Making Elections Great Again
The Great Society, Reagan's Revolution, and Generations of Presidential Voting
Yair Ghitza, Andrew Gelman & Jonathan Auerbach
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
We build a model of American presidential voting in which the cumulative impression left by political events determines the preferences of voters. The impression varies by voter, depending on their age at the time the events took place. We use the Gallup presidential approval-rating time series to reflect the major events that influence voter preferences, with the most influential occurring during a voter's teenage and early adult years. Our fitted model is predictive, explaining more than 80% of the variation in voting trends over the last half-century. It is also interpretable, dividing voters into five meaningful generations: New Deal Democrats, Eisenhower Republicans, 1960s Liberals, Reagan Conservatives, and Millennials. We present each generation in context of the political events that shaped its preferences, beginning in 1940 and ending with the 2016 election.
Do voting and election outcomes predict changes in conspiracy beliefs? Evidence from two high-profile U.S. elections
Sangmin Kim, Olga Stavrova & Kathleen Vohs
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, November 2022
Abstract:
Despite widespread recognition that conspiracy theories carry the potential for serious harm, relatively little research has investigated possible antidotes to conspiracy beliefs. Previous theorizing posits that belief in conspiracy theories is driven in part by existential motives related to a sense of control and social motives aimed at maintaining a positive image of oneself and one's ingroup. Using electoral contests as the context, we investigated whether the act of voting (i.e., addressing existential motives) and seeing one's preferred candidate win (i.e., addressing social motives) were associated with a reduction in conspiracy beliefs. In two two-wave studies of high-profile U.S. elections, we measured endorsement of conspiracy beliefs before the election and after the results were known, thereby tracking change in conspiracy belief endorsement over time. Both Study 1 (2020 U.S. Presidential election) and Study 2 (2021 Georgia Senate runoff election) showed a significant decrease in conspiracy beliefs among people who supported the winning candidate, consistent with the importance of social motives. The findings highlight the merits of one's political ideology receiving support and recognition for potentially abating conspiracy beliefs.
Support for leaders who use conspiratorial rhetoric: The role of personal control and political identity
Benjamin Dow, Cynthia Wang & Jennifer Whitson
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conspiracy theories have accrued around recent world events, and many of them have been endorsed by leaders seeking to garner support. Drawing from compensatory control theory, we argue a reduced sense of control will increase support for leaders who use conspiratorial rhetoric. Moreover, we posit that the congruence between one's political identity and a leader's conspiratorial rhetoric is an important consideration with regard to when this effect will emerge. Studies 1a and 1b established causality by directly manipulating sense of control and finding greater support for conspiratorial leaders in the lacking vs. having control condition. Studies 2 and 3 examined the effects of real-world events that are posited to reduce a sense of control, along with the moderating effect of political identity. Study 2 showed, in two waves collected before and during COVID-19 lockdowns, that the lockdowns reduced a sense of control. Congruently, individuals supported leaders espousing a COVID-19 conspiracy theory more during the lockdowns than before. In addition, for leaders espousing conspiratorial rhetoric related to paid protests, Republicans exhibited greater support during than before the lockdown; however, the lockdown did not affect Democrats' support. Study 3 showed, in two waves collected before and after the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, that Biden supporters felt greater control after the election and decreased their support for conspiratorial leaders. Trump supporters' sense of control did not change, and concurrently they did not change their support for conspiratorial leaders. Implications are discussed for leadership during times of crisis and beyond.
Elections have (health) consequences: Depression, anxiety, and the 2020 presidential election
Sankar Mukhopadhyay
Economics & Human Biology, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this paper, we examine the effect of the 2020 presidential election on anxiety and depression among Americans. We use data from the 2020 Household Pulse Survey (HPS), a nationally representative rapid response survey conducted weekly from April to July of 2020 and then bi-weekly until December of 2021. The high-frequency nature of the survey implies that we can identify week-to-week changes in mental health outcomes. We find that self-reported symptoms of moderate to severe anxiety and depression increased steadily up to the presidential election and declined after the election. The anxiety and depression levels are significantly higher around the 2020 election than in April 2020, when most of the U.S. was under mandatory or advisory stay-at-home orders due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, anxiety and depression-specific office visits and usage of mental-health-specific prescription drugs show similar patterns. Robustness checks rule out alternative explanations such as a COVID-19 surge or vaccine development.
Do social media ads matter for political behavior? A field experiment
George Beknazar-Yuzbashev & Mateusz Stalinski
Journal of Public Economics, October 2022
Abstract:
We exploit Facebook's introduction of a filter hiding ads from the feed as a unique opportunity to study the effects of online ads on political behavior. In a pre-registered experiment, we randomly assigned participants to hide political ads (treatment) or alcohol ads (control) for several weeks preceding the 2020 US elections. We report an insignificant intent-to-treat effect of political ads on turnout (2.3 pp.), but we cannot rule out a sizable positive effect, with 95% confidence interval of [-2.8, 7.4]. The result may mask important heterogeneity, with political ads making Democrats slightly more motivated to vote and Republicans substantially less. We explore the reasons for this effect, such as natural variation in ad content: the majority of Facebook ads on users' feeds skewed Democratic. Lastly, the effect on measures of affective polarization and informedness was negligible.
Authority After the Tempest: Hurricane Michael and the 2018 Elections
Kevin Morris & Peter Miller
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hurricane Michael made landfall in the Florida panhandle 27 days before the 2018 elections. In the aftermath the governor issued Executive Order 18-283, allowing election officials in 8 impacted counties to loosen a variety of voting laws and consolidate polling places but providing no emergency funding to maintain the planned number of polling places. We test the efficacy of the order using a novel research design that separates the weather effects of the hurricane on turnout from the administrative effects of how the election was run. We find little evidence that the hurricane itself (as proxied by historically-relative rainfall) reduced turnout, but that the Executive Order likely had large, negative turnout effects thanks to widespread polling place consolidation. Natural disasters need not spell turnout disasters if state and local election officials can avoid reducing the number of polling places.
