From Political Behavior

Does Economic
Inequality Depress Electoral Participation? Testing the Schattschneider
Hypothesis

Frederick Solt

June 2010

Abstract  

Nearly a half-century ago, E.E. Schattschneider wrote that
the high abstention and large differences between the rates of electoral
participation of richer and poorer citizens found in the United States
were caused by high levels of economic inequality. Despite increasing
inequality and stagnant or declining voting rates since then, Schattschneider’s
hypothesis remains largely untested. This article takes advantage of the
variation in inequality across states and over time to remedy this oversight.
Using a multilevel analysis that combines aspects of state context with
individual survey responses in 144 gubernatorial elections, it finds that
citizens of states with greater income inequality are less likely to vote and
that income inequality increases income bias in the electorate, lending
empirical support to Schattschneider’s argument.

Taking Threat Seriously: Prejudice, Principle, and
Attitudes Toward Racial Policies

 Christina Suthammanont , David A.
M. Peterson , Chris T. Owens  and Jan E.
Leighley

 June 2010

 ABSTRACT  

Drawing from group theories of
race-related attitudes and electoral politics, we develop and test how anxiety
influences the relative weight of prejudice as a determinant of individuals’
support for racial policies. We hypothesize that prejudice will more strongly
influence the racial policy preferences of people who are feeling anxious than
it will for people who are not. Using an experimental design we manipulate
subjects’ levels of threat and find significant treatment effects, as hypothesized.
We find that individuals’ racial policy attitudes are partially conditional on
their affective states: individuals who feel anxious report less support for
racial policies than those individuals who do not feel anxious, even when this
threat is stimulated by non-racial content. More broadly, we conclude that
affect is central to a better understanding of individuals’ political attitudes
and behaviors.

From Political Research Quarterly

Gender and the
Perception of Knowledge in Political Discussion

Jeanette Morehouse Mendez  and Tracy Osborn

June 2010

ABSTRACT

Differences in knowledge about politics between men and
women have the potential to affect political discussion. We examine
differences in the perception of political knowledge between men
and women and the effects these differences have on how often men
and women talk about politics. We find both men and women perceive
women to be less knowledgeable about politics and men to be more
knowledgeable, regardless of the actual level of knowledge each
discussion partner holds. This perceptual knowledge gap could have
ramifications for discussion as political participation, since
people turn to those they perceive to be experts to gather political
information.

The Impact of
Descriptive Representation on Women’s Political Engagement: Does Party Matter?

Beth Reingold and Jessica Harrell

June 2010

ABSTRACT

Recent research raises doubts about whether the presence of women
contesting or occupying prominent public office enhances women’s political
engagement. Taking into account both gender and party congruence
between politicians and constituents, the authors find that it is
primarily female candidates of the same party who enhance women’s
interest in politics. The stronger impact of party-congruent (over
party-incongruent) female candidates can be attributed to either
greater visibility or agreement on substantive issues. Party
matters, but rather than obscuring the role of gender in electoral
politics, it enhances our understanding of how, or under what
conditions, it works.

Reducing the Costs of Participation: Are
States Getting a Return on Early Voting?

Joseph D. Giammo and Brian J. Brox

June 2010

ABSTRACT

The authors address the puzzle of why governments have implemented methods
of early voting when those methods appear not to have an effect on
turnout. Using an aggregate analysis, the authors find that early
voting seems to produce a short-lived increase in turnout that
disappears by the second presidential election in which it is
available. They also address whether the additional costs to
government are worth the negligible increase in participation. They
conclude that these reforms merely offer additional convenience for
those already likely to vote.

Balance or
Dominance? Party Competition in Congressional Politics

Suzanne M. Robbins and Helmut Norpoth

June 2010

ABSTRACT

With a pioneering application of probability models in political science,
Stokes and Iversen established “the existence of forces restoring
party competition.” Whatever the margin of victory in a given
election, the partisan vote subsequently tends to return to the
point of equal division. The authors introduce an expanded test of
electoral equilibrium that allows for effects of major realignments
and regional differences, using congressional elections since 1828.
They find that the vote division gravitates to the mean but that the
mean vote, in most periods of American history and in several
regions, departs significantly from the point of equal division and
in some instances is prone to a pronounced drift. Hence, during much
of their lifetime, many Americans do not experience, in
congressional elections, party competition that gives the opposition
much of a chance to win.

The Electoral
Benefits of Distributive Spending

Jeffrey Lazarus and Shauna Reilly

ABSTRACT

Prior studies search for evidence that distributive spending influences
Congress members’ vote shares but find limited evidence. The authors
argue that Democratic and Republican members each benefit from
different types of distributive projects. Democrats benefit from
delivering spending projects (what most people think of as
“pork”) to their constituents, while many Republican
members benefit from delivering contingent liabilities (in which the
federal treasury underwrites a private entity’s financial risk).
Empirical tests using data from U.S. House elections between 1984
and 2002 generally confirm these hypotheses, with one exception:
only Republicans in relatively conservative districts gain from contingent
liabilities. This result is further explored in the text.

