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While the link between religion and politics in the U.S. has been heavily researched, the idea of religion as a voting cue in congressional elections warrants attention. This paper expands on the idea that religion can act as a voting cue signaling voters to cast their ballot for a candidate who shares their religious affiliation. Specifically, this paper answers the question of whether individuals vote for a congressional candidate who shares their religion. Data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) 2008 post-election survey, as well as data on candidate religion from Project Vote Smart's candidate biography dataset and the 2008 Almanac of American Politics, are used to gauge the extent to which religion acts as a voting cue in U.S. House elections. This paper finds that there is indeed a relationship between the major religious group of voters and the major religious group of House candidates. In other words, this paper suggests that there is a link between voter religion and vote choice, which gives insight into both voter behavior and the link between religion and politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The central topic of this paper is the measurement of one variable, civic duty. This variable has become a mainstay in empirical research on individual voting behavior since the 1960s and it is one of the chief explanatory saviors of the rational choice model of voting. Nevertheless, the measurement of civic duty on the American National Elections Study is prima facie substandard. Question wording is one concern, as a number of scholars have demonstrated that seemingly small changes in question wording can have large effects on the answers individuals provide and the conclusions scholars draw. My primary concern is measurement validity, commonly defined as "whether a variable measures what it is supposed to measure" (King, Keohane, and Verba 1994). In survey research, the question is the instrument through which we measure a concept; if the wording is unclear, biased, or just plain bad, then any research that uses that indicator will also be flawed.In the paper, I will explain the controversies surrounding question wording and measurement validity; I will examine the existing body of work on civic duty; and I will empirical evaluate the validity of survey instruments that use different measures of civic duty in the United States and the United Kingdom. Possible explanations for the results, recommendations for further analysis, and the implications of these findings for research on voting behavior will also be discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses data from the National Election Study to examine the impact, or lack thereof, of religious preferences in the last four U.S. presidential elections. Using multinomial logistic regression, the paper looks for the influence of religion, in terms of specific preferences as well as attendance, on presidential vote choice as well as stated preferences on individual issues as diverse as abortion rights, same-sex marriage, environmental preservation, foreign intervention, and social welfare spending. Additionally, the paper explores interactions between religious preferences and demographic characteristics such as race, gender, and age. Finally, the paper examines the relative predictive values of the traditional categorization of religion by sect and the contemporary culture war hypothesis put forth by Morris Fiorina and others, which emphasizes the importance of religiosity in determining political behavior. Specifically, I argue that the influence of the evangelical vote may be overstated by media and scholars alike. The paper concludes by suggesting that the increased importance of foreign policy in presidential elections has resulted in a decline in the influence of religion and religiously-based social preferences on voting behavior at the national level. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of the gender gap in American politics, there is still much debate about the source of this disparity in party identification and vote choice. For example, it is unclear whether campaigns have a role in affecting the size of the gender gap. In this paper, we examine how the issue-focus of Senate campaigns influences the size of the gender gap in those contests. We argue that the gender gap will be larger in elections where women?s issues are more central to the campaign and smaller when women?s issues are not as salient. Our analysis combines exit polls with data on campaign advertising in 24 Senate campaigns to examine the relationship between campaigns and the gender gap. We find that, even when controlling for partisanship, gender is a significant factor in affecting vote choice when women?s issues are more prevalent in campaign advertising. Thus, campaigns can affect the size of the gender gap by focusing more on the issues that tend to produce that gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper does two things. First, we document the extent to which misreport persists across the past two decades of major academic voting surveys in the United States. Second, we assess whether the split population, or partial observability, model, which has recently gained prominence, provides a possible estimation-based "fix" for vote choice models that rely on survey data in which there is clear evidence of over-report for the winner. We consider both simulated data and data from the 1992 NES and SES for in-depth analysis. Especially in regards to those data that are available for past elections, estimation-based strategies likely provide the only feasible, albeit less than optimal, response in terms of addressing bias in vote choice models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides information on a research paper by researchers Philip Klinkner and Jesse Stinebring of the Hamilton College, Clinton, New York which analyses the impact of the race of U.S. President Barack Obama on the outcome of the 2008 election. It also examines the impact of Obama's massive spending advantage in boosting his vote beyond that predicted by election models employing standard political and economic variables.

