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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 article presents a conference paper on impact of initiative and effect of public opinion on policy in the U.S. The paper used regression analysis indicating that policy in initiative states may or may not be more responsive to public opinion. It states that the citizen initiative is a political institution which allows them to put bills on the ballot and if it receives more then half votes cast it becomes a law.

Are at-large formats for electing city councils inherently discriminatory? This paper briefly reviews the history of the introduction of at-large elections during the Progressive Era. Then it examines the standards under the Federal Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the California Voting Rights Act of 2001 for determining whether or not an at-large election is discriminatory. Finally, the paper analyzes the 2010 Whittier city council elections, finding evidence of racially polarized voting by non-Latino voters, which diluted minority voting power and denied them the ability to elect candidates of their choice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions do losing candidates file complaints about election fraud? And, what can such complaints teach us about the nature and extension of election fraud? This paper investigates a method for measuring electoral fraud by examining a dataset of challenges over unfair elections filed to the Committee on Elections of the United States House of Representatives between 1840 and 1939. Drawing on a general "calculus of petitions" that can help untangle when contests might be filed, we seek to evaluate the extent to which the analysis of election disputes is a useful method for measuring the incidence of election fraud. We also analyze a variety of hypotheses on the over-time and cross-sectional distribution of election disputes. Overall, the paper seeks to use the American historical case to contribute to the growing comparative politics literature on the causes of election fraud in newly democratizing countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides an overview of major findings from our book-length manuscript focusing on the demographic, political and legal determinants of voter turnout in the US, 1972-2008. Using data from the American National Election Studies, 1972-2008, and the Current Population Survey, 1972-2008, we estimate the effects of demographic determinants of the vote--similar to Wolfinger and Rosenstone's analysis--but also consider the political and legal contexts and how they affect who votes and therefore the representativeness of the electorate.The paper would fit into a panel on voter turnout; demographics; electoral laws; issues and political behavior; or representation and American elections. Because we are finishing up the book project during the Fall 2009 semester, we can easily orient the paper to whatever type of panel it fits on. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper advances and improves existing post-election audit sampling methodology. Methods for determining post-election audit sampling have been the subject of extensive recent research. This paper * provides an overview of post-election audit sampling research and compares various approaches to calculating post-election audit sample sizes, focusing on risk-limiting audits,* discusses fundamental concepts common to all risk-limiting post-election audits, presenting new margin error bounds, sampling weights and sampling probabilities that improve upon existing approaches and work for any size audit unit and for single or multi-winner election contests,* provides two new simple formulas for estimating post-election audit sample sizes in cases when detailed data, expertise, or tools are not available,* summarizes four improvedmethods for calculating risk-limiting election audit sample sizes, showing how to apply precise margin error bounds to improve the accuracy and efficacy of existing methods, and* discusses sampling mistakes that reduce post-election audit effectiveness.Adequate post-election audit sampling is crucial because analyzing discrepancies found in too-small samples can determine little except that the sample size is inadequate.This paper is one of three in a series Checking Election Outcome Accuracy. The other two articles discuss post-election auditing procedures and an algorithm for deciding whether to increase the sample or to certify the election outcome in response to any discrepancies found during a post-election audit. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The selection of Sarah Palin by John McCain in the 2008 presidential election was perceived as one of the defining moments in the campaign. Anecdotal evidence from the McCain campaign and media commentary after the election suggests that Palin may have cost McCain support among key voting groups. This paper uses data from the 2008 American National Election Study to examine the extent of any "Palin Effect." The paper also places the findings of 2008 in context by historical comparison of the effect of vice-presidential nominees on vote choice when controlling for other variables using data from the NES Cumulative File. