American National Election Studies Research Articles

Are Populists Insecure About Themselves or About Their Country? Political Attitudes and Economic Perceptions.

We investigate whether greater economic insecurity increases distrust in government and fosters authoritarian politics. Using the 2016 American National Election Studies dataset, we build on the literature regarding “egotropic" and “sociotropic" economic concerns to distinguish between “micro" insecurity (perceived insecurity regarding the individual’s own personal economic well-being), and “macro" insecurity (negative expectations concerning the macro economy). Our results suggest micro insecurity is not significantly correlated with attitudinal differences, but macro-level insecurity is associated with increased levels of political distrust, accompanied by greater authoritarianism. Greater macro-level insecurity is also associated with more negative feelings toward “out-groups" (e.g. Muslims, the LGBTQ+ community, feminists, immigrants) and was a key predictor in reduced affinity for Hillary Clinton and the rise in support for Donald Trump. Results are robust to controls for political affiliation and aggregate macroeconomic indicators, suggesting that rising levels of income inequality and weakening social safety nets increase political polarization and encourage xenophobia, racism, and homophobia.

The Authoritarian Predisposition and American Public Support for Social Security

Authoritarianism, an individual-level predisposition that favors security, conformity, and certainty, has been powerfully linked with cultural conservatism and support for “strongman” politicians but weakly and inconsistently linked with public opinion toward economic issues. In examining this latter relationship, past work has tended to pose a dichotomous question, is authoritarianism associated with economic liberalism/conservatism or not? Here, I diverge from this approach and argue that authoritarianism is associated with support for one specific program—Social Security. I argue that the unique framing of this program, which emphasizes rule-following, certainty, and deservingness, should resonate with authoritarian-minded individuals. I test this with survey data, primarily from the American National Election Studies (ANES). Overall, I find a positive and substantively significant relationship between authoritarianism and support for Social Security but not for other types of domestic social welfare spending. These findings help us better understand the correlates of mass support for Social Security as well as the policy consequences of authoritarianism. These findings also suggest that Social Security will likely remain popular in an increasingly authoritarian Republican Party.

2024 American National Election Study Competition (NSF)

Federal Grants & ContractsVolume 45, Issue 17 p. 2-2 Grants alerts 2024 American National Election Study Competition (NSF) First published: 29 July 2021 https://doi.org/10.1002/fgc.31861Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat No abstract is available for this article. Volume45, Issue175 August 2021Pages 2-2 RelatedInformation

Misattributed blame? Attitudes toward globalization in the age of automation

AbstractMany, especially low-skilled workers, blame globalization for their economic woes. Robots and machines, which have led to job market polarization, rising income inequality, and labor displacement, are often viewed much more forgivingly. This paper argues that citizens have a tendency to misattribute blame for economic dislocations toward immigrants and workers abroad, while discounting the effects of technology. Using the 2016 American National Elections Studies, a nationally representative survey, I show that workers facing higher risks of automation are more likely to oppose free trade agreements and favor immigration restrictions, even controlling for standard explanations for these attitudes. Although pocket-book concerns do influence attitudes toward globalization, this study calls into question the standard assumption that individuals understand and can correctly identify the sources of their economic anxieties. Accelerated automation may have intensified attempts to resist globalization.

Does the Alt‐Right still matter? An examination of Alt‐Right influence between 2016 and 2018

AbstractIn this paper, we use panel data from the 2016 and 2017 waves of the Voter Study and the 2018 American National Election Studies (ANES) Pilot, to better understand the relative influence of the Alt‐Right on mainstream US politics in the Trump era. Given the degree of formal alignment between Trump and a number of key voices within the movement, we first examine the strength of the association between affect for the Alt‐Right and support for Republican Party between 2016 and 2018. We also examine relative levels of affect for the Alt‐Right among Whites between this period, tracking a number of important changes. We find that, while affect for the Alt‐Right was strongly associated with support for Republican candidates such as Trump in the 2016 election cycle, we find a somewhat weaker relationship between affect for the Alt‐Right and White support for Trump and down ballot Republican candidates in 2018. We also find that, after rising between 2016 and 2017, levels of affect for Alt‐Right appear to have declined by 2018. The results are therefore reflective of exponential rise of the Alt‐Right during the 2016 election and the movement's subsequent implosion after the 2017 ‘United the Right’, rally in Charlottesville, VA.