*Abstract: In their article, "The Conditional Nature of Presidential Responsiveness to Public Opinion," Canes-Wrone, Brandice, and Shotts (2004) argue that when the next election is soon, the president tend to alter policy decisions in response to public opinion in order to increase presidential approval ratings. It implies that presidential approval ratings may have an impact on elections. The implication has made me raise the following questions: If presidential approval may have an impact on voter choice, how it works? In other words, which voters are likely to consider it and why? In this paper, I will try to answer the questions by examining the relationship between presidential approval and vote choice in presidential primaries. Specifically, I will examine the 2004 Democratic presidential nomination campaigns to see how presidential approval can affect the voting behavior of the opposition party supporters. I expect that presidential approval can be more influential to the opposition party supporters who are dissatisfied with the incumbent candidate than the others. They will be more likely to support "electable" candidates, who seem to have more chance to defeat the incumbent candidate in November, since defeating the incumbent candidate in November is the most important in making their vote decisions.* Hypothesis: The more the opposition party supporters are dissatisfied with the incumbent candidate on the other side, the more they are likely to support "electable" candidates of their party.* Data: National Election Pool Democratic Presidential Preference Primary Exit Polls, 2004, made available by ICPSR (Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A sizable literature has demonstrated the importance of social networks for both electoral decision-making (e.g., Huckfeldt and Sprague 1995) and political participation (e.g., Mutz 2002). However, the question of how networks operate over time has been largely unexamined. Do voters discuss politics with the same individuals during a general election as during a primary? Moreover, how do the characteristics of an individual's network - in terms of density, composition, and the content of political discussion - change over time? And what are the potential behavioral consequences of such changes (or non-changes)?I address these questions using an original longitudinal study following a group of Franklin County, Ohio Republican primary voters. The sample of voters was first surveyed in the summer of 2006 after the gubernatorial primary; the follow-up survey was conducted in late 2006 after the general election. Given that both the original survey and the general election follow-up were specially designed to tap the frequency, content, structure, and context of interpersonal political discussion, the data are particularly appropriate for answering the questions posed. This paper makes several contributions to the study of voting behavior and public opinion. The county-wide network panel study is among the first to examine voters' social networks over time and across multiple electoral contexts, and therefore provides a first look at how people's social circles react to political developments. By thinking temporally about social influence, this paper provides a better understanding of how social channels enable (or inhibit) information flow and mobilization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federalism manifests itself distinctly in the administration of elections, as the Constitution and historical practice leave this largely in the hands of the states. Consequently, voters across state and even local jurisdictions are likely to have different experiences at the polls. Based on a collection of data about the election features of states and counties in the 2008 election, we examine the impact of state party traditions on what voters encounter, including the frequency of partisan vs. non-partisan elections, the number of ballot propositions, ballot layout, opportunities to use convenience voting options, and other election characteristics. We find that the characteristics of a state's election system vary by the contours of its party system. Furthermore, individual attitudes about the voting process and toward political parties also differ by the kind of party system in the state. We also find that these attitudes are partially mediated by election characteristics, at least for independents. We thus demonstrate the enduring impact of states' political traditions, some aspects of which originated a century or more ago, on the conduct and administration of contemporary electoral systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent scholarship has shown that states holding a temporary seat on the United Nations Security Council receive higher levels of aid from the United States. This has led to the question: are states being bribed for their votes? The results from the existing literature support an affirmative answer to this question. Using recently available data on votes in the UN Security Council, I unpack a bit further the mechanism that underlies this empirical observation and explore in greater detail how the US employs its persuasive powers. My results only partially confirm the results of these previous studies. In particular, I find that the US does