Carving Voters Out: Redistricting’s
Influence on Political Information, Turnout, and Voting Behavior

Jonathan Winburn and Michael Wagner

June 2010

ABSTRACT

This article examines how the splitting of counties into multiple congressional
districts affects citizens’ abilities to recall House candidates,
turnout, roll off their congressional vote, and cast straight-ticket
ballots. We demonstrate that while voters living in the “short
end of the split” are less likely to recall their House
candidates, they do behave similarly at the ballot box to voters
drawn into districts containing their natural community of interest.
Our results suggest the Supreme Court’s traditional focus on
population equality across congressional districts might be more
appropriately administered in concert with respect for natural
communities of interest such as counties.

 From Politics & Society

Winner-Take-All
Politics: Public Policy, Political Organization, and the Precipitous Rise of
Top Incomes in the United
States

Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson

June 2010

ABSTRACT

The dramatic rise in inequality in the United States
over the past generation has occasioned considerable attention from
economists, but strikingly little from students of American
politics. This has started to change: in recent years, a small but
growing body of political science research on rising inequality has
challenged standard economic accounts that emphasize apolitical processes
of economic change. For all the sophistication of this new
scholarship, however, it too fails to provide a compelling account
of the political sources and effects of rising inequality. In
particular, these studies share with dominant economic accounts three
weaknesses: (1) they downplay the distinctive feature of American
inequality –namely, the extreme concentration of income gains at the
top of the economic ladder; (2) they miss the profound role of
government policy in creating this “winner-take-all”
pattern; and (3) they give little attention or weight to the
dramatic long-term transformation of the organizational landscape of
American politics that lies behind these changes in policy. These
weaknesses are interrelated, stemming ultimately from a conception
of politics that emphasizes the sway (or lack thereof) of the
“median voter” in electoral politics, rather than the
influence of organized interests in the process of policy making. A
perspective centered on organizational and policy change –one that
identifies the major policy shifts that have bolstered the economic
standing of those at the top and then links those shifts to concrete
organizational efforts by resourceful private interests –fares much
better at explaining why the American political economy has become
distinctively winner-take-all.

From Political Behavior

The Role of Media Distrust in
Partisan Voting

Jonathan McDonald Ladd

May 2010

ABSTRACT  

As an institution, the American news media have become highly unpopular in
recent decades. Yet, we do not thoroughly understand the consequences of this
unpopularity for mass political behavior. While several existing studies find
that media trust moderates media effects, they do not examine the consequences
of this for voting. This paper explores those consequences by analyzing voting
behavior in the 2004 presidential election. It finds, consistent with most
theories of persuasion and with studies of media effects in other contexts,
that media distrust leads voters to discount campaign news and increasingly
rely on their partisan predispositions as cues. This suggests that increasing
aggregate levels of media distrust are an important source of greater partisan
voting.

The Enduring Effects of Social
Pressure: Tracking Campaign Experiments Over a Series of Elections

Tiffany C. Davenport, Alan S. Gerber,
Donald P. Green, Christopher W. Larimer,
Christopher B. Mann and Costas Panagopoulos

May 2010

ABSTRACT  

Recent field experiments have demonstrated the powerful effect of social
pressure messages on voter turnout. This research note considers the question
of whether these interventions’ effects persist over a series of subsequent
elections. Tracking more than one million voters from six experimental studies,
we find strong and statistically significant enduring effects one and sometimes
two years after the initial communication

Considering Mixed Mode Surveys for
Questions in Political Behavior: Using the Internet and Mail to Get Quality
Data at Reasonable Costs

Lonna Rae Atkeson, Alex N. Adams,
Lisa A. Bryant, Luciana Zilberman and Kyle L. Saunders

May 2010

ABSTRACT  

Telephone surveys have been a principle means of learning about the
attitudes and behaviors of citizens and voters. The single mode telephone
survey, however, is increasingly threatened by rising costs, the declining use
of landline telephones, and declining participation rates. One solution to
these problems has been the introduction of mixed-mode surveys. However, such
designs are relatively new and questions about their representativeness and the
intricacies of the methodology remain. We report on the representativeness of a
post election mixed-mode (Internet and mail) survey design of 2006 general
election voters. We compare sample respondent means to sample frame means on
key demographic characteristics and examine how mail and Internet respondents
differed in terms of attitudes, behaviors and demographics. We find that
overall the Internet respondents were representative of the population and that
respondent choice of mode did not influence item response. We conclude that
mixed-mode designs may allow researchers to ask important questions about
political behavior from their desktops.

Timing Is Everything? Primacy and
Recency Effects in Voter Mobilization Campaigns

Costas Panagopoulos

May 2010

ABSTRACT  

The timing of message delivery in political campaigns is a key component of
strategy. Yet studies that examine the impact of message timing on political
behavior are surprisingly rare. Although one recent study finds that appeals
delivered closer to Election Day will be most effective (Nickerson, American
Journal of Political Science 51(2):269-282, 2007), methodological
considerations render this conclusion tentative and suggest the impact of
message timing remains an open question. In this paper I report the results of
a randomized field experiment designed to compare the mobilization effects of
nonpartisan messages delivered via commercial phone banks at different points
during a campaign cycle. The results of the experiment, conducted during the
November 2005 municipal elections in Rochester, New York, suggest calls
delivered early on during a campaign cycle can also be effective.

