Vote of no confidence
How to Elect More Women: Gender and Candidate Success in a Field Experiment
Christopher Karpowitz, Quin Monson & Jessica Robinson Preece
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Women are dramatically underrepresented in legislative bodies, and most scholars agree that the greatest limiting factor is the lack of female candidates (supply). However, voters’ subconscious biases (demand) may also play a role, particularly among conservatives. We designed an original field experiment to test whether messages from party leaders can affect women's electoral success. The experimental treatments involved messages from a state Republican Party chair to the leaders of 1,842 precinct-level caucus meetings. We find that party leaders’ efforts to stoke both supply and demand (and especially both together) increase the number of women elected as delegates to the statewide nominating convention. We replicate this finding in a survey experiment with a national sample of validated Republican primary election voters (N = 2,897). Our results suggest that simple interventions from party leaders can affect the behavior of candidates and voters and ultimately lead to a substantial increase in women's descriptive representation.
Celebrity Endorsements and Voter Emotions: Evidence From Two Experiments
Anthony Nownes
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Here, I report the results of two randomized, posttest only, control group, survey experiments in which respondents were exposed to factual information about celebrity support for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election campaign. Based on previous research, I hypothesize that celebrity endorsements will affect the emotions of enthusiasm, anger, and anxiety vis-à-vis Secretary Clinton. My results provide support for the general notion that celebrity endorsements can affect voter emotions. Specifically, I find that celebrity endorsements profoundly decreased the negative emotions of anger and anxiety vis-à-vis Secretary Clinton. My research suggests that a broad range of stimuli may affect voter emotions, which in turn affect political attitudes and behavior.
The Voting Rights of Ex-Felons and Election Outcomes in the United States
Tilman Klumpp, Hugo Mialon & Michael Williams
Emory University Working Paper, March 2017
Abstract:
Approximately one in forty adult U.S. citizens has lost their right to vote, either temporarily or permanently, as a result of a felony conviction. Because laws restricting voting by felons and ex-felons disproportionately affect minorities, and minorities tend to vote for Democratic candidates, it has been hypothesized that felony disenfranchisement hurts Democratic candidates in elections, thus helping Republican candidates. We test this hypothesis using variation in felony disenfranchisement laws across U.S. states and over time. During the 2000s, a number of states restored the voting rights of ex-felons. Using difference-in-differences regressions, we estimate the effect of laws re-enfranchising ex-felons on the vote shares of major party candidates in elections for seats to the U.S. House of Representatives. We argue that the regression estimates provide an upper bound for the true effect of restoring voting rights to ex-felons on the vote shares of major party candidates. Using this upper bound, no House majority would have been reversed in any year between 1998 and 2012, had all states allowed ex-felons to vote.
Citizens United: A Theoretical Evaluation
Carlo Prato & Stephane Wolton
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
The 2010 US Supreme Court’s decision on Citizens United v. Federal Electoral Commission lifted restrictions on the funding by unions and corporations of groups engaging in independent political advertising (outside spending). Many have criticized the majority opinion’s premise that outside spending cannot corrupt or distort the electoral process. Fewer have examined the implications of this decision under the Court’s assumptions. Using a game-theoretic model of electoral competition, we show that informative outside spending by a group whose policy preferences are partially aligned with the electorate may reduce voter welfare. This negative effect is more likely when policy information is highly valuable for the electorate or congruence between the group and voters is high. We further show that the regulatory environment produced by the Court’s decision is always suboptimal: the electorate would be better off if either groups were allowed to coordinate with candidates or if outside spending was banned altogether.
Visual Presentation Style 2: Influences on Perceptions of Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton Based on Visual Presentation Style During the Third 2016 Presidential Debate
Patrick Stewart et al.
