Cooperative Congressional Election Study Research Articles

Selecting for Masculinity: Women’s Under-Representation in the Republican Party

The gap between women’s representation in the Democratic and Republican parties has grown significantly in the last three decades. We argue existing explanations undervalue voters’ contributions to this trend by focusing on voter responses to candidate sex rather than candidate gender. We theorize that Republican voters (especially the most conservative) prefer masculine candidates in intraparty and entry-level elections. Because sex and gender are correlated, this limits the number of Republican women who advance through the political pipeline. Experimental vignettes from two rounds of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (N = 2,000) and two large surveys of Republicans (N > 10,000) show that Republican (but not Democratic) voters penalize candidates with “feminine” self-presentation regardless of the candidate’s sex. Original data on the self-presentation of Republican candidates for entry-level office (N = 459) confirm Republican candidates often present themselves in gender-stereotypical ways. In short, voters play an underappreciated role in the partisan gap in women’s representation.

Electoral Accountability for Rising Tuition in the US: Evidence from a Survey Experiment and Observational Data

ABSTRACT Tuition levels in the US have been rising at an above-the-inflation pace, leading to spiraling student debt levels and negative effects on students’ well-being. While student outcomes of rising tuition are well known, the political reasons behind the decisions of policy makers to contain tuition increases or not remain poorly understood. In this article, we focus on electoral accountability that policy makers face for rising tuition by examining voters’ reactions. Using a survey experiment with a sample of US adults (N = 1040), we show that clarity of responsibility is an important factor affecting reactions to rising tuition levels. When voters are informed about the role of the government in tuition setting, they are more likely to vote out policy makers responsible for cuts in funding. We show a similar relationship in observational data using a nationally representative survey from Cooperative Congressional Election Study. State governors’ approval is lower in states where tuition levels increased recently, and the relationship is moderated by the visibility of government in tuition-setting. By demonstrating that policy makers face repercussions for rising tuition but are able to avoid blame in certain conditions, we contribute to scholarly understanding of preferences of policy makers in higher education.

ARE CATHOLICS UNIQUELY CROSS-PRESSURED? POLICY BELIEFS AND VOTING BEHAVIOR BY RELIGIOUS TRADITION IN RECENT U.S. ELECTIONS

The Catholic Church’s pro-life, pro-social justice policy agenda takes the sides of both major US political parties. This potentially cross-pressures Catholic voters’ choice between those parties, but could alternatively legitimate a Catholic voter’s personal partisan preference. This paper examines whether Catholic voters who share the Church’s core policy positions are more or less likely than comparably cross-pressured non-Catholic voters to exhibit political behaviors associated with cross-pressures: avoiding identification with a major party, avoiding voting or a major-party vote choice, defecting from one’s party in voting, and selectively misperceiving candidate issue positions. Analyzing data from the 2016-2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies and the 1992-2016 American National Election Studies, I find little evidence that Catholics are uniquely, strongly cross-pressured. If anything, cross-pressured (and other) Catholics are more likely than comparable non-Catholics–even those in faith traditions that are more clearly aligned with a single party–to embrace partisan politics. In some cases, partisan differences between Catholics in their responsiveness to cross-pressures exceed differences between Catholics and non-Catholics.

Ideology, Information, and Social Welfare Preferences

Research shows that Americans have a generally poor understanding of welfare programs. Providing information about such programs has the potential to shape public preferences, but we argue that such effects may differ based on the content of the information and its correspondence with existing ideological beliefs. Using original survey experiments embedded in the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, we analyze how the relationship of ideology with welfare programs varies in response to different types of negative information about the program, and different descriptions of policy design. We find that information about inadequate benefits has a larger negative impact on welfare support for liberals than for conservatives but that both liberals and conservatives may be equally concerned about fraud and inefficiency. Other information about policy design has the expected conditional effect: state (as opposed to federal) funding and short time limits for benefits are more appealing to conservatives than liberals.

White Racial Identity, Racial Attitudes, and Latino Partisanship

AbstractWhile partisanship in American politics has been historically tied to racial identity and racial attitudes, most studies of Latino partisanship do not incorporate these factors into understanding their partisan attachments. I argue that the concepts of race, color, and mestizaje as they are understood within Latino communities in the United States can influence political attitudes and partisanship among Latinos themselves. Using six consecutive Cooperative Election Study (formerly Cooperative Congressional Election Study) surveys I examine how self-identification as white, racial resentment, and color-blind attitudes influence Latino partisanship. I find that white racial identity has a small but significant positive association with Republican partisanship among Latinos, and a negative association with Democratic partisanship. Additionally, negative racial attitudes among Latinos are strongly related to identification as Republican, even when controlling for ideology and other factors like immigrant generation and religion. These results have important implications for understanding current and future Latino voting patterns.

