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Although the landscape for female candidates in U.S. politics has improved, research continues to find that many voters possess sexist attitudes. We rely on a standard political communication framework to help reconcile sexism in the electorate with increasingly favorable outcomes for women in primary elections. Based on two national survey experiments, we first demonstrate that in the absence of gendered campaign rhetoric, sexism is a weak predictor of support for female candidates on both sides of the political aisle. We then show, however, that when a male candidate attempts to activate sexism among voters by attacking a female opponent, gender attitudes become more salient—but not to the woman's disadvantage. In a Democratic primary, gendered attacks backfire and lead to a significant boost in support for the female candidate. On the Republican side, a male candidate does not face the same backlash, but the attacks do very little to depress his female opponent's support. While the persistence of hostile attitudes toward women has slowed the march toward gender equality in society, our experimental results suggest that sexism exerts only contingent effects in primary elections and not systematically to female candidates' detriment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent presidential primaries have taken place against the backdrop of a secular realignment in the South, a shift that carries important consequences for nomination politics. In this article, we use statewide exit polls to trace changes between 1988 and 2008 in the Southern Democratic and Republican primary electorates. We find that the Democratic electorate has grown strikingly more liberal, more racially diverse, and less heavily Protestant over the last 20 years. Meanwhile, the Republican Party has solidified into a conservative, almost exclusively white primary electorate. We also identify a growing partisan gender gap in the region, The findings suggest that it will be increasingly difficult for a centrist white Democrat, such as Jimmy Carter or Bill Clinton, to use the South as a launching pad to the nomination. In addition, the growing polarization of the parties' Southern primary electorates will likely continue to widen the ideological distance between the major presidential nominees., The distinctiveness of the South is a prominent feature of the American political landscape, and its contours have regularly been evident in postreform presidential nomination politics. (1) In 1976 and [...]

Most observers now consider the American South a two-party region, with Democrats and Republicans competing vigorously for political office. In this article, we raise the possibility that the South has begun a transformation into a one-party region dominated by the GOP. Three factors tip the scales in the party's favor: the ideological congruence between the Republican Party and the region's electorate, the Republican trend among the region's younger voters, and the incumbency advantage accrued by current Republican officeholders. Using a vast array of longitudinal data from the South, we provide evidence that speaks to the daunting challenges facing the Democratic Party in the South. We also address the results in the South's 2006 midterm elections. The findings suggest that as the United States' most reliably Republican region continues to change, Democrats may have an exceedingly difficult time winning statewide races. Keywords: southern politics; partisan change; party realignment; two-party competition; voting trends; southern exceptionalism; Republican Party growth

Prior to the 2003 California recall election, pundits and academics pondered how a host of factors--including the historic nature of the election and the unusual cast of characters on the ballot--would influence voter turnout. Here, we examine two questions to shed some light on the turnout dynamics of the election: How was the recall electorate different from its 2002 counterpart, and what explains the 10% increase in registered voter turnout compared to 2002? Using the statewide voter file, we find the recall produced a younger, less partisan, and less politically experienced electorate. Citizens who stayed home in 2002 but cast ballots in 2003 tended to be intermittent voters. Media attention appears to have helped boost turnout, confirming in a new context other studies that find that lowering the costs of voting affects most strongly those citizens with demographic characteristics somewhere between habitual voters and hard-core and nonvoters. Keywords: California recall; turnout, political participation: California governor; state politics; mobilizotion; information costs

Echo Chamber: Rush Limbaugh and the Conservative Media Establishment by Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Joseph N. Cappella. New York, Oxford University Press, 2008. 320 pp. $24.95. In the brief history [...]

Assessments of candidates' personal attributes are known to affect vote choice in presidential elections, but little work has explored trait perceptions and trait voting in congressional contests. In this article, I examine the role of candidate traits in U.S. Senate campaigns, drawing on unique survey data from the 2006 midterms. I find that voters' evaluations of candidate qualities are less influenced by party stereotypes than in presidential elections and are strongly related to whether a candidate is an incumbent. And just as in campaigns for the White House, trait perceptions affect vote choice. But sitting Senators hold trait advantages that incumbent presidents do not necessarily receive, which makes leadership a particularly influential attribute in Senate races. In addition, trait voting is not contingent on campaign intensity and is strongest among the least politically aware citizens. In general, the results provide evidence for the applicability of presidential trait theories to congressional elections but show that incumbency and political awareness condition their effects in Senate contests.

Gender bias in elections is both a source of debate in the political science literature and a prominent topic in U.S. political discourse. As a result, Americans are exposed to differing messages about the extent to which women face disadvantages in their campaigns for office. We argue that such messages can have differing effects—some of which benefit female candidates, but others that may perpetuate the gender gap in political ambition. Using a survey experiment administered on samples of the U.S. public, campaign donors, and college students, we show that messages portraying women as facing gender bias boosts female candidates' support and young people's willingness to engage in campaign activism on their behalf. Simultaneously, it does not affect female candidates' fundraising ability. But paradoxically, such messages also reduce young women's confidence in their own ability to run a political campaign. These results suggest important implications for women's underrepresentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the foreign elites as primary influences on public opinion in the U.S. politics. It highlights U.S. people's consideration of second opinion about military endeavors. It refers to a relationship between foreign elite messages and U.S. public opinion. It mentions a lack of empirical clarity regarding the influence of foreign actors on U.S. public opinion.