American Voters Research Articles

“I’m Going to Vote for the First Time in My Life this Year”: Native American Political Engagement in the Trump Era

During the 2020 election, Arizona voted Democratic for the first time in decades and contributed to Joe Biden’s presidential win. Native Americans, predominantly young adults, turned out in record numbers and were credited as one of the key demographic groups that “flipped” Arizona blue. What drove young Native voters to engage during this election cycle? Using data from the Arizona Youth Identity Project, a multi-wave mixed-methods study, we analyzed interviews with 38 self-identified Native American participants ages 18–29 to understand the factors motivating their political engagement in the 2020 Presidential election. Findings reveal that young Native adults in Arizona were motivated by (1) targeted political organizing, outreach, and advocacy efforts, (2) increased positive attitudes toward voting, and (3) a desire for political and social change. These findings enhance our collective understanding of the motivations behind Native American voter engagement.

Will Americans Vote for an Atheist?

Will Americans Vote for an Atheist?

Embracing the Status Hierarchy: How Immigration Attitudes, Prejudice, and Sexism Shaped Non-White Support for Trump

It is well established that Donald Trump’s rhetoric and actions during his candidacy and presidency endorsed existing group-based social hierarchies, helping to boost his support among white Americans, especially men and those without a college degree. But how did these endorsements shape support for Trump among non-white Americans? Extant theories suggest that these actions should have pushed racial and ethnic minority voter support for the GOP candidate to its lowest observed levels in contemporary political history. Yet Trump outperformed these expectations in 2016 and in 2020 among Black, Latino, and Asian American voters. We propose the same embrace of social hierarchies that motivated white support for Trump also motivated the political preferences and behaviors of a significant number of non-white Americans. Using several national large-N surveys conducted between 2011 and 2021 with large samples of Black, Latino, and Asian Americans, we explore how support for existing status hierarchies—both gender and racial—engendered support for Trump across racial and ethnic groups and discuss implications for the future of electoral politics in a rapidly diversifying United States.

Sexist Beliefs and Participation in the 2016 Presidential Election: Evidence from the General Social Survey

ABSTRACT Many studies of the 2016 U.S. presidential election have demonstrated that American voters with strong sexist beliefs tended to vote against the female candidate, Hillary Clinton. However, most of these studies did not pay much attention to whether eligible voters chose to vote. This study analyzed the 2018 and 2020 General Social Surveys to examine how American voters’ gender stereotypes in the family and sexist attitudes toward women in politics were associated with their participation in the 2016 presidential election—the latest election when the surveys were conducted—considering their party identification. The study discovered that strong Democrats who harbored a sexist attitude toward women in politics were less likely to participate in the 2016 presidential election than were Republicans and Independents with the same attitude. Furthermore, weak Democrats and Independents who endorsed traditional gender stereotypes in the family were less likely to participate in the election than were Republicans with the same ideals. The findings indicate that benevolent sexism may have discouraged some Democrat and Independent voters from going to the polls.

“The Explosive Ingredients Are Here” Mexican American Municipal Electoral Challenges in South Texas, 1963–1965

Abstract This article examines the unsettled landscape of racial and political relations between and among Mexican Americans and Anglos in South Texas from 1963 to 1965, as liberal Mexican American civil rights activists organized to challenge longstanding Anglo power, driving fear, anger, and backlash among Anglos and exacerbating divisions among Mexican Americans across lines of class and ideology. In three sections, the work investigates a series of threatened, attempted, and successful municipal electoral challenges by Mexican American voters beyond the well-known and widely publicized such event in Crystal City in 1963. In the first section, the study details the embryonic municipal electoral challenges that erupted before and after Crystal City between 1963 and 1965, showing that Mexican American South Texans supported the overthrow of Anglo political domination. In the second, it sketches the responses of Anglos to what they termed “Latin take-overs,” reflecting the erosion of Anglo dominance. In the third, it examines how the electoral challenges mounted by Mexican Americans revealed internecine ideological and class divisions amongst themselves over the most effective ways to challenge racism, demonstrating the conflicts that undermined their efforts and strengthened those of the Anglos. In so doing, the study challenges and revises the historiography of the Crystal City ‘revolt’ and its legacies.

