Electoral Benefits Research Articles

“Let Our Ballots Secure What Our Bullets Have Won”: Union Veterans and the Making of Radical Reconstruction

After the Civil War, congressional Republicans used sweeping powers to expand and enforce civil rights for African Americans. Though the electoral benefits of African American suffrage were clear, Republicans had to overcome party divisions and racist voters. This paper argues that the war imbued Northern veterans with the belief that true victory required renewing the Union by abolishing slavery and establishing (imperfect) legal equality. This made veterans more receptive to Radical Reconstruction and ignited activism for it from below. Using difference-in-differences, I show that greater enlistment increased Republican vote share, particularly in pivotal postwar elections. Moreover, “as-if” random exposure to combat deaths increased Republican partisanship among soldiers after the war. Finally, I show that veterans became more likely to vote for African American suffrage. The paper concludes that Union veterans, through their votes and their activism, were a decisive part of the white coalition that backed America’s “Second Revolution.”

The electoral benefits of environmental position‐taking: Floods and electoral outcomes in England 2010–2019

AbstractThe global increase in extreme weather events in recent years has spurred political scientists to examine the potential political effects of such phenomena. This paper explores effect of flooding on electoral outcomes and offers evidence that the impact of adverse events varies with changes in political context. Using a difference‐in‐differences identification strategy to analyse three consecutive general elections in the United Kingdom (2015, 2017 and 2019), the paper finds variability in partisan electoral benefit from one election to the next that calls into question the blind retrospection and rally‐round‐the‐leader explanations which are often advanced to account for electoral reactions to natural disasters. Instead, changing party positions on environmental issues appear to account more convincingly for shifts in electoral support in response to flooding. This suggests that parties can derive benefit from, or be punished for, the positions they take on environmental issues when extreme weather events affect citizens.

Not for ideology but opportunity? The foundations of EU issue-voting in Eurosceptic Italy

ABSTRACT Party-system dynamics and party EU ideology have traditionally influenced trends in EU issue-voting, with opposition and Eurosceptic parties being more likely to benefit electorally from EU issues. While the electoral benefits of Eurosceptic and opposition parties on the EU have been separately analysed, less is known about the persistence of these preference configurations when Eurosceptic parties move into government. This raises a key question: Does the electoral potential of Eurosceptic parties change once they take over government? We address this question focusing on the Italian case, which, due to the experience of having had a fully-fledged Eurosceptic cabinet in the 2018–2019 period, allows us to test whether changes in governing/opposition status affect the electoral performance of Eurosceptic/Europhile parties on EU issues. While confirming that Italian voters are likely, electorally, to reward opposition and Eurosceptic parties on Europe more than governing and Europhile parties, the article shows that Eurosceptic parties, by assuming government office, tend to lose their electoral advantage on EU issues, not only as compared to Europhile parties, but also to Eurosceptic parties remaining in opposition. In contrast, governing/opposition status does not condition the electoral potential of Europhile parties on the EU dimension.

Polarization and pandering in common-interest elections

Adding candidates to a one-dimensional common-interest voting model, this paper shows that catering to centrist voters can lower social welfare. The electoral benefit of doing so is weak, so candidates polarize substantially in equilibrium, resolving a long-standing empirical puzzle.

The Electoral Impact of Military Experience: Evidence From U.S. Senate Elections (1982–2016)

The belief that a military veteran candidate receives an electoral benefit at the polls based on a history of military service remains a widely held assumption in American politics. However, this assumption of a veteran electoral bonus has rarely been studied by scholars and the limited literature displays mixed results. This article presents the findings of a new study that addresses the mixed results in the literature and presents evidence that demonstrates that certain types of military veteran candidates do gain a veteran bonus in congressional elections. This advantage over nonveterans is conditioned by party, the type of race, and the nature of military service. By analyzing general election races for the United States Senate over 34 years (1982–2016), the study uncovers support for Democratic candidates with military service receiving an electoral bonus at the polls. This electoral bonus is most widely enjoyed by Democratic veterans in open Senate races and with experience in deployed warzones. The key findings suggest that previous conclusions in the literature with respect to establishing a veteran bonus in congressional elections should be reexamined to expand the time period of analysis, restructure the characterization of military experience beyond a binary variable, and include both House and Senate elections.

