Leadership and Elections
Looking Like a Winner: Candidate Appearance and Electoral Success in New Democracies
Chappell Lawson, Gabriel Lenz, Andy Baker & Michael Myers
World Politics, October 2010, Pages 561-593
Abstract:
A flurry of recent studies indicates that candidates who simply look more capable or attractive are more likely to win elections. In this article, the authors investigate whether voters' snap judgments of appearance travel across cultures and whether they influence elections in new democracies. They show unlabeled, black-and-white pictures of Mexican and Brazilian candidates' faces to subjects living in America and India, asking them which candidates would be better elected officials. Despite cultural, ethnic, and racial differences, Americans and Indians agree about which candidates are superficially appealing (correlations ranging from .70 to .87). Moreover, these superficial judgments appear to have a profound influence on Mexican and Brazilian voters, as the American and Indian judgments predict actual election returns with surprising accuracy. These effects, the results also suggest, may depend on the rules of the electoral game, with institutions exacerbating or mitigating the effects of appearance.
-----------------------
Geoffrey Evans & Mark Pickup
Journal of Politics, October 2010, Pages 1236-1251
Abstract:
Many economic voting models assume that individual voters' reactions to incumbents are strongly conditioned by their perceptions of the performance of the macroeconomy. However, the direction of causality between economic perceptions and political preferences is unclear: economic perceptions can be a consequence of incumbent support rather than an influence on it. We develop the latter thesis by examining the dynamic relationship between retrospective economic perceptions and several measures of political preferences-approval, partisanship, and vote-in the 2000-2004 U.S. presidential election cycle using the ANES 2000-2002-2004 panel study to estimate structural equation model extensions of the Anderson and Hsiao estimator for panel data. Our findings confirm that the conventional wisdom misrepresents the relationship between retrospective economic perceptions and incumbent partisanship: economic perceptions are consistently and robustly conditioned by political preferences. Individuals' economic perceptions are influenced by their political preferences rather than vice versa.
-----------------------
Voting For Mom: The Political Consequences of Being a Parent for Male and Female Candidates
Brittany Stalsburg
Politics & Gender, September 2010, Pages 373-404
Abstract:
In this article, I explore the political consequences of being a parent for men and women seeking political office. Although a long-standing body of research has concluded that family obligations constrain the political careers of women but not of men, almost no research examines how family status can affect voter evaluations of political candidates. Using an experiment in which I varied the candidate's gender and parental status, I find that on a number of indicators, voters rate childless female candidates substantially lower than childless male candidates, mother candidates, and father candidates. Childless women also lose the traditional "female advantage" on child-care and children's issues. Additionally, while mothers of young children are not significantly disadvantaged compared to mothers of older children and women with no children, they are disadvantaged in comparison to male candidates with young children. Furthermore, this study finds evidence that male candidates may receive a "fatherhood penalty" compared to men with no children. Thus, there are political consequences of being a parent, but the consequences are dependent on the candidate's gender. These findings have important implications for candidate campaign strategy and how female candidates should think about presenting their family lives to voters.
-----------------------
What's in a Name? Coverage of Senator Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Primary
Joseph Uscinski & Lily Goren
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Throughout the 2008 Democratic primary, Senator Hillary Clinton, her supporters and advocates, feminist groups, and commentators accused the media of sexist coverage. Was Hillary Clinton treated differently in the media because of her gender? The authors attempt to answer this question by examining the forms of address that television newspeople use to refer to the Democratic primary candidates. The authors find that newspeople referred to Clinton more informally than her male competitors. This treatment stemmed from the gender of the broadcaster; males show gender bias in how they reference presidential candidates. The authors conclude with suggestions for addressing gender bias in news coverage.
-----------------------
Jojanneke van der Toorn, Tom Tyler & John Jost
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Legitimacy is a source of power for authorities because it promotes voluntary deference on the part of followers. From a system justification perspective, there is reason to believe that power is also a source of perceived legitimacy. We report five studies demonstrating that in addition to procedural fairness and outcome favorability, outcome dependence is an independent contributor to perceived legitimacy. In two cross-sectional field studies and one panel study, we hypothesized and found that dependence on an authority figure is positively associated with appraisals of legitimacy, measured in terms of trust and confidence in, empowerment of, and deference to authority. These effects were demonstrated in educational, political, and legal settings. Two additional experiments provided direct causal evidence for the hypothesized effect on both perceived legitimacy and voluntary deference (i.e., acquiescence to additional requests). We also found that participants assigned to a high (vs. low) dependence condition judged their outcomes to be more favorable, despite the fact that the outcomes were identical in the two conditions; this effect was mediated by perceived legitimacy. Taken as a whole, these findings suggest that perceived legitimacy is enhanced not only when authorities exercise fair procedures and deliver favorable outcomes, but also when subordinates are dependent on them. Implications for society and the study of legitimacy and social power are discussed.
-----------------------
Colin Provost
Publius, Fall 2010, Pages 597-616
Abstract:
Anecdotes have emerged in the media about why state attorneys general run for higher office, but there have been no empirical examinations of why some attorney generals (AGs) run for higher office and others do not. I seek to answer two questions: first, what shapes political ambition among state AGs? Second, how do styles of policy making affect the likelihood of AGs running for higher office? I examine Rohde's assumption that all politicians have progressive ambition and analyze participation in multistate lawsuits as an influence on ambition. The findings indicate that AGs begin their service with varying levels of political ambition, but also that much of the media speculation is correct: AGs who are active in multistate litigation are also likely to run for higher office.