Whose Rights are Civil Rights? Evaluating Group Threat as an Explanation for Racial Differences in Attitudes Toward Same-Gender Sexuality

ABSTRACT The alleged prevalence of anti-gay bias among Black communities in the United States has received ample popular and academic attention in recent decades. But just how consistent is the purported relationship between race and homophobia? In this paper, we use the American National Election Studies and the General Social Survey to show that public claims about “Black homophobia” have been dangerously overstated. Moreover, where racial differences in attitudes toward same-gender sexuality do occur, we find that the two most prevalent scholarly explanations for such gaps—religious institutions and gender ideologies—do not predict anti-gay bias for Black survey respondents. We thus derive an alternative explanation from scholarship on group threat: that perceived competition for political resources is what motivates racial differences in antagonism toward same-gender sexuality. Our results support that alternative and, in so doing, evince the importance of a relational approach to homophobia in academic and activist spheres alike.

Racial prejudice, education, and views of climate change

AbstractObjectiveWe examine the role of education in shaping attitudes about climate change and how it interacts with racial prejudice.MethodsWe analyze data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) and 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES).ResultsWe identify a paradoxical relationship in which education is associated with both lower levels of racial prejudice and increased support for climate policies, but also strengthens the negative effects of prejudices that persist at higher levels of educational attainment. For individuals with racially prejudiced views, we find that educational attainment decreases both agreement with the scientific consensus and support for climate policies. Our results hold up in evaluating Democrats and Republicans and using alternative measures of racial bias.ConclusionOur results contribute to our understanding of the barriers to action on climate change and the continued salience of racial prejudice in the United States.

Do We Live in a ‘Post-Truth’ Era?

Have we entered a ‘post-truth’ era? This article is an attempt to answer this question by (a) offering an explication of the notion of ‘post-truth’ from recent discussions, (b) deriving a testable implication from that explication, to the effect that we should expect to see decreasing information effects – that is, differences between actual preferences and estimated, fully informed preferences – on central political issues over time and then (c) putting the relevant narrative to the test by way of counterfactual modelling, using election year data for the period of 2004–2016 from the American National Election Studies’ Times Series Study. The implication in question turns out to be consistent with the data: at least in a US context, we do see evidence of a decrease in information effects on key, political issues – immigration, same-sex adoption and gun laws, in particular – in the period 2004–2016. This offers some novel, empirical evidence for the ‘post-truth’ narrative.

Ethnonationalism and White immigration attitudes

AbstractIn this article, I explore how much of White Americans' opposition to immigration—opposition that is often grounded in fears of the threat that immigration poses to the robustness of America's national identity—is shaped by ethnonationalism, a set of beliefs concerning which traits are important for being a “true” American. Drawing on data from the 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES), I examine how ethnonationalism shapes White Americans' attitudes towards immigrants. I find that ethnonationalism is positively associated with anti‐immigrant attitudes among Whites, with the effect size of my ethnonationalism measure being larger than that of any other variable in my ordinary least squares (OLS) regression model. Critically, this includes a number of variables that are already known to be strongly predictive of White attitudes towards immigration, such as Republican partisanship. Beyond anti‐immigrant attitudes, I also find that ethnonationalism also predicts support for policies that would restriction immigration.

Redistribution Preferences, Inequality Information, and Partisan Motivated Reasoning in the United States

In an era of rising inequality, the U.S. public’s relatively modest support for redistributive policies has been a puzzle for scholars. Deepening the paradox is recent evidence that presenting information about inequality increases subjects’ support for redistributive policies by only a small amount. What explains inequality information’s limited effects? We extend partisan motivated reasoning scholarship to investigate whether political party identification confounds individuals’ processing of inequality information. Our study considers a much larger number of redistribution preference measures (12) than past scholarship. We offer a second novelty by bringing the dimension of historical time into hypothesis testing. Analyzing high-quality data from four American National Election Studies surveys, we find new evidence that partisanship confounds the interrelationship of inequality information and redistribution preferences. Further, our analyses find the effects of partisanship on redistribution preferences grew in magnitude from 2004 through 2016. We discuss implications for scholarship on information, motivated reasoning, and attitudes towards redistribution.

