Turnout in gubernatorial and senatorial primary and general elections in the South, 1922–90: A rational choice model of the effects of short-run and long-run electoral competition on relative turnout

Using data on non-presidential-year elections for governor and U.S. Senators in eight southern states over the period 1922– 1990, we provide a rational-choice-inspired model of the factors that should be expected to affect the relative levels of turnout in primaries as compared to general elections. Both V.O. Key and Anthony Downs have argued that voters will be more likely to participate in the elections in which they can most expect to be decisive. V.O. Key (1949) proposed that when general elections are usually lop-sided because of one-party dominance of a state's politics the primary of the dominant party of the state should have a higher turnout than the general election. Downs argued that turnout should be higher in competitive elections. Our modelling combines these ideas. We use as our dependent variable the ratio of primary to general election turnout in each year. We posit that this ratio will increase (1) the greater the degree of within-party competition in the primary (especially that within the dominant party of a state, if there is one), and (2) the weaker the degree of between party competition in the general election. In addition to election-specific effects, we also posit long-run effects, such that the ratio for the offices of governor and U.S. Senator will be affected not merely by the degrees of competition within and between parties specific to any given election, but also by the long-run trends in party competition. This hypothesis leads us to expect that, (3) in the South, with the rise of the Republican party, the ratio of primary to general election turnout should decline over time. All of our expectations about the links between turnout and competition are strongly supported. We argue that rational choice models of turnout perform quite well when we view them in a comparative statics perspective, rather than using them to make predictions about who will and who will not vote in any given election.     

Do Primaries Improve Electoral Performance? Clientelism and Intra‐Party Conflict in Ghana

We consider the effect of legislative primaries on the electoral performance of political parties in a new democracy. While existing literature suggests that primaries may either hurt a party by selecting extremist candidates or improve performance by selecting high valence candidates or improving a party’s image, these mechanisms may not apply where clientelism is prevalent. A theory of primaries built instead on a logic of clientelism with intra‐party conflict suggests different effects of legislative primaries for ruling and opposition parties, as well as spillover effects for presidential elections. Using matching with an original dataset on Ghana, we find evidence of a primary bonus for the opposition party and a primary penalty for the ruling party in the legislative election, while legislative primaries improve performance in the presidential election in some constituencies for both parties.     

Electoral Selection with Parties and Primaries

We develop a model of intraparty candidate selection under partisan electoral competition and voter uncertainty. Candidates for office belong to parties, which are factions of ideologically similar candidates. Each party’s candidate for a general election can be selected either by a “centralized” mechanism that effectively randomizes over possible candidates or by voters in a primary election. The electorate cares about ideology and valence, and both primary and general elections may reveal candidate valences. Our main theoretical result is that while primaries raise the expected quality of a party’s candidates, they may hurt the ex ante preferred party in a competitive electorate by increasing the chances of revealing the opposing party’s candidates as superior. Thus, primaries are adopted in relatively extreme districts where a clear favorite party exists. An empirical analysis of the adoption of direct primaries and the competitiveness of primary elections across U.S. states supports these predictions.     

National Party Division and Divisive State Primaries in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948–2012

In presidential nomination campaigns, individual state primaries and a national competition take place simultaneously. The relationship between divisive state primaries and general election outcomes is substantially different in presidential campaigns than in single-state campaigns. To capture the full impact of divisiveness in presidential campaigns, one must estimate both the impact of national party division (NPD) and the impact of divisive primaries in individual states. To do so, we develop a comprehensive model of state outcomes in presidential campaigns that incorporates both state-level and national-level controls. We also examine and compare several measures of NPD and several measures of divisive state primaries found in previous research. We find that both NPD and divisive state primaries have independent and significant influence on state-level general election outcomes, with the former having a greater and more widespread impact on the national results. The findings are not artifacts of statistical techniques, timeframes or operational definitions. The results are consistent—varying very little across a wide range of methods and specifications.     