Whose War is it Anyway? Explaining the Black-White Gap in Support for the Use of Force Abroad

Building on long-standing work on a “gender gap” in war support, this article documents a recurring “race gap” in which Black Americans display less enthusiasm for war than their White counterparts. We compile time-series data on public opinion during the Iraq War collected from over fifty national polls and successive waves of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to assess potential explanations for the gap. We show that concerns about casualties best explain lower levels of support for war among Black Americans. Feelings of political alienation and preferences for domestic spending serve as more salient contributors to Black disapproval of war during the George W. Bush years. Meanwhile, having a family member in the military does not explain lower Black support for war. Black antiwar rhetoric suggests that our casualty sensitivity and alienation findings stem from linked fate attitudes and concerns about fairness and “justness” of the war effort among Black Americans.

The (racial) implications of “special favors”

In this short manuscript, I explore the predictive validity of a common component of racial resentment—(dis)agreement with the idea that minority racial groups need special favors to get ahead. Specifically, this analysis takes advantage of different “special favors” questions included in the Cooperative Congressional Election Studies (CCES) 2012-2014 Panel Study to assess whether affirmative action preferences are uniquely racialized. I find that (1) respondents react differently to the special favors instrument on the basis of the racial group in question, (2) these assessments vary among liberals and conservatives, and (3) they predict racialized outcomes stereotypically associated with a given racial group. These findings dovetail with recent work that illustrates an ideological sorting of such measures, while offering modest evidence that a prominent instrument used in symbolic racism scales is, in fact, race-coded to specific target groups.

Alignment of state-level policies and public attitudes towards abortion legality and government restrictions on abortion in the United States

BackgroundContextual factors can shape public opinion towards abortion. We investigated the association between the state-level abortion legislative climate and individual attitudes towards abortion legality and government restrictions of abortion access in the United States. MethodsData come from the 2020 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (n = 61,000). Using multivariable logistic regression with generalized estimating equations, we explored whether state-level abortion policy climates (based on the Guttmacher Institute’s 2020 rating of state abortion policies) were associated with individual attitudes (1) towards abortion legality, and (2) towards government restriction of abortion access, controlling for individual socio-demographic factors. ResultsEighty-eight percent of participants supported the legality of abortion in some or all circumstances. Conversely, 30% of the sample opposed all federal government restrictions on abortion. More than 60% of the sample lived in highly abortion-restrictive states. Participants living in states with a more supportive abortion legislative climate were more likely to support the legality of abortion in some or all circumstances (AOR = 1.07, (95% CI 1.05, 1.09). Participants in states with more supportive abortion policies were more likely to oppose federal governmental restrictions (AOR = 1.03, 95% CI 1.02, 1.04). Low religiosity, higher educational attainment, and politically liberal views were associated with increased support for abortion legality and increased opposition to government restrictions on abortion. ConclusionsState-level abortion policy contexts were positively associated with public attitudes towards abortion. While attitudes towards abortion legality are favorable across the country; there is also strong support at least one type of government restriction on abortion access. Results highlight a disconnect between multifaceted public attitudes towards abortion and polarized state contexts, suggesting that policymaking on abortion represents a higher level of polarization than exists at the individual level. Policymakers and legislators should more carefully consider the desires of the public when designing abortion legislation.

Trump Tweets and Democratic Attitudes: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

During his tenure in office, President Trump made repeated attacks on democratic norms and practices in his public statements, in particular via Twitter. Does this type of anti-democratic rhetoric lead to an erosion of citizens’ democratic attitudes? We argue that reactions to Trump’s rhetoric are not likely to be uniform given the highly polarized political climate in the United States. In order to test this theoretical proposition, we fielded a survey experiment on a module of the 2019 Cooperative Congressional Election Study. Treated respondents were exposed to a range of tweets sent by President Trump attacking three critical institutions of a liberal democracy (the media, Congress, and the Courts). We find limited evidence that Trump’s rhetoric leads to an erosion of democratic attitudes. On the contrary, the results suggest there is significant pushback against anti-democratic messages, especially among Democrats.