Explicit Evidence on the Import of
Implicit Attitudes: The IAT and Immigration Policy Judgments

Efrén O. Pérez

May 2010

ABSTRACT

The implicit association test (IAT) is increasingly used to detect automatic
attitudes. Yet a fundamental question remains about this measure: How well can
it predict individual judgments? Though studies find that IAT scores shape
individual evaluations, these inquiries do not account for an array of
well-validated, theoretically relevant variables, thus raising the challenge of
omitted variable bias. For scholars using the IAT, the risk here is one of
misattributing to implicit attitudes what can be better explained by alternate
and rigorous self-reports of explicit constructs. This paper examines the IAT’s
performance in the context of U.S. immigration politics. Using a representative
web survey of adults, I demonstrate the IAT effectively captures implicit
attitude toward Latino immigrants. Critically, I then show these attitudes
substantively mold individual preferences for illegal and legal immigration
policy, net of political ideology, socio-economic concerns, and
well-established measures of intolerance toward immigrants, such as
authoritarianism and ethnocentrism. Combined, these results suggest the IAT
measures attitudes that are non-redundant and potent predictors of individual
political judgments.

From Political Psychology

Basic Personal Values, Core Political Values, and Voting: A
Longitudinal Analysis

Shalom H. Schwartz, Gian Vittorio Caprara and
Michele Vecchione

May 2010

ABSTRACT

We theorize that political values express basic personal values
in the domain of politics. We test a set of hypotheses that specify how the
motivational structure of basic values constrains and gives coherence to core
political values. We also test the hypothesis that core political values
mediate relations of basic personal values to voting demonstrated in previous
research. We measured the basic personal values, core political values, and
vote of Italian adults both before (n = 1699)
and after (n = 1030) the 2006 national election.
Basic values explained substantial variance in each of eight political values
(22% to 53%) and predicted voting significantly. Correlations and an MDS
projection of relations among basic values and political values supported the
hypothesized coherent structuring of core political values by basic values.
Core political values fully mediated relations of basic values to voting,
supporting a basic values–political values–voting causal hierarchy.

Legitimizing the
“War on Terror”: Political Myth in Official-Level Rhetoric

Joanne Esch

May 2010

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that mythical discourse affects
political practice by imbuing language with power, shaping what people consider
to be legitimate, and driving the determination to act. Drawing on Bottici’s
(2007) philosophical understanding of political myth as a process of work
on a common narrative that answers the human need to ground events in significance,
it contributes to the study of legitimization in political discourse by
examining the role of political myth in official-level U.S. war
rhetoric. It explores how two ubiquitous yet largely invisible political myths,
American Exceptionalism and Civilization vs.
Barbarism, which have long defined America’s ideal image of itself and
its place in the world, have become staples in the language of the “War on
Terror.” Through a qualitative analysis of the content of over 50 official
texts containing lexical triggers of the two myths, this paper shows that
senior officials of the Bush Administration have rhetorically accessed these
mythical representations of the world in ways that legitimize and normalize the
practices of the “War on Terror.”

Authoritarianism,
Social Dominance, and Other Roots of Generalized Prejudice

Sam McFarland

May 2010

ABSTRACT

The search for the personological roots of generalized prejudice
(or ethnocentrism) began with the authoritarian personality, but in recent
years, the twin constructs of right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance
orientation have been widely treated as the dual processes that lead to
generalized prejudice. However, studies conducted for this article show that
other constructs, notably empathy and principled moral reasoning, contribute
important additional variance. Whereas authoritarianism and social dominance
positively predict generalized prejudice, empathy and principled moral
reasoning are related negatively to it. For the final study, a structural model
of these relationships was tested. To fully understand individual differences
in the propensity for generalized prejudice, it is necessary to move beyond the
dual processes union of authoritarianism and social dominance.

From American Political Science
Review

Electoral Markets,
Party Strategies, and Proportional Representation

Carles Boix

May 2010

ABSTRACT

Following Kreuzer’s (2010) methodological pleas, I first
reflect, at the conceptual level, on the ways in which historical research and
political science should be related to each other. I then apply some of those
considerations to examine two key “moments” in the theory (and history) of
institutional choice that I first presented in Boix (1999): the underlying
conditions that shaped the interests of different parties toward proportional
representation, and the process through which those interests were translated
into actual legislative decisions.

Activists
and Conflict Extension in American Party Politics

Geoffrey C. Layman, Thomas M. Carsey, John C. Green, Richard Herrera and
Rosalyn Cooperman

May 2010

ABSTRACT

Party activists have played a leading role in
“conflict extension”–the polarization of the parties along multiple issue
dimensions–in contemporary American politics. We argue that open nomination
systems and the ambitious politicians competing within those systems encourage
activists with extreme views on a variety of issue dimensions to become
involved in party politics, thus motivating candidates to take noncentrist
positions on a range of issues. Once that happens, continuing activists with
strong partisan commitments bring their views into line with the new candidate
agendas, thus extending the domain of interparty conflict. Using
cross-sectional and panel surveys of national convention delegates, we find
clear evidence for conflict extension among party activists, evidence
tentatively suggesting a leading role for activists in partisan conflict
extension more generally, and strong support for our argument about change
among continuing activists. Issue conversion among activists has contributed
substantially to conflict extension and party commitment has played a key role
in motivating that conversion.

