Voting for Winners
Pitfalls of Demographic Forecasts of US Elections
Richard Calvo, Vincent Pons & Jesse Shapiro
NBER Working Paper, October 2024
Abstract:
Many observers have forecast large partisan shifts in the US electorate based on demographic trends. Such forecasts are appealing because demographic trends are often predictable even over long horizons. We backtest demographic forecasts using data on US elections since 1952. We envision a forecaster who fits a model using data from a given election and uses that model, in tandem with a projection of demographic trends, to predict future elections. Even a forecaster with perfect knowledge of future demographic trends would have performed poorly over this period -- worse even than one who simply guesses that each election will have a 50-50 partisan split. Enriching the set of demographics available does not change this conclusion. We discuss both mechanical and economic reasons for this finding, and show suggestive evidence that parties adjust their platforms in accordance with changes in the electorate.
The Costs of Voting and Voter Confidence
Lonna Rae Atkeson, Eli McKown-Dawson & Robert Stein
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
We revisit the effect of ballot access laws on voter confidence in the outcome of elections. Previous research found weak or no relationship between voter confidence and election laws regulating ballot access. We argue this non-finding is conditioned by partisanship. Democrats and Republicans view election laws through a partisan lens, which is especially triggered when coalitions lose. Republican voters see ballot restrictions as a means of securing the vote against fraud; Democratic voters see ballot restrictions as voter suppression. We maintain that the conditional partisan effect that election laws have on voter confidence is triggered or attenuated when partisans' candidates lose elections. We find that in states where ballot access is costly, voter confidence among partisans and supporters of the losing Presidential candidate is significantly higher for Republicans and significantly lower for Democrats than their counterparts in states with less costly ballot access laws. These effects are greater for Republican than Democrats. We discuss the implications of our findings on election ecosystems and voter confidence.
Who Are the Election Skeptics? Evidence from the 2022 Midterm Elections
Derek Holliday et al.
Election Law Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
Faith in American elections is eroding, with politicians frequently questioning the legitimacy of election results and spreading misinformation about voter fraud. Substantial work has been done to refute misinformation and increase confidence in elections, but often without a clear picture of who skeptics are and why they are skeptical. Using a nationally representative survey from around the 2022 midterm election (N = 5,244) and beyond (N = 77,325), we provide a comprehensive profile of election skeptics: their prevalence, views, and justifications. Our use of quantitative and qualitative data reveals a more milquetoast portrait of skeptics. Skeptics are demographically closer to the broader electorate than not, and the self-reported underpinnings of skepticism are more mundane than conspiratorial. Over half of skeptics claim they are skeptical because of how elections are run and nearly one-in-five skeptics claim they are skeptical because of the other party's performance in recent elections, which we corroborate through an event study of the 2022 election.
Measuring the Contribution of Voting Blocs to Election Outcomes
William Marble, Justin Grimmer & Cole Tanigawa-Lau
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
To interpret elections, social scientists and media pundits often ask: how much did particular groups, or voting blocs, contribute to a candidate's vote total? The default tool for studying voter behavior -- regressions of vote choice on voter characteristics -- is useful for evaluating correlates and determinants of vote choice, but is incapable of assessing how many votes a group contributes. Accounting for votes also requires knowing a group's size and its turnout rate. We introduce a set of tools for estimating how many votes a bloc gives to a candidate, how voting bloc patterns differ from prior elections, and how support changes under counterfactuals. We apply these tools to study U.S. presidential elections, demonstrating that there is little evidence to show Black and Latino voters are shifting toward Republicans in recent elections and that Donald Trump's support was concentrated among voters with moderate attitudes toward racial outgroups.
The Rise or Decline of Social Acceptance? Perspective from U.S. Presidential Elections, 2012 to 2020
Kyle Dodson & Clem Brooks
Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, September 2024
Abstract:
Recent acts of racial violence, the growing visibility of nationalized white power movements, and a drift toward a number of more restrictive laws and Supreme Court rulings have raised troubling questions about the significance and influence of social acceptance in the United States. Focusing on voters and elections, an important strain of scholarship has argued that declining acceptance of minority groups and marginalized communities contributed to the political rise of Donald Trump and his 2016 election to the presidency. However, the argument that low levels of social acceptance benefited Republican candidates is premised on a basic yet untested assumption: that social acceptance has decreased over the time period covered by the past several elections. In this study, we offer a new and systematic evaluation of this assumption through an analysis of change in the level of social acceptance within the American electorate and its political influence from the 2012 through 2020 elections. The analysis focuses on key target groups that include racial minorities, women, immigrants, and gay and lesbian individuals. We find that voters adopted more supportive and inclusive positions toward these marginalized social groups, resulting in a substantial increase in social acceptance over time. Contrasting further with much of the commentary regarding the rise of Donald Trump, our analysis indicates that these trends in social acceptance served to hurt Trump and to help his Democratic opponents. Supplemental analyses find little evidence that social desirability influences the measures of social acceptance or their estimated influence on voter choice.
