Search

In today's competitive information environment, clicks are the currency of the digital media landscape. Clickbait journalism attempts to entice attention with provocative and sensational headlines, but what are the implications when public opinion polls are the hook? Does the use of survey clickbait—news stories that make misleading claims about public opinion—have implications for perceptions of the public, journalists, or the polling industry? In two survey experiments conducted in the United States, we find that exposure to apolitical survey clickbait that makes exaggerated claims about the incompetence of the American public undermines perceptions of their capacity for democratic citizenship. At the same time, we find no evidence that this type of survey clickbait damages the reputations of the media or polling industry, suggesting that the media may have perverse incentives to use low-quality polls or to misrepresent polling results to drive traffic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social media are an increasingly important communication tool in political campaigns, yet there is much to learn about how communication effects might differ for these platforms. In contrast to traditional media outlets, messengers often do not fully control their message on social media; rather, the audience often receive the candidate message along with comments and reactions, commonly uncivil ones. Using a survey experiment, we examine the persuasion implications of audience comments on candidate tweets. We find that commentary on tweets becomes part of the communicated message, with mostly positive comments offering a slight persuasive boost, and mostly negative comments offering a larger negative effect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the political implications of domestic migration to the American South? Using the American National Election Studies, we track the changing dynamic of party identification and presidential voting among white southern in-migrants and natives. Although it was once thought southern in-migration from the rest of the country contributed to Republican ascendancy in the region, we find that is no longer true. In the 1970s and 1980s, white migrants to the South were more Republican than natives. Today, white southern in-migrants are more likely to affiliate with the Democratic Party and vote Democratic, suggesting population change could ultimately shift the partisan balance in the region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time of vote decision research has shaped our understanding of the nature and influence of campaigns. Traditionally, time of decision has been viewed primarily as a reflection of individual-level characteristics, especially political interest or attentiveness. We use eight waves of panel survey data to evaluate how campaign context interacts with attentiveness to affect time of decision in the 2008 US presidential election. Our data show that less politically interested respondents living in locations where campaigning was most intense made up their minds earlier than those living elsewhere, but there is no such difference among the most interested. Rather than time of decision simply constraining campaign effects, these results suggest that campaigns structure the time of decision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has cast doubt on the potential for various electoral reforms to increase voter turnout. In this article, we examine the effectiveness of preregistration laws, which allow young citizens to register before being eligible to vote. We use two empirical approaches to evaluate the impact of preregistration on youth turnout. First, we implement difference-in-difference and lag models to bracket the causal effect of preregistration implementation using the 2000-2012 Current Population Survey. Second, focusing on the state of Florida, we leverage a discontinuity based on date of birth to estimate the effect of increased preregistration exposure on the turnout of young registrants. In both approaches, we find preregistration increases voter turnout, with equal effectiveness for various subgroups in the electorate. More broadly, observed patterns suggest that campaign context and supporting institutions may help to determine when and if electoral reforms are effective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The received wisdom in the scholarly literature on the US Supreme Court is that the perceived legitimacy of the institution is largely independent of the Court's policy output. Legitimacy is thought to be rooted in more stable factors, such as support for democratic values, and thus to be immune from ideological discontent with any particular decision. While recent research has demonstrated a general association between political predispositions and legitimacy, questions remain about the extent to which the specific decisions of the Court might shape legitimacy judgments in the mass public. In this paper, we examine the relationship between ideology, political sophistication, and evaluations of Supreme Court legitimacy in the aftermath of the recent decision on the Affordable Care Act. Our findings suggest a substantial role for Court policymaking in shaping perceptions of legitimacy in the mass public, but the nature of the relationship is conditional on political sophistication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public opinion polls have long played an important role in the study and conduct of elections. In this essay, I outline the evolution of polling as used for three different functions in U.S. presidential elections: forecasting election outcomes, understanding voter behavior, and planning campaign strategy. Since the introduction of scientific polling in the 1936 election, technology has altered the way polls are used by the media, public, candidates, and scholars. Today, polls and surveys remain vital to electoral behavior and our understanding of it, but they are being increasingly supplemented or replaced by alternate measures and methods. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act highlights the extent of party polarization in Washington. While the partisan divide on this issue is stark among political elites, it is less clear how the mass electorate has responded to this divisive conflict. In this article we examine individual-level dynamics in health care attitudes between 2008 and 2010. We find partisan attachments and self-interests strongly predict change in health care attitudes, with Republicans growing more opposed to universal health insurance between 2008 and 2010, and those personally worried about medical expenses less likely to abandon support. We find, however, that the effect of partisanship is moderated by self-interest, with strong Republicans significantly less likely to switch to opposition if they were personally worried about medical expenses. Finally, we find that health care policy preferences, already tinged with racial attitudes in 2008, became increasingly so by 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

