Old Siding
Legitimate questions: Public perceptions of the legitimacy of US presidential election outcomes
Michael Sances
Research & Politics, October 2023
Abstract:
Numerous polls show most Republicans view the 2020 election as illegitimate, but we know relatively little about legitimacy perceptions among losing candidates' supporters in past elections. I analyze 76 polls asking about the legitimacy of the 2000, 2016, and 2020 presidential elections. Even before 2020, the losing candidate's supporters are much less likely to view the outcome as legitimate. Losers are about 60 percentage points less likely to accept the election in 2000, about 40 points less likely in 2016, and about 70 points less likely in 2020. Perceptions of legitimacy are typically higher than confidence in election results, and many voters express doubts about the vote count while still accepting the legitimacy of the result.
Issues, Groups, or Idiots? Comparing Theories of Partisan Stereotypes
Daniel Myers
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
When individuals picture the two parties, what do they think of? Given the dominant understanding of partisanship as a social identity, understanding the content of these mental images -- individuals' stereotypes of the two parties -- is essential, as stereotypes play an important role in how identity affects attitudes and behaviors, perceptions of others, and inter-group relations. The existing literature offers three answers to this question: one that claims that people picture the two parties in terms of their constituent social groups, a second that claims that people picture the two parties in terms of policy positions, and a third that claims that people view the two parties in terms of individual traits they associate with partisans. While not mutually exclusive, these theories have different implications for the effects of partisanship and the roots of partisan animosity. This paper adjudicates between these theories by employing a new method that measures stereotype content at the collective and individual level using a conjoint experiment. An important advantage of the conjoint measure is that it allows for the direct comparison of the importance of different attributes, and different kinds of attributes, to the stereotype. Using a pre-registered 2,909-person survey, I evaluate the relative importance of issues, groups, and traits to stereotypes of partisans. I find strong evidence that issue positions and ideological labels are the central elements of partisan stereotypes. I also find that individuals who hold issue- or ideology-based stereotypes are more affectively polarized than those whose stereotypes are rooted in groups or traits.
Algorithmic recommendations have limited effects on polarization: A naturalistic experiment on YouTube
Naijia Liu et al.
Harvard Working Paper, September 2023
Abstract:
An enormous body of academic and journalistic work argues that opaque recommendation algorithms contribute to political polarization by promoting increasingly extreme content. We present evidence that challenges this dominant view, drawing on three large-scale, multi-wave experiments with a combined N of 7,851 human users, consistently showing that extremizing algorithmic recommendations has limited effects on opinions. Our experiments employ a custom-built video platform with a naturalistic, YouTube-like interface that presents real videos and recommendations drawn directly from YouTube. We experimentally manipulate YouTube's actual recommendation algorithm to create ideologically balanced and slanted variations. Our design allows us to directly intervene in a cyclical feedback loop that has long confounded the study of algorithmic polarization -- the complex interplay between algorithmic supply of content recommendations and user demand for its consumption -- to examine the downstream effects of recommendation-consumption cycles on policy attitudes. We use data on over 125,000 experimentally manipulated recommendations and 26,000 platform interactions to estimate how recommendation algorithms alter users' media consumption decisions and, indirectly, their political attitudes. Our work builds on recent observational studies showing that algorithm-driven "rabbit holes" of recommendations may be less prevalent than previously thought. We provide new experimental evidence casting further doubt on widely circulating theories of algorithmic polarization, showing that even large perturbations of real-world recommendation systems that substantially modify consumption patterns have limited causal effects on policy attitudes. Our methodology, which captures and modifies the output of real-world recommendation algorithms, offers a path forward for future investigations of black-box artificial intelligence systems. However, our findings also reveal practical limits to effect sizes that are feasibly detectable in academic experiments.
"Compensate the Losers?" Economic Policy and Partisan Realignment in the US
Ilyana Kuziemko, Nicolas Longuet Marx & Suresh Naidu
NBER Working Paper, October 2023
Abstract:
We argue that the Democratic Party's evolution on economic policy helps explain partisan realignment by education. We show that less-educated Americans differentially demand "predistribution" policies (e.g., a federal jobs guarantee, higher minimum wages, protectionism, and stronger unions), while more-educated Americans differentially favor redistribution (taxes and transfers). This educational gradient in policy preferences has been largely unchanged since the 1940s. We then show the Democrats' supply of predistribution has declined since the 1970s. We tie this decline to the rise of a self-described "New Democrat" party faction who court more educated voters and are explicitly skeptical of predistribution. Consistent with this faction's growing influence, we document the significant growth of donations from highly educated donors, especially from out-of-district donors, who play an increasingly important role in Democratic (especially "New Democrat") primary campaigns relative to Republican primaries. In response to these within-party changes in power, less-educated Americans began to leave the Democratic Party in the 1970s, after decades of serving as the party's base. Roughly half of the total shift can be explained by their changing views of the parties' economic policies. We also show that in the crucial transition period of the 1970s and 1980s, New Democrat-aligned candidates draw disproportionately from more-educated voters in both survey questions and actual Congressional elections.
