The New Federalism and Direct Popular Election

Academic researchers and commentators have drawn attention to the potential link between heightened uncertainty experienced in a presidential election year and slower real economic activity. Our analysis looks at some of the key economic variables typically used by the NBER to date business cycles and compares the performance of these economic indicators between presidential election and non-election years since 1960. Our results suggest that the general argument that uncertainty during presidential election years results in slower economic activity does not hold water. In fact, based on our analysis, we find that several measures of economic activity are actually stronger during presidential election years.

Conservation invokes a range of policy issues including questions of economics, recreation, public good, stewardship, and governance obligations. When U.S. legislators consider creating new National Park units, interrelated policy issues influence decisions about whether to support or oppose a new site. In this article, we explored the influence of electoral competition, political party in control, and presidential election year on the number of new National Park units created between 1934 and 2014. Electoral competition theory hypothesizes that as the congressional majority margin decreases (gets more competitive), politicians act in more strategic and less partisan ways. In this analysis, high electoral competition occurred if the party in power had less than a 55% majority; low electoral competition was defined as a 55% or more majority. Three conditions of political control were also examined: (a) Democrats controlled the Presidency and the House, (b) Republicans controlled the Presidency and the House, and (c) shared party control (one party controlled the Presidency and the other party controlled the House). The effect that presidential election years had on the number of new park units created was also considered. Results indicated that more park units were created during periods of low electoral competition (M = 5.00) than high electoral competition (M = 2.04), F (1, 79) = 7.24, p = .009, ? = .084 (Hypothesis 1). In addition, there was evidence of partisanship (Hypothesis 2). When Democrats controlled both the Presidency and the House, an average of 5.55 new park units were created annually. When political control was shared, an average of 3.34 park units were created per year, and when Republicans were in control only one park unit on average was created annually, F (2, 78) = 3.54, p = .034, ? = .289. More park units were created in presidential election years (M = 5.02), than nonpresidential election years (M = 2.06), F (1, 74) = 2.32, p = .024, ? = .259 (Hypothesis 3). There was no evidence of interaction effects among the variables (contrary to Hypothesis 4). This research contributes to the existing literature on the development and growth of the National Park System by analyzing the role of electoral competition, political control, and presidential election years as they effect the creation of new National Park units.Subscribe to JPRA

The idea of reforming the Electoral College in favor of a direct popular election of a President, which has long existed in the United States, recurs each time a presidential election nears. All the polls show that an overwhelming majority of respondents support this idea. However, it is doubtful whether these polls imply that such a move would be the best for the country. Despite the seeming simplicity of direct popular presidential election, its introduction in the United States–a country in which the clear separation of powers between the states and the Federal government has existed for more than two centuries– would have hidden drawbacks that the media and the pollsters usually fail to communicate. Moreover, the existing Electoral College-based system of electing a President is complicated, and the simplistic coverage of American social and political phenomena fails to educate voters about nuances of that system. Thus, pollsters are asking people whether they favor replacing the Electoral College, a system that many respondents do not sufficiently understand, with direct popular election, a system that many respondents also do not necessarily understand [48].

Memorandum on Supreme Court Vacancies and Confirmations During Presidential Election Years

This note examines the effects of presidential elections on congressional elections. Nationally aggregated congressional seat and vote change data for the 61 congressional elections held in presidential and midterm election years from 1868 to 1988 are examined in a single-equation model. The results indicate strong presidential "surge and decline" effects. In presidential election years, a party's presidential vote positively affects its congressional election results--the presidential surge. In the following midterm elections, the president's party loses the advantage of the presidential surge and, as a consequence, also loses congressional votes and seats. These midterm losses of congressional seats and votes for the president's party are in proportion to the party's prior presidential vote margin. Presidential surge and decline effects, however, do not entirely explain vote and seat losses by the president's party in midterms. In addition to suffering vote and seat losses because of the absence of presidential coattail or surge help, it appears that the president's party also sustains midterm losses because of the public's evaluation of the incumbent administration at the midterm.