: In this paper, we leverage a 10-wave election panel to examine the relative and dynamic effects of voter evaluations of Bush, Palin, Biden, McCain, and Obama in the 2008 presidential election. We show that the effects of these political figures on vote choice evolves through the campaign, with the predictive effects of President Bush declining after the nominees are known, and the effects of the candidates (and Palin), increasing towards Election Day. In evaluating the relative effects of these political figures on individual-level changes in vote choice during the fall campaign, we also find that evaluations of the candidates and Sarah Palin dwarf that of President Bush. Our results suggest a Bayesian model of voter decision making in which retrospective evaluations of the previous administration might provide a starting point for assessing the candidates, but prospective evaluations based on information learned during the campaign helps voters to update their candidate preference. Finally, we estimate the “Palin effect,” based on individual-level changes in favorability towards the vice-presidential nominee, and conclude that her campaign performance cost McCain just under 2% of the final vote share. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

During the 2008 presidential campaign, journalists and pundits debated the electoral consequences of the prolonged and hard-fought nomination contest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Previous research, typically using aggregate vote returns, has concluded that divisive primaries negatively impact the electoral prospects of the winning candidate. It is thought that supporters of the losing candidate are less likely to vote and more likely to defect because of psychological disaffection, or “sour grapes.” Using a new panel dataset that traces individual candidate preferences during the primary and general election campaigns, we are able to explicitly examine individual-level decision making in the general election conditioned on voting behavior in the primary. Although “sour grapes” had a modest effect on eventual support for the party nominee, fundamental political considerations—especially attitudes on the War in Iraq—were far better predictors of the vote decision among thwarted voters. Moreover, we find that supporters of losing Democratic candidates were far more likely to vote for Obama if they lived in a battleground state. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The 2008 American presidential contest occurred amidst economic conditions unlike any seen in decades. Media assessments have often attributed Barack Obama's victory to the faltering economy, particularly the financial crisis that erupted just seven weeks before election day. In this article we assess the role of the economy and other political issues on vote choice, and find that the impact of the economic crisis is more nuanced than is often assumed. We find that while the economy did matter for the general election, so too did social issues. More interestingly, the collapse itself seemed to have only a minor impact because so many people had already made up their minds before the collapse. Finally, we show that while Obama benefited from the economy in the general election, it may have actually worked against him in the primary phase of the contest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the increasingly polarized nature of American politics, renewed attention has been focused on the ideological nature of the mass public. Using Bayesian Item Response Theory (IRT), we examine the contemporary contours of policy attitudes as they relate to ideological identity and we consider the implications for the way scholars conceptualize, measure, and use political ideology in empirical research. Although political rhetoric today is clearly organized by a single ideological dimension, we find that the belief systems of the mass public remain multidimensional, with many in the electorate holding liberal preferences on one dimension and conservative preferences on another. These cross-pressured individuals tend to self-identify as moderate (or say “Don't Know”) in response to the standard liberal-conservative scale, thereby jeopardizing the validity of this commonly used measure. Our analysis further shows that failing to account for the multidimensional nature of ideological preferences can produce inaccurate predictions about the voting behavior of the American public. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The authors examine the dynamics of public opinion formation and change around a sitting president and their implications for reelection contests. Because of the biases inherent in information processing and the information environment, two distinct, but simultaneous, effects of citizen learning during a presidential term are expected. For those with prior opinions of the president, learning contributes to more polarized evaluations of the president. For those initially uncertain about the president, learning contributes to opinion formation about the president. Because the gap in uncertainty generally favors the incumbent over a lesser-known challenger, races with an incumbent presidential candidate are typically marked, perhaps paradoxically, by both a polarization of public opinion and an incumbency advantage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The South has undergone dramatic changes in population, economics, and partisanship in recent decades, leading scholars to conclude that the New South has lost many of its unique patterns of voting behavior. Using an extensive data set that contains sufficient sample sizes for regional comparisons, we estimate an interactive model of vote choice in the 2000 presidential election to compare the decision making of Southern and non-Southern respondents. We find that the voting calculus of Southern voters remains distinct, particularly for those struggling with cross-pressures between ideology and party identification. These findings have theoretical implications for general models of presidential voting behavior and practical relevance for understanding election outcomes and the future of party politics in the South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Minor party candidates are quite common in modern democratic elections, but we know relatively little about the decision-making process of minor-party supporters. An extensive panel dataset is used to examine the individual-level dynamics of Nader support in the United States during the 2000 presidential election campaign. A multinomial logit model is estimated to analyse the factors related to a Nader supporter's decision to switch support to Gore. to switch support to Bush or to remain loyal to Nader from one interview to the next. The Nader supporters most likely to switch to a major-party candidate were the most politically aware, partisans, those concerned about policy outcomes and respondents in competitive states. Nader supporters were also more likely to abandon the candidate at the ballot box rather than earlier in the campaign. These findings challenge existing expectations about campaign dynamics and appear to reflect strategic calculations on the part of Nader supporters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do citizens respond to campaign events? We explore this question with a unique repeated measures survey design, fielded during the 2000 presidential campaign. We model transitions in support for the major party candidates following the party conventions and presidential debates. In the aggregate, Gore support increases following the conventions (but not the debates), while Bush support increases with the debates (but not the conventions). But there is considerable microlevel variation in the data: responsiveness to campaign events is greatest among Independents, undecided voters, and "mismatched partisans," but exactly how these groups respond differs for each event. Moreover, attitudes toward then President Clinton mediate the effect of the campaign events on voter preferences. Two primary conclusions follow: (1) rich data sets are required to observe the effects of campaign events; (2) the influence of campaign events on vote choice is conditional on previous preferences, partisan dispositions, and political context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do anonymous online conversations between people with different political views exacerbate or mitigate partisan polarization? We created a mobile chat platform to study the impact of such discussions. Our study recruited Republicans and Democrats in the United States to complete a survey about their political views. We later randomized them into treatment conditions where they were offered financial incentives to use our platform to discuss a contentious policy issue with an opposing partisan. We found that people who engage in anonymous cross-party conversations about political topics exhibit substantial decreases in polarization compared with a placebo group that wrote an essay using the same conversation prompts. Moreover, these depolarizing effects were correlated with the civility of dialogue between study participants. Our findings demonstrate the potential for well-designed social media platforms to mitigate political polarization and underscore the need for a flexible platform for scientific research on social media., (© 2023. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Limited.)

