Are Biased Media Bad for Democracy?

This article assesses the normative and positive claims regarding the consequences of biased media using a political agency framework that includes a strategic voter, polarized politicians, and news providers. My model predicts that voters are always better informed with unbiased than with biased outlets even when the latter have opposite ideological preferences. However, biased media may improve voter welfare. Contrary to several scholars' fears, partisan news providers are not always bad for democracy. My theoretical findings also have important implications for empirical analyses of the electoral consequences of changes in the media environment. The impact of left‐wing and right‐wing biased outlets depends on the partisan identity of officeholders. Empirical findings may, thus, not be comparable across studies or even over time within a study. Existing empirical works are unlikely to measure the consequences of biased media, as researchers never observe and can rarely approximate the adequate counterfactual: elections with unbiased news outlets.     

Individual Differences in Group Loyalty Predict Partisan Strength

The strength of an individual’s identification with their political party is a powerful predictor of their engagement with politics, voting behavior, and polarization. Partisanship is often characterized as primarily a social identity, rather than an expression of instrumental goals. Yet, it is unclear why some people develop strong partisan attachments while others do not. I argue that the moral foundation of Loyalty, which represents an individual difference in the tendency to hold strong group attachments, facilitates stronger partisan identification. Across two samples, including a national panel and a convenience sample, as well as multiple measures of the moral foundations, I demonstrate that the Loyalty foundation is a robust predictor of partisan strength. Moreover, I show that these effects cannot be explained by patriotism, ideological extremity, or directional effects on partisanship. Overall, the results provide further evidence for partisanship as a social identity, as well as insight into the sources of partisan strength.     

Sorting and the Split-Ticket: Evidence from Presidential and Subpresidential Elections

Although prior research demonstrates that strong partisans are less likely to cast a split-ticket, recent scholarly work hints that partisan-ideological sorting—the matching of an individual’s partisan and ideological identities—may play a comparatively stronger role in shaping this voting behavior. Simply, if a high degree of congruence between identities underscores psychological orientations that prevent association with an out-group, then highly-sorted voters should be less likely to cross-party lines within the voting booth. Using the 1972–2012 ANES Time-Series and 2010 CCES surveys, we provide evidence that demonstrates that a high degree of partisan-ideological sorting produces the strongest negative effect on split-ticket voting among a variety of alternative explanations at both the national and subnational levels. We then supplement these analyses with 1992–1996 ANES panel data to demonstrate how changes in sorting over time affect this voting behavior. Our results indicate that although an increase in partisan strength alone is insufficient to reduce an individual’s propensity to cast a split-ticket, an increase in identity sorting over time has a strong negative effect on split-ticket voting. We conclude with a brief discussion about the consequences of identity convergence; namely, that sorting fosters a unique form of electoral “polarization.”     

Media proliferation and partisan selective exposure

The number of Internet news media outlets has skyrocketed in recent years. We analyze the effects of media proliferation on electoral outcomes assuming voters may choose news that is too partisan, from an informational perspective, i.e., engage in partisan selective exposure. We find that if voters who prefer highly partisan news—either because they are truly ideologically extreme, or due to a tendency towards excessive selective exposure—are politically “important,” then proliferation is socially beneficial, as it makes these voters more likely to obtain informative news. Otherwise, proliferation still protects against very poor electoral outcomes that can occur when the number of outlets is small and the only media options are highly partisan. Our model’s overall implication is thus that, surprisingly, proliferation is socially beneficial regardless of the degree of selective exposure.     

Does Choice Bring Loyalty? Electoral Participation and the Development of Party Identification

Party identification is known to influence almost all aspects of political life. How this attachment develops across the adult life cycle, however, remains unknown. I argue that people reinforce their partisan predispositions by voting for their preferred party. Voting entails a choice over a set of alternatives. This choice is likely to induce rationalization. In so doing, it provides signals of group identity, which in turn strengthens people's partisan ties. Testing this hypothesis is made difficult because it implies a reciprocal relationship between partisanship and vote choice. I address this problem by using vote eligibility as an instrument of vote in a sample of almost equally aged respondents. The results indicate that elections fortify prior partisan orientations. Moreover, they do so not by increasing political information. Rather, it is the act of voting for a party that, itself, bolsters partisan attachment. This act leaves a long‐lasting imprint on people's partisan outlooks.     

