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The gap between women's representation in the Democratic and Republican parties has grown significantly in the last three decades. We argue existing explanations undervalue voters' contributions to this trend by focusing on voter responses to candidate sex rather than candidate gender. We theorize that Republican voters (especially the most conservative) prefer masculine candidates in intraparty and entry-level elections. Because sex and gender are correlated, this limits the number of Republican women who advance through the political pipeline. Experimental vignettes from two rounds of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (N  = 2,000) and two large surveys of Republicans (N  > 10,000) show that Republican (but not Democratic) voters penalize candidates with "feminine" self-presentation regardless of the candidate's sex. Original data on the self-presentation of Republican candidates for entry-level office (N  = 459) confirm Republican candidates often present themselves in gender-stereotypical ways. In short, voters play an underappreciated role in the partisan gap in women's representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A growing body of research indicates that voters' perceptions of the electoral system change when the means of administering elections change. As some electoral jurisdictions have moved to systems designed to increase voter convenience, little is known about whether convenience is achieved at the expense of confidence. Utah's rollout of Vote by Mail (VBM) occurred county by county across five federal elections, and the three most populous counties adopted all VBM elections successively in 2014, 2016, and 2018. This meaningful variance in voter experience with VBM allows us to model the relationship between experience with VBM and voter confidence. We find that the switch to a more convenient system of voting came at the expense of diminished confidence in the voting process. However, experience with VBM is positively related to confidence such that the loss in confidence can be recouped over time. To capture this dynamic relative to other factors, we also estimate the effects of partisanship and the messages of political elites. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, the effect of partisanship on voter confidence changed compared to just two years earlier. Elite messages appear to be especially negative for Trump voters after 2020. More experience with VBM acts as a bulwark against those negative messages, almost completely attenuating the negative effects of Trump's fraud claims among his voters with the highest levels of VBM experience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the boundaries for discussing a candidate's religion? In the 2008 and the 2012 presidential campaigns, the religious beliefs and practices of at least one of the candidates became a subject of intense scrutiny from the media and the public. To ascertain the limits of social discourse for religious out-group, we conducted a survey experiment on the 2012 CCES survey. We find strong evidence that norms of social discourse do not apply to all religions equally. Furthermore, the application of norms differs by political party because Democrats and Republicans express concerns about different religious groups. Overall, there is a large difference for Muslims when it comes to social discourse. Finally, individuals have internalized the norms because most of them are willing to sanction those who violate them, even if the norms on social discourse are not applied equally among American voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of representation have focused primarily on the correlation between legislators’ voting records and their constituents’ preferences; however, accountability inevitably includes representatives’ explanations of their legislative actions. Unlike previous research that has examined consistency within a single form of communication, this study systematically examines legislators’ consistency in the explanations they give across different means of communication. Contrary to arguments that members of Congress do not vary their explanations or presentational styles, we find that incumbents present themselves to constituents differently through different methods of communication. Using the 2006 Campaign Communication Survey, a random survey of registered voters in Ohio and Pennsylvania who were asked to send in all campaign mail received during three weeks in 2006, we compare the content of campaign mail and franked mail incumbents send to constituents. Even though the mediums of communication are similar and the timing of franked mail suggests its use as a campaign tool, we find incumbents use these different tools to present themselves to their constituents in different ways. As such, we argue that fully understanding a member of Congress's representational style requires an examination of a wide range of congressional activities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research spurred by the widespread adoption of new voting technology has largely neglected the issue of privacy. Using data from a field experiment, we find that a treatment intended to increase a sense of privacy is able to alter poll-worker and voter behavior, but has little direct effect on voter attitudes. More importantly, we find that concern about privacy is concentrated among an identifiable group: those who go against their community's descriptive political norm or majority. This “political minority” is more sensitive to issues of privacy and harder to reassure that voting conditions will safeguard the confidentiality of their choices. Data from the 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study confirm that privacy is a concern for voters nationwide who feel out of step with their locality's political majority. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Voting technologies received considerable scrutiny after the 2000 election. However, the voter-poll worker interaction is also of critical importance. Poll workers exercise discretion and implement policies in ways that directly affect the voting experience. The authors examine the relationship between voters' perceptions of the poll worker job performance and measures of voter confidence. In an ordered logit model, the perception of poll workers is a significant predictor of voter confidence even in the presence of numerous controls. The results suggest that overlooking the recruitment and training of competent poll workers can have a detrimental effect on voter confidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, 13 states had ballot initiatives on whether their state constitutions should include a ban on gay marriage. States with gay marriage ballot propositions, which included the linchpin of Ohio, afforded Republicans the opportunity to raise gay marriage as an issue with an important subset of their base, white evangelical Protestants. We find evidence that white evangelical Protestants had a higher level of mobilization for Bush in states with a gay marriage initiative. However, we also see that secularists were demobilized in these same states, having a lower rate of turnout but not a higher level of support for Kerry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why did Utah voters--most of whom are Mormons--vote in favor of repealing Prohibition in 1933, and against a modest relaxation of Utah's liquor laws in 1968? In answering this question, we illuminate some important facets of the political behavior of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We hypothesize that Mormons are likely to "follow their leaders" on political questions when two conditions hold: (1) official endorsement of a position by LDS church leaders; and (2) internal agreement among those leaders. Each is necessary, but neither is sufficient alone. In 