Rounding up votes
The “Daily Grind”: Work, Commuting, and Their Impact on Political Participation
Benjamin Newman, Joshua Johnson & Patrick Lown
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research demonstrates that free time is an important resource for political participation. We investigate whether two central drains on citizens’ daily time — working and commuting — impact their level of political participation. The prevailing “resources” model offers a quantity-focused view where additional time spent working or commuting reduces free time and should each separately decrease participation. We contrast this view to a “commuter’s strain” hypothesis, which emphasizes time spent in transit as a psychologically onerous burden over and above the workday. Using national survey data, we find that time spent working has no effect on participation, while commuting significantly decreases participation. We incorporate this finding into a comprehensive model of the “daily grind,” which factors in both socioeconomic status and political interest. Our analysis demonstrates that commuting leads to the greatest loss in political interest for low-income Americans, and that this loss serves as a main mechanism through which commuting erodes political participation.
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Election Laws, Mobilization, and Turnout: The Unanticipated Consequences of Election Reform
Barry Burden et al.
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
State governments have experimented with a variety of election laws to make voting more convenient and increase turnout. The impacts of these reforms vary in surprising ways, providing insight into the mechanisms by which states can encourage or reduce turnout. Our theory focuses on mobilization and distinguishes between the direct and indirect effects of election laws. We conduct both aggregate and individual-level statistical analyses of voter turnout in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. The results show that Election Day registration has a consistently positive effect on turnout, whereas the most popular reform — early voting — is actually associated with lower turnout when it is implemented by itself. We propose that early voting has created negative unanticipated consequences by reducing the civic significance of elections for individuals and altering the incentives for political campaigns to invest in mobilization.
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Unresponsive and Unpersuaded: The Unintended Consequences of Voter Persuasion Efforts
Michael Bailey, Daniel Hopkins & Todd Rogers
Georgetown University Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
Can randomized experiments at the individual level help assess the persuasive effects of campaign tactics? In the contemporary U.S., vote choice is not observable, so one promising research design involves randomizing appeals and then using a survey to measure vote intentions. Here, we analyze one such field experiment conducted during the 2008 presidential election in which 56,000 registered voters were assigned to persuasion in person, by phone, and/or by mail. Persuasive appeals by canvassers had two unintended consequences. First, they reduced responsiveness to the follow-up survey, lowering the response rate sharply among infrequent voters. Second, various statistical methods to address the resulting biases converge on a counter-intuitive conclusion: the persuasive canvassing reduced candidate support. Our results allow us to rule out even small effects in the intended direction and thus illustrate the backlash that attempts at inter-personal persuasion can engender.
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Unintentional Gerrymandering: Political Geography and Electoral Bias in Legislatures
Jowei Chen & Jonathan Rodden
Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Summer 2013, Pages 239-269
Abstract:
While conventional wisdom holds that partisan bias in U.S. legislative elections results from intentional partisan and racial gerrymandering, we demonstrate that substantial bias can also emerge from patterns of human geography. We show that in many states, Democrats are inefficiently concentrated in large cities and smaller industrial agglomerations such that they can expect to win fewer than 50% of the seats when they win 50% of the votes. To measure this "unintentional gerrymandering," we use automated districting simulations based on precinct-level 2000 presidential election results in several states. Our results illustrate a strong relationship between the geographic concentration of Democratic voters and electoral bias favoring Republicans.
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Identifying Election Fraud Using Orphan and Low Propensity Voters
Ray Christensen & Thomas Schultz
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although voter ID laws have become a hot topic of political debate, existing scholarship has failed to produce conclusive evidence concerning the existence or frequency of electoral fraud, especially the type of fraud that would be prevented by photo identification laws and signature verification protocols for voting by mail. We propose a new method of measuring election fraud, especially identity fraud, that is superior to previous measurement efforts because it measures actual instances of fraud rather than waiting for conclusive proof of fraud produced in a criminal prosecution. We test our method in multiple jurisdictions, including two known cases of electoral fraud, and we find no additional cases of fraud. We speculate that public access to voting and registration records play an important role in preventing this type of election fraud, suggesting that these practices are perhaps more important than voter ID laws in preventing election fraud.
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The effects of earmarks on the likelihood of reelection
Thomas Stratmann
European Journal of Political Economy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many models predict that incumbent legislators use government spending — “pork barrel” spending — to increase their vote shares in elections. To date, however, evidence for this hypothesis is scarce. Using recently available data on the sponsorship of earmarks in U.S. appropriations legislation, this paper tests the effects of earmarks on the likelihood of legislators’ reelection. The results show that secured earmarks lead to higher vote shares. The analysis demonstrates that a 10 million increase in earmarks leads to as much as a one percentage point increase in vote share on election day. Furthermore, the paper tests for voter responses to earmarks when earmarks have few or many sponsors.