Partisan Discourse,Polarization, and the Politics of Military Fatalities in Iraq

Public deliberation on the costs of war is important to democratic decision-making. This article explores congressional rhetoric about military fatalities within the U.S. House of Representatives and in television news media interviews from 2004 to 2006. In the House, the results are consistent with the “ideological opportunism” model of congressional rhetoric, which suggests that politicians–particularly the president’s partisan opponents–will be highly communicative about combat deaths in an effort to express ideological perspectives on war and criticize opponents’ positions. The results also show that as local combat fatalities accumulate, the president’s partisan opponents tend to become increasingly vocal about these deaths. The results do not support the “newsworthiness” model of congressional rhetoric in TV media interviews, which expects opposition party support and presidential party criticism of the president. Politicians on the far ends of the ideological spectrum dominate discussions about the loss of troops in the House, and politicians in both the House and TV news interviews advance largely unwavering partisan positions on the conduct of war. The findings suggest members of Congress reinforce political polarization in debates over the use of force.     

Asians—A monolithic voting bloc?

Past studies of Asian voting behavior have more often than not treated Asians as a single homogeneous group. Based on this assumption, the studies proceed to predict Asian voting behavior. However, the underlying assumption of homogeneity can produce fallacious results when the group Asians is not homogeneous. In fact, it isoften the case that the separate ethnicities act as separate groups with their own unique political perspectives and identities. Hence, studies of Asian voting behavior should be careful to consider the effects and consequences of such aggregation.     

Party Identification,Issue Attitudes,and the Dynamics of Political Debate

This article investigates whether media coverage of elite debate surrounding an issue moderates the relationship between individual‐level partisan identities and issue preferences. We posit that when the news media cover debate among partisan elites on a given issue, citizens update their party identities and issue attitudes. We test this proposition for a quartet of prominent issues debated during the first Clinton term: health care reform, welfare reform, gay rights, and affirmative action. Drawing on data from the Vanderbilt Television News Archives and the 1992‐93‐94‐96 NES panel, we demonstrate that when partisan debate on an important issue receives extensive media coverage, partisanship systematically affects—and is affected by—issue attitudes. When the issue is not being contested, dynamic updating between party ties and issue attitudes ceases.     

Explaining Contextual Effects on Vote Choice

How are individual voters influenced by their social surroundings? Though numerous studies establish that voting behavior can be influenced by the social context, we lack a full understanding of how the actions of individual voters can be influenced by the composition of their social environment. In this paper, I develop and test a micro-level model of the operation of contextual influences on political behavior. The model specifies the effects of both personal contact and individual perception of the partisan nature of the local environment. The data show little support for personal contact as a mechanism of contextual influence, but reveal that perception of partisan dominance markedly enhances the impact of partisan identification on vote choice.     

Policy Responsiveness and Incumbent Reelection in State Legislatures

Does policy responsiveness on the part of incumbent legislators affect their prospects for reelection? Recent studies of congressional campaigns demonstrate that incumbents who support policies that are more congruent with their constituents' preferences face fewer reelection obstacles. The present analysis considers this question in state legislative elections where voter knowledge of legislator activities is generally quite low. The findings demonstrate that incumbents positioned farther from the average citizen and toward their party's base are only slightly more likely to be challenged than other incumbents. However, more partisan voting incumbents do attract challengers capable of raising and spending larger amounts of money. Interestingly, incumbents positioned closer to their party's base actually receive a greater share of the vote in most contested elections. Only when challengers spend significant amounts of money do we see the positive effects of partisan voting by incumbents diminished. Overall, these findings demonstrate the mechanisms by which policy positions of incumbents in a low‐information environment affect the challengers that emerge and the level of voter support received.     