Voter turnout in presidential primaries: A cross-sectional examination

Decades of individual and aggregate level research suggest that three sets of factors influence voter turnout: the socioeconomic makeup of the potential voter; legal restrictions on voting; and the political context of each election. In this brief study, we use state-level data to test whether these factors combine to account for variations in turnout rates in the electoral arena of presidential primaries. As expected, high turnout is associated with states which have high median levels of education, lenient legal restrictions on voting, and a history of competitive two-party elections. Also congruent with our expectations, but at odds with research of other electoral arenas, high turnout in presidential primaries is unrelated to high campaign spending or close elections. We contend that spending in presidential primaries may be simply too low to stimulate turnout and that close primaries do not enhance turnout because voters are often unaware that the pending election will be close.The names of the authors appear in alphabetical order and imply that this study is in every way a collaborative enterprise.     

Voter Partisanship and the Effect of Distributive Spending on Political Participation

Do distributive benefits increase voter participation? This article argues that the government delivery of distributive aid increases the incumbent party's turnout but decreases opposition‐party turnout. The theoretical intuition here is that an incumbent who delivers distributive benefits to the opposing party's voters partially mitigates these voters’ ideological opposition to the incumbent, hence weakening their motivation to turn out and oust the incumbent. Analysis of individual‐level data on FEMA hurricane disaster aid awards in Florida, linked with voter‐turnout records from the 2002 (pre‐hurricane) and 2004 (post‐hurricane) elections, corroborates these predictions. Furthermore, the timing of the FEMA aid delivery determines its effect: aid delivered during the week just before the November 2004 election had especially large effects on voters, increasing the probability of Republican (incumbent party) turnout by 5.1% and decreasing Democratic (opposition party) turnout by 3.1%. But aid delivered immediately after the election had no effect on Election Day turnout.     

Packed primaries and empty caucuses: voter turnout in presidential nominations

In presidential nomination contests, the number of voters participating in selecting the presidential candidates varies considerably across states. In the same election year, turnout in presidential nomination contests ranges from less than 1 % of party supporters participating in some caucuses to record breaking turnout levels upwards of 50 % in primaries in other states. This variation is attributable, in part, to the electoral rules, which vary across states, years, and parties. In this paper, I provide a comprehensive examination of the extent to which party and state rules affect voter turnout in nomination contests from 1980 to 2012. Using the normal partisan support score as the voter turnout denominator, I find that primaries, open contests, and proportional representation rules result in higher levels of turnout. I also show that within the window of competitiveness, turnout is higher in states that hold contests later in the nomination season. Overall, my analysis provides insight into the institutional structures that influence the number of people who participate in the presidential nomination process and enhances understanding about the factors that affect voter turnout.     

Blame,Responsibility, and the Tea Party in the 2010 Midterm Elections

There is a general consensus both in the news media and scholarly research that 2010 was a highly nationalized election year. Reports have indicated that anti-Obama sentiment, the Democrats’ legislative agenda, the economy, and the Tea Party were all factors contributing to Democratic losses in the congressional elections. In this paper, we use data from 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study to examine the individual-level dynamics that contributed to the heightened nationalization of the 2010 congressional elections. Our analysis shows that Tea Party support and the attribution of blame and responsibility by voters are essential to understanding the 2010 election outcome, beyond what we would expect from a simple referendum model of midterm elections. Not surprisingly, Tea Party supporters blamed Democrats for the state of national affairs, disapproved of the Democrats’ policy agenda, and overwhelmingly supported Republican candidates in the congressional elections. However, our analysis shows that not all voters who supported Republican candidates were driven by high levels of opposition to President Obama and the Democrats. Another key group of voters blamed both Democrats and Republicans for the nation’s problems but ultimately held Democrats responsible in the voting booth by supporting Republican congressional candidates.     

The Party's Primary Preferences: Race,Gender, and Party Support of Congressional Primary Candidates

Party support has a strong influence on candidate success in the primary. What remains unexplored is whether party actions during the primary are biased along racial and gender lines. Using candidate demographic data at the congressional level and measures of party support for primary candidates, we test whether parties discriminate against women and minority candidates in congressional primaries and also whether parties are strategic in their support of minority candidates in certain primaries. Our findings show parties are not biased against minority candidates and also that white women candidates receive more support from the Democratic Party than do other types of candidates. Our findings also suggest that parties do not appear to strategically support minority candidates in districts with larger populations of minorities. Lastly, we also find no significant differences in the effects of party support on the likelihood of success in the primary by candidate race or gender.     