Zero-sum beliefs and the avoidance of political conversations

Although researchers have argued that exposure to diverse views may help reduce political divisions in society, people often avoid discussing politics with ideologically opposed others. We investigate the avoidance of political conversations surrounding highly contested elections in Israel and the U.S. Specifically, we examine the relationship between people’s belief that politics is a zero-sum game and their tendency to avoid talking about politics with ideologically opposed others. In two studies conducted in the days leading up to their countries’ elections, we found that Israeli and American voters who view politics as zero-sum avoided political discussions with ideologically opposed others. Furthermore, zero-sum beliefs about politics statistically predicted the avoidance of political conversations through two distinct mechanisms: perceived conflict and a lack of receptiveness to opposing views. Finally, in a longitudinal design, we found that zero-sum beliefs about politics statistically and robustly predicted the avoidance of political conversation one week later.

Price and party: The importance of partisanship and cost in American climate public opinion

Existing research on American climate opinion demonstrates that a wide variety of variables impact whether voters support a given policy. However, little research has empirically tested which variables matter the most in creating durable majority support for climate policies, and how varying outcomes of those variables can impact such support. I use a conjoint experiment to test the extent to which American voters value the six most important variables around climate mitigation policy, as illustrated in the current literature, and which potential options among those values attract the greatest support. I improve in external validity over previous conjoints by introducing partisanship and policy level, as well as more realistic ranges for policy cost. I find that voters generally-and across racial, gender, and partisan lines- value some variables ten times higher than others, and prefer Democratic or Bipartisan policies that are low cost and provide a variety of benefits.

Pervasive and pernicious underestimation of Asian Americans' support for affirmative action

AbstractPolling data show that 69% of Asian American voters favor affirmative action. However, Asian Americans were featured prominently by the organization Students for Fair Admissions, which played a central role in the Supreme Court's decision to overturn affirmative action. This may distort people's estimates of Asian Americans’ support for affirmative action. Two studies (N = 695) found that people, even Asian Americans, underestimated Asian Americans’ support for affirmative action. Three follow‐up studies (N = 1,625), where we manipulated perceived Asian Americans’ support for affirmative action or the Supreme Court's decision, found no evidence that such information affected White people's support for affirmative action. In Study 6 (N = 365), however, we found that Asian Americans were more likely to agree with the Supreme Court's decision to overturn affirmative action when they saw that a majority of Asian Americans supported the court ruling (relative to a control condition in which no information was presented). This suggests that the widespread misperception of Asian Americans’ support for affirmative action and their central role in the Supreme Court cases may ultimately create a self‐fulfilling prophecy that could shift individual Asian Americans’ own attitude about affirmative action.

Identifying American climate change free riders and motivating sustainable behavior

Free riders, who benefit from collective efforts to mitigate climate change but do not actively contribute, play a key role in shaping behavioral climate action. Using a sample of 2096 registered American voters, we explore the discrepancy between two groups of free riders: cynics, who recognize the significance of environmental issues but do not adopt sustainable behaviors, and doubters, who neither recognize the significance nor engage in such actions. Through statistical analyses, we show these two groups are different. Doubters are predominantly male, younger, with lower income and education, exhibit stronger conspiracy beliefs, lower altruism, and limited environmental knowledge, are more likely to have voted for Trump and lean towards conservative ideology. Cynics are younger, religious, higher in socioeconomic status, environmentally informed, liberal-leaning, and less likely to support Trump. Our research provides insights on who could be most effectively persuaded to make climate-sensitive lifestyle changes and provides recommendations to prompt involvement in individual sustainability behaviors. Our findings suggest that for doubters, incentivizing sustainability through positive incentives, such as financial rewards, may be particularly effective. Conversely, for cynics, we argue that engaging them in more community-driven and social influence initiatives could effectively translate their passive beliefs into active participation.

Can Latin American Voters see the Future?

The present study examined whether Argentinian citizens could predict election results at the sub-national level. We targeted Argentinian Twitter users in seven provinces with polls using Twitter Ads. Argentinian Twitter users constitute a high-ability subgroup that possesses several characteristics that enhance citizen forecasting competence. The polls asked citizens to predict what party would win the first round of the upcoming presidential election in their province. We present a preliminary citizen forecast of the first round of the 2023 Argentinian presidential election. The forecast demonstrates three preliminary findings. First, citizens expect a competitive election in their respective provinces. Second, citizens in almost all the provinces expect an opposition victory. Finally, a high degree of uncertainty surrounds these predictions, with no party obtaining a greater than 50 percent probability of winning in any of the provinces.