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the comments surrounding partisan polarization in Congress indicate concerns about a government and elected officials that are highly partisan and not responsive to the public. While this may be true of members' voting records, which reflect an increasingly partisan agenda, this paper explores how members have pursued greater bipartisanship in other legislative behaviors. Building on previous work on the divergence of bipartisanship between voting and cosponsorship of House bills, this paper examines member responsiveness to district preferences, again using voting and bill cosponsorship coalitions. I find that although responsiveness to district preferences has declined since the 1970s in vote-based measures of partisan legislative behavior, responsiveness in cosponsorship-based measures has increased. I also explore whether members can benefit electorally from being in-step in cosponsorship patterns even if they are out-of-step in voting patterns. Ultimately, this project helps us better understand the tensions between district and party pressures and speaks to why members support partisan floor agendas despite the risk of being out-of-step with constituents. Moreover, it helps us understand the complex ways in which members can seek to be representative of their constituents. [T]he resulting polarization is worrisome. By reducing the space for bipartisanship, it can condemn Congress to gridlock. By driving elected officials to the fringe while citizens inhabit the center, it can alienate citizens from their government ("A Polarized Nation?" 2004). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do partisan media affect polarization and partisanship? The rise of Fox News, MSNBC, and hyper-partisan outlets online gives this question fresh salience, but in this paper, we argue that the question is actually not new: prior to the broadcast era, newspapers dominated American mass communication. Many of these were identified as supporting one party over the other in their news coverage. While scholars have studied the composition and impact of the partisan press during their 19th-century height, the political impact of the gradual decline of these partisan papers remains relatively under-examined. The unnoted vitality and endurance of partisan newspapers (which constituted a majority of American newspapers until the 1960s) represents a huge hole in our understanding of how parties communicate. As a consequence of this omission, scholars have ignored a potentially vital contributing factor to changing patterns of partisan voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using retrospective voting as a foundation to see how voters reacted in 2008 to an Obama candidacy, this paper aims to look at whether or not voter behavior was profoundly affected by considerations of race. Did the issue of race cause voters to shift from using retrospective voting decisions to new considerations involving race? Or did traditional retrospective voting considerations hold up in 2008? This paper attempts to answer these questions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [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 details the design and implementation of an Election Day field study targeting the operation of polling stations. This pilot study represents the first systematic attempt to determine how common lines are on Election Day, at what times of day lines are most likely to form, bottlenecks in the voting process, and how long it takes an average citizen to cast his or her ballot. We collected data during the 2008 presidential primary election in California measuring the efficiency of the operational components of 30 polling stations across three counties. During the Election Day, voter arrivals peaked twice: in the early morning and the early evening. Our data also suggest that experienced poll workers are not more efficient than first-time poll workers, even controlling for age. We also find that voters who used a DRE machine took a full minute longer to cast their ballot than voters marking paper ballots that were subsequently scanned. This study illustrates the need for further and more extensive data collection about the operation of polling stations. The study also shows how better data can help election officials make critical decisions on the allocation of capital, labor and other resources. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades moderates have steadily declined in Congress. This decline is often seen as an unusual matter, but there were few moderates in Congress from the 1870s until the late 1920s. They emerged in both houses within the Democratic Party, because of a developing split within the party. Southern Democrats were once the base of the party, but found themselves in opposition to the growing Northern wing of the party over cultural issues such as race, immigration and alcohol. These issues split the party and pushed the Southern Democrats into moderate voting records. In later years moderates also emerged within the Republican Party as a result of a split within that party, with the Northeast wing moving from the core to moderate as the party changed. In each case, therefore, the former core of the party shifted to being the moderate wing. The paper will present trends in the presence of moderates overall and by party from 1900-2006, and then review and analyze the type of legislation that created splits and the rise of moderates within each party over time. The paper will explain the emergence of moderates and it will also indicate how internal party conflicts declined, resulting in the decline of moderates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable research has accumulated evidence of voter learning about candidate issue positions during the course of a political campaign. Presidential campaigns present a particularly information-rich environment that makes it easier for voters to learn about candidates and their policy positions. The evidence is less clear as to the extent to which the issue positions of voters influence the decisions they make at the ballot box. Previous research on these two topics, campaign learning and issue voting, has focused on measuring the extent to which such learning or voting occurs, but it has not thoroughly considered heterogeneity in these relationships. Do all voters learn about the same issues and learn about them equally? Do evaluations about issue voting turn on whose issues and which voters are considered? In this paper I will show how the interests of issue publics mediate both campaign learning and issue voting. Specifically, seniors and non-seniors are compared over the course of three campaigns on: 1) The levels and changes in knowledge of candidates' positions