Estimating the
Electoral Effects of Voter Turnout

Thomas G. Hansford and Brad T. Gomez

May 2010

ABSTRACT

This article examines the electoral consequences of
variation in voter turnout in the United States. Existing scholarship focuses
on the claim that high turnout benefits Democrats, but evidence supporting this
conjecture is variable and controversial. Previous work, however, does not
account for endogeneity between turnout and electoral choice, and thus, causal
claims are questionable. Using election day rainfall as an instrumental
variable for voter turnout, we are able to estimate the effect of variation in turnout
due to across-the-board changes in the utility of voting. We re-examine the
Partisan Effects and Two-Effects Hypotheses, provide an empirical test of an
Anti-Incumbent Hypothesis, and propose a Volatility Hypothesis, which posits
that high turnout produces less predictable electoral outcomes. Using
county-level data from the 1948-2000 presidential elections, we find support
for each hypothesis. Failing to address the endogeneity problem would lead
researchers to incorrectly reject all but the Anti-Incumbent Hypothesis. The
effect of variation in turnout on electoral outcomes appears quite meaningful.
Although election-specific factors other than turnout have the greatest
influence on who wins an election, variation in turnout significantly affects
vote shares at the county, national, and Electoral College levels.

From Electoral Studies

The 2009 Mexican
Midterm Congressional Elections

Joseph L. Klesner

May 2010.

ABSTRACT

In Mexico’s 5 July 2009 midterm congressional elections
the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) made significant gains in the lower
house of the Mexican federal congress and in state and local elections held the
same day. In addition, a high percentage of voters cast deliberately nullified
votes to demonstrate their dissatisfaction with existing choices among the
parties. The elections were a setback for President Felipe Calderon of the
National Action Party.

Resource spending
over time in competitions for electoral support

Alex Coram

May 2010

ABSTRACT

So far we have little by way of a theoretical
understanding of the dynamics of electoral competition. This paper attempts to
fill some of this gap by studying resource expenditure over the electoral
cycle. Among the main results is that, when contributions are independent of support
parties accelerate expenditure during the entire period between elections, even
when voters do not forget. If contributions depend on support, and are
significant, parties front load expenditure and decelerate.

From The British
Journal of Political Science

Divided
We Fall: Opposition Fragmentation and the Electoral Fortunes of Governing
Parties

Ko
Maeda

April
2010

ABSTRACT

This article introduces the concept of opposition
fragmentation into the study of the determinants of election results. Empirical
studies have demonstrated that anti-government economic voting is likely to
take place where the clarity of responsibility (the degree to which voters can
attribute policy responsibility to the government) is high. This argument is
extended by focusing on the effects of the degree of opposition fragmentation
in influencing the extent to which poor economic performance decreases the
government’s vote share. With data from seventeen parliamentary democracies, it
is shown that when there are fewer opposition parties, the relationship between
economic performance and governing parties’ electoral fortune is stronger.
Opposition fragmentation appears to be as strong a factor as the clarity of
responsibility.

From Political Psychology

Political
Conservatism, Need for Cognitive Closure, and Intergroup Hostility

Agnieszka Golec De Zavala, Aleksandra Cislak and
Elzbieta Wesolowska

April 2010

ABSTRACT

Two studies examined the interaction of political conservatism
and the need for cognitive closure in predicting aggressiveness in intergroup
conflict and hostility toward outgroups. In the first study, Polish
participants indicated their preference for coercive conflict strategies in the
context of a real-life intergroup conflict. Only among participants who
identify themselves as conservative, need for cognitive closure was positively
and significantly related to preference for aggressive actions against the
outgroup. In the second study, the predicted interaction was investigated in
the context of the terrorist threat in Poland. The findings indicated that high
in need for closure conservatives showed greater hostility against Arabs and
Muslims only when they believed that Poland was under threat of terrorist
attacks inspired by Islamist fundamentalism.

Ethnic
Minority-Majority Asymmetry in National Attitudes around the World: A
Multilevel Analysis

Christian Staerklé, Jim Sidanius, Eva
G. T. Green and Ludwin E. Molina

April 2010

ABSTRACT

Using data from the International Social Survey Programme,
this research investigated asymmetric attitudes of ethnic minorities and
majorities towards their country and explored the impact of human development,
ethnic diversity, and social inequality as country-level moderators of national
attitudes. In line with the general hypothesis of ethnic asymmetry, we found
that ethnic, linguistic, and religious majorities were more identified with the
nation and more strongly endorsed nationalist ideology than minorities (H1, 33
countries). Multilevel analyses revealed that this pattern of asymmetry was
moderated by country-level characteristics: the difference between minorities
and majorities was greatest in ethnically diverse countries and in egalitarian,
low inequality contexts. We also observed a larger positive correlation between
ethnic subgroup identification and both national identification and nationalism
for majorities than for minorities (H2, 20 countries). A stronger overall
relationship between ethnic and national identification was observed in
countries with a low level of human development. The greatest minority-majority
differences in the relationship between ethnic identification and national
attitudes were found in egalitarian countries with a strong welfare state
tradition.