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The Effect of Political Competition on Democratic Accountability
Philip Edward Jones
Political Behavior, September 2013, Pages 481-515
Abstract:
Representing uncompetitive, homogeneous constituencies is increasingly the norm for American legislators. Extensive research has investigated how competition affects the way representatives respond to their constituents’ policy preferences. This paper explores competition’s effect on the other side of representation, how constituents respond to their legislators’ policy record. Combining multiple measures of state competitiveness with large-N survey data, I demonstrate that competition enhances democratic accountability. Voters in competitive states are more interested in politics, more aware of the policy positions their U.S. senators have taken, and more likely to hold them accountable for those positions at election time. Robustness checks show that these effects are not due to the intensity of campaigning in a state: general competition, not particular campaign activities, drives citizens’ response. The recent increase in uncompetitive constituencies has likely lessened the degree to which legislators are held accountable for their actions in office.
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Celebrities and GOTV: An Experiment to Motivate Voting Among College Students
Kaye Usry & Michael Cobb
University of Illinois Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
An increasing number of celebrities have become involved in organized efforts to encourage young people to vote. In this paper, we examine whether celebrities are effective at these get out the vote (GOTV) efforts. In an experiment embedded in a survey conducted right before the 2012 presidential election, we exposed college students to a mock news story encouraging them to vote. We varied whether this information came from a celebrity possessing high or low levels of credibility, a former student body president, or an anonymous generic source. To estimate differences in voting intentions and validated turnout, we also included a control group that was never encouraged to vote. Overall, we find minimal evidence that celebrities are effective at mobilizing young voters. Democrats’ actual turnout was higher when they received an anonymously sourced GOTV appeal, but not when the same message was sourced to a celebrity. In addition, political independents expressed a greater intention to vote in a celebrity treatment condition, but this effect was not replicated with validated turnout data. In fact, Republicans and Independents were actually less likely to have voted when exposed to a GOTV message, and in the case of Independents when it was sourced to a celebrity.
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Substituting the End for the Whole: Why Voters Respond Primarily to the Election-Year Economy
Andrew Healy & Gabriel Lenz
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
According to numerous studies, the election-year economy influences presidential election results far more than cumulative growth throughout the term. Here we describe a series of surveys and experiments that point to an intriguing explanation for this pattern that runs contrary to standard political science explanations, but one that accords with a large psychological literature. Voters, we find, actually intend to judge presidents on cumulative growth. However, since that characteristic is not readily available to them, voters inadvertently substitute election-year performance because it is more easily accessible. This “end-heuristic” explanation for voters’ election-year emphasis reflects a general tendency for people to simplify retrospective assessments by substituting conditions at the end for the whole. The end-heuristic explanation also suggests a remedy, a way to align voters’ actions with their intentions. Providing people with the attribute they are seeking — cumulative growth — eliminates the election-year emphasis.
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Raymond La Raja & Brian Schaffner
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper seeks to understand the effect of campaign finance laws on electoral outcomes. Spurred by the recent Supreme Court decision, Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission (2010), which eliminated bans on corporate and union political spending, the study focuses on whether such bans generate electoral outcomes that are notably different from an electoral system that lacks such bans. We look to two key electoral dynamics that such bans might influence: the partisan balance of power and the success of incumbents. Using historical data on regulations in 49 American states between 1968 and 2009 we test alternative models for evaluating the impact of corporate spending bans put in place during this period. The results indicate that spending bans appear to have limited effects on election outcomes.
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Patrick Hummel & Richard Holden
NBER Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
We analyze a model of US presidential primary elections for a given party. There are two candidates, one of whom is a higher quality candidate. Voters reside in m different states and receive noisy private information about the identity of the superior candidate. States vote in some order, and this order is chosen by a social planner. We provide conditions under which the ordering of the states that maximizes the probability that the higher quality candidate is elected is for states to vote in order from smallest to largest populations and most accurate private information to least accurate private information.
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Heather LaMarre & Yoshikazu Suzuki-Lambrecht
Public Relations Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
Considering the integral relationship between public relations and democracy (Martinelli, 2011) coupled with the growing use of social media for democratic aims (Smith, 2011) the current study examines the effectiveness of Twitter as a public relations communications tool for congressional campaigns. Specifically, as a means of testing Twitter's effectiveness in informing and engaging voters, congressional candidate and political party Twitter use for all 435 U.S. House of Representatives races (N = 1284) are compared with 2010 election outcomes. Results indicate that candidates’ Twitter use significantly increased their odds of winning, controlling for incumbency and Party ID. Additionally, significant differences between incumbents’ and challengers’ Twitter use during the election cycle emerged, which has important implications for public relations practices aimed at achieving democratic outcomes.
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More Tweets, More Votes: Social Media as a Quantitative Indicator of Political Behavior
Joseph DiGrazia et al.
