis comparing presidential names to polling data suggests that these trends reflect shifts in public approval of the president, implying that naming can provide important information about historical eras when direct measures are unavailable.
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Perceptions of Competence and the European Economic Crisis: A Micro-Level Analysis
Giacomo Chiozza & Luigi Manzetti
Political Research Quarterly, September 2015, Pages 457-473
Abstract:
This study provides micro-level evidence for the new theories of accountability under globalization. We analyze the micro-level logic that underpins political accountability in democratic countries with highly globalized economies. We contend that voters discount current economic conditions in evaluating incumbent leaders if they perceive the incumbent leader moving the country in the right direction. We test this argument with survey data from eight European countries in 2012, while controlling for potential alternative explanations associated with pocketbook, sociotropic, and clarity-of-responsibility factors. We find that valence considerations related to future directions in the country sustain positive evaluations of leaders' performance even in the face of negative evaluations of the economy.