From Public Opinion Quarterly

Residential
Mobility, Family Structure, and The Cell-Only Population

Stephen Ansolabehere and Brian F. Schaffner

April 2010  

The cell-phone-only (CPO) population has grown rapidly over the
past several years, causing concern for researchers who rely mostly
on random digit dialing (RDD) of landlines to conduct their
research. While early research on CPOs has focused largely on age
differences, CPOs may differ from those with landlines in many other
ways even after controlling for age. In this article, we use the
Cooperative Congressional Election Study–an Internet survey based on
matched random sampling–and the American National Election Study–an
in-person survey based on stratified residential sampling–to examine
the potential effects of the cell-only population for survey
research. These surveys are ideal for studying the causes and
consequences of cell-only lifestyles for survey research because
they reach cell-only and landline respondents through a single
sampling frame. We reach two main conclusions: (1) CPO households
are not simply a function of age, but of other factors as well,
especially residential mobility and family structure; and (2) there
are notable differentials in vote preferences and turnout between
CPOs and others.

Race And Turnout
In U.S. Elections Exposing Hidden Effects

Benjamin J. Deufel and Orit Kedar

April 2010

We demonstrate that the use of self-reported turnout data
often results in misleading inferences about racial differences in
turnout. We theorize about the mechanism driving report of turnout and,
utilizing ANES turnout data in presidential elections from 1976 to
1988 (all years for which comparable validated data are available),
we empirically model report of turnout as well as the relationship
between reported and actual turnout. We apply the model to the two
subsequent presidential elections in which validated data are not
available, 1992 and 1996. Our findings suggest that African
Americans turned out almost 20 percentage points less than did
Whites in the 1992 and 1996 U.S. presidential elections–almost
double the gap that the self-reported data indicates. In contrast
with previous research, we show that racial differences in factors
predicting turnout make African Americans less likely to vote
compared to Whites and thus increase their probability of
overreporting. At the same time, when controlling for this effect,
other things equal, African Americans overreport electoral
participation more than Whites.

From The
Forum

The Scenic Road
to Nowhere: Reflections on the History of National Health Insurance in the
United States

Edward D. Berkowitz

April, 2010

Abstract

This historical essay looks at the changing meaning of
health insurance over time and explains how broad economic and political forces
have created that meaning at any one time but that these forces interact with
the contingencies of the moment to produce a particular outcome. That outcome
in turn influences the subsequent development of health insurance.

Harry Reid and Health Care Reform in the
Senate: Transactional Leadership in a Transformational Moment?

Vincent G. Moscardelli

April 2010

Abstract

On December 24, 2009, the United States Senate passed H.R.
3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, by a vote of 60-39. Final
passage was the culmination of over a month of behind-the-scenes negotiations
and strategy sessions coordinated by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV).
In this paper, I trace and evaluate Harry Reid’s coalition-building efforts
on health care reform in the months leading up to the Christmas Eve vote using
concepts drawn from the political science literature on legislative leadership.
I conclude that Reid adopted precisely the transactional,
“keep-the-chains-moving” leadership posture that matched both the
institution he leads and his limited personal investment in the issue of health
care prior to 2009. Efforts to paint Reid’s performance on this issue as a
failure of leadership ignore the extent to which contextual factors in the
Senate were stacked against reform.

Simulating Representation: Elite
Mobilization and Political Power in Health Care Reform

Robert Y. Shapiro and Lawrence Jacobs

April 2010

Abstract

The debate and the outcome in the Obama Administration’s drive to enact
national health care reform illustrate the conditional nature of democratic
governance in the United States, a blend of partisan policy maximization and
elite mobilization strategies that exploit core public policy preferences. The
public’s core policy preferences have, for some time, favored expanding access
to health insurance, regulating private insurers to ensure reliable coverage,
and increasing certain taxes to pay for these programs. Yet the intensely
divisive debate over reform generated several notable gaps between proposed
policies and public opinion for two reasons.

First, Democratic policymakers and their supporters pushed for certain
specific means for pursuing these broad policy goals—namely, mandates on
individuals to obtain health insurance coverage and the imposition of an excise
tax on high-end health insurance plans—that the public opposed. Second, core
public support for reform flipped into majority opposition in reaction to
carefully crafted messages aimed at frightening Americans and especially by
partisan polarization that cued Republican voters into opposition while they
unnerved independents. The result suggests a critical change in American
democracy, originating in transformations at the elite level and involving,
specifically, increased incentives to attempt to move the public in the
direction of policy goals favored by elites policies and to rally their
partisan base, rather than to respond to public wishes.

Why the “Death Panel” Myth
Wouldn’t Die: Misinformation in the Health Care Reform Debate

Brendan Nyhan

April 2010

Abstract

Both Bill Clinton and Barack Obama struggled to overcome
widespread and persistent myths about their proposals to reform the American
health care system. Their difficulties highlight the influence of factual
misinformation in national politics and the extent to which it correlates with
citizens’ political views. In this essay, I explain how greater elite
polarization and the growth in media choice have reinforced the partisan divide
in factual beliefs. To illustrate these points, I analyze debates over health
care reform in 1993—1994 and 2009—2010, tracing the spread of false claims
about reform proposals from Bill Clinton and Barack Obama and analyzing the
prevalence of misinformation in public opinion. Since false beliefs are
extremely difficult to correct, I conclude by arguing that increasing the
reputational costs for dishonest elites might be a more effective approach to
improving democratic discourse.