American Behavioral Scientist, forthcoming
Abstract:
A field experiment was conducted to analyze the third and final 2016 presidential debate. Randomly assigned participants watched the debate in the format of mainly solo camera shots that alternate between the candidates (i.e., switched feed), or with both candidates framed side-by-side on screen (i.e., split screen feed). Though viewer feelings of positivity toward the candidates did not differ, visual presentation style had a significant effect on trait judgments for Donald Trump overall. Participants watching Trump on the switched camera feed perceived him as significantly more Sophisticated, Honest, Attractive, Sincere, Strong, Active, Intelligent, Trustworthy, and Generous. There was not an effect for Hillary Clinton’s trait ratings overall, though she was perceived as significantly more Strong, Competent, and Intelligent by those watching the switched feed. This suggests that visual presentation style significantly influenced viewer perceptions. Political ideology was a significant predictor of all but one of the traits for each candidate.
The Complicated Partisan Effects of State Election Laws
Barry Burden et al.
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Conventional political wisdom holds that policies that make voting easier will increase turnout and ultimately benefit Democratic candidates. We challenge this assumption, questioning the ability of party strategists to predict which changes to election law will advantage them. Drawing on previous research, we theorize that voting laws affect who votes in diverse ways depending on the specific ways that they reduce the costs of participating. We assemble datasets of county-level vote returns in the 2004, 2008, and 2012 presidential elections and model these outcomes as a function of early voting and registration laws, using both cross-sectional regression and difference-in-difference models. Unlike Election Day registration, and contrary to conventional wisdom, the results show that early voting generally helps Republicans. We conclude with implications for partisan manipulation of election laws.
Ideological Signaling and Incumbency Advantage
Zachary Peskowitz
British Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article develops a novel explanation for the incumbency advantage based on incumbents’ ability to signal positions that are ideologically distinct from those of their parties. Using voter-level data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and controlling for unobserved district heterogeneity, the study finds that voters in US House elections primarily use information about the ideology of candidates’ parties to infer the location of challengers, while they instead rely on information about the individual candidates’ ideologies to place incumbents. In higher-profile Senate elections, the difference between challengers and incumbents is trivial. Decomposing the incumbency advantage into valence and signaling components, the study finds that the signaling mechanism explains 14 percent of the incumbency advantage in House elections, but only 5 percent of the advantage in Senate contests. It also finds that a 50 percent increase in party polarization increases the incumbency advantage by 3 percentage points.
Redistricting by Formula: An Ohio Reform Experiment
Micah Altman & Michael McDonald
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the last decade, Ohio reformers advocated redistricting by formula: selecting the redistricting plan that scores best on a predefined objective scoring function that combines prima facie neutral criteria with political goals of plan fairness and district competition. In the post-2010 redistricting, these reformers hosted a public competition where prizes were awarded to the best legal plan scored on the reformers’ formula. The submitted plans provide a unique opportunity to evaluate how redistricting by formula may work in practice. Our analysis finds the public yields a broader range of redistricting plans, on indicia of legal and public policy interest, than developed by the state legislature. The Pareto frontier reveals plans that perform better than the legislature’s adopted plan on one and two dimensions, as well as the reformers’ overall scoring function. Our evaluation reveals minimal trade-offs among the components of the overall competition’s scoring criteria, but we caution that the scoring formula may be sensitive to implementation choices among its components. Compared with the legislature’s plan, the reform community can get more of the four criteria they value; importantly, without sacrificing the state’s only African American opportunity congressional district.
Party, Policy, and the Ambition to Run for Higher Office
John Aldrich & Danielle Thomsen
Legislative Studies Quarterly, May 2017, Pages 321–343
Abstract:
This article examines why some state legislators run for Congress and others do not. Our main argument is that there are differences in the expected value of a state legislative seat and the expected benefits of being a member of Congress. One key component of this value is how closely the candidate fits with her party. We find that the probability of seeking congressional office increases among state legislators who are distant from the state party and proximate to the congressional party and decreases among those who are distant from the congressional party and proximate to the state party.