use financial incentives to persuade states to vote with them on the Security Council. However, the US does not generally punish states for their voting behavior. These results suggest one or both of the following: 1) the US is not actually bribing countries for particular votes, but rather buying goodwill; 2) implied threats from the US are strong enough that it rarely has to punish anyone. These findings add greater nuance to the current understanding of vote-buying as a tool of persuasion within international organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In previous work, I examine the effects of race on the perception of candidate ideologies in U.S. House elections. I find, for example, that white voters tend to perceive black candidates to be more liberal than ideologically identical white candidates. The proposed paper will extend this line of research and explore how the influence of race on the perception of candidate ideologies affects the voting decisions that citizens make. In analyzing ten years of American National Election Studies survey data combined with Poole-Rosenthal DW-Nominate scores and data on the race of candidates, I will contribute to a literature that has heretofore been largely experimental in nature. While experiments have been valuable in demonstrating the importance of race in the evaluation of candidate ideologies, my research design is less susceptible to social desirability bias, and I am better able to estimate importance of race relative to factors such as party identification in complex, real-world campaigns where information about candidates is transmitted in many ways and over a long period of time. Additionally, in using a simultaneous equations approach to model vote choice, I hope to isolate "simple prejudice," where voters simply refuse to vote for candidates of other races, from the more complex phenomenon of race impacting vote choice by being used as a cue in the evaluation of candidate ideologies. This research has ramifications for the quality of representation in the United States, the study of voting behavior, and the study of race and politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ideal point estimates are one of the most commonly used measures in studies of the U.S. Congress. While much has been written about the overall accuracy of measures such as NOMINATE, relatively little has been said about when these measures yield incorrect predictions of member voting behavior. Ideal point estimates derived from legislative roll-calls suggest that most voting behavior in the U.S. Congress can be understood by a one or two dimensional space. Perhaps the most convincing evidence of this point is that one-dimension correctly predicts over 80% of all votes over the last 60 years and over 90% in the last decade (Poole and Rosenthal 2007). While the relatively small number of misclassified votes is central to arguments about the low dimensionality of roll call voting in Congress, much of the information contained in these errors remains untapped. In this paper we focus on member level misclassification rates measured by the failure of ideal point estimates to predict actual votes. Conventional wisdom would suggest that high misclassification rates are associated with "maverick" members of the House and Senate. We move beyond this conception and consider a number of potential explanations (e.g. constituency pressures, realignment, the changing agenda, and responsibility within the chamber) for member misclassifications among representatives and senators over time. By understanding what NOMINATE scaling procedures fail to predict, we can get a better idea of what the first two dimensions truly capture about members of Congress beyond a maverick tendency. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Legislative activity in the states demonstrates that the issue of felon disenfranchisement is rising on the public agenda both within and outside Southern states. An estimated 3.9 million citizens, or one out of every fifty adults, has lost the right to vote because of a felony conviction and it is widely acknowledged that felon disenfranchisement has a clear disproportionate impact on the African American population (Fellner and Mauer 1998). Felon disenfranchisement policies may also have affected the outcome of past elections (Uggen and Manza 2002). Historic practices vary widely across the states (Mauer and Kansel 2005, M. Colgate Love 2005), and recent legislative efforts across the states diverge in content and approach as well. In this paper, we draw upon theories of agenda setting to explore factors that are shaping the felon disenfranchisement debate and which may provide an indication of the potential for significant policy change regarding the franchise. Agenda setting theory suggests that interest groups, state and citizen ideology, political context, state resources, and administrative infrastructure influence the ability of issues to reach the public agenda. We use cross-sectional time series to analyze the attempts of state legislatures in the fifty states to restore the franchise to convicted felons from 2001 through 2005. Findings demonstrate that interest groups, political context and administrative reforms are significant influences on attempts to restore voting rights, when controlling for regional effects. Specific administrative structures and state environments receptive to administrative reform may represent an avenue for policy change across the states. