Swinging the Voters
Is winning the first primaries of primary importance? A regression-discontinuity approach
Jonne Kamphorst et al.
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming
Abstract:
The literature on American politics widely agrees that early victories in U.S. presidential primaries are pivotal for securing the nomination, a belief that underpins the front-loading behavior of states. However, demonstrating this success-breeds-success effect is challenging because unobserved candidate qualities could independently link early victories to later success. To address this, we used a regression-discontinuity design, focusing on variations near the victory threshold. Our analysis shows that conclusions about early states rely heavily on limited observations around the cutoff. If any inference is to be drawn, it is that winning in Iowa or New Hampshire has no lasting impact on subsequent contests, nor does winning on any election day affect outcomes on the next. These findings question the presence of momentum effects for winners in the primaries.
The Price of Representation: Congressional Redistricting and Housing Markets
Calvin Wright
University of Southern California Working Paper, March 2026
Abstract:
This paper provides the first causal evidence that congressional redistricting affects residential property values and housing market activity, establishing political representation as a capitalized amenity in housing markets. Exploiting the 2022 redistricting in Harris County, Texas as a quasi-natural experiment, I compare 1.09 million properties whose congressional district assignment changed to those whose assignment remained stable, using annual data from 2017-2025. Average redistricting effects are modest and imprecise, but meaningful heterogeneity emerges along two dimensions. Properties experiencing a partisan flip in district control suffer a 7.9% decline in market values and a 0.35 percentage point increase in deed transfer probability, consistent with political misalignment imposing disutility on residents. Properties moved to more electorally competitive districts experience a 7.4% increase in market values and higher transaction rates, suggesting that electoral accountability is valued as a local amenity. These effects are persistent across alternative estimators designed to account for pre-existing neighborhood trends, alternative sample definitions, and controls for gentrification dynamics. The findings demonstrate that political geography shapes urban economic geography through non-pecuniary channels, independent of schools, taxes, and local services, and that gerrymandering imposes real economic costs on households by destroying competitive representation and disrupting partisan alignment.
Claims of Victimhood Shield Politicians from Political Scandals
Emily Kubin & Christian von Sikorski
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
Political scandals can shape entire elections and political structures within society. Scholars have long pointed to different strategies politicians use to respond to such scandals, finding strategies like denying may be more effective than apologizing. However, in recent years, politicians are increasingly responding to accusations of scandal by emphasizing how they (or their political in-group) have been victimized. These victimhood strategies may be highly effective by garnering sympathy and reducing blame, but have yet to be studied in political scandal research. Across four studies in the United States (N = 3,013), we show that when politicians respond to scandal accusations by emphasizing their own (or their political in-group’s) victimhood, participants see them as more moral and less responsible for the scandal. Additionally, people are sympathetic to politicians emphasizing victimhood. Victimhood strategies do not reduce (and in fact, often enhance) competency evaluations, potentially making these strategies especially effective and attractive for politicians. While responding by highlighting victimhood is less beneficial than denial, victimhood strategies positively benefit reactions to scandalized politicians with people from across the ideological spectrum and work similarly well for male and female politicians. These findings underscore how responding to a scandal with victimhood can significantly and positively influence the public’s perceptions of a scandalized politician, highlighting the powerful influence of victimhood in political scandal research and political communication more broadly.
Is There a Policy-Identity Representation Trade-off?
Ray Block & Matt Golder
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Are some voters willing to trade off concerns with policy and identity representation when evaluating political candidates? We conceptualize both policy and identity representation in spatial terms. We examine the utility of our conceptual framework by applying it to recent US presidential elections. In line with our theoretical expectations, we find that Black voters, and especially those who identify strongly with their racial group, not only care less about policy representation than White voters but are also more willing to trade off lower levels of policy representation for increased identity representation. Our theoretical framework has important implications for how representation scholars should model the effects of policy and identity on candidate evaluation at election time. Empirically, our analyses contribute to the growing body of evidence showing that the electoral calculus and representation priorities of Black voters in the US are different from those of White voters.
The Illusion of Third-Party Support: Why Third-Party Candidates Struggle to Consolidate Disaffected Voters
Steven Gardiner, Benjamin Warner & Ryan Neville-Shepard
International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Spring 2026
Abstract:
Voters in the United States consistently express to pollsters that they would like a third-party option, yet third-party candidates rarely earn their votes. In this study, we demonstrate why expressed support for a third-party candidate does not match actual support because the inclination to vote for a third-party candidate does not align with a consistent political ideology. We utilize a novel experiment (N = 777) to demonstrate that, though there is a sizable number of people generally supportive of a third-party candidate, once a candidate is placed on the ideological spectrum, many of these voters are unlikely to support them. We then present a study of the 2024 U.S. presidential election (N = 556) in which we find robust desire to support a third-party candidate in general but a complete absence of specific candidate support. Overall, we find that third-party candidates face considerable ideological barriers to actual support at the ballot box despite voters’ professed desire for a third-party candidate.
