Up for a Vote
Motivating voter turnout by invoking the self
Christopher Bryan et al.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, forthcoming
Abstract:
Three randomized experiments found that subtle linguistic cues have the power to increase voting and related behavior. The phrasing of survey items was varied to frame voting either as the enactment of a personal identity (e.g., "being a voter") or as simply a behavior (e.g., "voting"). As predicted, the personal-identity phrasing significantly increased interest in registering to vote (experiment 1) and, in two statewide elections in the United States, voter turnout as assessed by official state records (experiments 2 and 3). These results provide evidence that people are continually managing their self-concepts, seeking to assume or affirm valued personal identities. The results further demonstrate how this process can be channeled to motivate important socially relevant behavior.
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Do Campaigns Drive Partisan Turnout?
Eric McGhee & John Sides
Political Behavior, June 2011, Pages 313-333
Abstract:
Although campaign strategy often, and perhaps increasingly, emphasizes the mobilization of core supporters, we know little about whether campaigns affect the partisan complexion of the electorate. We examine whether the balance of Democratic and Republican voters depends on the balance of campaign activity, the popularity of the incumbent president, and the state of the economy. Drawing on time-series cross-sectional data from state exit polls, we demonstrate that the partisan composition of voters depends on campaign activity more than on the political and economic fundamentals.
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Unhyphenated Americans in the 2010 U.S. House Election
Brian Arbour
The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, July 2011
Abstract:
Sociologists have identified an emerging new ethnic population of "unhyphenated Americans," those whites who claim an "American" ancestry, or none at all. This article measures the voting habits of these individuals in the 2010 elections. Research has shown that Barack Obama's vote share suffered in the 2008 election in regions where these voters are concentrated. This paper extends that analysis to the 2010 midterm elections. I find that in districts where unhyphenated Americans are concentrated, Democratic candidates suffered reduced vote share and chances of victory. These findings show the importance of identity politics among white voters and raise further questions about the role of ethnicity and voting.
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Ideology over strategy: Extending voting rights to felons and ex-felons, 1966-1992
Brett Burkhardt
Social Science Journal, June 2011, Pages 356-363
Abstract:
The disenfranchisement of felons and ex-felons has long served to restrict the practice of democracy in the United States. In the late 20th century, a number of states allowed increasing numbers of felons and ex-felons to vote. Previous work has noted that Democrats are often associated with extensions of voting rights to felons and ex-felons. If this is the case, what accounts for their support for re-enfranchisement? In this paper I conduct a series of event history analyses of voting rights policy changes at the state level. I argue that Democratic support was not based on expected electoral benefits that might derive from changes in the composition of the electorate. Instead, analyses suggest that would-be reformers - often Democratic, but also Republican - were importantly constrained by the ideological climate among a state's population. Thus, policy liberalism appears to have trumped crass partisan strategizing in encouraging restoration of voting rights to felons and ex-felons. Results also confirm claims that local patterns of racial domination were relevant in decisions to re-enfranchise or not.
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Where You Live and Who You Know: Political Environments, Social Pressures, and Partisan Stability
Jeffrey Lyons
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do the social pressures individuals encounter from the political environments they reside in affect the stability of their partisanship? Are some citizens able to insulate themselves from such pressure through the composition of their discussion networks? While partisanship is widely regarded as stable, I consider whether it is influenced by such factors. I use panel data from the 1992-1996 and 2000-2004 American National Election Studies to address this, constructing a measure of partisan context at the county level. I find that those residing in a partisan minority county are more likely to change their party identification and that as the degree of incongruence rises, individuals become increasingly likely to change their identification across panel waves. These findings demonstrate the powerful effect of contextual social forces on an otherwise stable and enduring attachment such as partisanship and suggest that partisan socialization is a process that extends beyond an individual's childhood.
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Yanna Krupnikov
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
Do negative campaign advertisements affect voter turnout? Existing literature on this topic has produced conflicting empirical results. Some scholars show that negativity is demobilizing. Others show that negativity is mobilizing. Still others show that negativity has no effect on turnout. Relying on the psychology of decision making, this research argues and shows that this empirical stalemate is due to the fact that existing work ignores a crucial factor: the timing of exposure to negativity. Two independent empirical tests trace the conditional effect of negativity. The first test relies on data from the 2004 presidential campaign. The second test considers the effect of negativity over a broader period of time by considering elections 1976 to 2000. Taken together, both tests reinforce that negativity can only demobilize when two conditions are met: (1) a person is exposed to negativity after selecting a preferred candidate and (2) the negativity is about this selected candidate.
