Voting by Example
Electoral College bias and the 2020 presidential election
Robert Erikson, Karl Sigman & Linan Yao
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Donald Trump’s 2016 win despite failing to carry the popular vote has raised concern that 2020 would also see a mismatch between the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the Electoral College. This paper shows how to forecast the electoral vote in 2020 taking into account the unknown popular vote and the configuration of state voting in 2016. We note that 2016 was a statistical outlier. The potential Electoral College bias was slimmer in the past and not always favoring the Republican candidate. We show that in past presidential elections, difference among states in their presidential voting is solely a function of the states’ most recent presidential voting (plus new shocks); earlier history does not matter. Based on thousands of simulations, our research suggests that the bias in 2020 probably will favor Trump again but to a lesser degree than in 2016. The range of possible outcomes is sufficiently wide, however, to even include some possibility that Joseph Biden could win in the Electoral College while barely losing the popular vote.
How Likely Is It that Courts Will Select the US President? The Probability of Narrow, Reversible Election Results in the Electoral College versus a National Popular Vote
Michael Geruso & Dean Spears
NBER Working Paper, October 2020
Abstract:
Extremely narrow election outcomes — such as could be reversed by rejecting a few thousand ballots — are likely to trigger dispute over the results. Narrow vote tallies may generate recounts and litigation; they may be resolved by courts or elections administrators (e.g., Secretaries of State disqualifying ballots) rather than by voters; and they may reduce the peacefulness, perceived legitimacy, or predictability of the transfer of political power. In this paper we evaluate the probability of such disputable US presidential elections under a hypothetical National Popular Vote versus the current Electoral College system. Starting from probabilistic simulations of likely presidential election outcomes that are similar to the output from election forecasting models, we calculate the likelihood of disputable, narrow outcomes under the Electoral College. The probability that the Electoral College is decided by 20,000 ballots or fewer in a single, pivotal state is greater than 1-in-10. Although it is possible in principle for either system to generate more risk of a disputable election outcome, in practice the Electoral College today is about 40 times as likely as a National Popular Vote to generate scenarios in which a small number of ballots in a pivotal voting unit determines the Presidency. This disputed-election risk is asymmetric across political parties. It is about twice as likely that a Democrat's (rather than Republican's) Electoral College victory in a close election could be overturned by a judicial decision affecting less than 1,000, 5,000, or 10,000 ballots in a single, pivotal state.
Precarious Manhood Predicts Support for Aggressive Policies and Politicians
Sarah DiMuccio & Eric Knowles
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, forthcoming
Abstract:
Precarious manhood (PM) theory posits that males are expected to actively maintain their reputations as “real men.” We propose that men’s concern about failing to meet masculine standards leads them to embrace policies and politicians that signal strength and toughness — or what we term political aggression. Three correlational studies support this claim. In Study 1, men’s fear of failing to meet masculine expectations predicted their support for aggressive policies (e.g., the death penalty), but not policies lacking aggressive features (e.g., affirmative action). Studies 2 and 3 utilized Google searches to assess the relationship between regional levels of PM and real-world electoral behavior. The use of search terms related to masculine anxieties correlated with Donald Trump’s vote share in the 2016 general election (Study 2) and, confirming preregistered predictions, with Republican candidates’ vote shares in 2018 congressional elections (Study 3). We close by discussing potential sources of variation in PM.
Explaining Uncontested Seats in Congress and State Legislatures
Barry Burden & Rochelle Snyder
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
A fundamental requirement of democracy is the existence of contested elections. Our study documents and explains trends in uncontested seats in the U.S. Congress and state legislatures over time. We uncover a striking inconsistency in the health of elections: the frequency of uncontested seats in Congress has declined while the frequency of uncontested seats in state legislatures has actually increased. To explore these divergent trends, we consider factors that are common to both Congress and state legislatures such as the redistricting cycle but also variables that are unique to the state level. Our analysis points to the relative “flippability” of Congress compared to many state legislatures as a factor behind diverging levels of contestation. While many state legislatures have become bastions for dominant parties, congressional districts in those same states are often nonetheless viewed as enticing targets because they contribute to control of the federal government.