Supreme Court Appointments in Presidential Election YearsThe Case of John Hessin Clarke Jonathan L. Entin (bio) When Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died unexpectedly on February 13, 2016, Republicans in the US Senate immediately made clear that they would not consider any nominee proposed by President Barack Obama. Because 2016 was a presidential election year, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell declared within hours of Scalia’s passing: “The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court justice.”1 True to their word, the GOP-controlled Senate refused to take any action on Obama’s nomination of Chief Judge Merrick B. Garland of the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit as Justice Scalia’s successor. This inaction provoked widespread debate, but the vacancy remained open for President Donald J. Trump to appoint Judge Neil M. Gorsuch, of the US Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit, to Scalia’s seat.2 The refusal to act on Judge Garland’s nomination marked the first time in 150 years that the Senate had completely stonewalled a Supreme Court [End Page 30] nominee.3 But this does not mean that the confirmation process used to be genteel or straightforward. Since World War II, the only two Supreme Court appointments that had occurred during a presidential election cycle illustrated the fraught nature of such matters. In October 1956, shortly after the opening of the Court’s new term, President Dwight D. Eisenhower nominated New Jersey Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. to succeed Justice Sherman Minton, who had retired for health reasons. Eisenhower chose Brennan in an effort to appeal to Catholic voters who traditionally supported Democrats.4 The president acted quickly to put Brennan on the Court, giving him a recess appointment that meant that he was able to hear cases before the Senate got a chance to vote on his confirmation. This posed two potential problems. First, because the recess appointment came before the election, Brennan might not have received a permanent appointment had Eisenhower lost.5 Second, even if Eisenhower won (as he of course did), the recess appointment could undermine Brennan’s independence on the bench because the Senate might retaliate against him for controversial decisions, or, more subtly, Brennan might at least subconsciously decide cases with that possibility in mind.6 In June 1968, Chief Justice Earl Warren announced his retirement. The timing of the announcement was seen as a thinly veiled attempt to prevent the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Richard M. Nixon, from [End Page 31] appointing his successor. Warren and Nixon disliked each other from their days in Republican politics in their home state of California, and Nixon had strongly criticized the Warren Court’s liberal rulings on criminal law and procedure.7 President Lyndon B. Johnson, who was not seeking reelection, nominated Justice Abe Fortas as the new chief justice, but Republicans and southern Democrats in the Senate filibustered the nomination, and Fortas eventually withdrew.8 Despite the small number of postwar Supreme Court appointments in presidential election years, the prospect of such appointments fueled interbranch tensions. The Brennan appointment played a significant role in the Senate’s adoption of a resolution opposing recess appointments except in “unusual circumstances” to avoid “a demonstrable breakdown in the administration of the Court’s business.”9 Although the resolution expressed only the sense of the Senate, the timing of this move was hardly coincidental: the vote occurred on August 29, 1960, just two days before Congress adjourned to concentrate on the general election, so it served as at least a symbolic warning against any last-minute recess appointments.10 Similarly, as Republicans often pointed out during the Garland stalemate, Vice President Joseph R. Biden, while chairing the Senate Judiciary Committee, had advised President George H. W. Bush not to try to push through a nominee while he was running for reelection in 1992.11 This warning also seemed like no idle threat, coming only a few years after the controversy over the failed nomination of Judge Robert H. Bork and the tumultuous confirmation process for Justice Clarence Thomas. It was not always thus. In 1932, a politically vulnerable President...

OUR two major parties spend a great deal of money in the attempt to put over the national party ticket in a Presidential election year.' While no complete accounting of the total amount spent in support of the two major party tickets has ever been compiled it is reasonable to suppose that the figure is somewhere between twenty-five and thirty million dollars. In view of the hundreds of collecting and expending agencies, the most assiduous efforts of scholars, of legislative investigating committees, of Department of Justice officials, of public officers responsible for receiving and publicizing political financial information, and of the gentlemen of the press, can produce little more than a guess as to the amount involved.

We examine whether policy uncertainty triggered by presidential elections pushes the future back by reducing the extent to which current prices reflect information about future earnings. We estimate future earnings response coefficients (FERCs) for the years 1975–2013, a period that covers ten presidential elections. We find that FERCs are significantly lower (by 11.8%) during presidential election years compared to other years. Additional analyses using pseudo election years, ex‐ante polls, contract prices from the Iowa Electronic Political Market, and cross‐sectional firm characteristics provide corroborating evidence that the lower FERCs during election years are related to policy uncertainty. We also investigate potential explanations for the lower FERCs during election years. We find that the lower FERCs relate to forecasting difficulty rather than to changes in the discount rate or in the amount of noise trading. Finally, we find that market prices move toward future earnings to a greater degree during presidential election years compared with other years once the policy uncertainty is resolved. A trading strategy based on this drift yields significant abnormal returns. Overall, we contribute to the literature by providing the first empirical evidence that shocks to policy uncertainty influence the pricing of earnings information.