Indiana University Working Paper, February 2013
Abstract:
Is social media a valid indicator of political behavior? We answer this question using a random sample of 537,231,508 tweets from August 1 to November 1, 2010 and data from 406 competitive U.S. congressional elections provided by the Federal Election Commission. Our results show that the percentage of Republican-candidate name mentions correlates with the Republican vote margin in the subsequent election. This finding persists even when controlling for incumbency, district partisanship, media coverage of the race, time, and demographic variables such as the district’s racial and gender composition. With over 500 million active users in 2012, Twitter now represents a new frontier for the study of human behavior. This research provides a framework for incorporating this emerging medium into the computational social science toolkit.
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Life-Cycle Effects on Social Pressure to Vote
Costas Panagopoulos & Marisa Abrajano
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent scholarship reveals social pressure can compel citizens to conform to social norms like voting in elections. In this study, we investigate heterogeneity in the impact of social pressure to vote. We find that age, a key demographic characteristic, moderates the impact of social pressure. Using evidence from a large-scale randomized field experiment conducted in August 2006, we show that older voters are significantly more responsive to social pressure compared to younger voters. Given the emerging consensus that social pressure can be marshaled effectively to stimulate voting in elections, such investigations yield critical insights of both practical and theoretical significance.
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Can the Stress of Voting Be Reduced? A Test within the Context of the 2012 US Presidential Election
Jayme Neiman et al.
University of Nebraska Working Paper, August 2013
Abstract:
One out of three voters in the 2012 U.S. elections voted at home rather than at traditional polling places yet little is known about the physiological and psychological consequences of distinct voting modalities. One potential difference is the amount of stress involved and, in order to determine the level of stress associated with different voting procedures, we conducted a novel field experiment within the context of the 2012 election. Participants were randomly assigned either to vote at the polls, to vote at home, or (as a control) to go to a convenience store. Stress levels were then measured via survey self-report and also via levels of cortisol, a glucocorticoid known to be relevant to stress. The results indicate a significant elevation in cortisol when voting took place at traditional polling places and therefore have implications for reformers pondering the value of expanding opportunities for at-home voting.
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Presidential Campaigns and the Fundamentals Reconsidered
Peter Enns & Brian Richman
Journal of Politics, July 2013, Pages 803-820
Abstract:
The contrast between the predictability of presidential elections and the variability of early polls has come to be viewed as evidence that campaigns provide crucial information to voters. We argue that unmotivated survey respondents offering minimally acceptable answers (i.e., satisficing) offers an additional explanation for the classic conundrum of why the polls vary when the election outcome is predictable. The analysis relies on data from the National Annenberg Election Survey, a natural experiment that results from California’s election laws, and the 2000 ANES survey mode experiment. The results support the claim that respondents’ motivation to engage the survey question, not the information provided by the campaign, is the most important determinant of whether vote intentions reflect the “correctly” weighted fundamentals. We conclude by discussing the implications of this finding for both survey-based and experimental studies of campaign effects.
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A Natural Experiment in Proposal Power and Electoral Success
Peter John Loewen et al.
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does lawmaker behavior influence electoral outcomes? Observational studies cannot elucidate the effect of legislative proposals on electoral outcomes, since effects are confounded by unobserved differences in legislative and political skill. We take advantage of a unique natural experiment in the Canadian House of Commons that allows us to estimate how proposing legislation affects election outcomes. The right of noncabinet members to propose legislation is assigned by lottery. Comparing outcomes between those who were granted the right to propose and those who were not, we show that incumbents of the governing party enjoy a 2.7 percentage point bonus in vote total in the election following their winning the right to introduce a single piece of legislation, which translates to a 7% increase in the probability of winning. The causal effect results from higher likeability among constituents. These results demonstrate experimentally that what politicians do as lawmakers has a causal effect on electoral outcomes.
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Vote Self-Prediction Hardly Predicts Who Will Vote, And Is (Misleadingly) Unbiased
Todd Rogers & Masa Aida
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Public opinion researchers, campaigns, and political scientists often rely on self-predicted vote to forecast turnout, allocate resources, and measure political engagement. Despite its importance, little research has examined the accuracy of self-predicted vote responses. Seven pre-election surveys with postelection vote validation from three elections (N = 29,403) reveal several patterns. First, many self-predicted voters do not actually vote (flake-out). Second, many self-predicted nonvoters do actually vote (flake-in). This is the first robust observation of flake-in. Third, actual voting is more accurately predicted by past voting (from voter file or recalled) than by self-predicted voting. Finally, self-predicted voters differ from actual voters demographically. Actual voters are more likely to be White (and not Black), older, and partisan than actual nonvoters (i.e., there is participatory bias), but self-predicted voters and self-predicted nonvoters do not differ much. Vote self-prediction is “biased” in that it misleadingly suggests that there is no participatory bias.