Mama Grizzlies Compete for Office

In the 2010 general elections, a record number of Republican women ran for, and won congressional seats. Many were also endorsed by the Tea Party and/or heralded by Sarah Palin as being “Mama Grizzlies.” This election provides a unique opportunity to examine if ideological and partisan differences among women matter in terms of how they campaign for office. Did they behave any differently than their more liberal counterparts? Did they boast being endorsed by Palin and/or other Tea Party organizations? Did they invoke their gendered or “Mama Grizzly” status to appeal to voters? This study uses data gathered from ninety-two websites of women who ran for Congress in 2010. Overall, it is found that Republican women did not reference the Tea Party, nor embrace being “Mama Grizzlies.” In addition, these candidates shied away from discussing their gendered identities and supporting “women's issues.” Finally, there were few differences between Democratic and Republican women with regard to how they presented themselves via their websites. I conclude by discussing the implications of the claims they make (or not) about gender role norms, motherhood, and their fitness for office.     

Public policy and the initiative and referendum: a survey with some new evidence

Many scholars have argued that primary elections are an important factor in the polarization of the American Congress. Yet little research measures change in the policy preferences of primary electorates to evaluate the connection directly. We create the first explicit measures of the preferences of primary voters over the last 60 years using a Bayesian item-response theory model. Although the overall distribution of population preferences has changed little, the preferences of primary voters are now much more related to the party of the primary that they attend. We show that liberals are much more likely to turn out in Democratic primaries and conservatives are much more likely to turn out in Republican primaries. We estimate that the divergence of primary from general electorates is six times larger in 2012 than in 1958 owing to this “primary sorting”. This trend began with the emergence of the Southern Republicans. As the Republican party became viable, conservative Southerners switched to Republican primaries leading to a leftward shift in Democratic primary electorates. Nationwide, primary sorting began sometime after it began in the South. We speculate that Southern realignment played a clarifying role that contributed to subsequent sorting of primary electorates nationwide.     

The Swedish Election 1998: A Protest Vote and the Birth of a New Political Landscape?

The 1998 Swedish general election was a protest election primarily against the Social Democratic Party. The party was hit by a debate on deceit when the unpopular financial restructuring policy was implemented. Disappointed social democratic voters from the 1994 election flocked to the Left Party. Others did not vote at all. The electoral turnout dropped to 81.4 percent; the lowest level in a parliamentary election since the election of 1958. A turnout of 81.4 percent is not particularly low from an international perspective, but it has received a great deal of attention in the political debate. Certain signs do indicate that there has been a general devaluation of voting as a means of exercising political influence among large groups of voters. Other forms of influence are perceived as being more meaningful. A sense of meaninglessness, of individual and institutional powerlessness, also seems to be spreading to social groups that have traditionally had a fundamental trust in the political system.     

Super Tuesday 1988: Regional Results and National Implications

Fourteen southern and border states established a same-day presidentialprimary on 8 March 1988. This analysis shows that this SuperTuesday, in several senses, was less than super. The resultsturned out to be less satisfying than its Democratic founderspreferred but less upsetting than its critics anticipated. DespiteSuper Tuesday, Iowa and New Hampshire remained dominant in the1988 presidential primaries. Although voter turnout increasedslightly over 1984 and the results contributed mightily towardsettling the nomination in the Republican party, Super Tuesdayneither settled the Democratic nomination nor gave meaningfulmomentum to the more moderate Democratic candidates.     

