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The aim of this research is to investigate how ethnicity and political parties' mobilization efforts influence the voting preferences of migrants in electoral contexts. To achieve this, an empirical study was conducted, focusing on New Zealand's two major parties (New Zealand National and New Zealand Labour Party) and their mobilization practice targeting ethnic Chinese voters. This research adopted a mixed‐methods approach, involving conducting interviews with Chinese community leaders and surveys within the community. The quantitative findings establish a positive correlation between a party's mobilization efforts and the level of support from Chinese ethnic voters. Furthermore, the research underscores the importance of genuine targeting, emphasizing the recognition and addressing of the unique needs and concerns of ethnic minority communities, rather than engaging in mere tokenism. Related Articles: Escaleras, Monica, Dukhong Kim, and Kevin M. Wagner. 2019. "You Are Who You Think You Are: Linked Fate and Vote Choices among Latino Voters." Politics & Policy 47(5): 902–30. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12329. McKay, Spencer. 2021. "The Politics of Referendum Rules: Evidence from New Zealand (1893–2016)." Politics & Policy 50(1): 137–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12445. Stokes‐Brown, Atiya Kai. 2009. "The Hidden Politics of Identity: Racial Self‐Identification and Latino Political Engagement." Politics & Policy 37(6): 1281–305. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747‐1346.2009.00220.x. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Party identification is an important predictor of voting preference, but because a growing percentage of voters do not express any party identification, alternative ways to anticipate voting preferences are required. Partisan slants in voters' media consumption might offer a relevant proxy. With method triangulation, the current study explores whether media consumption prior to elections can predict voting preferences among independents. Depending on the media outlets adopted by voters and their partisan skew, as detected by Bert machine learning models, the authors calculate an overall partisan slant for each voter's political information consumption. Data from a nationwide panel survey conducted in Taiwan affirm that their media diet "color" in 2019 can predict independent voters' choices in 2020. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This introduction to the special issue first describes the cumbersome process of forming the fourth and final Merkel government. Both coalition partners experienced severe electoral losses in 2017 and were not particularly close to one another programmatically. This made the formation of a new coalition difficult. Next, the to-do-list is discussed. It turns out that, as a response to the Fridays-for-Future protests, voters considered climate change to be the most important problem in 2019, while the Corona pandemic dominated the agenda from early 2020. Interestingly, none of the coalition parties 'owned' either of these issues and this could have made policy-making even more intricate. In the third part, we summarise the policy profile of the fourth Merkel government, based mostly on the contributions to this special issue. It turns out that the policies of the fourth Merkel government mirrored those of its predecessor. In the socio-economic dimension a gentle de-liberalisation continued, while the policies on the social dimension followed a moderately liberal path. In the final section, the plan of the special issue is outlined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do voters form accurate expectations about the strength of political candidates in constituency elections if there are no reliable constituency polls available? We argue that voters can use national election polls and past election results to increase the accuracy of their expectations. A survey experiment during the German federal election of 2021 confirms that the provision of national election polls and past results increases the accuracy of voters' expectations. The analysis further shows that voters leverage the information to update their beliefs. The results have relevant implications for debates about belief formation in low-information environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One strategy in defence of compulsory voting is based on what I call the non-instrumental value of high turnout: the idea that almost-universal participation in elections is valuable per se. This article argues that we do not have democratic reasons to value compelled turnout. First, thanks to an original analysis of the practice of voting, I identify three constitutive rules that make the physical acts of marking and casting a ballot count as proper voting. This preliminary analysis serves to illuminate the fact that the act of voting has democratic value if it is performed in a free and reason-responsive way. Second, I identify political equality and popular control as democratic values that high turnout expresses. Finally, the article rejects the non-instrumental case for compulsory voting because it cannot ensure that people vote in a reason-responsive way and, if they do not, high turnout lacks democratic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since Converse's paper, opinion constraint has been defined as the degree to which voters hold ideologically consistent opinions across different issues. Yet, scholars have found that opinions departing from the liberal/conservative categories constitute alternative ways of organizing political preferences. This suggests a methodological dilemma: how can we assess the consistency of opinions based on empirical, rather than theoretically predefined, criteria? This article proposes measuring constraint as the extent to which citizens' policy preferences resemble those of their most preferred political parties (a top-down approach). To do so, it relies on data from the 2019 European Election Studies and the 2019 Chapel Hill Expert Survey. Analyses show that a top-down measure of opinion constraint correlates weakly with pre-existing measures of this concept (discriminant validation). Findings also suggest that well-established hypotheses about the predictors and effects of constraint are confirmed when using the top-down measure (nomological validation). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion is on the decline in the United States. Americans increasingly report low religiosity, have less attachment to religion, and a rapidly growing number identify as nonreligious. In Congress, the story is different. While a quarter of the public identifies as nonreligious, only one member of Congress does. Why are the nonreligious vastly underrepresented in government? I use a conjoint candidate choice experiment to causally link religious voters' bias against nonreligious candidates to reduced support for them in electoral settings. I demonstrate that bias against the nonreligious affects electoral decisions and is causally linked to the exclusion of the nonreligious from government. Furthermore, I show that nonreligious voters only exhibit in-group support for candidates who explicitly identify as Atheists, not agnostic or candidates that merely lack a religious identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Administering elections is costly, requiring considerable resourcing. The extent to which election administration is funded can reveal government priorities towards democratic rights and affects every potential voter. Yet, little is known of this crucial aspect of public administration, in any type of democracy. This research innovates by seeking to establish overall levels of variation in public funding of election administration in a national general election, and by applying this to the local level to investigate whether socio-economic, administrative or political factors are more important as drivers of costs. The article deploys a unique dataset which integrates rare government election administration budgeting data, with Census and political data to provide an exploratory analysis from a British general election. It finds that key production costs of voting infrastructure appear to drive funding. While socio-economic and political aspects have less of an impact, levels of ethnic minority voters and regional effects also appear important determinants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The purposes of this article are to (1) detail the extent to which the Republican Party personalized in the period from Donald Trump's first becoming a presidential candidate through 2022 and the process by which it occurred, (2) suggest plausible explanatory factors, and (3) speculate as to possible consequences. Methods: The authors employ this special issue's common conceptual framework and glean evidence from a broad accumulation of reportage and expert impressions from professional journalists. Results and conclusion: It is found that "Trumpization" invaded all aspects of the Grand Old Party, with de‐institutionalization encompassing both de‐routinization and value‐displacement affecting all faces of the party: as organization, in elective office, and in the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1832 Reform Act and the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act reconfigured political representation in English towns from a 'franchise' system (based on rights of corporate freedom) to a property-based ratepaying electorate. This shift also undermined the rights of freemen to urban common lands and resources, which were linked to pre-existing forms of representation. This issue links directly to debates in economic history about use-rights and the preservation of common-pool resources (CPRs). Supporters of Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom argue that such common resources could be preserved because this was the most rational economic choice facing their users. Critics have asserted that the fate of such economic resources was dictated by the historically contingent social, economic and political forces within them, not abstract economic rationality. This article assesses these arguments through a micro-study of the commons in the Yorkshire borough of Beverley between 1835 and 1870. New legislation ensured that these lands were managed in line with Ostrom's principles of transparency and accountability. Despite this, they became entangled in wholesale, organised political corruption, exposed by a detailed Parliamentary enquiry in 1868. The article investigates this contradiction to explore how far 'institutions' could remain autonomous within a highly contested political 'space'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an influential recent study, Broockman and Skovron (2018) found that American politicians consistently overestimate the conservativeness of their constituents on a host of issues. Whether this conservative bias in politicians' perceptions of public opinion is a uniquely American phenomenon is an open question with broad implications for the quality and nature of democratic representation. We investigate it in four democracies: Belgium, Canada, Germany, and Switzerland. Despite these countries having political systems that differ greatly, we document a strong and persistent conservative bias held by a majority of the 866 representatives interviewed. Our findings highlight the conservative bias in elites' perception of public opinion as a widespread regularity and point toward a pressing need for further research on its sources and impacts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Under what conditions did newly enfranchised women turn out to vote at levels approaching