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some observers have argued that the Democratic Party is making a strategic mistake by not appealing to American voters with progressive religious language. Could such a strategy be beneficial for the Democrats? In this paper, I examine the partisan leanings and recent voting behavior of individuals at the mass level who might be counted as potential allies of a resurgent Protestant left. Despite the existence of a meaningful network of elite-level organizations, the extent to which people at the mass level might identify with a Protestant left is unclear. Who might support a Protestant left within the mass public, and what are their personal political priorities? Using available data sources, including the National Election Studies and the General Social Survey, I explore how we might tease potential Protestant left identifiers out of the general population. Is there a potentially unified mass base for a resurgent Protestant left? We know that mainline Protestants have been leaning in a more Democratic direction in recent election years. Is it the case that mass-level Protestant left identifiers could be ripe for an electoral realignment of the sort that transformed evangelical Protestants in the 1980s? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does district competitiveness cause members of Congress to change their rollcall voting behavior? Ansolabehere et al. (2001) find that congressional races where the candidates fought tough primaries tend are less polarized than if both candidates won uncompetitive primaries. However, Burden (2004) shows the exact opposite: competitive primaries drive Republican and Democratic candidates further apart on the ideological spectrum. Thus, the effect of primary competitiveness on ideological extremism is still misunderstood. With general election competitiveness, there is a larger consensus showing that competitiveness has a moderating effect on candidate ideology.Whereas prior research treats competitiveness in these two electoral settings as separate entities, we model "district competitiveness" as the product of primary and general election competitiveness. We hypothesize that competitive primaries absent competitive general elections will push candidates away from the middle. Similarly, competitive general elections absent competitive primaries should pull candidates towards the middle. Most interesting theoretically are those cases in which a) neither primary nor general election is competitive, or b) both primary and general election are competitive. We intend to show that the dynamics underlying district competitiveness are more complicated than previously shown and might explain the discrepancies in the literature. We further expect open and closed primaries to pull candidates in different directions.We analyze election data from 1990-2004 and examine every congressional race during that time period in a selected number of states. Our paper should be of particular interest to those who argue that uncompetitive elections are a primary cause of polarization in Congress. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Common knowledge states that a lack of voter confidence in the overall membership of Congress should result in a decline in voter support for the voter's particular incumbent. However, little empirical evidence has been offered to support this assertion. Therefore, this paper examines this idea more closely by answering the question: What effect does voter confidence in the overall membership of Congress have on the electoral success of individual House incumbents? In doing so, constituent confidence in the entire membership of Congress is placed in models of electoral success alongside measures of individual incumbent quality to determine their relative effects. Incumbent electoral success at different stages of the electoral process is operationalized using four measures of electoral success: running unopposed in the primary election, the proportion of the vote received in the primary election, challenger spending in the general election, and the proportion of the vote received in the general election. In this preliminary study, only four southern states are under analysis: Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee. Using one logit regression and three separate ordinary least square regressions, it is found that in elections from 1986 to 2002, both individual incumbent quality and constituent confidence in Congress were significant in determining the overall electoral success of House incumbents. However, the major effect of each of these determinants occurred at different stages of the electoral process. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on a study related to the role of voting in election which helps in establishing stability of political party in the U.S. It informs about the explanation of Michigan model in order to address concern towards party identification. It reports that identification of political party majorily correlated with vote choice and this increases its stability with age.