Loss Aversion and the Framing of the Health
Care Reform Debate

David L. Eckles and Brian F. Schaffner

April 2010

Abstract

The high-stakes debate over health care reform captured the
public’s attention for nearly a year. Options ranging from fully nationalized
insurance to maintaining the status quo were considered, though little
consensus as to the appropriate solution emerged. Most surveys indicated an
agreement that a problem existed with the current health care system and a
clear and consistent majority favored taking some action on health care reform.
However, clear public support for any specific reform proposal was difficult to
muster since most individuals also indicated satisfaction with their own health
care. This paper explores this disconnect in public opinion within the context
of loss aversion. We note that even as elites actively attempted to frame the
issue to counteract the public’s loss averse tendencies, these strategies met
with little success in generating support for Obama’s reform plan. However, we
also argue that these loss averse tendencies will now work against any
Republican efforts to repeal the health reform legislation.

Public Opinion on Health Care Reform

Andrew Gelman, Daniel Lee and Yair Ghitza

April, 2010

Abstract

We use multilevel modeling to estimate support for health-care reform by
age, income, and state. Opposition to reform is concentrated among
higher-income voters and those over 65. Attitudes do not vary much by state.
Unfortunately, our poll data only go to 2004, but we suspect that much can be
learned from the relative positions of different demographic groups
and different states, despite swings in national opinion. We speculate on the
political implications of these findings.

Review of Presidential Party Building:
Dwight D. Eisenhower to George W. Bush

Jesse H. Rhodes

April, 2010

Abstract

This article reviews Daniel Galvin’s Presidential Party Building
(Princeton University Press, 2010).

From Perspectives on Politics

After War: The Political Economy of Exporting Democracy, by Christopher J. Coyne

Graciana del Castillo

April 2010

ABSTRACT

This is a highly readable book that provides
strong and rigorous arguments to prove a thesis that is intuitive to many but
still denied by some–that the United States foreign policy of using military
intervention, occupation, and reconstruction to establish liberal democracies
across the world is more likely to fail than to succeed.

From the American
Journal of Political Science

Partisan Polarization
and Congressional Accountability in House Elections

David R. Jones

April 2010

ABSTRACT

Early research led scholars to believe that
institutional accountability in Congress is lacking because public evaluations
of its collective performance do not affect the reelection of its members.
However, a changed partisan environment along with new empirical evidence
raises unanswered questions about the effect of congressional performance on
incumbents’ electoral outcomes over time. Analysis of House reelection races
across the last several decades produces important findings: (1) low
congressional approval ratings generally reduce the electoral margins of
majority party incumbents and increase margins for minority party incumbents;
(2) partisan polarization in the House increases the magnitude of this partisan
differential, mainly through increased electoral accountability among majority
party incumbents; (3) these electoral effects of congressional performance
ratings hold largely irrespective of a member’s individual party loyalty or
seat safety. These findings carry significant implications for partisan
theories of legislative organization and help explain salient features of
recent Congresses.

Party Strength, the
Personal Vote, and Government Spending

David M. Primo James
M. Snyder, Jr.

April 2010

ABSTRACT

“Strong” political parties within
legislatures are one possible solution to the problem of inefficient
universalism, a norm under which all legislators seek large projects for their
districts that are paid for out of a common pool. We demonstrate that even if
parties have no role in the legislature, their role in elections can be
sufficient to reduce spending. If parties in the electorate are strong, then
legislators will demand less distributive spending because of a decreased
incentive to secure a “personal vote” via local projects. We estimate
that spending in states with strong party organizations is at least 4% smaller
than in states where parties are weak. We also find evidence that strong party
states receive less federal aid than states with weak organizations, and we
theorize that this is because members of Congress from strong party states feel
less compelled to secure aid than members from weak party states.

Candidate Valence and
Ideological Positions in U.S. House Elections

Walter J. Stone 
and Elizabeth N. Simas

April 2010

ABSTRACT

We examine the relationship between the valence
qualities of candidates and the ideological positions they take in U.S. House
elections based on a study of the 2006 midterm elections. Our design enables us
to distinguish between campaign and character dimensions of candidate valence
and to place candidates and districts on the same ideological scale. Incumbents
with a personal-character advantage are closer ideologically to their district
preferences, while disadvantaged challengers take more extreme policy
positions. Contrary to conventional wisdom, challengers can reap electoral
rewards by taking more extreme positions relative to their districts. We
explore a possible mechanism for this extremism effect by demonstrating that
challengers closer to the extreme received greater financial contributions,
which enhanced their chances of victory. Our results bear on theories of
representation that include policy and valence, although the interactions
between these two dimensions may be complex and counterintuitive.