1933, only one of these two conditions held; in 1968 both did. Using ecological inference to generate estimates of individual-level behavior of Mormon and non-Mormon voters in Utah, we find that Mormon voters were significantly more likely to vote in accordance with the Mormon Church's official position in 1968 than in 1933. We further test our hypothesis by examining other referenda in states with a large Mormon population. We conclude with a discussion of when and how contemporary Mormon leaders get involved in political issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians and social activists frequently employ media designed to "change hearts and minds" by humanizing out-groups. These messages, it is assumed, lead to empathic concern, which motivates individuals to reconsider punitive policy attitudes. How effective is this approach? Using two experiments, we find that while media messages humanized Latinos for all respondents, the treatment messages produced the largest empathy response among those with the most positive prior attitudes. A key intended target of the media messages—those with the highest pretreatment antipathy toward the out-group—reported a dramatically lower increase in empathy. In a second study, we show that unpleasant affect from dissonance is one important mechanism driving these differential results. In both studies, treatments designed to provoke increased empathic concern produced little change in policy attitudes. Thus, changing hearts using empathy-inducing media is a complex task, making the ability to change minds elusive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A "tough on crime" attitude has dominated criminal justice policy and practice in the United States since the 1970s. In an effort to understand this rise in punitiveness, scholars have identified racial attitudes and religion as significant predictors of punitive sentiment. However, little or no extant research has examined the potential mediating effect of racial resentment on the relationship between religion and punitive attitudes. Using data from the 2017 Kids' Wellbeing Survey, ordinal and logistic regressions are employed to measure the relationships between religion, racial resentment, and punitive attitudes toward youth criminals. Findings indicate that the effects of religion, particularly Mainline Protestant, Evangelical, and Catholic affiliation, on punitive attitudes toward criminally involved youth is mediated by racial resentment. This suggests that racial resentment plays a significant role in understanding the relationship between religion and punitive sentiments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In studies of voting behavior, racial resentment has consistently been associated with decreased support for black candidates. In this article we bring together a unique collection of observational data and survey experiments to show how, in the certain contexts, exactly the opposite occurs: racially resentful voters prefer to vote for a black candidate over a white competitor. Higher levels of racial resentment do not imply an unyielding opposition to black candidates because such voters respond to partisan and ideological cues about the preferences of black candidates. Because the traditional measure of racial resentment captures more than just racial animus, some black candidates—most notably, Republicans with an individualist message—benefit electorally from higher levels of racial resentment in the electorate. These results highlight the importance of campaign context in shaping how voters respond to racial, partisan, and ideological cues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study uses response latency, the time required for a survey respondent to formulate an answer upon hearing a question, to examine the accessibility of partisan self identifications over the course of a political campaign season. Although the aggregate distribution of partisanship remains fairly stable during the campaign, party identifications become more accessible to individuals with weaker party identifications as the election approaches. Consistent with theoretical expectations, the authors find that partisan orientations are more useful in forming political judgments when those orientations are more accessible to the voter. The effect of partisanship on vote choice is a third greater for voters with highly accessible party identifications than for those with less accessible party identifications. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The experiences in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 demonstrate that the election process can fall short of voters' expectations. In the wake of reforms, such as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, scholars have attempted to identify ways in which the objective conditions in polling places shape citizens' experiences and overall confidence in the electoral system. Early studies reveal that poll workers play a major role in the way voters feel about their voting experience. Using exit poll data on the delivery of service at the polling locations, we study the determinants of reactions to poll workers. We find poll worker evaluations are responsive to wait times, feelings of privacy while voting, poll worker training, and special poll worker recruiting efforts, to name a few. When voters feel good about their interactions with poll workers, they feel better about their voting experience and more confident about the electoral system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we present the results from a large-scale field experiment designed to measure racial discrimination among the American public. We conducted an audit study on the general public--sending correspondence to 250,000 citizens randomly drawn from public voter registration lists. Our within-subjects experimental design tested the public's responsiveness to electronically delivered requests to volunteer their time to help with completing a simple task--taking a survey. We randomized whether the request came from either an ostensibly Black or an ostensibly White sender. We provide evidence that in electronic interactions, on average, the public is less likely to respond to emails from people they believe to be Black (rather than White). Our results give us a snapshot of a subtle form of racial bias that is systemic in the United States. What we term everyday or "paper cut" discrimination is exhibited by all racial/ethnic subgroups--outside of Black people themselves--and is present in all geographic regions in the United States. We benchmark paper cut discrimination among the public to estimates of discrimination among various groups of social elites. We show that discrimination among the public occurs more frequently than discrimination observed among elected officials and discrimination in higher education and themedical sector but simultaneously, less frequently than discrimination in housing and employment contexts. Our results provide a window into the discrimination that Black people in the United States face in day-to-day interactions with their fellow citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The “Stand by Your Ad” (SBYA) provision of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act requires federal candidates to claim responsibility for their advertising content. Using an experimental survey design to show respondents actual campaign ads with and without the SBYA language, we find that SBYA produces no effect on respondents’ levels of trust in candidates or the ads themselves. However, there is a statistically significant effect on respondents’ confidence in the campaign as well as on respondents’ support for the ad's sponsor. In ads sponsored by the presidential candidates, respondents’ reactions to the ads were further filtered through their predispositions toward the candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]