The electoral consequences of anti-Muslim prejudice

A growing body of research has documented the development of pervasive anti-Muslim sentiment among White Americans. We build on this research to demonstrate that anti-Muslim attitudes and negative stereotypes of Muslim people have become an enduring and consistent component of White Americans' presidential vote choice beyond any one specific candidate or election. We argue that the racialization of Muslim Americas has increased their salience and significance in both the minds of White Americans and in national political discourse, making attitudes toward Muslims a consistent predictor of Whites’ presidential candidate evaluations in every election since at least 2004. We support this account with empirical evidence from the 2004–2020 American National Election Studies, using measures of group affect and negative stereotypes of Muslim people.

Protest as One Political Act in Individuals’ Participation Repertoires: Latent Class Analysis and Political Participant Types

This study advances research on the role of protest in individual-level participation repertoires by examining how latent class analysis can be used to identify distinctive types of political participants. This methodological approach requires shifting researchers’ traditional theoretical and analytical focus on protest as a single political act to the ways in which political actors combine protest with other political behaviors. From a theoretical perspective, the study examines the increased salience of research on the causes and consequences of protest in the context of individuals’ broader participation repertoires. From a methodological perspective, an illustrative analysis is conducted using the 2016 American National Election Studies survey to test theoretical expectations about the relationship between protest and civic duty. The study concludes with a discussion of how latent class analysis can be used to advance research on protest as one political act in individuals’ broader repertories of political participation.

Learning to Be Inclusive? Testing the Effects of News Media Diet on Attitudes toward LGT Equality

ABSTRACT This study analyzed a large national survey, the 2016 version of American National Election Study (ANES), to identify the predictors of attitudes toward the equal rights of lesbians, gay men, and transgender individuals. Egalitarian attitudes are associated with being female, younger, more liberal, less Republican, having a higher income and a lower level of fundamentalist religiosity, as well as consuming a wider variety of news media. Liberals tend to consume a larger number of news sources than conservatives. Also, news media diet mediates, instead of moderates, the effects of political ideology on support for the LGT community. Overall, a healthy diet of news media is associated with support for equality rights.

Perceived Discrimination against Black Americans and White Americans

A widely-cited study reported evidence that White Americans reported higher ratings of how much Whites are the victims of discrimination in the United States than of how much Blacks are the victims of discrimination in the United States. However, much fewer than half of White Americans rated discrimination against Whites in the United States today to be greater or more frequent than discrimination against Blacks in the United States today, in data from the American National Election Studies 2012 Time Series Study or in preregistered analyses of data from the American National Election Studies 2016 Time Series Study or from a 2017 national nonprobability survey. Given that relative discrimination against Black Americans is a compelling justification for policies to reduce Black disadvantage, results from these three surveys suggest that White Americans’ policy preferences have much potential to move in a direction that disfavors programs intended to reduce Black disadvantage.

The Effect of Children's Gender on Parents’ Attitudes Toward Women

AbstractScholars have found that the gender of children—particularly, having daughters—has a discernible effect on parents’ attitudinal and behavioral support for the empowerment of women. In this article, we explore how the gender of children affects the gender attitudes of parents. Using data from the 2016 American National Election Study (ANES) survey, we estimate the effects of children's gender on parents’ feminist self‐identification, support for more women representatives, and attitudes toward traditional gender roles, both in general and separately for men and women. Surprisingly, we find that sons—and not daughters—have a systematic negative effect on feminist self‐identification and support for electing more women, as well as a positive effect on support for traditional gender roles. The effects of sons on feminist self‐identification and traditional gender roles are observed for both men and women, while the effects of sons on support for more women representatives are limited to women. It appears that having a son decreases support for feminist and egalitarian gender attitudes in both men and women to varying degrees across a variety of dimensions.