men? This question is important because if women's turnout lagged behind men's, politicians' incentives to advocate for women's interests could remain weak even after suffrage. I argue that women's turnout approached parity with men's in localities with strong incentives to vote and to mobilize among the general population. This is because women faced barriers to voting and were, therefore, more likely to vote and be mobilized under the most favorable circumstances. I then propose that electoral competition determines the strength of voting and mobilization incentives and, therefore, the gender turnout gap. Using sex-separated turnout data in Norway, I demonstrate that the gap narrows in high-turnout competitive districts in systems with single-member districts and in high-turnout within-district strongholds in proportional systems. I probe generalizability of my findings in New Zealand, Austria, and Sweden. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Democratic governments sometimes use violence against their people, yet little is known about the electoral consequences of these events. Studying South Africa's Marikana massacre, we document how a new opposition party formed as a direct result of violence, quantify significant electoral losses for the incumbent, and show that those losses were driven by voters switching from the incumbent to the new party. Three lessons emerge. First, incumbents who preside over state violence may be held electorally accountable by voters. Second, such accountability seemingly depends on the existence of credible opposition parties that can serve as a vector for disaffected voters. Where such parties do not exist, violence may create political cleavages that facilitate the formalization of opposition movements. Third, immediate proximity to violence is correlated with holding incumbents accountable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates over racial voting, and over policies to combat vote dilution, turn on the extent to which groups' voting preferences differ and vary across geography. We present the first study of racial voting patterns in every congressional district (CD) in the United States. Using large-sample surveys combined with aggregate demographic and election data, we find that national-level differences across racial groups explain 60% of the variation in district-level voting patterns, whereas geography explains 30%. Black voters consistently choose Democratic candidates across districts, whereas Hispanic and white voters' preferences vary considerably across geography. Districts with the highest racial polarization are concentrated in the parts of the South and Midwest. Importantly, multiracial coalitions have become the norm: in most CDs, the winning majority requires support from non-white voters. In arriving at these conclusions, we make methodological innovations that improve the precision and accuracy when modeling sparse survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We show that a common method of predicting individuals' race in administrative records, Bayesian Improved Surname Geocoding (BISG), produces misclassification errors that are strongly correlated with demographic and socioeconomic factors. In addition to the high error rates for some racial subgroups, the misclassification rates are correlated with the political and economic characteristics of a voter's neighborhood. Racial and ethnic minorities who live in wealthy, highly educated, and politically active areas are most likely to be misclassified as white by BISG. Inferences about the relationship between sociodemographic factors and political outcomes, like voting, are likely to be biased in models using BISG to infer race. We develop an improved method in which the BISG estimates are incorporated into a machine learning model that accounts for class imbalance and incorporates individual and neighborhood characteristics. Our model decreases the misclassification rates among non-white individuals, in some cases by as much as 50%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article analyzes belief systems in a novel way, modeling relational patterns of policy disagreements using nonmetric multidimensional scaling. Because of its flexible assumptions, the approach enables us to conduct a notably harder test of the "low-dimensionality" hypothesis than is found in previous work. The results support the proposition that a basic space (consisting of a small number of interwoven issue domains) anchors the policy dimension of public opinion. Among our findings, we show that voters—especially those meeting a minimum threshold of political sophistication—neither lack meaningful attitudes nor hold distinct preferences across a wide range of issues. Rather, their policy attitudes are organized alongside relevant core values and affective evaluations in a common, low-dimensional cognitive space. A unidimensional approximation of these belief structures often exhausts the explanatory power of vote choice models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advocates of the instant-runoff voting system (IRV) often argue that it is less susceptible to strategic voting than plurality. Is this true? More generally, how should we define and measure a voting system's susceptibility to strategic voting? Previous research in this area is unsatisfying, partly because it ignores the uncertainty voters face when they vote; we introduce a better approach. We find that, when beliefs are precise and other voters are expected to vote sincerely, more voters would benefit from voting strategically in IRV than in plurality (contrary to what advocates suggest). The anticipated benefit for these voters is small, however, and for the average voter the benefit of taking strategy into account is many times larger in plurality than IRV—especially when beliefs are imprecise or voters expect other voters to behave strategically. The