The importance of immigrants on American intervention in international crises

Immigrants have a substantial impact on US foreign policy: doubling the proportion of the American voters who were born in a country yields a 4% increase in the probability that the United States will intervene in a crisis involving that country. This result is significant at the 1% level. Moreover, the immigrants’ level of education and income do not affect this result. Apart from unemployment and real gross domestic product growth, other quantifiable domestic and international variables, from presidential approval to trade dependency and defense pacts, do not have a statistically significant impact on American intervention.

Alabama Black Belt Politics: Promise and Peril, 1890-1935

This thesis examines African Americans in Alabama’s Black Belt—the majority constituent in the region—and their centrality in Republican and Communist Party voter campaigns. The Black Belt, originally named for the geological conditions of the soil, was home to a large enslaved population in the nineteenth century. As African Americans became the largest settled community across the belt’s counties, they were seen as useful constituents, first by Alabama politicians in the early twentieth century, and then, by the Communist Party in the 1930s. Both hoped to mobilize African American voters to bolster support for their own parties. These instances reflect a consistent trend of disregarding Black Belt residents as independent political actors. This thesis shows that despite earlier failures by the Republican Party to politically incorporate African Americans, the Communist Party would later create a mutually beneficial relationship. African Americans worked within the party to advocate for their own needs. This self-advocacy by African Americans is often overlooked in regional histories of the area. 

We Got Our Guy!: Populist Attitudes after Populists Gain Power

Research on populist attitudes and populist leaders’ narratives has largely overlooked what happens to populist attitudes after a populist is elected, especially among the populist’s supporters. Existing literature points to two possible directions of change. On one hand, if populist attitudes stem from a perceived lack of representation, then we would expect people’s populist attitudes to decrease once their preferred candidate is in power. On the other hand, scholars have observed that populist politicians in power continue to deploy populist rhetoric, suggesting that their supporters’ populist attitudes should stay constant or even increase. In this project, the author focuses on Donald Trump and his supporters to explore this mechanism. Drawing on a national survey conducted around the 2016 and 2020 elections, the author shows that Trump’s supporters saw a significant decrease in populist attitudes after he came into power compared with both other American voters and other Republicans. The author also demonstrates that this decrease in populist attitudes is associated with changes in the level of “feeling represented.” On the basis of these findings, the author argues that populist attitudes are driven by feelings of lack of representation over other mechanisms.

Far-right Extremism in the USA

The author of the article examines the current state of far-right extremism in the USA. The article points out several features typical of such movements in the political realia of the Unites States at the beginning of the 2020s. Among those are: decentralization, the metamorphosis of the idea of ‘white supremacy’, contacts with like-minded individuals and movements abroad, the unifying role of D. Trump, as well as the growing popularity of far-right views among American voters. The author concludes that far-right extremism is still a force with which one has to reckon and which may play an essential role in the upcoming presidential election of 2024.

UNCOVERING USA PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE GENRE

Presidential debate (PD) draws the most attention compared to other political discourses as the candidates present their profile and proposals using rhetorical communicative strategy to convince voter candidates and defeat their adversaries. However, the generic structure of PD is seldomly being the perspective of linguistics studies. The paper aims at scrutinizing the genre of USA Presidential debate using the genre analysis framework proposed by Swales and Bhatia. Thus, the study employs two parts of genre analysis: move, and strategies analysis. The present study finds that there are six moves of USA PD namely greetings-informing the debate format, introducing the topic, thesis, argumentation, and closure. The communicative purpose of the moves is persuading the American voters in the election day. The finding implies pivotal stages of PD to construct political discourse. This study is expected to contribute to EFL teaching and learning especially in teaching genre exposition integrated in four English skills.