-----------------------
Kent Tedin, Brandon Rottinghaus & Harrell Rodgers
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Evidence is mounting that presidents find difficulty in leading public opinion. However, focusing on presidential ability to lead mass opinion may underestimate the degree to which presidents are able to rally key groups on political and personal characteristics. In this article, the authors use an experimental design to test the effect of communication mode across issue types and groups. From three of President Bush's speeches on Iraq (the State of the Union, an Oval Office address, and a press conference), the data show that by going public the president can influence political opinions across certain issue types and groups. Among the findings are that the groups most affected by the president's speeches are not always his core constituency but often his putative opponents. However, this opinion change by the noncore groups is often limited to direct presidential addresses and evaluations of the president's personal qualities. The implication is that writing off presidential leadership as totally ineffective may be as yet premature.
-----------------------
Is Obama's win a gain for Blacks?: Changes in implicit racial prejudice following the 2008 election
Michael Bernstein, Steven Young & Heather Claypool
Social Psychology, Summer 2010, Pages 147-151
Abstract:
Many have questioned what Barack Obama's victory in the 2008 presidential election means for prejudice and intergroup relations in the United States. In this study, we examined both explicit and implicit prejudice toward African Americans prior to and immediately following the election of the first African American to the nation's highest office. Results indicated that implicit prejudice (as measured by an IAT) decreased following Obama's victory, though explicit prejudice remained unchanged. The results are discussed in terms of the malleability of implicit attitudes, race relations, and the impact an Obama presidency and other positive exemplars may have on intergroup relations.
-----------------------
Accuracy of United States Regional Personality Stereotypes
Katherine Rogers & Dustin Wood
Journal of Research in Personality, forthcoming
Abstract:
Past research has suggested that impressions of how personality traits vary across geographic regions may be no more accurate than chance (Terracciano et al., 2005). We explored whether Americans can accurately describe how personality traits vary across regions of the United States. In comparing regional stereotypes to average regional self-ratings (Rentfrow et al., 2008), we found participants showed considerable accuracy in judging how openness to experience and neuroticism vary across US regions, and above chance accuracy for agreeableness and extraversion. We also detail how accuracy may arise from the use of certain regional cues such as population density and political voting patterns. The results indicate that people can detect valid regional personality differences in certain situations.
-----------------------
Regina Lawrence & Melody Rose
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article the authors measure a phenomenon they name "exit talk": the undertheorized pressures that second-place contenders for presidential nominations face to exit the race. Content analysis of media exit talk from the 2008 Clinton candidacy compared with that of key comparators from other modern presidential campaigns suggests that Clinton experienced greater levels of exit talk than her historical comparators, though less explicit pressure to exit than was exerted on Ronald Reagan in 1976. The authors also find that a higher percentage of Clinton exit talk was unattributed to its source. They investigate the potential causes for these findings and recommend further study of whether this heightened pressure to exit constitutes an unexamined hurdle for female presidential contenders.
-----------------------
Political Ideology at Face Value
Jakub Samochowiec, Michaela Wänke & Klaus Fiedler
Social Psychological and Personality Science, July 2010, Pages 206-213
Abstract:
Four studies demonstrated that perceivers were able to identify the political attitudes of unknown politicians on a left-right dimension when the targets were merely shown in photographs. In Study 1, party membership provided an objective criterion for political attitudes, whereas actual voting behavior served as a validity criterion in Studies 2, 3a, and 3b. All studies yielded ratings highly chance accuracy. Additional ratings suggest that perceived dominance may partly account for the effect. Moreover, perceivers were more accurate when they rated politicians whose attitudes were opposite to their own position, reflecting a more liberal criterion for out-group than for in-group members. Finally, politicians who were rated accurately had higher chances of being reelected to the following parliamentary session.
-----------------------
Robert Böhm, Friedrich Funke & Nicole Harth
Analyses of Social Issues and Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Previous research has demonstrated the relevance of voters' and candidates' group memberships on voting behavior. We examined the impact of voters' race (Black vs. White) and gender (male vs. female) on voting preferences for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries and caucuses of 2008. Study 1 investigated national exit poll data, representative for voters from various U.S. states. Analyses revealed a same-race and same-gender voting preference. Confirming the threat hypothesis (Blalock, 1967), same-race preference among White voters (but not among Black voters) increased with the proportion of Blacks per state. In Study 2, we assessed voting preferences, racial identification, and perceived realistic threat by Blacks among White voters. High racial identification was associated with a stronger same-race preference. This effect was mediated by perceived realistic threat. We discuss the results with regard to the intergroup threat versus contact hypothesis, and psychological differences between racial majority and minority members.
-----------------------
Race and Turnout: Does Descriptive Representation in State Legislatures Increase Minority Voting?
Rene Rocha, Caroline Tolbert, Daniel Bowen & Christopher Clark
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
The 2008 election marked an end to the longstanding gap in the level of black and white voter turnout, offering further evidence that minority empowerment affects voter turnout. In this article, the authors move beyond a dyadic conceptualization of empowerment and argue that the level of descriptive representation within the legislative body as a whole is crucial to understanding how context affects voter turnout. They find African Americans and Latinos are more likely to vote when residing in states with increased descriptive representation in the state legislature measured by the percentage of black or Latino lawmakers.
-----------------------
Caroline Tolbert, Amanda Keller & Todd Donovan
Political Science Quarterly, Fall 2010, Pages 393-424
Abstract:
Caroline J. Tolbert, Amanda Keller, and Todd Donovan examine public opinion data on proposals to reform the presidential nominating process. They argue that one way to preserve a role for grassroots politics and the sequential process that is critical for candidate quality is to combine rotating state primaries and caucuses in a dozen small-population states with a national primary in which voters from all states would cast ballots.