methods we introduce can be used to study other properties of voting systems when voters are strategic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do voters tolerate undemocratic behavior by politicians with whom they share partisanship or policy preferences? I answer this question employing conjoint experiments in the United States, the United Kingdom, the Czech Republic, Mexico, and South Korea. Theoretically, I distinguish between a hypothesis based on social psychological partisan attachments and Downsian hypotheses based on spatial policy preferences. In all five countries, I find that partisanship does not suppress the negative effects of undemocratic behavior on voting intentions, whereas policy agreement between voters and candidates even increases punishment of undemocratic behavior. However, partisanship has much stronger direct influences on voting intentions than policy agreement and especially undemocratic behavior. The findings suggest that voters have a harder time setting aside their partisan attachments than their policy preferences for democracy. But most importantly, citizens are not completely blinded by either partisanship or policy agreement when facing undemocratic politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2015 and 2017, the Internet Research Agency (IRA) – a Kremlin-backed "troll farm" based in St. Petersburg – executed a propaganda campaign on Twitter to target US voters. Scholarship has expended relatively little effort to study the role of Islamophobia in the IRA's propaganda campaign. Following critical disinformation research, this article demonstrates that Islamophobia, affect, and white identity played a crucial role in the IRA's targeting of right-wing US voters. With an official release of tweets and associated visual content from Twitter, we use topic modeling and visual analysis to explore both how, and to what extent, the IRA used Islamophobia in its propaganda. To do so, we develop a multimodal distant reading technique to study how the IRA aligned users with contemporary far right social movements by deploying racial and emotional appeals that center on narrating a transnational white identity under threat from Islam and Muslims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Financial regulation is often adopted in the wake of scandals and crises. Yet political science has little to say about the political effects of corporate scandals. We break that silence, asking whether exposure to news coverage of bank scandals changes the preferences of voters for financial regulation. Drawing from the literatures on media influence and public opinion, we argue that news coverage of bank scandals should increase voters' appetite for regulation. We test our hypothesis with data from six countries, using original nationally representative panel surveys with embedded experiments (total N = 27,673). Our pooled and country‐specific analyses largely support our expectation that exposure to news coverage of scandals increases regulatory preferences. We reproduce this finding in a separate survey wave, using different scandals than in our original analysis. These results contribute to studies on media influence on public opinion, the political significance of scandals, and the political economy of regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Quantifying the value that legislators give to reelection relative to policy is crucial to understanding electoral accountability. We estimate the preferences for office and policy of members of the U.S. Senate, using a structural approach that exploits variation in polls, position‐taking, and advertising throughout the electoral cycle. We then combine these preference estimates with estimates of the electoral effectiveness of policy moderation and political advertising to quantify electoral accountability in competitive and uncompetitive elections. We find that senators differ markedly in the value they give to securing office relative to policy gains: While over a fourth of senators are highly ideological, a sizable number of senators are willing to make relatively large policy concessions to attain electoral gains. Nevertheless, electoral accountability is only moderate on average, due to the relatively low impact of changes in senators' policy stance on voter support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the political consequences of rising household debt in the context of fiscal austerity? I argue that cuts in welfare benefits privatize social obligations as voters address ensuing financial shortfalls by borrowing money. Debt re‐commodifies individuals and shifts their electoral support from incumbents to opposition and anti‐establishment parties by provoking feelings of political neglect, economic vulnerability, and strong emotional responses. I examine this argument by leveraging spatial and temporal variation in the rollout of Universal Credit (UC), a large‐scale welfare reform in the United Kingdom. Using fine‐grained administrative data on unsecured debt, I demonstrate that fiscal austerity generated an increase in indebtedness, which lowered support for the incumbent Conservatives and strengthened support for Labour and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). I then use individual‐level survey data to explore the mechanisms that link debt and political behavior. The results suggest that rising indebtedness increases the political costs of welfare retrenchment and creates new political cleavages. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