Social Media and Political Mobilization in India

India is considered as the largest democracy in the world. The proper functioning of a democratic system depends upon its electoral politics and election result is the outcome of the mobilization strategies adopted by the different political parties of the country. Thus political mobilization is particularly important in any democratic politics. This paper seeks to understand how the mobilization strategy has been redefined due to the entry of social media into politics. There is no scope to deny the fact that conventional media still play an important role in political mobilization. But the coming into being of social media into politics has made things more interesting, politics more democratic and the electoral system more inclusive. The political leaders irrespective of political parties are trying their best to utilize the social media platforms for their electoral benefits. The paper is evaluating the role of social media in political mobilization as different from conventional media with the expectation that doing away with the fake news will make this new media a prospective media in the near future.

Fact-checking, reputation, and political falsehoods in Italy and the United States

This article develops a reputational theory of political falsehoods. Politicians are motivated by the desire to build a positive reputation, therefore, they will be more likely to deliver false statements (incurring the risk of being fact-checked) when the potential benefit outweighs the cost. This happens as new elections come closer, since the electoral benefit of falsehoods increases along with the probability of being checked too late (after the election day). Politicians are less likely to issue falsehoods in detailed statements and in scripted communication, since the reputational cost is higher because such falsehoods would be considered intentional. Conversely, the stronger trust that voters attribute to politicians on issues they own, allows politicians to lie on such topics. Statistical analysis of almost 8000 statements released by politicians and assessed by fact-checkers, in the United States and Italy (2007–2018), supports the hypotheses. The results hold irrespective of party affiliation.

By invitation only: on why do politicians bring interest groups into committees

ABSTRACT In democratic politics, the participation of interest groups in policymaking is commonly understood as a secluded affair. Why would interest groups and policymakers make public an otherwise private affair? I argue that legislators invite interest groups to participate in the legislative process to raise the salience of issues they ”own”. Legislators with gatekeeping authority, I show, bring interest groups into committees when their party benefits from raising public attention. Interest groups, on their part, are given preferential access to finetune laws that directly affect them. Extensions of the model show that participation increases before an election and declines after, with issue salience providing electoral benefits rather than policy ones. I test my argument using an original dataset of 4902 instances of interest group participation in committee meetings in the Ecuadorian Congress between 1988 and 2018, as well as over 30 interviews to interest group representatives, legislators, and congressional staff.

Do Stereotypes Explain Discrimination Against Minority Candidates or Discrimination in Favor of Majority Candidates?

AbstractScholars have examined the role that negative stereotypes play in electoral discrimination against minority candidates. Incorporating literature on in-group favoritism, the author argues here that some degree of this discrimination can be explained instead by voters holding positive stereotypes of majority candidates and discriminating in their favor. Based on the results of an original moderation-of-process survey experiment carried out in Italy, the study provides evidence of electoral discrimination pertaining to immigrant-origin candidates, concentrated among right-wing citizens. It finds that stereotypes have little mediating effect on discriminationagainstcandidates with a migration background; rather, the primary role played by stereotypes is in discriminationin favor ofmajority candidates, that is, positive bias that reserves electoral benefits to them. The relevance of in-group favoritism is corroborated by the finding that large segments of the Italian voting population hold distinctively positive stereotypes of majority candidates without also negatively stereotyping immigrant-origin candidates.

The politicization of protected areas establishment in Canada

Environmental issues and related policy instruments are becoming increasingly politicized in the Canadian context, but it is unclear whether biodiversity conservation and protected areas are similarly politicized. Here, we suggest that the political characteristics of protected areas do not lend themselves easily to politicization, but data from the Canadian Protected and Conserved Areas Database indicate that at the federal level, and provincially in Alberta, the rate of protected areas establishment is becoming increasingly tied to electoral politics, suggesting some politicization. We situate these trends within federal electoral politics between 2006 and the present, outlining the differing approaches of the Harper Conservatives and the Trudeau Liberals and showing how both administrations instrumentalized the environment and protected areas for their own electoral benefits. We find similar trends in Alberta with the Progressive Conservative, New Democratic Party, and United Conservative Party governments. However, while there is increasing polarization in practice, there has been less polarization of the electoral rhetoric surrounding protected areas. This politicization represents a barrier to conservation in Canada as it can lead to greenwashing, poor accountability, or the creation of an anti-conservation constituency. At the same time, politicization can raise the profile of conservation in public discourse, leading to greater public interest and engagement.