Candidate Repositioning, Valence, and a Backfire Effect from Criticism
Andrew Gooch
American Politics Research, November 2022, Pages 757-768
Abstract:
Politicians who switch policy positions are often criticized for being inconsistent "flip-floppers", which suggests a valence penalty for repositioning. Using a survey experiment with six treatment conditions and a sample of 2694 respondents, results show that candidates receive an increase in favorability and perceived competency when holding a consistent position on asylum seekers from the campaign to holding office. Repositioning on asylum seekers reduces favorability and perceived competency. However, in treatment conditions where the candidate is criticized for "flip-flopping" by unelected groups, candidate favorability improves relative to a treatment condition where only the repositioning is presented. These results suggest that a backfire effect might occur from criticisms. This backfire occurs on average across all respondents. This study contributes to the line of research that shows mechanisms that offset the negative effects of repositioning.
Newspaper Endorsements, Candidate Quality, and Election Outcomes in the United States, 1950-2020
Kevin DeLuca
Harvard Working Paper, September 2022
Abstract:
In today's politically polarized era, how much does candidate quality matter in elections? Spatial models of vote choice predict that valence factors, such as candidate quality, matter less to voters as differences between the policy platforms of parties increase. However, this and related claims are hard to test empirically because it is difficult to accurately measure candidate quality. In this paper, I construct a novel measure of candidate quality differences using over 23,000 political endorsements from hundreds of local newspapers around the United States. I estimate the quality differences between candidates in elections between 1950-2020 to evaluate the effects of candidate quality on election outcomes. I find that the higher quality candidate wins in a large majority of elections in the United States. A one standard deviation increase in relative candidate quality increases a candidate's two-party vote share by 4 percentage points, with the largest effects on the probability of winning concentrated in competitive elections. Contrary to popular beliefs about the impact of polarization on the importance of candidate quality to voters, the effect of quality differences on vote shares has actually increased slightly over time. However, the decrease in competitive elections over the same period has reduced the share of elections where candidate quality can plausibly alter the election's outcome. The results highlight the important role of electoral competition in enabling voters to select high-quality representatives.
Facing the Competition: Gender Differences in Facial Emotion and Prominence in Visual News Coverage of Democratic Presidential Primary Candidates
Mike Gruszczynski et al.
Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study considered the impact of gender on visual coverage of the top 12 candidates in the 2020 Democratic Presidential Primary. Using Microsoft Azure's Face API, we analyzed 9,529 still images from 43 mainstream news sources for facial emotion (happiness, anger, neutrality) and prominence (close-up, medium, long shots). We found visual evidence for an age-old narrative that undermines confidence in women's leadership fitness: They were presented as emotionally less composed than men. Although we found no gender differences for facial prominence per se, its interaction with facial emotion gave nuance to gender differences in visual coverage of leadership performances.
Are Campaigns Getting Uglier, and Who Is to Blame? Negativity, Dramatization and Populism on Facebook in the 2014 and 2019 EP Election Campaigns
Ulrike Klinger, Karolina Koc-Michalska & Uta Russmann
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Relating to theories of dissonant public spheres and affective publics, we study negativity, dramatization, and populist content in political party Facebook posts across 12 countries during the 2014 and 2019 European Parliament Election campaigns. A quantitative content analysis of 14,293 posts from 111 (2014) and 116 (2019) political parties shows that negative emotion, negative campaigning, dramatization, and populist content has increased over this time. We show that political parties sought to evoke more negative emotions and generate more dramatization, engaged more in negative campaigning, and included more populist content in their Facebook posts in the 2019 EP election than in 2014. Further, we show that posts evoking negative emotions and dramatization and involving negative campaigning yield higher user engagement than other posts, while populist content also led to more user reactions in 2014, but not in 2019. Negative, exaggerated, and sensationalized messaging therefore makes sense from a strategic perspective, because the increased frequencies of likes, shares, and comments make parties' messages travel farther and deeper in social networks, thereby reaching a wider audience. It seems that the rise in affective and dissonant communication has not emerged unintentionally, but is also a result of strategic campaigning.
Mitigating the Turnout Effects of Bad Weather With Early Voting: 1948-2016
Martin Johnson & Robert Stein
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We identify in-person early voting and no-excuse mail voting as antidotes for the depressing effect inclement weather has on voter turnout and the Republican dividend that accompanies rain and snow on Election Day. We offer and test an explanation for how voters utilize early voting to anticipate and avoid the costs of voting in bad weather. Replicating and extending Gomez et al (2007) analysis through the 2016 election, we confirm the remedial effect in-person early voting and to a lesser degree no-excuse mail voting has on turnout and the Republican advantage when bad weather coincides with Election Day. Our work makes an important contribution to understanding how election laws effect voter participation. We discuss how taking seriously treatment effect heterogeneity both in theoretical and empirical analyses might contribute to our understanding of the effects of election laws on voter participation.
Intergenerational mobility and voting in the presidential election: Evidence from U.S. counties
Sungmun Choi
Economics Letters, November 2022
Abstract:
According to conventional knowledge, higher intergenerational mobility is related to lower preferences for redistribution and, thus, lower support for liberal (i.e. left-wing) political parties. While most of previous studies use survey responses to elicit political preferences, I use county-level statistics of intergenerational mobility and voting patterns to analyze the link between the two. I find that, even after controlling for average income, income inequality, and other characteristics of counties, the vote share for the Democratic candidate in the 2008 presidential election is significantly lower in counties with higher intergenerational mobility.