TikTok is known for its lighthearted dance and lip-synch videos, yet videos with the hashtag #politics have garnered nearly 14 billion views. Does young adults' politically oriented expression on TikTok lead to increased civic engagement offline? TikTok helps incorporate young adults into political social networks that may encourage additional civic activity. In addition, the playful, humorous nature of TikTok-based political expression encourages young adults to develop participatory, political selves. Using data from a 2020 survey of Americans between 18 and 25 years old, we find that posting political videos on TikTok connects with higher offline civic engagement. The results suggest that playful political expression is an important feature for promoting young adult civic engagement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do party positions influence voters' attitudes toward the economic and political aspects of globalization? Initially an issue following a left-right dimension of conflict, globalization increasingly divides mainstream from nonmainstream parties. In this study, I argue that parties help citizens form opinions on globalization issues. I then use data on voters' attitudes and party positions on globalization to test this supply-side theory of globalization attitudes on both economic and political dimensions. Holding demand-side factors such as economic self-interest and predispositions/values constant, I find that party positions strongly affect voters' views on economic and political globalization, with the effect being similar to that of education. Moreover, I find that the effect of cues from left- and right-populist parties is much more negative than that of mainstream parties, replicating previous elite-level findings on the positioning of these party families. Finally, green party cues show conflicting results for the economic and political dimensions, with green cues affecting voters negatively on economic globalization but positively on political globalization. The findings in this study call for a deeper exploration of the supply-side determinants of globalization attitudes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses Claire Jean Kim's book, "Bitter Fruit," which examines the racial tensions between black and Korean Americans in New York City during the 1990s. The book introduces the concept of "racial triangulation" to analyze the relationships between these two groups and emphasizes the importance of local and national political processes in shaping racial populations. However, the article points out some limitations of the book, such as its under-examination of violence in constructing black identities and its lack of focus on political economy. Overall, "Bitter Fruit" provides a valuable analysis of black-Korean conflict and challenges prevailing intellectual forces within political science. [Extracted from the article]

This paper examines the relationship between the rise of populist support and increasing rates of abstention in European democracies. Empirical studies have shown that populist parties are gaining traction among voters, while abstention rates are also on the rise, particularly among “temporary” abstentionists who refrain from voting due to situational factors. We delve into this matter by utilising an original survey on a representative sample of the Portuguese population conducted in 2020. The findings suggest that there are similarities between voting for populist radical right parties and abstention, particularly in terms of “protest” attitudes, which set them apart from supporters of non-populist parties. Additionally, the study indicates that both phenomena are influenced by short-term factors related to the supply side of politics. However, abstentionists are more likely to belong to lower socio-economic strata and exhibit lower levels of political interest. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The eventual disconnection between voters´ preferences and specific policies is of special concern in decentralized countries, where any policy initiative might be simultaneously seen either as an erosion or a reinforcement of selfrule. The aim of this paper is to apply this framework to the harmonization of the Spanish Inheritance and Gift Tax (IGT). We econometrically contrast whether citizens´ living in Autonomous Communities (ACs) that led a tax race to the bottom regarding this tax or in those that exert a greater taste for political autonomy are more likely to oppose a more nationally uniform tax than the rest of Spaniards. Empirically, we exploit data from the 2019 wave of the Institute for Fiscal Studies Fiscal Barometer. According to our main results, citizens living in low taxation ACs and citizens living in some more pro-self-rule regions are even more likely to favor harmonization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The phenomenon of elected representatives ditching the political party on whose ticket they were elected for another party constitutes a problem for representative democracy. Especially in settings where identity politics is reportedly common, it is important to interrogate whether voters simply follow their politicians to a new party. This article examines public responses to party switching in Nigeria, drawing from a nationwide representative survey of 1,023 participants against existing debates on ethno-religious and money politics. The author argues that while identity and money politics do have some influence on electoral choices, Nigerian voters generally disapprove of party switchers, except those with a prior track record of good performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are potentially multiple sources that make it difficult to compare the typical survey measure of the left-right self-placement cross-nationally. We focus on differential item functioning (DIF) due to the different use of response scales when the left-right is framed as an aggregate dimension of policies. We also examine whether and to what extent ordinary citizens' use of the scale is cross-nationally comparable. Our goal is twofold. First, we assess the cross-national comparability of the left-right self-placement scale using the anchoring vignette method used in nine European countries. Second, we