Unintended environmental consequences of anti-corruption strategies

Fighting corruption in one sector may improve overall governance but may also shift rent extraction activities to less scrutinized sectors. This paper highlights such unintended consequences of a federal anti-corruption strategy in Brazil by documenting the causal effects of randomized fiscal audits on deforestation dynamics, a non-targeted outcome. Between 2003 and 2011, public audits of federal funds increased deforestation by about 10% in municipalities of the Brazilian Amazon within the first three years after the audit. Municipalities seem also to have learned from neighboring audits, which affected deforestation outcomes in a similar way to own audits. The audit effects doubled among first term mayors who managed to win re-elections afterwards, suggesting the potential presence of electoral benefits to such strategies.

Racial attitudes & political cross-pressures in nationalized elections: The case of the Republican coalition in the Trump era

While scholars have found that Trump was able to capitalize on the racial attitudes of white voters, it is less clear how these racial attitudes influenced vote-choice across partisan and ideological cleavages in the electorate. It is also unclear whether racial attitudes affected voting at the congressional level or electoral outcomes at the aggregate level. Using a novel measure of racial attitudes at the subnational level and survey data, we make three clear findings: (1) Trump and Republican congressional candidates benefited from conservative racial attitudes both at the aggregate level and among white voters, (2) this electoral benefit for Republicans persisted during the 2018 midterm elections, and (3) the effect of attitudes on vote-choice did not significantly vary across partisan and ideological cleavages in the white electorate. Our findings suggest that, even during the era of highly nationalized and partisan elections, racial attitudes are still a mechanism by which Republicans can win significant electoral support among Democrats and relatively liberal voters in the white electorate. These findings have implications for the growing salience of race in the Republican electoral coalition.

The Politics of Trade Adjustment Versus Trade Protection

The United States’ Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA) program seeks to help workers transition away from jobs lost to import competition. By contrast, trade remedies like antidumping seek to directly reduce the effect of competition at the border. Though they have very different economic effects, we show that trade adjustment and protectionism act as substitutes. Using the first geo-coded measure of US trade protectionist demands, we show that controlling for trade shocks, counties with a history of successful TAA petitions see fewer calls for trade protection. This effect holds when we confine our analysis to the steel industry, a heavy user of antidumping duties. And though they are both means of addressing import exposure, the two policy options have distinct political effects: in particular, successful TAA petitions carry a significant electoral benefit for Democratic candidates. Greater recognition of the substitutability of trade compensation and protectionism would improve governments’ response to import exposure.

Pork barrel politics and electoral returns at the local level

Does the targeted spending of public resources provide electoral benefits for incumbents? Despite the attention of scholars to that question, the empirical results are mixed thus far. The present paper supplies insights into the electoral benefits of discretionary funding on local elections. I study the consequences of pork-barrel politics in 7355 competitive mayoral elections in Slovakia between 2006 and 2018, finding that more grants from the central government enhance the likelihood of mayors winning reelection. The same advantage applies to mayors whose municipalities receive grants in local election years. The effects of the number of grants obtained as well as the timing of their distribution are, however, moderated by municipal population. More specifically, a larger number of grants and resources obtained near the end of the mayoral term provides electoral benefits only to small town mayors but give no advantage to the mayors of larger urban areas.

The Politics of White Racial Identity and Vote Choice in the 2018 Midterm Elections

ObjectivesThis article examines the role of white racial identity or white racial group consciousness in the vote choice of whites for the U.S. House of Representatives in the 2018 midterm elections.MethodsData from the 2018 American National Election Study (ANES) Pilot Study are analyzed using a logistic regression model.ResultsWhite racial consciousness was a significant predictor of U.S. House vote choice in 2018, even after controlling for other relevant explanatory variables such as racial resentment, party identification, and ideology. The effects were especially evident for two quintessential swing groups: independents and moderates.ConclusionIn the first national election of the Trump era, white racial group consciousness became a relevant electoral cleavage and determinant of white vote choice at the subpresidential level. Given the rhetoric and action of Trump as president, the Republican Party has morphed into a white identity political party, not dissimilar to populist right‐wing parties in Europe. While this might reap electoral benefits for the Republican Party in jurisdictions with smaller minority populations, it is likely to cost the party support where there is greater racial diversity. In the long term, the politics of white identity is likely to be an impediment to the Republican Party's ability to expand its electoral base.