Predictors of U.S. public support for climate aid to developing countries

Effectively responding to global warming requires mitigation and adaptation efforts worldwide. Although developed countries have pledged substantial financial support to help developing countries respond to climate change, these pledges have yet to be fulfilled. A majority of American voters support providing aid to developing nations, however, levels of support differ sharply between Democrats and Republicans. To investigate the predictors of support for climate aid among registered voters in the United States and to assess the effect of political party identification, we conducted hierarchical regression and relative weight analysis on a nationally representative sample of U.S. registered voters (n = 898) surveyed in 2021. Among all voters, the predictors of support for climate aid were: party identification (with more support among Democrats), perceived risk to developing countries, worry about global warming, injunctive beliefs that the U.S. should do more, and global warming belief certainty. Among Democrats, the predictors were: perceived risk to the U.S., worry, injunctive beliefs the U.S. should do more, education, and income. Among Republicans, the predictors were: perceived risk to developing countries, and injunctive beliefs the U.S. should do more. These findings have both theoretical and practical relevance for efforts to build public support for development assistance aimed at reducing climate change.

Redistricting in Virginia: Identifying a Gerrymandered Map using County Levels

This paper analyzes redistricting in Virginia between the 2010 and 2020 election cycles. While existing redistricting research proposes solutions to gerrymandering, identifies gerrymandered maps, and reviews the local effects of redistricting, there lacks research using smaller levels of analysis. Thus, this study employs a meta-analysis, comparing a partisan index of each of Virginia’s 134 counties to the congressional district that county was a part of, in both 2010 and 2020. The results demonstrate an average 3 percent decrease in the disparity between a county’s partisanship and the entire district from 2010 to 2020. This change in the average distance between a county’s partisanship and its district indicates that the 2020 redistricting made Virginia’s districts more representative. This conclusion is corroborated by other Virginia-focused studies. By using counties as levels of analysis, this study delves deeper into how to identify gerrymandering using smaller groups. Given how important redistricting is to the American voting system, more research is needed to better understand the best way to identify a gerrymandered map.

Younger and older adults’ memory of past feelings surrounding an election

ABSTRACT People often misremember their past feelings, especially when recalling their prior mood as opposed to their specific emotions in response to events. A previous study also found that the direction of memory errors varies based on feeling type; younger adults overestimated the intensity of prior moods but underestimated the intensity of prior event-specific emotions. This study aimed to replicate these patterns and test whether they vary with age. In doing so, we also tested whether an age-related positivity effect would emerge, such that older adults would be relatively more likely to overestimate past positive feelings and underestimate past negative feelings. Using a sample of American voters, who reported their feelings following the 2020 United States presidential election, we found that both younger and older adults subsequently overestimated the intensity of their past mood in the week following the election but were relatively accurate in recalling the intensity of their prior emotions about the election result. Unexpectedly, among election losers, we also observed an age-related negativity effect in recall for prior mood. When faced with negative real-world events, older adults may not show the same positivity biases that are observed in lab studies.

The Gaza Horror and US Policy

In responding to Hamas’s devastating 7 October 2023 attack on Israel, the United States has two strategic interests: a geopolitical interest in preventing the conflict from widening; and a reputational interest in forestalling an even worse humanitarian catastrophe. Although the Biden administration has not questioned whether Israel should act decisively, it has counselled caution and deliberation to buy time for hostage negotiations and to minimise civilian casualties while deploying US military assets to deter Iran and Hizbullah from directly initiating hostilities against Israel. The unprecedented horror of the attack makes the argument for Israeli restraint more difficult to make, but questions will undoubtedly arise as to how the US can move Israel away from a maximally aggressive posture to preserve its bona fides with the rest of the world, including some American voters. The US would best cast the crisis as an urgent prompt to a more agreeable future based on an affirmative, multilateral plan.

What Can Voting Do for Democracy?

Abstract Empirical political scientists and normative political theorists alike have challenged the grip elections hold on our democratic imagination, albeit for very different reasons. Against both sets of critics, Emilee Booth Chapman’s remarkable and timely new book Election Day: How We Vote and What it Means for Democracy makes a compelling case for the ballot box’s unique place in democratic theory as a site of collective agency among political equals. Chapman offers an invaluable framework for navigating the shifting character of the American voting system and the innumerable proposals for improving it. But at the same time, this essay argues that in face of American democracy’s moral failures, Election Day reveals as much about the limits of well-ordered elections as it does their democratic promise.