Ideology and interests in congressional voting: The politics of abortion in the U.S. Senate

Many studies suggest that personal ideology accounts for much more of congressional voting behavior than does attention to the desires of the electorate. There are two main explanations given for this seemingly robust conclusion: 1) poor measures of constituency preferences compared to those for ideology or behavior, and 2) representatives “shirk” on an inattentive electorate. We argue that existing studies have been biased against the “interest” explanation by ignoring the structure of American Congressional elections, in particular the party primary process. Correcting for the party primary effect, we show, within the context of abortion politics, that constituency interests possess greater explanatory power than previous models would suggest.     

Political Marketing Research in the 2000 U.S. Election

Abstract

It is not news that polls and other forms of marketing research are regularly employed to craft political strategy. What is new is that the 2000 U.S. election represented a turning point where political marketing research seems to take center stage. The print and broadcast media employed polls and other forms of research at levels far beyond anything ever seen before. At times, it appeared as if almost as much attention was being given to polls as was being given to the political candidates and the issues. This was clearly a new and important posturing of the role of political marketing research. With this as a backdrop, the current article compares polls and other forms of political research-focusing on what went wrong and what was right in terms of the use of polls, focus groups and Internet research during the 2000 U.S. election. The article ends with the presentation of some exploratory research that examines insights about respondents' opinions regarding the impact of political polls.     

Ideology and Vote Choice in U.S. Mayoral Elections: Evidence from Facebook Surveys

City elections in the U.S. are widely thought to be low-information contests decided by non-ideological factors. This consensus casts doubt on the possibility of electoral accountability in cities, and renders recent evidence of municipal responsiveness puzzling. However, our knowledge of how voters actually behave in local elections is severely limited by a lack of individual-level survey data collected from local contests. Using three such original surveys, I re-examine the role of ideology in mayoral elections, recruiting samples of local voters via geotargeted Facebook advertisements. In two large cities, I find ideology is a powerful and independent predictor of vote choice. Using a panel design, I find voters learn the relative ideological positions of candidates over the course of a campaign, and that learning causally impacts vote choice. The effect of ideology also replicates in a conjoint experiment fielded to a sample of small-city voters in another region. Electoral accountability is thus a plausible explanation for ideological responsiveness in U.S. cities, and the methodological tools introduced here can now be applied to a variety of questions about local voter behavior.     

Estimating the Effect of Rent-Seeking on income distribution: an analysis of U.S. States and Counties

Public Choice - Prior empirical research on rent seeking has focused on estimating its effects on overall macroeconomic performance, with few studies attentive to income distribution. This paper...     

Polarization,Ideology, and Vote Choice in U.S. Congressional Elections

Despite the debate about mass polarization, most scholars agree that parties in Congress have become increasingly polarized over time. Scholars have sought to connect party polarization to the beliefs and perceptions of individual citizens, but little work exists on the relationship between polarization and the vote choices made by ordinary citizens. In this article, I examine the link between party polarization at the elite level, the use of ideology by citizens, and their vote choices in Congressional elections. I argue that the increased polarization that has occurred over time has led people to place more weight on ideology when casting their votes in U.S. House elections. My hypothesis stems from work on group conflict theory, which suggests that when people sense a high degree of conflict between two groups, a cue from elites, they will be more likely to rely on their own relevant characteristics or attitudes when making choices. This study differs from previous work on Congressional elections in that I examine variation in the effect of ideology on vote choice over multiple elections rather than just in one or two elections. I argue that an exploration of the political context (or the political context perceived by voters) is necessary in order to more fully understand the use of ideology in U.S. elections. To the extent that polarization facilitates the use of information shortcuts among voters, it might be viewed as a positive development within the context of electoral politics.     

Introduction: Social Media,Political Marketing and the 2016 U.S. Election

This essay introduces the contributions of the volume “Social Media, Political Marketing and the 2016 U. S. Election.” Using a variety of methodological approaches, the authors investigate the communication strategies of the Democratic and Republican candidates for president together with the responses of their audience. Collectively, this research offers insights into how new communication technologies are changing both political marketing and the ways candidates and voters interact.     