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Sounman Hong
Government Information Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Many researchers have assumed that social media will reduce inequalities between elite politicians and those outside the political mainstream and that it will thus benefit democracy, as it circumvents the traditional media that focus too much on a few elite politicians. I test this assumption by investigating the association between U.S. Representatives using Twitter and their fundraising. Evidence suggests that (1) politicians' adoptions of social media have yielded increased donations from outside their constituencies but little from within their own constituencies; (2) politicians with extreme ideologies tend to benefit more from their social media adoptions; and (3) the political use of social media may yield a more unequal distribution of financial resources among candidates. Finally, I discuss the implications of these findings for political equality, polarization, and democracy.
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Song Yang et al.
Party Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Scholars have long been examining the presidential nomination process in the United States. In addition to studies considering the selection mechanism itself, there has been a movement towards analysing the contest even before voting begins. Campaign finance allows for a reliable and valid means to examine the year prior to the nomination with data that are not just vast in quantity but also consistent across time. Donors who gave to multiple campaigns represent a particularly important subset of elite participants in elections whose behaviour shed light on phenomena of parties functioning as a network. We find only rare instances of multiple donors giving across party and that Democratic contributors function as a far more cohesive unit. Also, without any supervising entity, the candidate that amasses the most shared donors goes on to win the nomination in the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections.
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Does Election Day Weather Affect Voter Turnout? Evidence from Swedish Elections
Mikael Persson, Anders Sundell & Richard Öhrvall
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does rainfall during the Election Day reduce voter turnout? Previous research shows that in the US one inch of rain reduces turnout with about one percentage point. We turn to the Swedish context in order to test whether rainfall on Election Day have the same impact in a high turnout context. We move beyond previous research by testing the impact of GIS-interpolated rainfall on three different datasets that allows us to view the issue both from a wide time frame as well as with high precision as for turnout measures: (a) aggregate turnout data for Sweden’s 290 municipalities, (b) individual level data from the Swedish National Election Study and (c) data from a register-based survey on voter turnout. In none of the three datasets do we find robust negative effects of rain.
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Mobilization Effects Using Mail: Social Pressure, Descriptive Norms, and Timing
Gregg Murray & Richard Matland
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use field experiments in Texas and Wisconsin to address voter mobilization and turnout by evaluating nonpartisan get-out-the-vote (GOTV) messages delivered via mail during 2010 gubernatorial campaigns. We manipulate three factors in the messages: social pressure, descriptive- and injunctive-voting norm consistency, and message timing. The results present an initial field-based confirmation that norm-consistent messages increase turnout; demonstrate significant message timing effects, which are mediated by state election rules; and indicate social pressure’s effectiveness varies significantly more than previously found. These diverse findings suggest researchers place a greater emphasis on context when evaluating experiments and the effects of mobilization messages.
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Effectiveness of Politicians' Soft Campaign on Twitter Versus TV: Cognitive and Experiential Routes
Eun-Ju Lee
Journal of Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
An experiment (N = 183) investigated (a) if individuals respond differently to politicians' Twitter messages and their TV interview, and if so, (b) what cognitive and experiential processes account for such differences. Participants viewed either a segment of a TV talk show, wherein a female politician conversed with the hosts about her personal life and political philosophy, or her Twitter page containing identical messages. Exposure to her TV interview (vs. Twitter page) heightened social presence, inducing stronger parasocial interaction (PSI) and more favorable candidate evaluations among those lower in need for cognition (NFC), but the opposite was true for high NFCs. The candidate's TV interview prompted less source-related thoughts, but more counterarguing among those holding unfavorable attitudes, thereby lowering PSI.
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Thad Hall
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Voter registration in the United States changed after the 2000 election with a requirement that states adopt statewide voter registries. However, these registries vary in design in practice, with some states having state managed “top-down” registries and other states having more decentralized “bottom-up” registries. I compare the effect of moving to a top-down registry with the adoption of election day registration – where voters can register to vote the day of the election – on voters saying that they are not registered because of election management problems or not voting because of a voter registration issue. EDR had a pronounced effect on reducing voter registration problems but the adoption of new voter registries had minimal effect on the same problems.
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The Influence of Initiative Signature-Gathering Campaigns on Political Participation
Frederick Boehmke & Michael Alvarez
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Objective: This article studies the effect of initiative signature-gathering campaigns on political participation within a state.
Methods: Using data on signatures gathered for eight initiatives and four different elections, we conduct grouped logit regression to test whether counties that are subject to more intense signature-gathering campaigns, measured by the number of signatures gathered per capita, experience greater levels of turnout and ballot roll-off in the subsequent election.
Results: Our analysis provides evidence that the intensity of signature-gathering campaigns has a moderate effect on both of these measures of political participation.
Conclusion: Initiative campaigns influence turnout not just at the state level, but variation in campaigns leads to differences within states as well.