The electoral benefits of unemployment, clientelism and distributive politics

Abstract We show that in the month prior to the 2003 Argentine presidential election, the expenditures of an Argentine poverty relief program exhibit a partisan bias. Taking into consideration the number of potential recipients (the unemployed with children 18 years old or less), the counties that were ideologically against the incumbent received a disproportionately large amount of the spending. Hence, instead of targeting swing or core districts, as established in the distributive politics literature, in Argentina the incumbent targeted opposition strongholds. To identify these effects and to classify districts into swing, core and opposition ones, we exploit the 2001 crises in Argentina. In particular, we use the 2001 political discontent that led to 15% of blank and null votes to estimate swing districts. Finally, we also show that this tactical spending had an electoral purpose. In counties where it was arguably cheaper to monitor the recipients’ voting behavior, the spending was significantly larger. In return, the clientelist exchange took place in districts with greater spending and monitoring. Thus, the politicians’ incentives to design an appropriate poverty relief program may be at odds with their electoral motivation.

The cost of coalition compromise: The electoral effects of holding salient portfolios

This article highlights the electoral effects of holding salient portfolios within a coalition government. For voters, holding ministries can be seen as a symbol of a party’s success within the coalition. As a voting heuristic, parties not controlling the portfolios on issues important to their platforms signal their failure to achieve these goals. Following this perspective, we hypothesize that the difference between coalition parties that hold salient portfolios and those that do not partially predicts the extent of the electoral cost of coalition participation. Using a data set that covers 11 European parliamentary democracies between 1966 and 2002, we show that for junior coalition partners there is an electoral reward for holding their most salient portfolio. There is also an electoral benefit for a junior partner to hold a larger number of portfolios if they do not control their most salient portfolio. Conversely, holding their most salient portfolio and a larger number of additional ministries results in greater electoral losses in the subsequent parliamentary election. These results indicate that parties’ success at negotiating for their policy priorities in coalition governments holds consequences for their future electoral success.

The Cyclical Electoral Effects of Programmatic Policies: Evidence From Education Reforms in Tanzania

A large literature documents the electoral benefits of clientelistic and programmatic policies in low-income states. We extend this literature by showing the cyclical electoral responses to a large programmatic intervention to expand access to secondary education in Tanzania over multiple electoral periods. Using a difference-in-difference approach, we find that the incumbent party's vote share increased by 2 percentage points in the election following the policy's announcement as a campaign promise (2005), but decreased by -1.4 percentage points in the election following implementation (2010). We find no discernible electoral impact of the policy in 2015, two electoral cycles later. We attribute the electoral penalty in 2010 to how the secondary school expansion policy was implemented. Our findings shed light on the temporally-contingent electoral impacts of programmatic policies, and highlight the need for more research on how policy implementation structures public opinion and vote choice in low-income states.

Distributive Spending and Presidential Partisan Politics

Do Republican and Democratic presidents vary in their geographic allocations of federal spending? Recent scholarship suggests that US presidents provide more federal outlays to districts represented by their co-partisans, but leave the issue of partisan affiliation unanswered. We explore that question using an updated database that covers federal spending programs over the 1984-2014 period. We show that the alignment effect found in previous studies cannot be observed for Republican presidents. We argue that Republican presidents may not use pork as much as Democratic presidents because their core constituency is fiscally conservative. One implication of the results reported herein is that the electoral benefits of distributive politics depend on the fiscal preferences of the electorate.

Expressway to Power: Infrastructure Projects and Political Support

This paper provides causal evidence on how political parties consolidate power in an electoral democracy. We collect administrative data on expressway construction by the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in Turkey, and use province-by-year variation in expressway construction to show that vote shares for the AKP increased in response to the expressways. For the average province in which the length of the expressway network increased from 51km to 193km, the estimates imply that the expressway expansion increased the AKP's vote share by 4.2 percentage-points or one-third of the increase from 2002 to 2011. Electoral gains by the AKP primarily came at the expense of its more established rivals. The estimates account for province and year fixed effects, which allows us to control for any fixed province characteristics and time-specific factors that might be related to expressway expansion and vote shares. We further show that the estimates are robust to arbitrary region-specific time trends, province-specific quadratic time trends, and are not driven by province-by-year variation in other investments undertaken by the AKP. Examining mechanisms, we do not find evidence that increased economic growth due to the express-ways drove increased vote shares for the AKP. We find evidence that the visibility and success of the expressway expansion project signalled competence and stability. The electoral benefits of the expressway were stronger in provinces that experienced greater political instability between 1995 and 2002, losses for the rival parties were greater in provinces they previously controlled indicating changes in perception, and there were no similar electoral gains to less visible projects.