Expressive Responding and Belief in 2020 Election Fraud
Matthew Graham & Omer Yair
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do surveys measure sincere belief in Donald Trump's "big lie" that fraud decided the 2020 election? We apply a comprehensive approach to detecting expressive responding: three honesty encouragements, a list experiment, two opportunities to express related sentiments, and two opportunities to bet on related predictions about the future. We find that nearly all respondents who endorse the big lie appear to genuinely believe it. These "believers" are evenly split between those who confidently accept the big lie and those who find it plausible but are not deeply convinced. Similarly, those who predicted that evidence of fraud would enable Trump to retain power in January 2021 or be reinstated in August 2021 were overwhelmingly sincere. Our findings indicate that Trump's big lie is unique in terms of the size and veracity of belief differences between Democrats and Republicans. We discuss implications for democratic stability.
The Great Divide: Neither Fairness Nor Kindness Eliminates Moral Derogation of People With Opposing Political Beliefs
Phillip McGarry et al.
Social Psychological and Personality Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
People increasingly view those with opposing political beliefs as less moral than those with shared political beliefs. Across two experiments, using a U.S. undergraduate sample (n = 1,070) and a U.S. resident online sample through Prolific (n = 402), we employed the Ultimatum Game (UG) to investigate whether acts of fairness, or even kindness, by persons with out-party political beliefs would mitigate moral derogation toward them. In neither experiment, did fairness or kindness by persons with opposite political beliefs moderate moral derogation. More extreme partisans engaged in even greater moral derogation of out-party (versus in-party) individuals, regardless of their acts of fairness or kindness. However, even self-identified moderate partisans engage in out-party moral derogation. The implications of these findings for political discourse and resolution for political conflict are discussed.
Critical Race Theory and Asymmetric Mobilization
Pia Deshpande et al.
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in schools quickly became a salient issue nationally and in local elections despite CRT's origins as an academic theory. In this paper, we argue that elite asymmetries regarding the importance of CRT spillover to the electorate. We show that Republican legislators and conservative media's use of the term "critical race theory" dwarfed that of Democratic legislators and liberal media, respectively. A spike in general interest in the term happened concurrently with this elite push. We then hypothesize that in part due to this asymmetry in exposure to the term "critical race theory" itself in elite messaging, CRT policy may have an asymmetric effect on political mobilization, favoring Republicans, who tend to oppose the teaching of CRT in schools. To test this hypothesis, we conduct a survey experiment and find that Republicans presented with a pro-CRT policy change are politically mobilized, while Democrats presented with an anti-CRT policy change are not. In particular, Republicans exposed to the pro-CRT policy reported a higher likelihood of voting, encouraging others to vote, and contacting their local politicians. Thus, the case of CRT helps to illustrate the conditions under which issues can asymmetrically mobilize citizens.
The Effects of Elite Attacks on Copartisan Media: Evidence from Trump and Fox News
Allison Archer
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Individuals seeking news content face a variety of options in the current media landscape, yet scholarly research provides little evidence regarding the conditions under which they might become more or less open to different partisan news outlets. Drawing on the case of Donald Trump's critiques of Fox News, I argue that elite rhetoric plays an important role in this process for members of both parties. I first conduct an original content analysis of Trump's tweets from 2017 to 2020 and find that he increasingly attacked Fox News on this platform. Notably, Trump's increasingly critical rhetoric about Fox correlates significantly with decreases in both Fox's daytime and prime-time ratings. Two survey experiments shed light on how individuals respond to this intraparty conflict, and I find that Trump's rhetoric affects both Republicans and Democrats. Republicans view Fox as less conservative and more critical of Trump when exposed to his critiques of the outlet. However, Republicans do not change their viewing habits until Trump promotes an alternative to Fox like OANN. Democrats respond to Trump's rhetoric by updating their perceptions of Fox's coverage and ideology as well as increasing their willingness to watch the channel, both in isolation and relative to an alternative like OANN. The results suggest that elite rhetoric is instrumental in shaping views of and demand for partisan outlets among members of both parties and can elevate more ideologically extreme sources among followers. Thus, elite rhetoric serves as a meaningful cue for individuals navigating an increasingly fragmented partisan media landscape.