on social security over the course of a campaign; and 2) The levels and changes in the correlation between attitudes on this issue and vote choice. This paper utilizes multiple data sources, including the 2008 Associated Press-Yahoo News panel study as well as the rolling cross section and panel components of the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg Election Surveys. The analysis finds that belonging to an issue public, rather than just general political knowledge, explains differences in knowledge and learning about candidate positions. The evidence for heterogeneity of issue voting is more mixed. In both cases, the relationships appear to depend in part upon the contexts of particular campaigns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the assumption has been that voting barriers have been on the decline since the 1960s, this paper examines the effect of a new generation of registration and voting barriersâ??voter ID laws, provisional balloting, etc. Changes in federal law in 1993 and 2002, even while they have increased federal oversight over the voting process, also injected a great deal of new variation in how states and counties administer both registration and voting. Drawing on data from the 2004 Current Population Survey, this paper explores the impact of state-level electoral institutions on voting and registration on the population as a whole as well as on potentially vulnerable populations such as first generation immigrants, blacks, Latinos and Asian-Americans. The paper 1) argues that old barriers to participation haven't entirely faded away and that in fact new barriers, while perhaps not as pernicious as those in the past, continue to appear. 2) indicates that these barriers have real effects on electoral participationâ??and naturalizationâ??particularly for racial and ethnic minorities, linguistic minorities, and immigrants. And 3) makes a case for thinking about these policies as working in conjunction as parts of states' policy 'ecosystems,' such that policies in one arena (like voting) have effects in other arenas (like naturalization). ..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]

Party polarization among members of Congress has been increasing in recent years. While the evidence for this increasing polarization is substantial, the reasons for it have remained elusive. This paper proposes that partisan redistricting is one cause of polarization in the House of Representatives. While this explanation is not new, the theory developed in this paper uses median voter theory to explain how district level polarization can increase, while at the same time national levels of polarization among the voting public do not. Median voter theory provides an explanation of how the composition of voters within partisan redistricted districts incentivize House Members to become more ideologically extreme. Thus, partisan redistricting causes Members to change their behavior within the House in order to appease their more ideologically extreme constituency. A quantitative analysis is performed on Congressional districts using a statistical matching technique designed to demonstrate a statistically significant difference in ideological extremity among those Members within districts that have been gerrymandered as opposed to Members in non-gerrymandered districts. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1982 amendments in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act determined that electoral structural features were significant determinants of minority representation. The research regarding electoral system structure and representation, however, has produced conflicting results. This paper seeks to address two puzzles that remain in understanding black representation. The first puzzle examines the impact of at-large elections on African American representation. The second puzzle examines the quality of representation in different electoral structures; at-large and single member districts. Quality in this sense is defined as African-American representatives' ability to generate higher levels of benefits for the African-American community (more administrative and teaching positions for African Americans). This paper first provides a formal argument that explains the connection between electoral structures and representation for African Americans. It then moves to an empirical study using the 1800 largest school districts in the United States (based on an original survey conducted in 2001). In addition to explaining these puzzles, this paper includes how region (North and South) affects representation for African Americans in different electoral structures. It also shows how Democratic competitive states and Republican dominant states are the underlying explanation of these regional differences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The brief tenure of Ambassador John Bolton as the United States’ Ambassador to the United Nations drew significant criticism from a range of lay people, experts, and practitioners. An underlying assumption of this criticism must be that individual diplomats have a significant effect on outcomes at the UN. This paper, part of a larger project examining the impact of individuals on diplomacy at the UN, will be a quantitative analysis of voting records in the UN General Assembly under President's George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, and George Bush, including an analysis of how each of their ambassadors voted. This paper is part of a larger work looking at how different US presidents and ambassadors have interacted at the United Nations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper assesses the extent to which Democrats and Republicans disagree over policy in the U.S. Congress. No one disputes that the parties are increasingly voting differently from one another, but this papers calls into question the popular conception that the parties' policy stances are also becoming more divergent. An examination of cosponsorship reveals that bills, prior to being placed in the meat grinder of the legislative process, are as bipartisan now as they have always been. Furthermore, I present evidence that shows that it is the actual procedural machinations on the floor of both the House and the Senate that have driven the parties apart. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Though the debate pro and con over the initiative process has many aspects, the question at the heart of the debate is majoritarianism. This paper--which is unfinished and in progress--attempts to place the debate over initiatives against a background of theoretical discussion on the subject of majority rule. A preliminary section considers a variety of claims that the initiative is not really a majoritarian process, but rejects them. The rest of the paper in its present form, deals with mid-20th century theorist Willmoore Kendall. Early in his career he was a "self-confessed" defender of "absolute majority rule." Later, he developed a more nuanced position. Later versions will also consider Elaine Spitz, whose "Majority Rule" in the 1980s examined how majorities are formed. It is not expected that the paper, when completed, will dramatically influence the debate over direct democracy, but it may help show how the issues in that debate match with more general debates over majority rule. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Of the 500,000 elections that occur in the US, the most frequent and most local are the least understood. Voting behavior in school board elections is a prime example. Despite the fact school boards are one of the longest running forms of citizen governance in the U.S., we know very little what motivates citizens to vote in school board elections and to chose among candidates. This exploratory paper relies on data generated from observations and focus group interviews to further investigate this topic. We begin this paper by reviewing alternative theoretical works that might speak to these elections and how individuals vote in them. That review suggests a limited number of theoretical treatments that might be useful. Those theories are explored through focus groups of individuals who voted in a recent school election. We conclude that friends and neighbor voting was far and away the most compelling for focus group participants. Capture theory and dissatisfaction theories were potentially useful, but require a long-term view (not the snap-shot view provided from focus group interviews). There was little evidence to support partisan voting theories (partisanship is difficult to discern), retrospective voting theories (because participants were not very sophisticated at getting school performance information) or single issue voting (maybe explained by lack of controversy in county we did focus groups). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do non-policy valence advantages that incumbent members of Congress possess affect spatial position-taking? Are legislators who deliver substantial amounts of federal largesse more likely to diverge from their constituency medians? Are legislators who are perceived as more competent than their opponents more likely to diverge from the preferences of their constituents? I argue and empirically demonstrate that valence advantages such as the distribution of "pork" projects and legislator competence allow incumbent legislators to deviate from the policy preferences of their constituents (in some instances). Formal valence theories of position-taking are examined in this paper, and I argue for an expansive definition of valence advantages that includes both valence policies and non-policy valence characteristics. I show that valence advantages sometimes cause legislators to converge to their constituents' preferences and to sometimes diverge. I test the expectations of valence theories of congressional position-taking by examining an example of a valence issue (distributive policy) and a valence characteristic (an incumbent's perceived competence relative to his or her challenger). These empirical tests are conducted with original data on senators' divergence from their states' median voters during the 104th-107th Congresses (1995-2002). One key contribution of this paper is the creation of ideal point estimates of legislators and constituency medians on a common scale using Bayesian MCMC ideal point estimation techniques (similar to the popular NOMINATE scores, though unlike NOMINATE, these scores include measures of constituents and senators). The findings are that valence theories of position-taking are demonstrated when examining incumbent divergence from the constituency median. In sum, senators with no valence advantage diverge from their constituents; senators with small valence advantages move closer to their constituents; and senators with large valence advantages are able to deviate far off of their constituents' preferences. The implications of these results are that senators who deliver very large amounts of federal outlays to a state or senators perceived as very competent relative to their campaign challengers are able to vote closer to their own personal preferences than to their constituents' preferences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the reigning conception of party change in America. Whether dressed as realignment theory, politics in "political time," or merely empirical analysis with little theoretical superstructure, this idea asserts that presidents are the agents of party development. Further, we can recognize change only after a major on-year electoral shift (1800, 1828, 1860, 1896, 1932). I show this view to be theoretically naive and historically inaccurate.More than simple critique, I offer an alternative model. Forming a new party is fundamentally an exercise in coalition building. For a variety of reasons, regimes develop opposition. Yet these malcontents do not inevitably form a new party. Instead, this group (often heterogeneous) must negotiate its disagreements and raise