Controversy and Costs: Investigating the Consensus on American Voter ID Laws
John Kane & David Wilson
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Voter identification laws (VID) potentially affect who votes and who wins elections, making debates about them highly contentious among national elites and state legislatures. Yet the debate is far more muted among members of the public, with over three quarters of Americans supporting a photo identification requirement to vote, including majorities of both Democrats and Republicans. Research points to several factors that affect opinion on VID; however, these studies have not led to a theoretical framework for understanding the broad consensus of public support. We propose that the public generally views policies requiring ID to vote as commonsensical, uncontroversial, and essentially costless insofar as most people (likely) possess the necessary ID. These perceptions, we argue, undergird the sizable public consensus on VID. If true, then when presented with dissonant information cueing controversy and increasing the costs of compliance with the law, we should expect support to substantially decline. We test these hypotheses using observational and experimental data. We find that citizens are significantly less supportive of an ID requirement upon learning of lower public support, and become dramatically less supportive when obtaining such identification involves some degree of cost. This latter result also holds among Republicans — a group that has long-been exceptionally supportive of VID. We conclude that the strong public consensus on voter ID is, in large part, a result of its costlessness to most citizens combined with limited familiarity with the policy, its controversial nature, and the costs potentially incurred by other citizens to comply with the law.
Keeping the left at bay: Delegate selection system choice in US Democratic presidential nominations
Matthew Walz & Andrew Foote
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
In the modern era of US presidential nominations, every election cycle we witness around 20% change in delegate selection system types. This variance remains unexplained and for the most part unexplored. At the same time, prior formal and empirical models offer contradicting expectations of party leader behavior in their choice of system. This paper looks to bridge this divide. We argue state party leaders use delegate selection systems to select candidates favorable to their own ideological position. When the median partisan is ideologically left relative to the position of state Democratic leaders, the leaders of the Party will open up the delegate selection system to dilute the voices furthest on the left. We employ maximum likelihood estimation as a method to show that left positioning of citizens relative to state Democratic leaders increases the likelihood the state Democratic Party will use a primary system as opposed to a caucus.
Googling Politics: How Offloading Affects Voting and Political Knowledge
Mona Kleinberg & Richard Lau
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Studies suggest that individuals are less likely to process information they can easily look up. Instead of committing information to memory, they rely on the Internet to store information for them — a phenomenon known as “offloading.” We examine the effects of offloading on political knowledge and voting behavior. Using data from a 10‐wave panel experiment designed to study information processing in two distinct information environments, we demonstrate that people whose environment is conducive to offloading learn more during an election campaign than individuals whose information environment is not conducive to offloading, even though they look at less information during the campaign. Individuals in the offloading condition also make better vote choices despite examining less information. These results suggest that offloading reduces cognitive load, thereby freeing up processing space in working memory, which can increase learning of information that is accessed, and improve decision‐making.
A Digital Field Experiment Reveals Large Effects of Friend-to-Friend Texting on Voter Turnout
Aaron Schein et al.
Columbia University Working Paper, September 2020
Abstract:
Two decades of field experiments on get-out-the-vote tactics suggest that impersonal tactics, like mass emails, have only a modest or negligible effect on voter turnout, while more personal tactics, like door-to-door canvassing, are more effective. However, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to upend the vast face-to-face voter mobilization efforts that have figured prominently in recent presidential election campaigns. If campaigns can no longer send canvassers to voters' doors, what tactics can they turn to in order to mobilize their supporters? This paper evaluates a promising alternative to face-to-face get-out-the-vote tactics: mobile app technology that enables millions of people to message their friends to urge them to vote. Prior to the most recent US midterm elections in 2018, the mobile app Outvote randomized an aspect of their system, hoping to unobtrusively assess the causal effect of their users' messages on voter turnout. We develop a statistical methodology to address the challenges of such data, and then analyze the Outvote study. Our analysis reveals evidence of very large and statistically significant treatment effects from friend-to-friend mobilization efforts (CACE = 8.3, CI = (1.2, 15.3)). Further, the statistical methodology can be used to study other friend-to-friend messaging efforts. These results suggest that friend-to-friend texting, which is a personal voter mobilization effort that does not require face-to-face contact, is an effective alternative to conventional voter mobilization tactics.
Is Negative Campaigning a Matter of Taste? Political Attacks, Incivility, and the Moderating Role of Individual Differences
Alessandro Nai & Jürgen Maier
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We test how individual differences moderate the attitudinal effects of attack politics in two online experiments among US respondents, surveyed through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (N = 1,408 and N = 1,081). Study 1 tests the moderating effect of personality traits (Big Five, Dark Triad) on the effectiveness of character vs. policy attacks. Study 2 investigates the difference between civil and uncivil attacks and explores the moderating effect of Big Five, Dark Triad, tolerance to negativity and conflict avoidance. Results suggest that the effects of negativity and incivility are not uniform across all respondents. For instance, evaluations of the sponsor are more negative after exposure to negative messages for respondents high in conflict avoidance; respondents high in psychopathy are more likely to have a more negative opinion of the target after being exposed to character attacks, whereas incivility worsen the perception of the target for individuals low in conflict avoidance and agreeableness. Harsher campaigns, in other terms, work particularly well for some – and are particularly rejected by others. The implications of these trends are discussed.