The Effect of Childhood Environment on Political Behavior: Evidence from Young U.S. Movers, 1992-2021
Jacob Brown et al.
NBER Working Paper, October 2023
Abstract:
We ask how childhood environment shapes political behavior. We measure young voters' participation and party affiliation in nationally comprehensive voter files and reconstruct their childhood location histories based on their parents' addresses. We compare outcomes of individuals who moved between the same origin and destination counties but at different ages. Those who spend more time in the destination are more influenced by it: Growing up in a county where their peers are 10 percentage points more likely to become Republicans makes them 4.7 percentage points more likely to become Republican themselves upon entering the electorate. The effects are of similar magnitude for Democratic partisanship and turnout. These exposure effects are primarily driven by teenage years, and they persist but decay after the first election. They reflect both state-level factors and factors varying at a smaller scale such as peer effects.
Political Person-Culture Match and Longevity: The Partisanship-Mortality Link Depends on the Cultural Context
Tobias Ebert, Jana Berkessel & Thorsteinn Jonsson
Psychological Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent studies demonstrate that Republicans live longer than Democrats. We examined whether these longevity benefits are universal or culturally varying. Following a person-culture match perspective, we hypothesized that Republicans' longevity benefits occur in Republican, but not in Democratic, states. To test this argument, we conducted two studies among U.S. adults. In preregistered Study 1, we used large survey data (extended U.S. General Social Survey; N = 42,855). In confirmatory Study 2, we analyzed obituaries/biographies of deceased U.S. political partisans (novel data web-scraped from an online cemetery; N = 9,177). Both studies supported the person-culture match perspective with substantial effect sizes. In Republican contexts, up to 50.1% of all Republicans but only 36.3% of all Democrats reached an age of 80 years. In Democratic contexts, there was no such longevity gap. Robustness tests showed that this effect generalizes to political ideology and holds across spatial levels but is limited to persons with strong political convictions.
Rockefellers and Goldwaters: The effect of compulsory schooling on voting preferences
Philip DeCicca, Harry Krashinsky & Erik Nesson
Economics of Education Review, October 2023
Abstract:
Research into the causal impact of formal education on political beliefs and ultimate voting behavior arrives at contradictory results. While some early work, e.g. Dee (2004) finds education induces more socially-liberal views, more recent works suggests that education makes individuals more fiscally conservative. We use quasi-experimental variation in schooling created by compulsory schooling laws (CSLs) to reconcile these results. Following Marshall (2019), we first examine a pooled sample of voter and find that policy-induced increases in education lead to voters being more likely to identify as, and vote for, Republican candidates, largely due to concerns regarding taxes. Delving further into this result, however, we find highly heterogeneous impacts of education, which depend on the efficacy of CSLs. In particular, in states where CSLs significantly increased educational attainment, impacted individuals become more fiscally conservative, but also exhibit greater support for traditional Democratic social issues like abortion rights and environmental protection, creating so-called "Rockefeller" Republicans. By contrast, voters educated in states where CSLs have no measured impact on educational attainment exhibit generally more conservative attitudes toward non-economics and social issues, which are traits that are consistent with so-called "Goldwater" Republicans.
Partisan Motivated Empathy and Policy Attitudes
Nathan Brophy & Kevin Mullinix
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
A voluminous literature examines whether empathy -- the capacity to share other people's perspectives and feelings -- mitigates prejudice and improves intergroup relations. We know less about the impact of empathy for policy preferences. We theorize that the effects of empathy on policy attitudes are, at times, contingent on partisanship. Social identity dynamics and partisan motivations shape the target of a person's empathy and their beliefs about a policy's effects. We argue that, rather than bringing people together, high levels of empathy can accentuate partisan divisions in policy opinions. We test our theoretical argument using two surveys implemented in the United States. We find that partisanship often moderates the effects of dispositional empathy such that the most empathetic partisans are more polarized in their policy views. Importantly, there are predictable differences across issues. A perspective-taking experiment fails to heighten empathy or change policy opinions. Our study demonstrates that empathy has a nuanced role in preference formation. We discuss the implications of our findings for research on empathy, policy opinions, and political behavior.