an organizational structure. Both, I argue, are done in Congress. Regional elections - by state and single-member district - allow opposition members to win office with local appeals. Once in office, legislators must solve the basic dilemma of social choice: molding their manifold complaints against the incumbent into a single (perhaps coherent) platform. This might be simply a matter of logrolling, in which case leaders can "buy" cooperation from wavering members. Likewise, rule change can rivet a coalition together (Reed's Rules) or pull one apart in hopes of establishing something new (the revolt against Speaker Cannon). The most important party-building work comes before the newly-minted opposition wins its first presidential election.After outlining its theory, the paper goes on to offer several illustrative cases. Given the limitations of a conference paper, these are exploratory, not actual tests of my approach. We see that activities in Congress, forging a coalition prior to contesting presidential elections, mark important changes in the 19th Century party system. "Jeffersonian" Republicanism, "Jacksonian" Democracy, along with the Whig and Republican parties, all spent years building durable legislative coalitions before winning the presidency. Recent developments follow a similar logic. Moreover, third-party movements fail when reaching for the White House without gaining a legislative foothold (Free Soil, Liberal Republican, Populist, Progressive, Socialist, and others).As the paper will show, when considering changes in the nature of the American party system, we must lend Congress a central role. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory of seat change in U.S. House elections. The theory contends, in short, that a substantial part of the impact of national electoral forces on seat change acts indirectly through the intervening variable of challenger quality. District and aggregate level models of challenger quality are estimated using a new database of House challengers. Jacobson's district level model is estimated using pooled data from the 1946-2002 elections. Krasno and Green's district level model and a revised version of their model are estimated for each of the 1946-2002 elections. Jacobson's aggregate level models of relative challenger quality are estimated using data from the 1946-2002 elections. A new aggregate level model of challenger quality is developed in this paper. The overall performance of the new model as measured by explained variance is comparatively greater than for earlier models. The impact of national forces on challenger quality is moderate at best. A new seat change model including challenger quality as a causal variable is introduced and estimated for the 1954-2002 elections. Estimates of this model demonstrate that challenger quality is an important cause of seat change. In addition, the impact of both national and district electoral forces on seat change, acting through the intervening variable of challenger quality, is estimated using data from the 1954-2002 elections. The indirect impact of national forces on seat change is moderate. Finally, an alternative measure of challenger quality constructed from data originally gathered in order to construct Krasno and Green's measure of challenger quality is substituted for Jacobson's traditional measure. The substitution improves the overall performance of the new aggregate level model of challenger quality presented here, but the additional gain in the performance is small. In conclusion, the analysis presented here provides empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory. However, the theory has limited explanatory power. The impact of national forces on seat change acting through challenger quality is not large enough to account for much of the observed seat change that occurs from one election to the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The challenges in isolating the substantive conflict in American politics as it actually moves the mass public are truly daunting. Two such challenges dominate all others, however. First, it is necessary to have consistent measures of the main domains of policy conflict across the postwar years, itself a demanding challenge. But second, it is necessary to combine these into a consistent issue structure across that same period, else good individual measures will mislead as much as they help, by masking and distorting the mix of available policy concerns. This paper builds on previous APSA papers aimed at eliciting this issue structure, and moves on to its impact on voting behavior from 1952 through 2000. A set of measures for the policy domains of social welfare, foreign affairs, civil rights, and cultural values are developed, with much confirmation of an existing literature specialized to these domains, plus some twists that arrive with the ability to address them in an extended time-frame. These individual measures are then combined into a more comprehensive picture, an ?issue structure?, so that their influence within a richer issue context can be examined. What results is a picture of postwar American politics at the mass level, confirmed in many familiar ways but, we hope, nuanced in many others and actually disconfirmed in a few. Said differently, what results is a picture of social welfare as the dominating issue concern in this politics among the general public, with foreign affairs as an important?and frequently cross-cutting?secondary concern. Civil rights changes its partisan direction as the postwar years pass. And cultural values does the same, while exploding to prominence in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does the allocation of ?pork? projects to constituents affect legislative position-taking? Are legislators who deliver substantial amounts of federal largesse more likely to diverge from their campaign opponents and from their constituency medians? Three competing, though overlapping, literatures are examined in this paper: valence theories of