Donors,Primary Elections,and Polarization in the United States

I examine the influence of partisan donors on the district-level ideological polarization of congressional candidates in the United States. I use data from 2002–10 U.S. House elections, which provide for the placement of major party primary winners on the same ideological dimension as their primary, general election, and partisan donor constituencies. Using this unique data set, I find strong evidence that the influence of donors in nominating contests is a source of polarization in the United States. House nominees are more responsive to their donor constituencies than either their primary or general electorates. I also find some evidence that the lack of general election competition affects nominee extremity. In safer districts, Democratic incumbents appear more responsive to donors. However, Republican donors seem to demand proximity regardless of district competitiveness. Overall, the polarizing effects of donor constituencies dominate any moderating effects, resulting in ideologically extreme nominees and, ultimately, members of Congress.     

Timing the habit: Voter registration and turnout

Does registration timing impact whether an individual becomes a habitual voter? We argue that those registering in near proximity to a presidential election are more likely to vote in the upcoming election compared to those who register at other times during an election cycle because they seek an immediate return on their investment, but they are less likely to become habituated to vote in subsequent mid-term and primary elections. We suggest that this is because last-minute registrants, many of whom were registered through voter registration drives, were not focused on long-term electoral payoffs. Leveraging Florida's statewide voter files, we use logistic regression and propensity score weighting with county fixed-effects to evaluate if the timing of voter registration has significant short- and long-term turnout effects in high- and low-salience elections, controlling for party registration and an array of demographic factors. We find that the timing of registration does affect turnout, as last-minute registrants are not equally likely to vote in ensuing elections.     

A behavioral measure of the enthusiasm gap in American elections

What are the effects of a mobilized party base on elections? I present a new behavioral measure of the enthusiasm gap in a set of American elections to identify how the turnout rate of the party faithful varies across different contexts. I find that the advantaged party can see its registrants turn out by four percentage points more than the disadvantaged party in some elections, and that this effect can be even larger in competitive House districts. I estimate the net benefit to party vote share of the mobilized base, which is around one percentage point statewide, and up to one and one half points in competitive House contests. These results suggest that the partisan characteristics of an election have consequences not just for vote choice, but for the composition of the electorate.     

Everyone likes a winner: An empirical test of the effect of electoral closeness on turnout in a context of expressive voting

Under instrumental voting closer elections are expected to have higher turnout. Under expressive voting, however, turnout may increase with decreasing closeness when voters have a preference for winners. An empirical test using data on Belgian municipal elections supports this. We find that turnout reaches a local maximum when the largest party in the election obtains just over 52% of the seats and then falls (supporting the “instrumental” closeness-argument). There is, however, another turning point: the presence of a highly dominating party (receiving at least two-thirds of the votes) stimulates turnout despite the fact that dominance implies lower closeness.     

The US mid-term elections of 1982

The 1982 US election completed the destruction of the myth that 1980 saw a Republican landslide. It disappointed the election-eve expectations of the Democrats, but was far crueller to the earlier hopes of the Republicans, though their financial advantage kept their losses down. Old political forces-parties and unions-played a more active part than in recent years, and turnout rose for the first time for two decades. The results should make internal differences less divisive among Democrats, more so among Republicans, especially with the crushing exposure of the bogus claims of the ‘New Right’. But if the economy recovers, so may the Republican party.     

Going Postal: How All-Mail Elections Influence Turnout

We examine the question of whether or not reducing the costs of voting by conducting elections entirely through the mail rather than at the traditional polling place increases participation. Using election data from Oregon, we examine whether or not elections conducted through the mail increase turnout in both local and statewide elections. Using precinct-level data merged with census data we also examine how postal voting may alter the composition of the electorate. We find that, while all-mail elections tend to produce higher turnout, the most significant increases occur in low stimulus elections, such as local elections or primaries where turnout is usually low. The increase in turnout, however, is not uniform across demographic groups. Voting only by mail is likely to increase turnout among those who are already predisposed to vote, such as those with higher socioeconomic status. Like other administrative reforms designed to make voting easier, postal voting has the potential to increase turnout. However, the expanded pool of voters will be limited most likely to those already inclined to vote but find it inconvenient to go to the polling place. This conclusion is consistent with the growing body of research that suggests that relaxing administrative requirements is not likely to be the panacea for low turnout among the disenfranchised.