Elite polarization and mass policy attitudes: A study of the 2010 senate election

Objectives This study aims to test the extent to which campaigns along with partisanship polarized public attitudes on a series of major policy issues during the 2010 Senate elections. Methods Data are drawn from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study data and Campaign Media Analysis Group data, which are provided by Wesleyan Media Project. Results The findings of this article are two-fold: First, the 2010 Senate campaigns did not sweepingly boost mass polarization on policy attitudes in general. Second, polarization effect only demonstrated among low-information voters on economic policy issues but little on moral and non-economic issues. Conclusion This article argues that elite-driven mass polarization is based on a matrix of interconnecting varying degrees of information intensity, predispositions, and voters’ awareness level. In the context of low-intensity campaigns, low-information citizens are more likely to follow the party communications and thus are more likely to polarize their attitudes on self-interest issues.

Serving Democracy: Evidence of Voting Resource Disparity in Florida

Florida, an important state in presidential elections in the United States, has received considerable media coverage in recent years for long lines to vote. Do some segments of the population receive a disproportionate share of the resources to serve the voting process, which could encourage some or dissuade others from voting? We conduct the first empirical panel data study to examine whether minority and Democrat voters in Florida experience lower poll worker staffing, which could lengthen the time to vote. We do not find evidence of a disparity directly due to race. Instead, we observe a political party effect—all else equal, a 1% increase in the percentage of voters registered as Democrat in a county increases the number of registered voters per poll worker by 3.5%. This effect appears to be meaningful—using a voting queue simulation, a 5% increase in voters registered as Democrat in a county could increase the average wait time to vote from 40 minutes (the approximate average wait time to vote in Florida in 2012 and the highest average wait time across all states in that election per the Cooperative Congressional Election Study) to about 115 minutes. This paper was accepted by Vishal Gaur, operations management.

Primary Divisions: How Voters Evaluate Policy and Group Differences in Intraparty Contests

While central to theories of polarization and primary elections, surprisingly little evidence shows that partisans favor candidates who take ideologically consistent issue positions, above other considerations, in intraparty contests. In this study, we investigate how voters weigh policy and nonpolicy differences when evaluating same-party politicians, using novel conjoint experiments that manipulate the demographic, biographical, and issue information of congressional candidates. We recruit 4,093 participants in the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, assigning half to either rate same-party candidates on an ideological scale or choose between them in primary-like settings. We find that voters place candidates along coherent policy lines and give greater support to those taking party-consistent issue positions. We also find evidence of affinity voting on shared racial, gender, and religious characteristics, though effects are typically smaller. Our results underscore how informed partisans’ policy attitudes can drive choices in primary elections, including which candidates contest them.

Finding the missing link? The impact of co-ethnicity, pan-ethnicity, and cross-ethnicity on Latino vote choice

Surveys show that Latinos more strongly identify with their ethnic identities (i.e. national origin) than their pan-ethnic identity as “Latino/Hispanic.” Given the primacy of ethnic identity among Latinos, what impact does shared ethnic versus pan-ethnic identity between candidates and voters have on Latino vote choice? Studies suggest that an “identity-to-politics link” exists among Latinos; however, we believe the measurement of “co-ethnicity” should be reexamined. Using a survey experiment embedded in a module of the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we randomize the ethnic, pan-ethnic, and partisan identification of a fictional male congressional candidate in a contest against a white non-Hispanic candidate to examine the role of shared ethnic identity on Latino vote choice. We find that Latinos, regardless of candidate partisanship, more strongly support co-ethnic candidates relative to candidates with whom they share a pan-ethnic identity. We also find that Latinos are significantly more supportive of a cross-ethnic Latino candidate compared to a pan-ethnic Latino candidate; and that Latinos are more likely to cross partisan lines to support a co-ethnic candidate. These results not only suggest that there exists a Latino “identity to politics” link, but that the extant scholarship has underestimated the size and scope of this electoral connection.

Ready for a Woman President?

AbstractEven though a record number of women ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020, Clinton’s loss in 2016 led pundits, party elites, and voters to worry about whether the country would be willing to support a woman for president, and polling organizations regularly asked questions that tapped into such concerns. While the vast majority expressed willingness to vote for a woman for president in polls, people were more skeptical about how their neighbors felt. Our research question cuts to the heart of this issue: How does polling information about comfort with the idea of a woman president affect perceptions of the electability of actual women running for their party’s nomination, and in turn voting decisions? We expect that exposure to signals of low comfort with a woman president will reduce perceptions of electability, and in turn dampen support for women at the nomination stage, but there are competing hypotheses for how signals of high comfort will be received. We further expect that Democratic women will be most affected by such information. We test these expectations with an experiment fielded on the 2019 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Our findings have important implications for media coverage of polls related to women running for executive office.