position-taking, trust theories of position-taking, and marginality theories of position-taking. These three literatures lead to competing predictions in terms of the extent that legislators deviate from their constituencies and diverge from their campaign opponents given the extent of valence advantages available to incumbents. Examples of valence advantages are numerous (e.g., charisma, constituency service), though we measure an incumbent?s valence advantage as the extent of federal project outlays distributed to a legislator?s constituency. The marginality hypothesis suggests a linear and negative relationship between project allocations and legislator deviation from the district. The trust hypothesis also suggests a linear relationship, though in a positive direction. The valence hypothesis suggests a nonlinear relationship, where increased levels of project allocations at first lead to more legislator convergence toward the median, but eventually lead to more legislator divergence from the median. These competing expectations are tested by examining candidate convergence data from the 1996 U.S. House elections and data on senator divergence from their states? median voters during the 104th-107th Congresses. One key contribution of this paper is the creation of ideal point estimates of legislators and constituency medians on a common scale using MCMC ideal point estimation techniques. The findings are that valence theories are demonstrated when examining incumbent divergence from the constituency median, though these theories are not demonstrated when examining candidate divergence from one another. In addition, we also find that the extent of project outlays (though not deviation from the constituency median) is related to the margin of victory for legislators. The deviation from the constituency median, and not the extent of project outlays, is directly related to the likelihood of winning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we challenge convention wisdom that bemoans the perceived deterioration of the presidential election information environment in the U.S. We begin by acknowledging the much lamented decline in both news quality and news viewership, but argue that the rise in paid political advertising has served as a substitute information source for many Americans. As a consequence, presidential voting decisions are as firmly based on the candidates’ policy stances and personal characteristics today as they were 50 years ago. Moreover (and also contrary to conventional wisdom) the shift toward paid advertising as an information source has led to an increase in the extent to which Americans draw upon policy-related as opposed to character-related considerations in making their presidential vote decisions. The proposed paper will be our first presentation of findings form this ongoing project. Our analyses combine three kinds of data: measures of the public’s knowledge and perceptions of presidential candidates from the National Election Studies, records of political advertising by media market from the CMAG data, and our own coding of presidential election news coverage, candidate speeches, and paid advertising. To date, our analyses show that (1) the total number of reasons Americans offer to vote for or against the major party candidates (their candidate likes and dislikes) as been remarkably steady over the pat 50 years; (2) there is a slight trend toward more policy-oriented and less character-oriented likes and dislikes; (3) the variation from election to election in the ratio of policy- to character-oriented likes and dislikes tracks quite closely with the ratio of policy- to character-oriented content in candidates’ paid advertising but not with the ratio of policy- to character-oriented content in news coverage of the elections; and (4) NES respondents living in media markets with more presidential campaign advertising offer more policy-oriented likes and dislikes than those living in media markets with less advertising (net of education, partisan identification, etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, judicial scholars have recognized the significance of strategic, or outcome-prediction, voting in the US Supreme Court’s certiorari process (Caldeira, Wright, and Zorn 1999; Benesh, Brenner, and Spaeth 1998). However, the traditional strategic model has left both theoretical and empirical gaps in the study of justices? individual cert voting. This paper evaluates the existence of conformity voting in justices’ cert votes by examining votes cast on the Vinson, Warren, and Burger Courts, 1944-1986. First, I discuss three empirical problems with our current understanding of justices cert voting. Second, I propose a formal model of individual certiorari voting (the Public-Private Game) to solve the three problems. Finally, I present empirical support for the formal model. Using a binary logistic regression, this paper finds an effect that appears to be conformity voting, but is best explained as a pooling strategy resulting from a signaling game among justices during cert voting. These findings suggest that the our understanding of individual cert voting should be further scrutinized by game theory models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper revisits some old propositions of pluralist theories and the Columbia school about the impact of ‘cross-pressure’ on political attitudes and behavior that, following some discouraging test results, largely vanished from scholarly works since the early seventies. Cross-pressure means that some individuals, like socially conservative trade union members in the United States, are pulled in opposite partisan directions because of their different characteristics. In their most generalized form the relevant hypothesis suggests that the more conflicting are the ways the various attributes of citizens pull them towards one party or another, the more disengaged they become, reducing cognitive and affective involvement with politics as well as participation. The