The Effect of Partisan Representation at Different Levels of Government on Satisfaction with Democracy in the United States

AbstractIn this paper, we analyze how variations in partisan representation across different levels of government influence Americans’ satisfaction with the democracy in the United States. We conduct two survey experiments and analyze data from the 2016 American National Election Study postelection survey. We find that Americans are the most satisfied with democracy when their most preferred party controls both the federal and their respective state governments. However, we also find that even if an individual’s least preferred party only controls one level of government, they are still more satisfied with democracy than if their most preferred party controls no levels of government. These findings suggest that competition in elections across both the national and state government, where winning and losing alternates between the two parties, may have positive outcomes for attitudes toward democracy.

Mechanical Turk and the “Don’t Know” Option

ABSTRACTLuskin and Bullock’s (2011) randomized experiment on live-interview respondents found no evidence that American National Election Studies and Time-Sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences respondents hide knowledge behind the “don’t know” (DK) option. We successfully replicated their finding using two online platforms, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and Google Surveys. However, we obtained different results on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk (MTurk). We attribute this difference to MTurkers’ experience with attention checks and other quality-control mechanisms, which condition them to avoid errors. This conditioning leads MTurkers to hide knowledge behind DK in ways not observed on other platforms. Researchers conducting political knowledge experiments or piloting surveys on MTurk should be aware of these differences.

The Role of Identity Prioritization

Abstract Social Identity Theory suggests that individuals are motivated to support/oppose policies and politicians that benefit/harm members of their ingroup as a means of protecting their social status. Since the Republican Party’s rhetoric against immigrants in recent decades has often been viewed as an assault upon those of Latinx descent, it is not surprising that strong majorities oppose restrictionist immigration policies and support the Democratic Party. However, the existing literature has overlooked why a sizeable minority of Latinx voters express support for restrictionist immigration policies and the politicians who espouse them. Our analysis of Latinx voters with the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies (ANES) demonstrates that the degree to which individuals prioritize their US American identity over their Latinx identity has a significant influence over support for conservative immigration policies and GOP candidates. This relationship emerges above and beyond partisanship, ideology, and other key explanatory factors. Such attitudes likely represent an individual social mobility strategy in which members of a social group attempt to “pass” as a member of a higher-status group. Prioritizing a US American identity, supporting the Republican Party, and expressing hostility toward the interests of undocumented immigrants are a means of distinguishing themselves from a social group that has become increasingly associated with negative stereotypes. In contrast, those who are unwilling or unable to make this transition are likely pursuing a collective social mobility strategy (e.g., linked fate) whereby they attempt to enhance their individual status by elevating that of the entire social group.

From the Brady Bunch to Gilmore Girls: The Effect of Household Size on Economic Voting

This article examines whether household size affects economic voting. We argue when individuals are asked about national economic conditions and their personal financial situation that moderate or mid-range responses are more likely in multi-person households than in one-person households. The aggregation of personal economic evaluations within households reduces the variation in economic opinions across household members. As a result, it is harder for an individual to say that the national economic conditions and her personal financial situation are good or bad as the number of household members increases. Using individual-level data from the American National Election Studies from 1966 to 2016, the authors find that both evaluations of the national economy and personal economic conditions are endogenous to household size. The aggregate, state-level evidence from five presidential elections in the U.S. shows that the impact of the economy on the incumbent support increases the larger the number of one-person households.

American Party Women Redux: Stability in Partisan Gender Gaps

ABSTRACTRecent research in American politics demonstrates that despite gender-based partisan sorting, gender gaps in policy preferences persist within political parties—particularly among Republicans. Republican women report significantly more moderate views than their male counterparts across a range of policy areas. These gaps are largely attributable to gender differences in beliefs about the appropriate scope of government and attitudes toward gender-based inequality. Arguably, gender has become a more salient feature of American elections in recent years, and this heightened salience raises questions about whether these within-party gender gaps are stable over time or vary across campaign contexts. We use survey data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Study to evaluate whether gender gaps in policy preferences are stable across elections or if the 2016 election context affected the magnitude of gender differences in policy preferences. We find that gender gaps in policy preferences within political parties are fairly stable across the two electoral periods.