A critique of previous studies that attempt to establish a causal relationship between a decline in mortality and suicide rates and presidential elections in the United States is presented. "This work argues that the previous studies are flawed both methodologically and theoretically. By comparing suicide and mortality rates in presidential election years with rates in adjacent years the studies fail to examine all the information in their data set and consequently are unable to control for other relevant variables." The author notes that previous studies have shown "that the unemployment rate is significantly related to the suicide and mortality rates and the rate of unemployment tends to be relatively low in September and October of presidential election years. Employing monthly suicide and mortality data between 1903 and 1977 and using multivariate time-series analysis it is found that when variations in the unemployment rate are controlled no significant relationship exists between presidential elections and suicide and mortality rates. The results of this study demonstrate that the presidential death-dip hypothesis is incorrect." (EXCERPT)

Presidential Elections and the Market Pricing of Future Earnings

In 2016, the Republican-held Senate refused to hold a hearing on President Barack Obama’s nominee, Merrick Garland, sparking outrage among the Democratic Party. Then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell justified his party’s actions based on what became known as the “McConnell Rule.” This controversial rule holds that during years of presidential elections, when the president and the Senate majority are of different parties, the Senate is not expected to confirm the president’s Supreme Court nominees; but, when the president and Senate majority are of the same party, vacancies may be filled. When the Senate applied this rule in 2020, the stakes were even higher. Revered liberal stalwart Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg passed away only 46 days before the 2020 presidential election. Invoking the McConnell Rule, the Republican-held Senate moved forward with the confirmation of President Trump’s nominee Amy Coney Barrett. This contentious move again infuriated Democrats, and the presidential campaign. Now that Justice Barrett has been appointed and the presidential election has passed, it is useful to look back on the history of Supreme Court nominations during presidential election years. Such a review suggests that the so-called McConnell Rule is rooted in valid historical precedent. In fact, viewed in light of American history, even a Trump lame duck nomination and confirmation would have been valid. This blog post argues that the Senate should distill this historical precedent into an explicit Rule of the Senate that will govern the chamber going forward. The rule should obligate the Senate to either (1) hold a vote to confirm the election-year or lame duck nominee, or (2) hold a vote to postpone action on the nomination. If a vote to postpone action on the nomination fails, the rule should then compel the Senate to hold a vote to confirm the nominee. Such a rule removes all doubt about the Senate’s authority to act or refuse to act on election-year and lame duck nominees, exposes unfounded threats of retaliation by minority parties, and best conforms to the Constitution.

Given that political events have substantial effect on new economic policies and economic performance of the country, this article aims to examine the behavior of the investors’ sentiment in terms of implied volatility index trailed by the U.S. presidential elections. The study empirically tests whether the presidential elections in 2012/2016 do contain the important market inclusive information to explain the expected stock market volatility. The findings indicate that investors’ concern was distracted around the presidential elections window, albeit the market performed identically in both the presidential election years. The significant fall in the implied volatility level (post-election period) is the calm before the storm, just wait and watch. The positive estimate uncovers the fact that investor worries were higher before the election day. In particular, the significant estimate of the presidential election debate shows that investors do regard the minutes of the presidential election debates in their portfolio selection. At the two elections era, on the candidacy of both the parties, the empirical result speaks marginally contrasting outcomes and falsifies the presidential election cycle hypothesis of past 29 U.S. election years. Empirical estimates conclude that the presidential elections in 2012/2016 have a strong, significant relationship with investor’s sentiment and stock market performance.

A recent article by Barry Burden inPolitical Analysisalerts us to a steadily increasing gap during presidential election years between self-reported turnout in the NES (National Election Studies) and “official turnout” figures based on the voting-age population (VAP), and points to declining response rates as a culprit. Changing the baseline from the VAP to the VEP (voting-eligible population) significantly changes these conclusions, and point to panel effects as a culprit. The rise in the gap was not linear, but it does emerge rather suddenly in 1996. Gaps between NES self-reported turnout and VEP estimates are higher in presidential election years than in off-years, and self-reported turnout is higher among long-term panel participants than among cross-section respondents in multielection panels.

Journal Article Question Order and Declining Faith in Elections Get access LARRY M. BARTELS LARRY M. BARTELS Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 66, Issue 1, March 2002, Pages 67–79, https://doi.org/10.1086/338349 Published: 01 March 2002

ObjectiveThe objective of this study is to examine the impact of U.S. state online registration reforms on voter turnout. More states have been adopting online voter registration in recent years. Investigating the impact of the policy on voter turnout can inform policy making and contribute to our knowledge of political behavior.MethodsThe methods of this study include difference‐in‐difference analysis and instrumental variable analysis. Using the Current Population Survey data between 2000 and 2014, I conduct a difference‐in‐difference analysis at the state level and then an instrumental variable analysis at the individual level.ResultsThe results of this study demonstrate that state online voter registration increases voter turnout. The difference‐in‐difference analysis shows that the states’ implementation of online voter registration increases the turnout of young voters by about 3 percentage points in presidential election years. The instrumental variable analysis shows that the usage of online registration by voters increases their turnout by about 18 to 20 percentage points.ConclusionThe conclusion of this study is that state online voter registration reforms are generally effective in increasing voter turnout. There are nontrivial positive effects of online registration on turnout, especially for young people during presidential election years.