The influence of becoming a parent on political participation in the United States

AbstractObjectiveFocusing on the United States, this study assesses the near‐term influence of introducing a child into a household on a parent's likelihood of participating in politics.MethodsLogistic regression analysis and exact matching of data from the November 2010 and November 2014 Current Population Surveys. Conditional, fixed‐effects logistic reygression analysis of data from the 2010–2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study Panel Survey.ResultsCross‐sectional regressions and exact‐matching results indicate a negative relationship between becoming a parent and numerous forms of political participation, including voter turnout. However, recognizing potential threats to causal inference, analyses that leverage panel data and sensitivity analysis applied to the exact‐matching estimates provide weaker support for a causal claim.ConclusionThe introduction of a child into a household appears to be associated with attenuated parental civic engagement in the near term, but the evidence provides weaker support for a causal claim.

Black Workers in White Places: Daytime Racial Diversity and White Public Opinion

Research on the effects of racial context on public opinion often use residence-based measures of context, ignoring how the demographic composition of a context may change throughout the day. In this short article, we introduce a new zip code–level measure, racial flux, that accounts for how contexts differ between worker and resident populations. We merge our measure with survey data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and show that greater racial flux—more Black workers relative to Black residents in a zip code—is associated with more conservative voting behaviors and racial attitudes among whites who live in the zip code. Our study suggests that whites are as politically responsive to the presence of nonresident minorities as they are resident minorities. More work is needed on measuring racial context and on exploring the contours of how and why context affects political preferences.

Voting rights and the resilience of Black turnout

AbstractThe Voting Rights Act of 1965 increased turnout among Black voters, which then generated economic benefits for Black communities. In Shelby County v. Holder (2013), the Supreme Court invalidated the enforcement mechanism responsible for these improvements, prompting concerns that states with histories of discriminatory election practices would respond by suppressing Black turnout. I estimate the effect of the Shelby decision on the racial composition of the electorate using triple‐difference comparisons of validated turnout data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study. The data suggest that the Shelby decision did not widen the Black‐white turnout gap in states subject to the ruling.

Gender and Racial Gaps in Support for Policing and Correctional Reforms: Are the Gaps a Consequence of Political Partisanship?

Divisive criminal justice issues are typically framed through gender and racial lenses, with little empirical work considering the increasing role of political partisanship. Using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study ( N = 55,000), we estimate multivariate models of support for four policing and correctional reforms. The models initially point to gender gaps and racial gaps. However, as with many public policy issues, support for criminal justice reforms are largely a product of political partisanship—the gender and racial gaps are largely a consequence of gender and racial gaps in partisanship and appear to be driven by white Republican men. As legislative bodies continue to be overrepresented with individuals with the same demographic profile, criminal justice reform prospects are limited.

Immigrant status, race, and voter turnout in the American mass public

AbstractObjectiveThis study examines the joint effects of immigrant generation and race on voter turnout.MethodsUsing data from the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, this study compares voter turnout across immigrant generations across different racial groups.ResultsOur analysis shows that turnout rates in the 2018 midterm election are higher for blacks and Latinos as they become further removed from their immigration generation. Immigration generation has no effect on the turnout for Asians and other race respondents, and for whites, we find that voter turnout is highest among third‐generation immigrants.ConclusionOur findings generally support our expectations but there are differences across racial groups.

Elections, competition, and constituent evaluations of U.S. senators

Previous research posits that constituents' evaluations of senators will vary over time depending on if a senator is up for re-election or not. In order to test the effect of the Senate electoral cycle on constituent opinion, we take advantage of the Cooperative Congressional Election Study's survey panel from 2010, 2012, and 2014. These data are particularly well suited for our study because they allow us to examine the same constituents' opinions of the same senators at various stages in the Senate electoral cycle. While our analysis finds some variation in constituent evaluations over time, many of these differences are either statistically insignificant or substantively negligible. On balance, we find much more consistency in constituent evaluations over time, but the relationship can be more nuanced and conditional on the level of electoral competition. Specifically, we find that competitive elections lead to an increased association between policy agreement and constituent evaluations.