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

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.     

Political environment and voluntary disclosure in the U.S.: Evidence from the Carbon Disclosure Project

We investigate whether the political leaning of the state where a given firm is headquartered is related to that firm's decision to voluntarily disclose climate change information. We study S&P 500 firms that were surveyed by the Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) and find that firms headquartered in more Democratic states are more likely to disclose carbon emissions information to the CDP. Furthermore, firms in more Democratic states are more likely to permit public disclosure of their survey responses and tend to receive higher disclosure scores. We consider two political variables, one based on political power and one based on public political preference. Our results are consistent with political power driving the firm's willingness to voluntarily disclose information about climate change. These results suggest that the relation between the political environment and disclosure is more closely linked to concerns over regulatory threats as opposed to acquiescence to social norms.     

The Impact of the 1986 Immigration Reform and Control Act on the U.S. Poultry Industry: A Comparative Analysis

IRCA's impact on the U.S. poultry industry has been uneven across industry sectors and regions. In California, where undocumented immigrants have been present for some decades, IRCA strengthened unions in the processing sector without constricting labor supplies. In other areas of depressed local economies and high unemployment, IRCA has had little impact. Where low-wage industrial recruitment has increased competition for unskilled workers, however, plants have been relying on documented and undocumented new immigrants for labor. Although new immigrants stabilize industry work forces in the short run, over time these immigrant inflows reinforce high labor turnover and fuel the tendency for technological changes to accommodate an unskilkd labor force.     

Valuing Diversity in Political Organizations: Gender and Token Minorities in the U.S. House of Representatives

Political scientists are keenly interested in how diversity influences politics, yet we know little about how diverse groups of political actors interact. We advance a unified theory of colleague valuation to address this puzzle. The theory explains how minority group size affects how members of a political organization differentially value majority and minority group colleagues, predicting that the effect of preference divergence on individual‐level colleague valuation is greatest when the minority group is smallest. We test this prediction using member‐to‐member leadership political action committee (PAC) contributions in the U.S. House of Representatives. The results obtain strong, albeit not uniform, support for the theory, demonstrating that the gender gap in colleague valuations declines as preference divergence increases in all but one instance. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the theory and evidence indicate that women serving in the U.S. House of Representatives receive less support from men colleagues as their ranks increase.     

Political economy of the U.S. temporary duty suspension program: An empirical note

We examine every TDS Bill introduced by the House of Representatives and approved by the U.S. International Trade Commission in the last six years. The significant relationship between these bills and campaign contributions coupled with the personal characteristics of proponents and sponsors influence the policy outcomes of the U.S. TDS Program.     

Political Science and Prediction: What's Next for U.S. Climate Change Policy?

This article analyzes how U.S. climate change politics and policy making are changing in the public, private and civil society sectors, and how such changes are likely to influence U.S. federal policies. It outlines the current status of U.S. climate change action and explores four overlapping pathways of policy change: (1) the strategic demonstration of the feasibility of climate change action; (2) the creation and expansion of markets; (3) policy diffusion and learning; and (4) the creation and promulgation of norms about the need for more aggressive climate change action. These four pathways seek to fruitfully draw from rationalist and constructivist approaches to policy analysis, without collapsing or confusing the different logics. Building on this analysis, it predicts that future federal U.S. climate policy will include six major components: (1) A national cap on GHG emissions; (2) A national market based cap‐and‐trade GHG emissions trading scheme; (3) Mandatory renewable energy portfolio standards; (4) Increased national product standards for energy efficiency; (5) Increased vehicle fleet energy efficiency standards; and (6) Increased federal incentives for research and development on energy efficiency issues and renewable energy development. In addition, expanding federal climate policy may bring about significant changes in U.S. foreign policy as U.S. international re‐engagement on climate change is likely to occur only after the development of more significant federal policy.     