The Narrow Reach of Targeted Corrections: No Impact on Broader Beliefs About Election Integrity
John Carey et al.
Political Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Fact-checks have been shown to be effective in correcting specific false beliefs, but do they also cause people to update their broader views about the phenomenon in question? We consider this question in the context of the 2022 Arizona governor's race, testing the effect of debunking false claims of fraud on specific beliefs about that election as well as general confidence in the 2022 and 2020 U.S. elections and beliefs about the prevalence of fraud. Our results indicate that fact-checks reduce false beliefs about the election in Arizona, but we find no evidence that participants extrapolate these findings to their general beliefs about fraud or their confidence in the 2022 or 2020 elections. These results suggest that methods of combating misinformation that rely on case-by-case corrections of specific falsehoods may not be effective in changing broader false beliefs.
The Domestic Political Costs of Soliciting Foreign Electoral Intervention
Michael Tomz & Jessica Weeks
Journal of Politics, forthcoming
Abstract:
When would voters punish politicians for soliciting foreign help to win an election? We used U.S.-based survey experiments to study this question. Our experiments offer a mixed message about public willingness to defend democracy against external interference. On the one hand, the vast majority of voters -- from both major parties -- were unwilling to defect from candidates who solicited. Candidates could further reduce the domestic costs of soliciting by approaching allies rather than nonallies, refraining from explicit quid pro quos, recruiting elites to defend their behavior, and cultivating uncertainty. On the other hand, candidates who sought foreign help lost support on average, and in many situations the penalty could be sizable enough to sway an election. Our experiments therefore suggest that a small but consequential sliver of the electorate would punish candidates who solicit, and could influence whether and how politicians invite foreign meddling in future races.
The Electoral Effects of Private Sector Positions: Evidence from the US House
Preston Johnston
MIT Working Paper, September 2024
Abstract:
Does actively holding an outside private sector position benefit the political careers of politicians? I investigate this question in the context of candidates running for the House in the period 2004-2018. I define a private sector position (PSP) as a politician holding an executive, ownership, or director position at a firm while running for office. I acquire data on House members' outside positions and create a new dataset of challenger candidates' outside positions by digitizing their financial disclosure documents. I argue that PSPs may provide electoral resources to politicians, including in the form of campaign finance and politically influenced business decisions. I then estimate whether PSPs are associated with higher election returns and examine how the effect differs across party and incumbency status. I find that PSPs are associated with a significant electoral advantage, with the effect highest for challenger candidates and Republicans. I investigate two potential mechanisms to explain this result: campaign finance and expansionary behavior around election cycles. I find that candidates with PSPs receive more total contributions, contributions from committees, and individual donations. Linking firms declared on candidates' financial disclosures to panel data on firm characteristics, I find some evidence that firms connected to incumbents hire more during election years relative to challenger-connected and unconnected firms. This suggests that incumbent-connected firms engage in behavior analogous to political business cycles. These results contribute to a growing literature showing politicians with corporate connections can advance their political careers by extracting costly favors from firms.
An eye tracking study of gender biased information acquisition in candidate evaluation
Libby Jenke
Political Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Gender stereotypes may impact voters' candidate choices. But do gender stereotypes impact voters' attention when learning about candidates? This paper explores whether citizens take part in gender biased information acquisition when learning about women and men candidates. In an experiment, I use eye tracking to measure respondents' attention to gender stereotype-consistent and inconsistent information. The results indicate that citizens do not differ in their attention to different candidate information according to candidate gender. Additionally, respondents' own sex does not make a difference in their attention to masculine- and feminine-stereotyped information for women or men candidates. These findings provide an important specification of the mechanism behind gender bias in candidate choices: the bias appears to be different standards of judgment for candidates of different genders, not different compositions of information being judged for candidates of different genders.
Job Talk: Candidate Gender and Presentation of Prior Experience in Television Ads in the US
Eric Hansen & Connor Mautner
Politics & Gender, forthcoming
Abstract:
Does gender influence how candidates in the United States present their prior political experience to voters? Messaging one's experience might demonstrate a history of power-seeking behavior, a gender role violation for women under traditional norms. As a result, men should be more likely to make experience-based appeals than women candidates. For evidence, we analyze the contents of 1,030 televised advertisements from 2018 state legislative candidates from the Wesleyan Media Project. We find that ads sponsored by experienced men are significantly more likely to highlight experience than ads sponsored by experienced women. However, we find that women's and men's ads are roughly equally likely to discuss work experience, suggesting that men's greater emphasis on experience is limited to prior officeholding. The results contribute to our understanding of gender dynamics in political campaigns, the information available to voters, and how advertising shapes the criteria voters use to assess candidates.