paper scrutinizes the micro-logic of the proposition, points out that cross-pressure on citizens may be one of the mechanisms underlying the freezing effect of cleavages postulated by Lipset and Rokkan (1967), develops a greatly improved measure of cross-pressure, and subjects the hypothesis to a far more comprehensive test than those attempted before. The empirical analysis finds some support for the hypothesis using worldwide cross-sectional data on various forms of political participation from the World Values Study. However, not all forms of participation are affected to the same extent, and there are also signs of some significant cross-national variations. The cross-national differences can, however, be linked to survey sample and political system characteristics in ways that are consistent with the original hypothesis. Interestingly, it is the conflicting electoral influence of different value orientations that seems to be the truly consequential source of cross-pressure, and not the conflicting influence of two or more socio-demographic characteristics on party preference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is the real structure of substantive conflict in American politics during the postwar years? Is it even possible to talk about an ‘issue structure’, about ongoing policy conflict within continuing policy alignments, at the mass and not just the elite level? If so, what is the structure of substantive conflict characterizing the mass politics of our time? How do policy issues cluster, and nest, in the practical environment for mass politics? And how does such an issue structure relate to (and shape) electoral conflict? Has this relationship remained essentially constant over the last half-century, the period when public opinion data are most widely available, or are there major break-points, and when did these occur? The search for a continuing structure characterizing public preferences on policy conflicts across the postwar period is the principal challenge of this paper. To that end, consistent measures of public preference in four major issue domains–welfare policy, foreign policy, race policy, and social policy–are sought, developed, and analyzed. A theoretical grounding is derived from the literature on postwar political history. An exploratory analysis applies this theoretical grounding to the American National Elections Studies, 1948-2000. A confirmatory analysis is applied to these exploratory findings, as informed by the literature on public opinion in specific issue domains, which provides a further set of independently testable propositions. And the result is an ongoing issue structure. The application of this structure to voting behavior in presidential elections is then the main secondary task of the paper, yielding what is in effect a pure politics of public policy. In this, social welfare proves to have been the leading policy concern of American voters across the postwar period. But international relations was normally present and often important, while civil rights and cultural values made occasional but still noteworthy contributions. From one side, social welfare also had the most consistent impact. From the other, it was nevertheless international relations that divided the postwar years into coherent periods. By contrast, the domain of civil rights and the domain of cultural values, along with one of the two key aspects of foreign policy–foreign engagement, the continuum from isolationism to internationalism–all changed the actual direction of their partisan impact from the immediate postwar period to the modern era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The singular act of a Member of Congress placing a roll call vote in the US House, either yea or nay, occurred over five and a half million times from the 80th to 100th Congress. Using a dataset that links a large variety of exogenous factors to each of those acts of voting, this paper seeks to identify the development of ‘inter-party partisanship’ (how opposed are the Democrats and Republicans to one another?) and ‘intra-party’ partisanship, (how cohesively do members of the same party vote together?). The first section of this paper examines the scope of roll call voting in the post war US House, detailing the number, distribution, and variety of roll call votes held in that period. Following that, the second section examines methods that can be used to identify inter-party partisanship, including updated uses of Lowell and Rice measures. In addition, party and vote are correlated for each roll call vote to create another measure of inter-party partisanship - one that is explored by Clausen roll call topics. The paper goes on to examine intra-party partisanship by looking at predictors of partisan defection. Using a variety of methods culminating in a comprehensive Logit model, we are able to parse out many of the causal predictors of defection - roll call characteristics, member characteristics, constituency characteristics, and electoral marginality. We find that while no magic bullet exists that can overwhelmingly account for variance in the probability of a member defecting, several patterns emerge that indicate the large role roll call characteristics and member characteristics have in predicting defection. Please email me (after 15 October) at danielsinger@comcast.net for full paper [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses several kinds of evidence concerning the role of voters’ policy-related views in shaping their choices in 2002 for the House of Representatives. Most of the evidence presented is based on a new national survey conducted by Indiana University devoted to voters’ information and opinions about Congress, but selected results are also compared with similar kinds of evidence based on the National Election Studies (NES) 2002 survey. Initial findings include: (a) a large combined influence for voters’ views about current policy-related conflicts; (b) an even larger role for policy-related views in shaping