Winning cures everything? Beliefs about voter fraud,voter confidence,and the 2016 election

Rhetoric about “rigged” elections has raised concerns about the solidity of public trust in the integrity of the voting system. Mitigating these concerns, research by Sinclair et al. (2019) on the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign documents a robust “winner's effect” on voter confidence despite intense partisan messaging aimed at influencing citizens' acceptance of the legitimacy of the election. This suggests that regularly fluctuating electoral outcomes in competitive democracies limit the impact of elite messages on trust in electoral institutions. A critical question is whether similar dynamics apply to dimensions of electoral trust that are more clearly partisan-branded and targeted, such as beliefs about the prevalence of illicit voting. This paper uses a panel study with waves conducted before and after Election Day 2016 to compare the effect of election on beliefs about the extent of illicit voting and voter confidence. Underlining both the promise and limitations of democratic competition as a counterweight to elite efforts to sow electoral distrust, there are significant “winner's effects” on both but substantially smaller impact on beliefs about illicit voting, a difference that is especially large among strong Republican partisans.     

Reliable and unreliable partisan appointees to the Board of Governors

Every new appointment to the Board of Governors in recent years has triggered speculation as to how the new Governor will vote in FOMC meetings. While several studies have hinted at partisan voting behavior by Governors, no study has yet attempted to identify reliable and unreliable partisan voting behavior and to pinpoint the background characteristics of Governors that distinguish between the two. This paper indicates that Board members with a background in economics consistently voted in line with the economic ideology of the appointing President. Noneconomists on the Board, however, displayed no such partisan voting behavior and were seen to be influenced by pressures emanating from the Administration and by the monetary environment prior to their appointment. Over the 1951 to 1987 period, most Presidents have appointed reliable Governors earlier in their Presidential terms (when the returns from being able to influence subsequent monetary policy are great) and have chosen unreliable Governors later in their terms (when election support from the interest groups that these unreliables represent is important).The results of the present paper suggest skepticism toward the recent spate of rational expectations — game-theoretic models which feature a dictatorial policy maker gaming atomistic market participants whose only political activity, voting, generates monetary surprises followed by convergence to an equilibrium. Because of their obsession with the ceremonial formalism of their genre, these models ignore a vast complementary literature and, as a consequence, display conspicuously flimsy institutional and historical premises. Instead, the present paper argues for the greater relevance of models of uncoordinated interaction between multiple political and private principals and Federal Reserve agents.     

Proximity voting in the 2010 U.S. House elections

Utilizing data that allows for the placement of both of the candidates running and voters on the same ideological scale, I model proximity voting in the 2010 House elections. I demonstrate that though the literature predominantly emphasizes partisanship and incumbency, relative distance from the candidates also plays a significant role in the voting decision. Additionally, I show that these proximity effects are conditional upon the type of candidate running and the individual's partisan attachment. In total, these results show that while the rates of partisan voting and incumbent victory are high in House elections, voters do consider ideological proximity and can punish candidates who take positions that are too far out of line.     

Getting things straight: The effects of ballot design and electoral structure on voter participation

This paper considers the implications of the straight-party voting option (STVO) on participation in judicial elections. Voters using straight-party options (by definition) do not vote for candidates in nonpartisan elections. Consequently, ballot roll-off in these elections is more likely to occur when people are given the chance to vote the party ticket and complete the voting process quickly. This is the case because nonpartisan judicial elections are considerably less salient than statewide and federal partisan elections. This article separates out the effects of the institutional structure of the election on political participation with the effects of ballot design. We find that in nonpartisan elections, the straight-party option decreases voter participation since voters who utilize the straight-ticket option may erroneously believe that they have voted for these nonpartisan offices, or simply ignore them. However, in nonpartisan elections without straight-ticket voting, participation is increased compared to nonpartisan elections with straight-ticket voting. Additionally, both forms of nonpartisan elections have less participation than partisan elections, all of which have the straight-ticket option. Thus, voter participation is affected not only by the type of election, but the type of voting rules in the election.     

Structural constraints on partisan bias under the efficient gerrymander

Partisan bias occurs when the translation of the popular vote into legislative seats differs between competing parties. This paper contains a theoretical and empirical analysis of the consequences of an efficient gerrymander for the partisan bias of an electoral system. Under partisan apportionment, bias is shown to depend on some structural features of the electoral environment; namely, the size of the voting population and the number of single-member districts within a political jurisdiction. A statistical analysis reveals the predicted relationships in data on Congressional elections across states in the 1950–1984 period. This paper highlights the importance of some measurable features of the electoral environment for determining bias and provides an indirect test of partisan gerrymandering in congressional apportionment processes.     