The Twenty-Second Amendment and a Trump Third Term: An Empirical Analysis of Constitutional Consensus in Academia
Michael Conklin
Texas A&M University Working Paper, March 2026
Abstract:
Recent statements by President Trump suggesting the possibility of a third term have sparked debate regarding the Twenty-Second Amendment’s interpretation. Some scholars point to the text of the Amendment and argue that twice-elected presidents such as Trump are only barred from being elected to a third term, leaving open the possibility of ascending to the presidency through other means. Other scholars argue that such a loophole is against the intent of the drafters and therefore should not be countenanced. This first-of-its-kind Essay provides the results of an empirical analysis regarding scholarly consensus on the issue. The findings reveal that a significant majority of law journal articles on the subject support the narrow pathway to a third term. However, a majority of the articles published since Trump started discussing the potential of a third term are against this interpretation, illustrating the potential role partisan bias may play. This Essay contributes both an empirical foundation and a normative framework for evaluating one of the most consequential -- and understudied -- questions in modern constitutional law.
Detecting Anomalies in Voter Registration Data
Nahid Anwar, Amit Jain & Jaclyn Kettler
Election Law Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this article, we explore both unintentional and intentional anomalies that may arise in real voter registration data from a U.S. state. Through our collaborative efforts with the Idaho Secretary of State office, we identify and characterize various anomalies such as missing values in the required fields, abnormal age entries, unspecified gender types, non-unique driver’s license numbers, and formatting errors. Additionally, we present techniques, including a tailored approximate string matching algorithm, capable of detecting potential intentional anomalies in the real data. Gaining a comprehensive understanding of these anomalies is crucial for ensuring the integrity and accuracy of voter registration data. Therefore, we have developed software, in ongoing partnership with the Idaho Secretary of State office, that successfully identifies many of the anomalies. This software-based approach has proven effective and can be adapted for use in other states.
Artificial Intelligence in Election Campaigns: Perceptions, Penalties, and Implications
Andreas Jungherr, Adrian Rauchfleisch & Alexander Wuttke
Political Communication, forthcoming
Abstract:
As political parties around the world experiment with Artificial Intelligence (AI) in election campaigns, concerns about deception and manipulation are rising. This article examines how the public reacts to different uses of AI in elections and the potential consequences for party evaluations and regulatory preferences. Across three preregistered studies with over 7600 American respondents, we identify three categories of AI use: campaign operations, voter outreach, and deception. While people generally dislike AI in campaigns, they are especially critical of deceptive uses, which they perceive as norm violations. However, parties engaging in AI-enabled deception face no significant drop in favorability, neither with supporters, opponents, nor independents. Instead, deceptive AI use increases public support for stricter AI regulation, including calls for an outright ban on AI development. These findings indicate that public disapproval of deceptive uses of AI does not directly translate into incentives for parties to forgo them, at least in the polarized political environment of the US.
“He Got More Felonies Than I Do!” Formerly Incarcerated Americans on President Trump
Janani Umamaheswar
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, April 2026
Abstract:
President Trump has long espoused “tough-on-crime” rhetoric, and many of his current policy initiatives risk exacerbating challenges faced by the nation’s most vulnerable citizens, including formerly incarcerated people. Against this backdrop, I ask: How do formerly incarcerated Americans perceive President Trump and his actions? Using 44 in-depth interviews with formerly incarcerated people in Florida and Virginia, I find that participants’ mixed evaluations of President Trump are tied to what he and his second presidency symbolize in participants’ own lives and for the nation more broadly. Specifically, I argue that formerly incarcerated Americans see President Trump, more so than previous presidents, as symbolic of what it means to be American. Furthermore, as the first president with felony convictions, President Trump symbolizes many formerly incarcerated Americans’ own quest for redemption and their hopes for what is possible in their own lives. These findings reveal that formerly incarcerated people are neither politically apathetic nor immune to nationalistic ideologies about America.
Bounds and Bugs: The Limits of Symmetry Metrics to Detect Partisan Gerrymandering
Daryl DeFord & Ellen Veomett
Election Law Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
We consider two symmetry metrics commonly used to analyze partisan gerrymandering: the mean-median difference (MM) and partisan bias (PB). Our main results compare, for combinations of seats and votes achievable in districted elections, the number of districts won by each party to the extent of potential deviation from the ideal metric values, taking into account the political geography of the state. These comparisons are motivated by examples where the MM and PB have been used in efforts to detect when a districting plan awards extreme number of districts won by some party. These examples include expert testimony, public-facing apps, recommendations by experts to redistricting commissions, and public policy proposals. To achieve this goal we perform both theoretical and empirical analyses of the MM and PB. In our theoretical analysis, we consider vote-share, seat-share pairs (V,S) for which one can construct election data having vote share V and seat share S, and turnout is equal in each district. We calculate the range of values that MM and PB can achieve on that constructed election data. In the process, we find the range of (V,S) pairs that achieve MM=0, and see that the corresponding range for PB is the same set of (V,S) pairs. We show how the set of such (V,S) pairs allowing for MM=0 (and PB=0) changes when turnout in each district is allowed to vary. By observing the results of this theoretical analysis, we can show that the values taken on by these metrics do not necessarily attain more extreme values in plans with more extreme numbers of districts won. We also analyze specific example elections, showing how these metrics can return unintuitive results. We follow this with an empirical study, where we show that on 18 different US maps these metrics can fail to detect extreme seats outcomes.