Popularity Contests
The power of party to help voters overcome a participation obstacle in the United States
David Niven
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Can partisanship itself -- independent of any party mobilizing activity -- help voters overcome participatory obstacles? Challenges for evaluating this question in normal circumstances abound as parties mobilize voters specifically based on their partisanship and in order to counter participatory hurdles they may face. Here, taking advantage of a quasi-experimental circumstance in which a targeted mobilizing effort was not feasible, I show that party membership itself reduced vulnerability to an unforeseeable electoral hurdle and did so even among a class of supervoters who participated in every recent election. Employing logistic regression and propensity matching to isolate the influence of party, the results show the inoculating effect of party applies not only to major U.S. parties (Democrats and Republicans), but also to adherents of minor parties, rendering partisans about 40% less likely to have their ballot thwarted. The results offer unique evidence that party loyalties have an effect independent of party mobilization and a stark warning that while party-less voters may not be the intended target of procedural voting hurdles, they are likely to bear the sternest burden of them.
How and when candidate race affects inferences about ideology and group favoritism
Jennifer Wu & Gregory Huber
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
How does a candidate's racial background affect the inferences voters make about them? Prior work finds that Black candidates are perceived to be more liberal. Using two survey experiments, we test whether this effect persists when candidate partisanship and issue positions are specified and also consider other consequential voter perceptions. We make two contributions. First, we show that while Black candidates are perceived to be more liberal than White candidates with the same policy positions, this difference is smaller for Black candidates who adopt more conservative positions on race-related issues. Second, we find that voters, both Black and White, believe Black candidates will prioritize the interests of Black constituents over those of White constituents, regardless of candidate positions.
All Candidate Primaries, Open Primaries, and Voter Turnout
Nathan Micatka, Caroline Tolbert & Robert Boatright
Journal of Political Institutions and Political Economy, November 2024, Pages 363-385
Abstract:
Voter turnout in U.S. primary elections is very low. On average, only 20% of eligible nationwide voters participate in primaries. This raises questions about whether primary electorates distort representation in state legislatures and Congress. States frequently experiment with different rules about who can participate in primaries, such as adopting nonpartisan primaries to increase participation. This study uses individual-level panel data from state voter files nationwide to investigate whether nonpartisan and open primaries are associated with higher voter turnout in congressional primaries across multiple elections. While previous research using aggregate data or single-state case studies finds modest effects, the results of this study show that individuals living in nonpartisan primary states are 12 percentage points more likely to vote in the 2022 midterm elections compared to people living in closed or semi-closed primary states, controlling for other factors including electoral competition. The results further suggest that partisans and independents are more likely to vote in nonpartisan primary elections; independents uniquely benefit from the nonpartisan primary. Electoral competition in Senate and gubernatorial races is found to significantly boost turnout in primaries of all types.
Cast vote records: A database of ballots from the 2020 U.S. Election
Shiro Kuriwaki et al.
Scientific Data, November 2024
Abstract:
Ballots are the core records of elections. Electronic records of actual ballots cast (cast vote records) are available to the public in some jurisdictions. However, they have been released in a variety of formats and have not been independently evaluated. Here we introduce a database of cast vote records from the 2020 U.S. general election. We downloaded publicly available unstandardized cast vote records, standardized them into a multi-state database, and extensively compared their totals to certified election results. Our release includes vote records for President, Governor, U.S. Senate and House, and state upper and lower chambers, covering 42.7 million voters in 20 states who voted for more than 2,200 candidates. This database serves as a uniquely granular administrative dataset for studying voting behavior and election administration. Using this data, we show that in battleground states, 1.9 percent of solid Republicans (as defined by their congressional and state legislative voting) in our database split their ticket for Joe Biden, while 1.2 percent of solid Democrats split their ticket for Donald Trump.
Gender differences in political career progression
Ryan Brown et al.
Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, February 2025
Abstract:
This paper quantifies the gender gap in the returns to electoral success on the career progression of novice U.S. state legislators. Using a regression discontinuity design, we find that narrowly winning a state legislature election doubles the probability that a female politician will later compete for a higher-level legislative seat compared to narrowly elected male politicians. While the gender gap in the effect of local political experience on winning a higher-level election also favors women, it is not precisely estimated. The gender difference in the effect of winning a state legislature seat is larger when serving in positions that closely resemble the responsibilities and workload of higher-level positions. We conclude that the pathway from local to higher-level political offices functions at least as effectively for women as for men. Therefore, supporting the recruitment, funding, and campaigning of women in local elections can be an effective strategy to increase their representation at the highest levels of government.
Small Donors’ Political Slacktivism: The Relationship between Contribution Format and Subsequent Political Behaviors
Pureum Kim, Gustavo Schneider & Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite an increasing interest in the topic of marketing and politics, scholars have paid scant attention to a growing citizen stakeholders’ behavior: small donor contributions to political campaigns via the purchase of political merchandise. This paper demonstrates that purchasing merchandise reduces the likelihood of devoting significant effort to support the campaign in the future (political slacktivism) compared to making a financially equivalent monetary donation. The paper makes several contributions: (1) while prior work has examined how political behavior (such as support for a political party) affects consumer purchase decisions, we are the first to examine how political consumption affects political behavior; (2) the paper demonstrates how purchasing political merchandise (vs. making an equivalent monetary donation) reduces the likelihood of engagement in subsequent political behaviors, such as voting; (3) the paper offers insights for political operatives and public policy advocates on how to increase citizens’ political engagement through the donation format. To examine this unique phenomenon, this work focuses on four distinct election cycles and uses a multi-methods approach: analysis of an archival dataset, a longitudinal survey of actual donors, and a set of experiments, including actual consumption of political merchandise.
Political advertising and consumer sentiment: Evidence from U.S. presidential elections
Cody Couture et al.
European Journal of Political Economy, January 2025
Abstract:
We merge panel survey data on consumer sentiment with data on U.S. political advertisements run from 2013 to 2020 and estimate dynamic panel data models predicting the effect of positive, negative, and contrasting ads on several measures of consumer sentiment. We find that political ads during Presidential election cycles have a significant impact. In particular, a higher intensity of positive political ads with an economic theme makes consumers more optimistic about their own current and future financial positions and the future state of the economy. Our findings also suggest that political ads impact sentiment through an emotional appeal rather than by providing information to viewers about economic fundamentals.
Tracking Truth with Liquid Democracy
Adam Berinsky et al.
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
The dynamics of random transitive delegations on a graph are of particular interest when viewed through the lens of an emerging voting paradigm: liquid democracy. This paradigm allows voters to choose between directly voting and transitively delegating their votes to other voters so that those selected cast a vote weighted by the number of delegations that they received. In the epistemic setting, where voters decide on a binary issue for which there is a ground truth, previous work showed that a few voters may amass such a large amount of influence that liquid democracy is less likely to identify the ground truth than direct voting. We quantify the amount of permissible concentration of power and examine more realistic delegation models, showing that they behave well by ensuring that (with high probability) there is a permissible limit on the maximum number of delegations received. Our theoretical results demonstrate that the delegation process is similar to well-known processes on random graphs that are sufficiently bounded for our purposes. Along the way, we prove new bounds on the size of the largest component in an infinite Pólya urn process, which may be of independent interest. In addition, we empirically validate the theoretical results, running six experiments (for a total of N = 168 participants, 62 delegation graphs, and over 11,000 votes collected). We find that empirical delegation behaviors meet the conditions for our positive theoretical guarantees. Overall, our work alleviates concerns raised about liquid democracy and bolsters the case for the applicability of this emerging paradigm.
Online social media and populism in Europe
Mihai Mutascu, Cristina Strango & Camelia Turcu
European Journal of Political Economy, January 2025
Abstract:
We investigate the impact of social media (e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn) on left-wing and right-wing populist voting patterns within the European Union 27 (EU-27). Our empirical analysis is based on an Ordered Probit model, over 2014–2020. We differentiate between politically oriented communication and general communication, through social media. We find that politically oriented communication on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn contributes to the electoral success of right-wing parties. In contrast, active engagement of left-wing parties on social media platforms, such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn appears not to enhance their electoral success. This suggests that right-wing parties effectively leverage platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn to disseminate populist ideologies, while left-wing parties face challenges with their engagement strategies on these platforms.