Decomposing political advertising effects on vote choices
Wilson Law
Public Choice, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper studies the channels through which political television advertising influences individuals' voting decisions. Scholars are interested to learn whether advertising primarily persuades people to change their choices of candidates or mobilizes people to vote. I find that advertising does both: about 60% to 70% of advertising's effect is persuasion, and 30% to 40% of it is mobilization. Advertising's effects are stronger on those who did not plan to vote for a major-party candidate. To decompose the impact into its components, the present paper estimates a multinomial probit model that permits analysis of decisions of turnout and candidate choice jointly in a Markov chain framework. In contrast to most studies that estimate the effects of aggregated exposure to advertising on voters' choices on Election Day, I study how advertising influences peoples' monthly voting intentions leading up to Election Day. In the context of the 2008 presidential election, the magnitude of the advertising effect is not large enough to overcome John McCain's significant deficit, but it potentially could have changed the outcomes of other close elections such as those in 2000 and 2016.
Expanding Constituency Support Through Shared Local Roots in U.S. House Primaries
Charles Hunt
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper addresses the enduring connection of localism and place-based roots shared between many elected leaders and their constituents, which previous work has either ignored or improperly specified. I argue that representatives of the U.S. House with these roots — meaning authentic, lived experience in their districts prior to their officeholding — sustain more supportive constituencies in primary election stage. Using an original 7-point index of local biographical characteristics of incumbents seeking renomination from 2002 to 2018, I find that deeply-rooted incumbents are less than half as likely to receive a primary challenge, and on average perform more than 5 percentage points better in their primary elections when they are challenged. These gains take place even after taking district partisanship, national political conditions, incumbent ideology, and other primary factors into account, and should induce scholars to reconsider the importance of local representation even amidst a nationalizing political culture.
Murder and Presidential Elections: A Cultivation‐Based Issue‐Ownership Theory of Local Television News and Its Geographic Structure
Jeffrey Ladewig
Presidential Studies Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The theory that television, and in particular television violence, cultivates beliefs, attitudes, and actions in viewers, particularly heavy viewers, has long been a mainstay of media studies. Some critiques of the more recent empirical literature, however, argue that the current literature has lost some connection to the original theoretical formulations. This study attempts to answer some of these critiques by reengaging with the original conceptualization of cultivation analyses (i.e., institutional processes, message systems, and cultivation) as well as reaching out to find broader societal and political effects. Specifically, I argue and demonstrate that the rate of murder as funneled through the local television news cultivates voters in specific media markets, increasingly so in markets of resonance, toward a greater probability of voting for Republican presidential candidates.
Does Context Outweigh Individual Characteristics in Driving Voting Behavior? Evidence from Relocations within the U.S.
Enrico Cantoni & Vincent Pons
NBER Working Paper, October 2020
Abstract:
We measure the overall influence of contextual versus individual factors (e.g., voting rules and media as opposed to race and education) on voter behavior, and explore underlying mechanisms. Using a U.S.-wide voter-level panel, 2008–18, we examine voters who relocate across state and county lines, tracking changes in registration, turnout, and party affiliation to estimate location and individual fixed effects in a value-added model. Location explains 37 percent of the cross-state variation in turnout (to 63 percent for individual characteristics) and an only slightly smaller share of variation in party affiliation. Place effects are larger for young and White voters.
Social Media and Political Contributions: The Impact of New Technology on Political Competition
Maria Petrova, Ananya Sen & Pinar Yildirim
Management Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political campaigns are among the most sophisticated marketing exercises in the United States. As part of their marketing communication strategy, an increasing number of politicians adopt social media to inform their constituencies. This study documents the returns from adopting a new technology, namely Twitter, for politicians running for Congress by focusing on the change in campaign contributions received. We compare weekly donations received just before and just after a politician opens a Twitter account in regions with high and low levels of Twitter penetration, controlling for politician-month fixed effects. Specifically, over the course of a political campaign, we estimate that the differential effect of opening a Twitter account in regions with high versus low levels of Twitter penetration amounts to an increase of 0.7%–2% in donations for all politicians and 1%–3.1% for new politicians who were never elected to Congress before. In contrast, the effect of joining Twitter for experienced politicians remains negligibly small. We find some evidence consistent with the explanation that the effect is driven by new information about the candidates; for example, the effect is primarily driven by new donors rather than past donors, by candidates without Facebook accounts, and by tweeting more informatively. Overall, our findings imply that social media can intensify political competition by lowering the costs of disseminating information for new entrants to their constituents and thus may reduce the barriers to enter politics.