The World Wide Web
and the U.S. Political News Market

Norman H. Nie, 
Darwin W. Miller III, Saar Golde, Daniel
M. Butler and  Kenneth Winneg

April 2010

ABSTRACT

We propose a framework for understanding how the
Internet has affected the U.S. political news market. The framework is driven
by the lower cost of production for online news and consumers’ tendency to seek
out media that conform to their own beliefs. The framework predicts that
consumers of Internet news sources should hold more extreme political views and
be interested in more diverse political issues than those who solely consume
mainstream television news. We test these predictions using two large datasets
with questions about news exposure and political views. Generally speaking, we
find that consumers of generally left-of-center (right-of-center) cable news
sources who combine their cable news viewing with online sources are more
liberal (conservative) than those who do not. We also find that those who use
online news content are more likely than those who consume only television news
content to be interested in niche political issues.

From The Journal of Politics

The Blind
Leading the Blind: Who Gets Polling Information and Does it Improve Decisions?

Cheryl Boudreau and Matthew D. McCubbins

April 2010

Abstract

We analyze whether and when polls help
citizens to improve their decisions. Specifically, we use experiments to
investigate (1) whether and when citizens are willing to obtain polls and (2)
whether and when polls help citizens to make better choices than they would
have made on their own. We find that citizens are more likely to obtain polls
when the decisions they must make are difficult and when they are
unsophisticated. Ironically, when the decisions are difficult, the pollees are
also uninformed and, therefore, do not provide useful information. We also find
that when polls indicate the welfare-improving choice, citizens are able to
improve their decisions. However, when polls indicate a choice that will make
citizens worse off, citizens make worse decisions than they would have made on
their own. These results hold regardless of whether the majority in favor of
one option over the other is small or large.

Policy by
Contract: electoral cycles, parties and social pacts, 1974-2000

John S. Ahlquist

April 2010

ABSTRACT

Formal policy agreements between governments
and major peak associations–social pacts–are a useful way to explore issues of
election-induced variation in economic policymaking. I argue that pacts are
part of an electoral strategy for political parties. They are one way a party
can convince voters that economic outcomes under its rule will be better than
those under a challenger. I show that pacts can emerge as part of equilibrium
behavior in a repeated game but only if the policymaker is sufficiently willing
to work with unions. There is no reason for a pact to exist in the absence of
electoral incentives. I hypothesize that pacts are more likely to be struck
nearer to elections and with greater Left participation in government. Using an
original dataset on social pacts in the OECD, 1974-2000, I find evidence that the
onset of pacts is related to elections, partisanship, and EMU convergence
pressures.

From Electoral Studies

Transformation and
Polarization: The 2008 Presidential Election and the New American Electorate

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Alan I. Abramowitz

April 2010

Abstract

Along with the unpopularity of President Bush and the dire condition of the
U.S. economy, changes in the composition of the American electorate played a
major role in Barack Obama’s decisive victory in the 2008 presidential
election. The doubling of the nonwhite share of the electorate between 1992 and
2008 was critical to Obama’s election as African-American and other nonwhite
voters provided him with a large enough margin to overcome a substantial
deficit among white voters. In addition, voters under the age of 30 preferred
Obama by a better than 2-1 margin, accounting for more than 80 percent of his popular
vote margin. Despite the overall Democratic trend, the results revealed an
increasingly polarized electorate. Over the past three decades the coalitions
supporting the two major parties have become much more distinctive
geographically, racially, and ideologically. The growth of the nonwhite
electorate along with the increasing liberalism and Democratic identification
of younger voters suggest that a successful Obama presidency could put the
Democratic Party in a position to dominate American politics for many years.
However, these trends appear to be provoking an intense reaction from some
opponents of the President. The frustration and anger displayed at “tea party”
demonstrations and town hall meetings may reflect not just discomfort with
Barack Obama’s race but the perceived threat that Obama and his supporters
represent to the social status and power of those on the opposing side.

The Dynamic
Political Economy of Support for Barack Obama During the 2008 Presidential
Election Campaign

Thomas J. Scotto, Harold D. Clarke, Allan Kornberg, Jason Reifler, David
Sanders, Marianne C. Stewart, Paul Whiteley

April 2010

Abstract

In recent years, students of voting behavior have become increasingly
interested in valence politics models of electoral choice. These models share
the core assumption that key issues in electoral politics typically are ones
upon which there is a widespread public consensus on the goals of public
policy. The present paper uses latent curve modeling procedures and data from a
six-wave national panel survey of the American electorate to investigate the
dynamic effects of voters’ concerns with the worsening economy–a valence issue par excellence–in the skein of causal
forces at work in the 2008 presidential election campaign. As the campaign
developed, the economy became the dominant issue. Although the massively
negative public reaction to increasingly perilous economic conditions was not
the only factor at work in 2008, dynamic multivariate analyses show that
mounting worries about the economy played an important role in fueling Barack
Obama’s successful run for the presidency.