Strengthening the Political Safeguards of Federalism: The Fate of Recent Federalism Legislation in the U.S. Congress

Although a number of measures have been proposed during thepast decade to require the U. S. Congress to take more accountof state and local interests, whether in regard to mandates,preemptions, regulations, or grants-in-aid, the only major successhas been passage of the Unfunded Mandates Reform Act of 1995(UMRA). This article examines the fate of the dozen bills thatprogressed far enough to be the subject of a committee hearingor receive a vote in the House or Senate. Only a few of thesemeasures, most of them rather modest in scope, were enacted,while the most significant measures were rejected, largely becausestate and local governments have experienced a number of difficultiesin reproducing the conditions that were present for the passageof UMRA. Health, labor, and environmental groups were able toblock a number of these bills. Business groups occasionallyparted company with state and local governments and worked todefeat federalism legislation. Finally, state and local governmentgroups have not always been united in support of these measures.     

Better Know a District: Competition,Demographics, Ideology and the Use of Pollsters in the 2010 U.S. House Elections

Why do some congressional candidates hire pollsters, while others do not? Prior work claims candidates hire them when they face close contests. This argument does not explain the selection of pollsters in uncompetitive races, especially by incumbents, who also use pollsters to monitor the ramifications of some demographic changes in their districts and ideological incongruity with the constituencies. These determinants should be evident for the use of the most prestigious pollsters, and I argue that candidates hold in higher demand those survey research specialists who have worked for party campaign committees than those without party ties. But while challengers in close races can attract the services of these firms, incumbents in some vulnerable contexts, such as facing experienced challengers, are less able to do so. This study shows that constituency conditions and voter attitudes beyond electoral competition alone shape candidate use of pollsters, who serve representational needs to the extent they are contractually tied to the party organization, which extends its influence over but does not control the political consulting industry.     

U.S.-China Space Cooperation: Balancing Act between the U.S. Congress and President

There are a growing number of U.S. space scientists and managers calling for reinitiating cooperation with China in space. It is well-known that investigations of the U.S. Congress into various allegations involving China have resulted in a series of laws curtailing space cooperation between these two countries. By surveying the concurrent political developments within the United States in the 1980s and 1990s, this article attempts to reveal the domestic compulsions that propelled changes in the U.S. space policy towards China. The fundamental impetus is the power struggle and differences between the U.S. president and Congress in their perception of U.S. economic interests and national security in the context of space technology that strained these relations. Recent U.S. presidents who inherited this situation added to the discourse based on their own perceptions about outer space and China. These perceptions either found congruence with the policy of the U.S. Congress or led to finding ways to circumvent its legal restrictions. Based on these developments, it is concluded that the view of the U.S. president has alternated between necessary, desirable, and objectionable on the issue of U.S.-China space cooperation, and the U.S. Congress has thus shifted from supporting to restricting and then legally banning cooperation.     

In Play: A Commentary on Strategies in the 2004 U.S. Presidential Election

“A lot of military battle plans going back to the Civil War say ‘whoever controls the Mississippi controls America.’ And Bush is marching straight up the Mississippi,” the Democratic strategist said. “We’ve just retreated from Louisiana, Arkansas and Missouri. They already control Mississippi, Tennessee and Kentucky. Bush is now moving in on Iowa and Wisconsin. And except for Illinois, which isn’t in play, there’s only one state left: Minnesota, the mouth of the river. And it’s dead even [i.e., a tie] there.” From CNN.com, ALLPOLITICS, September 23, 2004: Mercurio, John and Molly Levinson. “CNN Survey: Bush widens lead in Electoral College.” CNN Political Unit. 27 Sept. 2004 <http://www.cnn.com/2004/ALLPOLITICS/ 09/23/electoral.map> “All total, 21 states are in play. Some will bounce between “lean [toward a candidate]” to “tossup” throughout the campaign.” USA Today, July 25, 2004: “AP: Bush leads Kerry in electoral votes.” A.P. 25 July 2004, <whttp://www.usatoday.com/news/Politicselections/nation/President/2004-07-25-bush-kerry-electoral-votes_x.htm>