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Andrea Wagner
The Forum: A Journal of Applied Research in Contemporary Politics, July 2011
Abstract:
Economic voting models predict a direct translation of "objective" economic conditions into voter's preferences. These models posit that declining micro- and macroeconomic circumstances will automatically lead to a vote against the incumbent government. The 2008 financial crisis provides a valuable opportunity to test the applicability of these theories. This paper argues that the framing of the crisis and the competency signals voters received during the 2008 US and the 2009 German campaigns mediate the link between economic perceptions and the vote intention.
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The Role of Perceptions of Media Bias in General and Issue-Specific Political Participation
Shirley Ho et al.
Mass Communication and Society, Summer 2011, Pages 343-374
Abstract:
Despite a large body of literature documenting factors influencing general political participation, research has lagged in understanding what motivates participation regarding specific issues. Our research fills this gap by examining the interplay of perceptions of media bias, trust in government, and political efficacy on individuals' levels of general and issue-specific political participation. Using survey data with indicators related to general political participation, our results demonstrate that perceptions of media bias overall are negatively related to general political participation. Moreover, this relationship is an indirect one, mediated by trust in government and political efficacy. Using survey data with indicators of issue-specific political participation in the context of stem cell research, our results show that - contrary to the relationship found for general political participation - perceptions of media bias are directly and positively associated with issue-specific participation. Implications for political participation and media bias theories are discussed.
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Social Networks as a Shortcut to Correct Voting
John Barry Ryan
American Journal of Political Science, forthcoming
Abstract:
This article reports on a small group experiment studying how the preferences of an individual's social network affect her ability to vote for the candidate who will provide her with the greater benefit on both valence issues and position issues. The research diverges from traditional formal models and experimental studies of social communication by expanding the communication network beyond the dyad. The results suggest that social communication is a useful information shortcut for uninformed independents, but not uninformed partisans. Informed individuals incorporate biased social messages into their candidate evaluations, which results in higher levels of incorrect voting in certain types of networks.
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War and Momentum: The 2008 Presidential Nominations
Helmut Norpoth & David Perkins
PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2011, Pages 536-543
Abstract:
In the 2008 presidential nomination campaigns, both Obama and McCain staked out clear positions on the Iraq war. Exit polls conducted in primary and caucus contests show that the war in Iraq was indeed the key issue of support for the winning contenders. However, it was not agreement with the candidates' positions that drove primary voters into the arms of Obama and McCain; rather, it was concern with the Iraq war. Primary voters treated the war as a valence issue, not as a position issue. Each candidate also won an early contest (the Iowa caucuses for Obama and the New Hampshire primary for McCain) in which concern over the Iraq war was especially strong. Those victories sparked a momentum for both candidates in subsequent contests. As a result, both Obama and McCain owed their respective nominations for president to the combination of war and momentum.
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David Dreyer Lassen & Soren Serritzlew
American Political Science Review, May 2011, Pagees 238-258
Abstract:
Optimal jurisdiction size is a cornerstone of government design. A strong tradition in political thought argues that democracy thrives in smaller jurisdictions, but existing studies of the effects of jurisdiction size, mostly cross-sectional in nature, yield ambiguous results due to sorting effects and problems of endogeneity. We focus on internal political efficacy, a psychological condition that many see as necessary for high-quality participatory democracy. We identify a quasi-experiment, a large-scale municipal reform in Denmark, which allows us to estimate a causal effect of jurisdiction size on internal political efficacy. The reform, affecting some municipalities, but not all, was implemented by the central government, and resulted in exogenous, and substantial, changes in municipal population size. Based on survey data collected before and after the reform, we find, using various difference-in-difference and matching estimators, that jurisdiction size has a causal and sizeable detrimental effect on citizens' internal political efficacy.
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Social information and political participation on the Internet: An experiment
Helen Margetts et al.
European Political Science Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper tests whether the social information provided by the internet affects the decision to participate in politics. In a field experiment, subjects could choose to sign petitions and donate money to support causes. Participants were randomized into treatment groups that received varying information about how many other people had participated and a control group receiving no social information. Results show that social information has a varying effect according to the numbers provided, which is strongest when there are more than a million other participants, supporting claims about critical mass, and tipping points in political participation.