In recent decades, a majority of states have instituted some form of early or convenience voting, whether in person or through the mail. With availability of these options, the cost to citizens of participating in elections has invariably declined, which would lead us to expect that turnout should therefore increase. It is still not clear, however, whether the expansion of the opportunity to vote has actually increased participation, and if so, for whom. Using 2004 American National Elections Studies data, as well as information about the activities of the Bush and Kerry campaigns in each state, we examine whether the institution of these alternatives does in fact increase the chances that an individual will turn out to vote in presidential elections, either directly or in combination with activities of the campaigns. Overall, we find no main effect for the availability of any form of early or convenience voting on the probability that an individual will vote. We do, however, find that in person early voting, when combined with television advertising by the campaigns, can increase the chances that individuals who are otherwise least likely to vote will take part in the election. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the impact of the limited vote/limited nomination system in the U.S. It has been observed that the system being used in Connecticut improves the role of the local party caucus while minimizing the role of the voter in the selection of representatives. In the democratic process, the structure of a government's electoral system plays a significant role. The choice of electoral systems for legislatures at all levels of government support the single-member plurality (SMP) districts.

In Chen and Niou's 2005 article "Term Limits as a Response to Incumbency Advantage," they argue that even if term limits do not potentially cause much partisan change, they are likely to produce legislators that are closer to the median voters in their districts than in situations where term limits do not apply. I aim to provide an empirical test of their hypothesis, and perhaps even broach a test of the whole theory behind term limits. Louisiana just completed its first election cycle with term limits in place, in some cases with legislators of over 30 years experience being forced out of their current offices. Term limits theory argues deviance occurs between long-term representatives and districts. If both these theories are correct, limited legislators' replacements ought to vote differently than they, and perhaps even from incumbents not yet subject to term limits. For the past few years I have complied voting scorecards for members of the Louisiana Legislature. These data could be used to the theory behind term limits is correct. And if the other theory is correct, then scorecards will pick up that replacements will vote differently. Scorecards comparing old members to new can pick up aggregate change to suggest that one or both of these theories are not empirically verified. Without going into too much detail, a number of other things can be investigated to filter other effects, such as registration and 2008 voting in national elections can to establish baseline district preferences, as well as longitudinal comparisons. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social science researchers have found that factors such as political preference, media coverage, age, and income are important determinants of attitudes toward the environment. Many of these researchers are in disagreement over the theoretical bases for these factors, as well as their impact and direction. In addition, in testing the impact of these variables, direct expression of preference through voting is rarely used; instead, researchers rely on survey data, elite behavior, experiments and other sources. Our study attempts to reconcile varying fields and findings through the use of initiative data from U.S. states. Using county-level data, we test the core theoretical propositions found in the social science research against initiative returns in multiple elections across various states. This study provides a strong empirical foundation for current environmental policy debates, while exploring possible new horizons for correlates of actual political commitment to the environment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the elimination of the regularly occurring legislative sessions that convened after the November congressional elections with the ratification of the Twentieth Amendment in 1933, Congress still occasional meets in a lame duck session. In fact, such sessions are becoming commonplace, with the convening of post-election sessions in 5 of the last 6 congresses. These sessions are comprised of a mix of members who will return to serve in the subsequent congress and of lame ducks: defeated members and retirees. As a result, lame duck sessions would seem to differ significantly from the regular sessions that met prior to the elections. Past opponents of the lame duck sessions argued departing members showed dramatic changes in their voting behavior as a result of the severed linkages with constituents. Lame ducks, it was claimed, sought to p! lacate interests other than those they represented. If that is the case, we might expect to find noticeable differences across regular and lame duck sessions in the effectiveness of party leaders to craft an agenda and to keep their fellow partisans in the fold to support that agenda. We analyze roll call behavior and party cohesion across sessions to answer two questions. First, whether departing members make notable changes in their voting behavior in their days in office. Second, we seek to determine whether the nature of party pressures and party leadership changes in lame duck sessions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2004, election turnout rates in the United States and Canada started to converge, in part due to an increase in interest which led to higher turnout in the United States, and in part due to a generational-induced decline in turnout in Canada. Based on the theory that higher rates of participation are commonly associated with lower socioeconomic bias in participation (Lijphart, APSR 1997), I will use National Election Studies data from both countries to examine whether the recent changes in turnout levels have resulted in lower turnout bias in the United States and higher turnout bias in Canada (using standard SES variables). Possible partisan consequences will be discussed. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]