There is widespread concern that Russia and other countries have launched social-media campaigns designed to increase political divisions in the United States. Though a growing number of studies analyze the strategy of such campaigns, it is not yet known how these efforts shaped the political attitudes and behaviors of Americans. We study this question using longitudinal data that describe the attitudes and online behaviors of 1,239 Republican and Democratic Twitter users from late 2017 merged with nonpublic data about the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) from Twitter. Using Bayesian regression tree models, we find no evidence that interaction with IRA accounts substantially impacted 6 distinctive measures of political attitudes and behaviors over a 1-mo period. We also find that interaction with IRA accounts were most common among respondents with strong ideological homophily within their Twitter network, high interest in politics, and high frequency of Twitter usage. Together, these findings suggest that Russian trolls might have failed to sow discord because they mostly interacted with those who were already highly polarized. We conclude by discussing several important limitations of our study-especially our inability to determine whether IRA accounts influenced the 2016 presidential election-as well as its implications for future research on social media influence campaigns, political polarization, and computational social science., Competing Interests: The authors declare no competing interest., (Copyright © 2020 the Author(s). Published by PNAS.)

Objectives: The National Sleep Foundation (NSF) sought to test, refine, and add statistical rigor to its previously described provisional Sleep Satisfaction Tool (SST). The tool assesses the general population's sleep satisfaction., Design: In 2017, NSF created a provisional tool through systematic literature review and an expert consensus panel process. This tool was expanded, refined, and tested through an open-ended survey, 2 rounds of cognitive testing, and a national survey of a random sample of Internet users (aged 18-90). Factor analysis and final consensus panel voting produced the robust SST., Results: The exploratory, open-ended surveying for identifying additional factors important to the public led to question formulation around mind relaxation. Cognitive testing yielded significant refinement to question and response option formatting. Factor analysis of questions from field testing indicated loading on one construct identified as "sleep satisfaction." The final 9-item SST demonstrated strong reliability and internal validity with overall SST scores of 56/100 (higher scores indicating greater sleep satisfaction). Individual SST item mean scores ranged from 39 to 66, and overall SST scores varied substantially across demographic groups., Conclusions: NSF used a series of development and validation tests on its provisional SST, producing a novel and reliable research tool that measures the general population's sleep satisfaction. The SST is a short, reliable, nonclinical assessment that expands the set of tools available to researchers that implements the individual, social, and environmental factors related to sleep satisfaction. Further research will explore refined scoring methods along with factor weighting and use within different populations., (Copyright © 2018 National Sleep Foundation. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)