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Losing to nobody? Nevada's "none of these candidates" ballot reform
Adam Brown
Social Science Journal, June 2011, Pages 364-370
Abstract:
Since 1975, Nevada voters have had the option of voting for "none of these candidates" in all statewide elections - a reform that one-third of the American states have since considered copying. It remains unclear, however, what effects this reform has had. By testing several arguments made by proponents and opponents of this reform, I find, first, that voters who actually choose "none of these" are motivated by a mixture of ignorance and protest; second, that most voters who choose "none" would probably have left parts of their ballot blank in the absence of the "none" option; and third, that "none" does not drain votes from third-party candidates, as some have feared.
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All the News You Want to Hear: The Impact of Partisan News Exposure on Political Participation
Susanna Dilliplane
Public Opinion Quarterly, Summer 2011, Pages 287-316
Abstract:
In a news media environment characterized by abundant choice, it is becoming increasingly easy for Americans to choose news sources slanted toward their own political views rather than sources providing more diverse perspectives. This development poses a challenge to ideals of deliberative democracy if people who consume politically likeminded news disproportionately populate the electoral process, while those presumably reaping the benefits of exposure to more diverse views in the news (e.g., more informed, tolerant attitudes) withdraw from politics. Using panel data collected during the 2008 presidential campaign, this study investigates the proposition that exposure to news slanted toward one's own partisan views increases political participation, while exposure to news with the opposite partisan slant depresses participation. The results suggest that, while exposure to partisan news does not alter the strongly habitual decision to turn out, the hypothesized energizing and enervating effects of exposure do appear for other behavior during the campaign; the partisan hue of the news sources citizens choose to consume affects both when voters decide and their levels of participation over time.
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The Seeds of Negativity: Knowledge and Money
Mitchell Lovett & Ron Shachar
Marketing Science, May-June 2011, Pages 430-446
Abstract:
This paper studies the tendency to use negative ads. For this purpose, we focus on an interesting industry (political campaigns) and an intriguing empirical regularity (the tendency to "go negative" is higher in close races). We present a model of electoral competition in which ads inform voters either of the good traits of the candidate or of the bad traits of his opponent. We find that in equilibrium, the proportion of negative ads depends on both voters' knowledge and the candidate's budget. Furthermore, for an interesting subset of the parameter space, negativity increases in both knowledge and budget. Using data on the elections for the U.S. House of Representative in 2000, 2002, and 2004, we examine the model and its implications. Using nonstructural estimation, we find that negativity indeed increases in both voters' knowledge and the candidate's budget. Furthermore, we also find that knowledge and budget mediate the effect of closeness on negativity. Using structural estimation, we reinforce these findings. Specifically, we find that the model's parameters are within the subset of the parameter space discussed above. Thus, the evidence implies that the model is not only helpful in identifying variables that were ignored by previous studies (i.e., knowledge and budget) but also in explaining an intriguing empirical regularity.
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Heather Ondercin, James Garand & Lauren Crapanzano
Electoral Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
We examine how political campaigns influence individuals' levels of correct, incorrect, and don't know responses and the gender gap in political knowledge during the 2000 American presidential campaign. Using data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey (NAES), we demonstrate that as the campaign progresses the electorate provides more correct answers and fewer incorrect answers. Moreover, the political campaign significantly reduces (and possibly eliminates) the direct effect of sex on political knowledge. While the political campaign decreases the number of incorrect answers provided by both men and women, the number of correct answers provided by women increases. Our findings highlight the importance of the political campaign in determining relative levels of political knowledge for men and women.
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Stacy Ulbig & Tamara Waggener
PS: Political Science & Politics, July 2011, Pages 544-551
Abstract:
Each election year, colleges and universities across the nation witness a plethora of on-campus voter registration activities. The results of these drives are most often assessed by tallying the number of voter registration cards collected. Little has been done, however, to more carefully investigate these results. As a first attempt to examine postdrive results more thoroughly, we ask two questions. First, do students who register through an on-campus voter registration drive actually make it to the voting booth? Second, does providing basic information about the voting process increase turnout among students who register through an on-campus voter registration drive? In this study, we investigate the overall turnout rate of students registering to vote in the 2008 presidential election through on-campus registration drives by validating votes through the office of the county voting registrar. We then compare the turnout rate of students who registered through the on-campus drives with the turnout rate of similar young people nationwide. Finally, we investigate whether the provision of information through certain avenues boosts turnout. Our findings show that students who registered through an on-campus voter registration drive turned out to vote at a higher rate than similar young people nationwide. Additionally, we found small but important effects of information provision through different formats.