propose a measure that quantifies the extent of DIF at the country level. Our original survey and other benchmark studies suggest that the size of cross-national DIF (CN-DIF) in citizens' use of a left-right scale is relatively small when the left-right concept is considered in policy terms and when a comparison is made between Western European countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Politicians are required to make policy decisions that involve short‐term and long‐term tradeoffs, and existing theory largely expects election‐driven myopic thinking to dominate their reasoning when they do so. Direct evidence on this is surprisingly absent, leaving open questions on whether and when politicians do support future‐oriented policies, and what factors, beyond the shadow of elections, influence such choices. Responding to this gap, we report results of a multi‐year survey of more than 1500 elected politicians who faced an original decision task involving short‐term and long‐term solutions to a local policy problem. First, we show that politicians' theories of voting behavior—specifically, their beliefs about whether voters focus on the short or the long term—strongly predict their decisions when facing inter‐temporal policy tradeoffs. Second, we show that politicians are responsive to changes to short‐run costs associated with long‐term policy investments. Finally, we leverage the panel design of our study and find—in contrast to prevalent assumptions—no evidence that politicians' policy choices are related to their proximity to the next election. In doing so, we expand and refine the theoretical framework on inter‐temporal choice by policymakers, and outline a comparative research agenda for studying how politicians think about the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do voters want their party to be office- or policy-seekers in coalition negotiations? This question has been left unstudied in political science research so far. While existing research shows that policies matter for voters when forming their preferences for coalitions, in this study it is argued that voters find it at the same time important that their preferred party gains offices. Specifically, voters' office-seeking considerations are expected to increase the more indifferent they are to the policy content of a coalition agreement. To test this assumption, an original conjoint experiment among Green Party voters in the context of the German federal election in 2021 has been conducted. The findings demonstrate that voters' office-seeking considerations become more important the more similar coalition agreements are with regard to their policy content. These findings have important implications for the understanding of voters' preferences regarding coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on the records of Labour's annual women's conference, this article analyses why, how and with what effects women activists in the Labour Party claimed to represent 'the housewife' in post-war Britain. Building on longstanding traditions on the left, Labour women saw a politics of housewifery as the most effective means of advancing the interests of working-class women in post-war Britain, and asserted the housewife's need for state intervention, good quality housing, and generous welfare provision. They also recognised that the housewife's concerns extended far beyond her own home, and were keen to promote her interests in different arenas, including paid work. Yet the success of groups like the British Housewives League meant that Labour women found it increasingly difficult to pursue a left-wing politics of the housewife. In opposition, they began to adopt the language of consumerism, losing sight of the emphasis on gender which had made their politics distinctive. This article thus shows that housewifery was a malleable and contested identity in the post-war period, valuable to those on the left as well as non-partisan women and those on the right. It also provides a new perspective on longstanding debates over the Labour Party's failure to appeal to women voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze support for the welfare state across time and space in Great Britain. Using multilevel regression and poststratification with historical data and an original survey, we show that a virtually identical majority of people supported those policies in the mid-1990s and in 2020, but patterns of support were very different. Young and highly educated people are now the strongest supporters, as are the youngest and most highly educated geographic areas, mirroring divides over "second-dimension" issues like Brexit. However, young and highly educated voters are clustered in a small number of places, with the Labour Party struggling to win moderately educated and moderately young areas. As a result, the left's problem in majoritarian systems is not the rise of second-dimension politics per se but rather how its supporters are distributed spatially along that dimension. A majority of voters in favor of welfare and redistribution no longer translates as easily into winning a majority of places in support. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do politicians publicly attack the leaders of their own party, even when they have no opportunistic reasons to do so and such attacks are electorally costly? The article addresses this question by presenting a model in which the leader faces a preference conflict with dissenting members of his party, and voters are learning about their own policy preferences over time. Here, by publicly attacking the leader (and thereby harming the party in the upcoming election), the dissenters can change his incentives to choose more or less extreme policies, which affects the amount of voter learning. This induces a trade-off between winning the current election and inducing the party leadership to pursue the dissenters' all-things-considered more preferred policy. Optimally balancing this trade-off sometimes involves public dissent that damages the party in the short run. In equilibrium open dissent arises precisely because it is electorally costly, in order to induce a policy response by the leader. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A woman has not yet shattered the "hardest, highest glass ceiling" of the American presidency. Our research answers two questions: Which groups are more likely to believe electing a woman president to be historically important? (R1), and When a presidential election is at stake, who is likely to support a woman candidate? (R2). Using observational data (n = 1075), our findings indicate that women, people who recognize sexism within politics, Democrats, and liberals are more likely to view a woman president as historic. Utilizing a list experiment of hypothetical 2024 presidential matchups, few who claimed to view a woman president as historic were willing to cast a vote in their favor. When push came to shove, Democratic women were the group most likely to vote for a woman presidential candidate. As parties look toward the future, this study offers insight into how voters respond to potential nominees and who parties will nominate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The academic debate on how voters decide which candidates to support often centers on whether they prioritize their personal preferences or consider who can beat the opposing candidate. American research on voting behavior has largely focused on first-past-the-post (FPTP) elections. However, considering jurisdictions are adopting new electoral systems such as ranked-choice voting (RCV) this leads to several questions about the impact of system adoption on voter decision-making. Particularly, does the voter decision-making process differ depending on the system used? To investigate the impact of RCV on voter decision-making across electoral systems we conducted a survey experiment in a federal senate election. Our findings indicate that in comparison to FPTP elections, RCV elections may lead to decreases in both sincere and strategic voting. Instead, RCV appears to increase voter uncertainty around how to decide which candidates to support and leads to voters who appear to be neither sincere nor strategic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What motivates bureaucrats to integrate refugees into welfare services even when they do not have any legal obligation to do so? How do they decide which services to include refugees and which not? Based on 61 semi-structured interviews with local municipal bureaucrats in Istanbul, and representatives of humanitarian agencies that collaborate with local municipalities I find that bureaucrats choose to cater different types of services to refugees depending on their motivation for extending services. Most municipal bureaucrats initiate cash, food, and in-kind goods transfers to refugees with extrinsic motivations – with the aspiration of appeasing the voters in their locality and protecting the mayor from a possible electoral backlash. Contrastingly, bureaucrats with professional motivations conduct needs assessments and initiate service and program development efforts in response to the specific needs of refugees in their municipalities. These findings are significant as they illustrate that local bureaucrats' motivations for service extension play a great role in explaining the variation in types of services that refugees can access and terms and conditions of access. They also demonstrate that inclusive distributive behavior toward refugees does not always emanate from bureaucrats' motivations of helping and benefiting refugee populations but can be instigated by extrinsic motivations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between 2010 and 2018, Australia saw four sitting prime ministers deposed by their own parties, giving the country the title "the coup capital of the democratic world". In this paper, we use Australian Election Study surveys and commercial opinion poll data to analyse what voters thought of these changes and whether they lifted the electoral fortunes of their respective parties. The results suggest that voters' views of the changes depended on the popularity of the leader in question, but that a desire to see better economic performance reinforced support for a change in prime minister. There is little evidence that opinion polls played a role in any of the changes, at least for voters. There is also no evidence that the changes improved the subsequent vote for each of the parties that changed a prime minister; indeed, in three of the four cases the party vote declined significantly following the change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent partisan claims about the illegitimacy of the 2020 election highlight a need to better understand the determinants underlying Americans' trust in the electoral process. In this study, we focus on African Americans and conservatives, two groups that stand out both historically and contemporaneously for high levels of distrust in elections. Utilizing nationally representative survey data, we analyze the degree to which election distrust is associated with respondents' attitudes towards policies addressing voter access (photo ID requirements, vote by-mail, and felon voting), perceptions of disenfranchisement, and their personal experience while voting. We find evidence that distrust is not tied to one's personal voting experience, but rather to one's policy attitudes towards electoral access. Importantly, for conservative and Black voters, the policy remedies that would lead to increased trust for one group would only further exacerbate the concerns of the other, suggesting that distrust towards American elections will be difficult to attenuate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]