The Party Faithful: Partisan Images,Candidate Religion,and the Electoral Impact of Party Identification

We argue that the factors shaping the impact of partisanship on vote choice—“partisan voting”—depend on the nature of party identification. Because party identification is partly based on images of the social group characteristics of the parties, the social profiles of political candidates should affect levels of partisan voting. A candidate's religious affiliation enables a test of this hypothesis. Using survey experiments which vary a hypothetical candidate's religious affiliation, we find strong evidence that candidates’ religions can affect partisan voting. Identifying a candidate as an evangelical (a group viewed as Republican) increases Republican support for, and Democratic opposition to, the candidate, while identifying the candidate as a Catholic (a group lacking a clear partisan profile) has no bearing on partisan voting. Importantly, the conditional effect of candidate religion on partisan voting requires the group to have a salient partisan image and holds with controls for respondents’ own religious affiliations and ideologies.     

Context, Conversation and Conviction: Social Networks and Voting at the 1992 British General Election

After some initial interest, analyses of contextual effects in British voting behaviour have tended to downplay or ignore the role of face to face conversations between electors. However, evidence from the 1992 British Election Study shows that conversations with partisan discussants do act as a statistically significant influence on voting. Those who discuss politics with supporters of a particular party are more likely to switch their votes to that party, if they had not previously voted for it, and less likely to switch to other parties. Conversations with family members are particularly important, though talking to other discussants also plays a part.     

Ideology,economic interests,and congressional roll-call voting: Partisan instability and Bank of the United States legislation, 1811–1816

We introduce a wrinkle into the study of Congressional roll-call voting by focusing on a period of partisan instability in American History: the Era of Good Feelings. During deviations from normal periods of two-party rule, the dominant model of voting behavior, the ideological model, loses precision in correctly classifying individual votes. We contend that a “pooled” voting model – comprised of both ideological and economic variables – performs better than the basic ideological model during these unstable periods. When party mechanisms no longer constrain or structure actions, we believe the “electoral connection” is especially important, and, thus, economic-based constituency factors must be included in models of vote choice. To explore this belief, we focus on a particularly contentious issue – the rechartering of the Bank of the United States (BUS) – which was dealt with before and after a partisan decomposition occurred in the House. Using measures developed by Poole and Rosenthal (1985, 1997), we find that the vote on the First BUS in 1811, during a stable partisan period, is organized along ideological lines. By 1816, the two-party system collapsed, and we do not find the vote on the Second BUS to exhibit much ideological structure. Conversely, we find that our pooled model predicts the vote on the Second BUS quite well, providing a substantial improvement in fit over the basic ideological classification.     

The rise of negative partisanship and the nationalization of U.S. elections in the 21st century

One of the most important developments affecting electoral competition in the United States has been the increasingly partisan behavior of the American electorate. Yet more voters than ever claim to be independents. We argue that the explanation for these seemingly contradictory trends is the rise of negative partisanship. Using data from the American National Election Studies, we show that as partisan identities have become more closely aligned with social, cultural and ideological divisions in American society, party supporters including leaning independents have developed increasingly negative feelings about the opposing party and its candidates. This has led to dramatic increases in party loyalty and straight-ticket voting, a steep decline in the advantage of incumbency and growing consistency between the results of presidential elections and the results of House, Senate and even state legislative elections. The rise of negative partisanship has had profound consequences for electoral competition, democratic representation and governance.     

The Neglected Power of Elite Opinion Leadership to Produce Antipathy Toward the News Media: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Today, most Americans dislike the news media as an institution. This has led to considerable debate about why people dislike the media and how their public standing could be improved. This paper contributes to this literature by using a survey experiment to test the effect of several different considerations on evaluations of the media. It finds, consistent with the broader literature on political persuasion, that elite partisan opinion leadership can powerfully shape these attitudes. Additionally, it finds that tabloid coverage creates antipathy toward the press regardless of predispositions and that horserace coverage has a negative effect on opinions among politically aware citizens on both sides of the political spectrum. Contrary to some claims in the literature, this study finds no detectable effect of news negativity.