From Social Science Research

Political
Partisanship, Race, and Union Strength from 1970 to 2000: A Pooled Time-Series
Analysis

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David Jacobs^a and Marc Dixon

April 2010

Abstract

This paper reports findings that assess the relationship between the
resurgence in conservative political strength and union density in the United
States. The conservative Republican return to political power after 1968 is
likely to have produced added declines in union membership. Yet despite close
political regulation of labor-management disputes, sociologists have paid
little attention to the influential political determinants of success in these
contests. Using fixed-effects estimation, this analysis assesses the
relationship between the political strength of the political party most hostile
to labor and union density. With multiple factors held constant, the results
suggest that increased Republican presence in the state legislatures along with
Republican control of the presidency and the governor’s office after 1989
helped to reduce union memberships. The results also indicate that increases in
the percentage of African Americans produces greater union strength but not in
the ex-Confederate states. Added findings suggest two policies controlled by
the states have influential effects on this outcome.

From PS: Political Science & Politics

What Might Bring
Regular Order Back to the House?

Matthew Green and Daniel Burns

April 2010

ABSTRACT

It is not hard to find critics of how the U.S. Congress
operates today. Two of the most prominent, Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein,
have bemoaned in particular Congress’s failure to follow “regular order,” which
in their 2006 book The
Broken Branch they describe as a legislative process that
incorporates “discussion, debate, negotiation, and compromise” (Mann and
Ornstein 2006, 170).

Demographic Change and
the Future of Congress

Kathryn Pearson

April 2010

ABSTRACT

The United States population is changing in significant ways:
it is growing larger, older, and more racially and ethnically diverse, and
these changes are regionally concentrated. How will these changes affect the
future of Congress? In this article, I show that demographic change has
significant implications for the quality of representation, the legislative
agenda, party coalitions, and the diversity of congressional membership in the
future, even as change inside Congress will proceed more slowly than change
outside it.

Did Bush Voters
Cause Obama’s Victory?

Arthur Lupia

April 2010

ABSTRACT

In the 2008 election, Barack Obama’s campaign brought many new
voters to the polls. Were these new voters necessary for Obama’s victory? In
this study, I find that they were not. The basis of this finding is an
examination of decisions made by people who voted for George W. Bush in 2004. I
show that Bush voters’ decisions not to vote or to support Obama were a
sufficient condition for Obama’s victory.

When Ballot Issues
Matter: Social Issue Ballot Measures and Their Impact on Turnout

Daniel R. Biggers

April 2010

ABSTRACT

Evidence for whether direct democracy positively affects turnout is mixed,
which can be attributed to a theoretical ambiguity about the proper way to
measure the institution. The most common measure, a count of the number of
initiatives on the ballot, is incomplete, because it unrealistically assumes
that all propositions have an equal impact on turnout and focuses exclusively
on initiatives. These deficiencies are addressed by looking at the issue
content of all ballot measures. I find that the number of social issues on the
ballot, because they are highly salient, tap into existing social cleavages,
help to overcome barriers to voting, and fit within a framework of expressive
choice, had a positive impact on turnout for all midterm and some presidential
elections since 1992. In contrast to previous findings, however, the total
number of propositions on the ballot was rarely associated with an increase in
turnout. I discuss the implications of these findings in the conclusion.

From Political Research Quarterly

The Paradox of
Redistricting: How Partisan Mapmakers Foster Competition but Disrupt
Representation

Antoine Yoshinaka,
Ph.D. and Chad Murphy

April 2010

ABSTRACT

The authors examine constituency changes induced by
redistricting and ask three questions: What explains the amount of
instability and uncertainty induced by redistricting? Does
uncertainty affect legislators’ career choices? How do these changes
affect election outcomes? The authors show that partisan
redistricting plans are able to produce significant instability
between elections, especially for opposing-party incumbents. Their
findings have important implications for representation: through
redistricting, strategic actors can disrupt the stability that many
theorists would consider paramount for the operation of a democratic
republic. The authors show that the effects of redistricting go
beyond the simple examination of changes in each district’s
underlying partisanship.

From Quarterly Journal of Political Science

Political Information
Acquisition for Social Exchange

Gani Aldashev

April 2010

ABSTRACT

Why do citizens get politically informed in a democracy? On one hand, being
informed allows a citizen to participate in political discussions within her
social network. On the other hand, having an informed opinion can help her to
extend her social network. This paper builds a simple model on these insights
and finds that effort in political information acquisition has inverted-U shape
in the size of social network. The data from the 2000 American National
Election Study and the 2002-2006 European Social Surveys confirm this theory:
political information acquisition, political knowledge, and interest in
politics increase with the size of social network, at a decreasing rate. The
effect of social network is much weaker for the political efficacy measures for
the United States, but not for Europe.

From Political
Behavior

How Sophistication
Affected The 2000 Presidential Vote: Traditional Sophistication Measures Versus
Conceptualization

Herbert F. Weisberg and
Steven P. Nawara

April 2010

ABSTRACT  

The 2000 Presidential vote is modeled using voter
sophistication as a source of heterogeneity. Three measures of sophistication
are employed: education, knowledge, and the levels of conceptualization.
Interacting them with vote predictors shows little meaningful variation.
However, removing the assumption of ordinality from the levels of
conceptualization uncovers considerable heterogeneity in the importance of the
vote predictors in explaining the vote. Thus, different sophistication measures
should not be treated as equivalent, nor combined as if they are equivalent.
Few of the issue and candidate components are relevant to those with a less
sophisticated understanding of politics. The opposite partisan attachments of
the two most sophisticated groups suggest that sophistication’s impact on the
vote can be confounded by partisanship.