Rethinking the Concept of Negativity: An Empirical Approach
Keena Lipsitz & John Geer
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Over the last twenty years, there has been a tremendous amount written on “negativity” in political campaigns. Yet, there is a conceptual disconnect between the definition of negativity used by researchers and how citizens define negativity. In this article, we show how large this disparity is and what its consequences are. Using a nationally representative online survey of 17,400 Americans and nearly 100 scholars of American politics who viewed presidential ads from the 2012 general election, we show that citizen perceptions of negativity are much stronger predictors of political participation than scholar codings of negativity. This means researchers need to give serious thought to how they operationalize negativity in their work. If we have any interest in understanding how voters are affected by campaign information that they perceive as being negative, then we must collect data consistent with the public’s understanding of negativity. Otherwise, we risk the continuation of this conceptual disconnect.
Tweeting Presidential Primary Debates: Debate Processing Through Motivated Twitter Instruction
Freddie Jennings et al.
American Behavioral Scientist, forthcoming
Abstract:
Researchers have noted that an individual’s processing of political media messages occurs through various filters including partisanship, interest, and cynicism. The phenomenon of motivated processing, however, is understudied particularly in the context of televised presidential debates. As major campaign events, presidential debates have been linked to increases in viewers’ political knowledge, political information efficacy, and changes in candidate evaluation. Yet individual’s information processing, largely unexplored in the extant debate literature, may well influence these outcomes. In the present study, we manipulate processing of a political debate and monitor the effects through participant engagement with social media. Researchers asked debate viewers to tweet while watching 2016 Democrat and Republican presidential primary debates following instructions designed to prime either directional motivated processing or accuracy motivated processing. The results demonstrate that the accuracy prompt reduced issue-based tweeting and therefore reduced knowledge acquisition. Conversely, the directional prompt increased issue-based tweeting and therefore increased knowledge acquisition.
How Do Indifferent Voters Decide? The Political Importance of Implicit Attitudes
Timothy Ryan
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
A hallmark finding in the study of public opinion is that many citizens approach the political realm with one-sided attitudes that color their judgments, making attitude change difficult. This finding highlights the importance of citizens with weak prior attitudes, since they might represent a segment of the electorate that is more susceptible to influence. The judgment processes of citizens with weak attitudes, however, are poorly understood. Drawing from dual-process models in psychology, I test the idea that citizens with weak explicit attitudes rely on implicit attitudes as they render political judgments. I find support for this conjecture in experimental and observational data. There are two main contributions. First, I show that an important and understudied segment of the electorate arrives at political decisions via automatic (but nonetheless predictable) mental processes. Second, I characterize the conditions under which implicit political attitudes matter more and less.
Survey Experiments on Candidate Religiosity, Political Attitudes, and Vote Choice
Jeremiah Castle et al.
Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, forthcoming
Abstract:
Because identification with and affect toward social groups is a primary heuristic for citizens, the social group profiles of candidates are important for electoral behavior. We focus on an increasingly important element of candidates’ social characteristics: their levels of religiosity and secularism. We argue that as religious groups and identities become structured less by what religion they are and more by how religious they are (or are not), candidate religiosity and secularism should condition the impact of political orientations such as partisanship and cultural policy attitudes on vote choice. Highly religious candidates should attract more support from Republicans and from cultural conservatives, while overtly secular candidates should appeal more to Democrats and cultural liberals. Using a survey experiment in which respondents evaluate a state legislative candidate with varying levels of religiosity and secularism, we find strong support for our argument.
Social pressure and voting: A field experiment conducted in a high-salience election
Todd Rogers et al.