voters’ evaluations of the President and other national leaders; (c) identification of specific policy-related conflicts which appeared to have an independent influence on vote choice; and (d) a dramatic increase in the apparent influence of policy-related views in districts that had more competitive races or challengers that spent enough money to provide a visible alternative. The paper concludes by reviewing leading challenges to the validity of these kinds of conclusions, and suggests the kinds of changes that must be made in future surveys to provide more decisive answers to address those kinds of challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Voting Rights Act is best known for the political impact it has had for African Americans in the South, but it has also been used by other minorities, including American Indians. This paper reports on the 35 cases identified, following a summary of the Voting Rights Act and of patterns of discrimination against American Indians. Drawing on Charles Epp’s concept of a legal support structure, the paper examines the support structure for voting rights cases on behalf of American Indians. It finds that Native American organizations are not the predominant litigators in the field; the Voting Rights Project of the ACLU and the Voting Rights Section of the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice are. The groups are compared and the emergence noted of the Mountain States Legal Foundation in support of the defendant jurisdictions. The paper concludes with the striking success of American Indian plaintiffs to date, but notes that political empowerment requires candidate and voter mobilization to turn legal victories into political victories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the politics of noncitizen voting in the United States. It is not widely known that noncitizens currently vote in local elections in Chicago, New York City and in five municipalities in Maryland; or that over the past decade campaigns to expand the franchise to noncitizens have been launched in at least a dozen other jurisdictions from coast to coast. These practices have their roots in another little known fact: for most of the country’s history–from the founding until the 1920s–noncitizens voted in at least twenty two states and federal territories and held public office such as alderman, coroner, and school board member. This paper presents arguments for (and against) noncitizen voting rights, and examines some of the contemporary political organizations and actors who fought for and won (or lost) campaigns to reinstate noncitizen voting. The paper explores recent campaigns that successfully reestablished noncitizen voting, that are currently underway, and other campaigns that failed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the preferences of major political factions are likely to influence policy choice on security issues, the origins of these preferences remains unclear compared to those on foreign economic policy. This paper examines efforts to explain preferences on security issues using data on congressional roll call voting. A large body of quantitative research in this area concludes that ideology drives these preferences, and that constituency economic interests have little or no effect. Unfortunately, this literature conceives of economic interests in an unrealistically narrow way, and does not consider the possibility that these interests may shape the ideology of members of congress. Using data on Senate voting on foreign policy from 1947 through 2000, this paper presents evidence that Senators’ home states’ stake in the international economic order, as well as their stake in military spending, played an important role in shaping foreign and defense policy. Although liberal-conservative "ideology" also matters, its effects are more consistent with an interest-based vote trading arrangement than with a coherent set of ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of the IEA Civic Education Study has been to examine in a comparative framework the political socialization of adolescents as they prepare to undertake their roles as citizens in democracies. Approximately 90,000 students from the modal grade for 14-year-olds from nationally representative samples in twenty-eight countries were tested during 1999. This paper focuses on the predictors of four different types of political engagement: electoral, partisan, volunteer, and protest. The potentially influential factors to be examined are knowledge of democracy and skills in interpreting information, sense of trust in government related institutions, several aspects of the schools (perceptions of curriculum, sense of efficacy developed in the school culture, perceived encouragement of discussion in the classroom, and current participation in organizations). The countries included in this presentation include Australia, England, Greece, Norway, and the United States. The theoretical base for the paper is Wenger’s work on communities of practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pursuit of the issue evolution of postwar American politics, and especially of its influence on the presidential vote, this paper asks what that influence would have looked like in a ?pure policy world?, that is, an environment in which policy preferences were the only influences on voting behavior. The paper begins with an exploratory consideration of postwar NES surveys by way of principal component (factor) analysis, seeking consistent and continuing measures of public preferences in four great policy realms: social welfare, international relations, civil rights, and cultural values. It moves to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) of the resulting measures?AMOS is the specific program used here?testing them both within and across domains. And it constructs the vote itself in a parallel manner, so that vote analysis can proceed by means of structural equation modeling. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]