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•Travel distances to polling locations can be significant costs to voters.•Voters do not travel the same distances and therefore some voters absorb higher costs.•Party identification is key factor in distances traveled.•Optimal polling locations that reduce travel costs for all can be achieved.

Education is a powerful cognitive resource that undermines the persuasiveness of political propaganda. However, little is known about the conditions that weaken this resource. This study examines whether lopsided media coverage preceding and during the initial phases of the Iraq War provided an information environment sufficient to overcome the positive effects of education, finding that for viewers of the unbalanced and partial CBS and Fox, the educated were as likely to be misinformed about Iraq as the uneducated. Findings are discussed within the context of persuasion theory and the watchdog role of the news media.

Provides information on a study that examined the effects of Kids Voting USA on voter turnout in the 1996 presidential election in Kansas. Methodology of the study; Results and discussion on the study.

This article examines the extent to which a change in the information environment affected opinion of a recent gun safety ballot initiative in Washington. Through content analysis of newspaper stories and documentation of expenditures of competing interests, the authors are able to detect a discernable shift in the information environment during the final weeks of the campaign. Support for the initiative dropped appreciably concurrent with this shift. The authors are able to show that the altered information context (a) generated the greatest change among the most politically aware respondents and (b) sustained this effect within specific partisan classifications. Although previous research investigates analogous behavioral dynamics in a variety of political settings, this analysis differs in application to ballot initiative campaigns. The authors discuss the implications of their findings in terms of direct democracy campaigns and conclude that influence of competing interests are central to the nature and outcome of the election.

This article modifies an earlier study by Bond and Fleisher that employed regression analysis to predict House members' support of Bush in 1989. The sample frame used in that investigation (1959-1974) to produce estimates is found to be inappropriate, and consequently, an alternative sample is offered. Drawing support from the larger literature on Congress that documents significant institutional change since the reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, as well as a variety of empirical data, a case is made for substituting an updated sample, one that better reflects the conditions that affect presidential support in the late 1980s. The differences in model parameters and predicted scores that result from this substitution are striking and clearly challenge previous findings. More generally, these results illustrate House dynamics and suggest that an accurate assessment of presidential success hinges critically on proper specification of the congressional context.