This study investigates how local unemployment rates influence presidential election outcomes. By analyzing data from across the United States during recent elections, we uncover causal mechanisms linking economic conditions to voting behavior.
This paper asks whether economic self-interest predicts revealed support for redistribution by examining votes on redistributive ballot initiatives rather than survey responses. Drawing on eight ballot initiatives across six American states, the authors report precinct-level evidence that precinct economic standing is systematically related to votes on redistribution and that class differences vary with local partisan composition.
This study asks whether populist campaign rhetoric matters for elections by increasing turnout rather than persuading vote choice. Using a large U.S. conjoint experiment that included an explicit abstention option, the authors separate mobilization effects of populist messaging from persuasion and from candidates’ policy positions. The paper's central contribution is testing whether populism changes who shows up to vote even when it does not change which candidate voters prefer.
Understanding how electoral systems shape representation requires knowing whether voters follow system-specific strategic incentives or stick to simple heuristics. Single-member districts (SMDs) make semi-sincere voting — casting a ballot for the most-preferred party or candidate among the viable options — optimal and commonly observed. In multimember districts (MMDs), that same semi-sincere strategy becomes suboptimal. A formal model shows that, in MMDs, the optimal response is instead to vote to "kick out" the least-preferred party or candidate.
This article asks whether a concentrated deliberative experience can produce lasting political effects. The case is "America in One Room," a national field experiment that brought together more than 500 randomly selected registered voters from across the United States to deliberate about five major national issues.
This paper asks whether voters are more tolerant of politicians’ undemocratic behavior when those politicians share voters’ partisanship or policy preferences. Using conjoint experiments run in five countries (United States, United Kingdom, Czech Republic, Mexico, South Korea), the study contrasts a social‑psychological partisan‑attachment account with Downsian spatial policy‑preference expectations to see which, if either, reduces voters’ punishment of undemocratic conduct.
A Chilean electoral reform introduced proportional representation and larger district magnitudes while voting remained voluntary and legislative and presidential elections continued to be held concurrently. The reform lengthened legislative ballots by offering more candidate options.
Reprecincting, the process of redrawing electoral boundaries within precincts, influences voter turnout and partisan alignment. This study analyzes how such administrative adjustments impact voting patterns across multiple states.
New research explores how voters use information search strategies.
This study asks how political parties divide attention across the past, present and future in campaign communication and whether incumbency shapes emotive rhetoric across these temporal dimensions. Using supervised machine learning to label temporal focus, the author analyzes 621 party manifestos from nine countries spanning 1949–2017 and describes the share of manifesto text devoted to each temporal category. The contribution is a systematic, cross-national description of parties' temporal rhetorical emphasis and how statements about past and present relate to differences in sentiment between incumbents and opposition.
This study asks whether electoral discrimination against minority candidates reflects negative stereotypes about those candidates or positive stereotypes about majority candidates — in other words, whether in-group favoritism explains electoral bias. Using an original moderation-of-process survey experiment in Italy, the author examines electoral responses to immigrant-origin candidates and the role stereotypes play in shaping those responses. The paper's central contribution is to shift attention from solely negative stereotyping of minorities to the possibility that positive evaluations of majority candidates produce electoral advantages for them.
This study asks whether distance between party and voter on EU positions affects party support, and whether the effect depends on how salient EU politics are. Focusing on the party–voter dyad, the authors analyze patterns of EU issue voting in first-order national elections in five countries (Austria, France, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands) between 2017 and 2018, combining CHES, public opinion surveys, and Twitter data to construct distance and salience measures. The article reports that EU party positions appear to influence voting preferences and that EU salience moderates that relationship, while preserving the article’s stated qualifications about scope and measurement.
Judicial nominations influence political behavior across three studies.
This paper asks why ethnic voting varies across localities and proposes a theory that local ethnic geography increases ethnic voting where minority-group voters fear intimidation from majority-group neighbors. The authors test this mechanism using Afrobarometer survey data for Ghana, combined with geocoded survey locations and demographic data, and compare intimidation beliefs against an alternative mechanism based on local public goods provision.
Recent post-election surveys show mainstream left parties face a class voting trade-off.
This study examines how racial isolation influences voting behavior.
Using the 2016 American National Election Study, the authors examine how Americans’ perceptions of immigrant threat and the strength of their American identity jointly relate to vote choice in the 2016 presidential election. Grounded in social identity theory, the paper tests whether perceptions of immigrant threat are more likely to translate into support for Donald Trump among those with stronger American identity, and conversely whether American identity’s effects on vote choice are activated by threat perceptions. With survey data from ANES, the authors report that immigrant-threat perceptions and American identity magnify each other’s effects: threat perceptions have larger associations with support for Trump among respondents with stronger American identity, and American identity has stronger associations with vote choice when respondents perceive greater immigrant threat.
This paper explores how multiracial identity influences political preferences.
New research explores how citizens navigate trade-offs between political parties, revealing that altruistic concerns for others' welfare and spiteful tendencies against disliked groups significantly influence voting behavior. The study shows voters often prioritize policies helping those they identify with or dislike seeing benefits go to rival parties.
New research offers a counterintuitive perspective on political representation.
This article explores whether selfish voting preferences can be overcome by majority rule. It examines the tension between individual self-interest and collective decision-making in democratic systems.
The article argues that immigration attitudes reshaped the strategic environment for parties and leaders in many advanced democracies. Using comparative survey evidence from spring 2015, it shows that immigration views had already driven a wedge between mainstream parties and their partisans, opening space for new movements and producing measurable electoral consequences.
This study investigates citizens' support for election reform through experimental methods. Using a field experiment design with mock elections, researchers explored how partisan self-interest influences willingness to alter voting costs.
This paper examines direct democracy institutions to reveal their disparate effects on citizens' political support.
The chaos theorems suggest that majority voting is theoretically unstable under most preferences. However, empirical evidence shows democratic stability.