Electoral Studies, April 2017, Pages 87–100
Abstract:
A large-scale experiment assessed the turnout effects of the “Neighbors” mailer, which exerts social pressure to vote by disclosing the past turnout records of recipients and their neighbors. A prior large-scale experiment conducted in a low salience election found that this mailer increased turnout substantially. The experiment reported here gauges the effects of this mailer in the context of a hotly contested recall election. We find smaller but still sizable effects, especially for low-propensity voters. Turnout increases significantly in the presidential election several months later, and the immediate and downstream effects are similar regardless of whether the mailer is worded in partisan or nonpartisan terms. Using data furnished by the Obama campaign and several nonpartisan organizations, we find little evidence that receiving the Neighbors mailer caused people to become the targets of subsequent mobilizing activity, suggesting that the downstream effects of social pressure cannot be attributed to subsequent campaign contacts.
Social influence and political mobilization: Further evidence from a randomized experiment in the 2012 U.S. presidential election
Jason Jones et al.
PLoS ONE, April 2017
Abstract:
A large-scale experiment during the 2010 U.S. Congressional Election demonstrated a positive effect of an online get-out-the-vote message on real world voting behavior. Here, we report results from a replication of the experiment conducted during the U.S. Presidential Election in 2012. In spite of the fact that get-out-the-vote messages typically yield smaller effects during high-stakes elections due to saturation of mobilization efforts from many sources, a significant increase in voting was again observed. Voting also increased significantly among the close friends of those who received the message to go to the polls, and the total effect on the friends was likely larger than the direct effect, suggesting that understanding social influence effects is potentially even more important than understanding the direct effects of messaging. These results replicate earlier work and they add to growing evidence that online social networks can be instrumental for spreading offline behaviors.
Information and the Beauty Premium in Political Elections
Todd Jones & Joseph Price
Contemporary Economic Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
We use data on 800 candidates from the 2012 U.S. election cycle in U.S. and state congressional races to examine the degree to which beauty affects electoral outcomes. We find that a candidate that is one standard deviation more beautiful receives a 1.1 percentage point higher vote share and is 6.0 percentage points more likely to win the election. This beauty premium is larger in situations where voters are less likely to have more information about the candidate. The beauty premium is much smaller for U.S. congressional races than for state congressional races, and is also much smaller for incumbent candidates. In addition, we find a correlation that the beauty premium is lower when a candidate spends more money on the election.
Playing with Emotions: The Effect of Moral Appeals in Elite Rhetoric
Keena Lipsitz
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study argues that moral appeals in political advertising — and political rhetoric in general — are a form of emotional appeal that political elites use strategically. In particular, the study shows that moral appeals in political ads elicit a strong emotional response from voters and that it is precisely through an adjustment in their use of moral appeals that candidates signal their moderation as they pivot from the primary to the general election. To make these arguments, the study uses a content analysis of 3462 unique political advertisements from the 2008 Presidential, Senate, House, and gubernatorial primary and general elections, as well as individual-level survey data from the 2012 YouGov/Vanderbilt Ad Rating Project.
Varying Metacognition Through Public Opinion Questions: How Language Can Affect Political Engagement
Hillary Shulman & Matthew Sweitzer
Journal of Language and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Guided by feelings-as-information theory, this experiment examined whether the difficulty of language in public opinion questions would influence reports of political interest and political efficacy. Results (N = 235) found that exposure to the easy language condition led to higher reports of political interest and efficacy than in the difficult language condition and that this effect was mediated by processing fluency. These findings proffer implications for the strategic use of language in political engagement and civic education initiatives.
Differential Influence of the Great Recession on Political Participation Among Race and Ethnic Groups
Kimberly Huyser et al.
Social Science Quarterly, forthcoming
Methods: We use the 2012 Collaborative Multi-Racial Political Study and negative binomial regression to examine the impact of financial hardship on black, Hispanic, and white political participation.
Results: We find that political participation among whites is unaffected by the Great Recession and is largely motivated by political interest. Blacks are mobilized by financial hardship even after controlling for political enthusiasm and linked fate. Hispanics have the lowest level of political participation.
Conclusion: Overall, we conclude that the Great Recession did affect political behavior but differently across race and ethnic groups; specifically, Hispanics were least likely to politically engage if they experienced negative consequences of the Great Recession.