House Vote Research Articles

A crisis in my community? Local-level awareness of the opioid epidemic and political consequences

The opioid epidemic has had a profound effect on American public health, and studies suggest it has had a profound effect on American politics as well. Research suggests a relationship between the severity of the opioid crisis in a community and aggregate-level political behavior, including voting for Donald Trump in 2016, but there is very little individual-level data establishing the mechanism for this relationship. Using a question on a nationally representative survey fielded after the 2018 election, we explore Americans’ perceptions of the severity of the opioid epidemic in their community, and whether these perceptions predict political behavior and attitudes. We find that relative estimates of local opioid overdoses are significantly influenced by the actual county-level overdose death rate, and that the relationship between reality and perception is strongest for the most knowledgeable and informed citizens. There is also evidence that the social construction of the opioid epidemic as a crisis primarily affecting White suburban or rural Americans affects these perceptions, as both White and non-urban respondents are significantly more attentive to objective mortality rates than others. Turning to political behavior, we find no evidence that these estimates affected validated voter turnout or U.S. House vote choice in the 2018 midterm election. Assessing public approval outcomes, we found a nonlinear effect of these estimates on support for President Trump, a pattern which is partially consistent with the existing literature. We also observed that those who believed the opioid epidemic to be worse than average in their communities reported lower approval of their state legislatures, though we found no such relationship for ratings of governors. These findings raise important questions about the micro-level mechanisms that link aggregate-level public health with political outcomes.

Highs and Lows of Cannabis Decriminalization: Twitter Analysis and Ethical and Regulatory Implications for Retailing and Marketing

We examined public reactions to the U.S. House vote to decriminalize cannabis at the federal level. Using Twitter data, we analyzed public sentiment, top hashtags used, and underlying themes in the discourse. Users with a wide range of profiles were engaged in this chatter, predominantly expressing positive sentiment with various thematic hashtags. The conversations were centered around five major topics: commentary on the House vote, legalization impediment in the Senate, expungement of marijuana-related criminal records, medical use of marijuana, and social and economic impact of the bill. We discussed ethical and regulatory implications for retailing and marketing.

Resolving Disputes Arising from the 2020 Presidential Election

There will likely be challenges to the validity of votes in this Presidential election which will give rise to numerous legal issues under state and federal law (both statutory and constitutional). This memorandum discusses various scenarios. The fact pattern to bear in mind is Democratic control of the process of counting the popular vote for electors and a Republican legislature (as is the case in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania). I first look at issues arising from the popular election of electors (such as receipt of late ballots after November 3 and challenges to signatures). State officials may or may not determine that these ballots are valid and may or may not permit certification of the selection of electors that goes beyond the December 8 date which guarantees congressional acceptance of an electoral slate (the “safe harbor” provision; 3 U.S.C. sec. 5). In any event, a federal court might decide that any such determination or certification by state officials violates Article II of the Constitution. That Article provides that the state legislature shall determine the manner of selecting electors, which rules out anything other than a reasonable interpretation of state election law by state officials. I also explain what happens if there is a tie in the electoral college – including the possibility of a tie in the House vote (by state delegations) and the likelihood that the Senate will be unable to select a Vice President as Acting President if the House fails to pick a President. I then consider what happens if a state legislature advances its own slate (without the Governor’s participation), resulting in the possibility of two slates being presented to Congress on January 6 (after the new Congress has been seated on January 3). An 1887 federal statute (3 U.S.C. sec. 15) purports to determine how Congress can choose between competing slates but that law has two major uncertainties – it does not clearly establish what role the President of the Senate (who will still be Vice President Pence) can play and how a dispute between a Democratic House and Republican Senate can be resolved. One provision of the statute suggests that, in the event of an unresolved House/Senate dispute, the slate offered by the Governor (a Democrat is the likely fact pattern) shall prevail. There is a real possibility that no President or Vice President would emerge from this legal and political chaos by January 20, when the President is supposed to take office. That would result in application of the Presidential Succession Act, which would likely lead to Speaker Pelosi becoming Acting President. At various points, the U.S. Supreme Court may be asked to resolve one or more of these legal issues (as well as some not mentioned in this abstract) and they will probably do so, despite a reluctance to become involved in “political questions”.

The Heightened Importance of Racism and Sexism in the 2018 US Midterm Elections

AbstractIn 2016, attitudes related to racism and sexism were strong predictors of vote choice for president. Since then, issues related to race and gender have continued to be an important part of the political agenda. This letter shows that hostile sexism and denial of racism emerged as stronger predictors of the House vote in the 2018 cycle than they had been in 2016. The results show that the increased importance of these factors came largely from the shifting of less sexist and less racist voters from voting Republican in 2016 to voting for Democrats in 2018. Overall, the results suggest that Trump's hostility towards women and minorities is becoming part of the Republican Party's brand, and that this appears to have created an electoral penalty for Republican candidates in 2018.

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.

Authoritarianism and support for Trump in the 2016 presidential election

The emergence of authoritarianism as a core political value has been emphasized by recent scholarship on the political behavior of the American electorate. This paper adds to this literature by examining the effect of authoritarianism in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Given the campaign style of Trump and the issues that he made salient in his campaign, it is hypothesized that authoritarianism should have a substantial effect on vote choice of whites. Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), logistic regression models of presidential vote choice of white respondents are estimated to ascertain the effect of authoritarianism in presidential elections from 1992 to 2016, controlling for party identification, ideology and several standard demographic control variables. Findings indicate that authoritarianism had the largest effect on white vote choice in 2016 than in any prior election that was analyzed. The candidacy of Trump appears to have been the triggering mechanism given that authoritarianism was a less salient predictor of U.S. House vote choice in 2016. Moreover, this relationship was true for both college and non-college educated whites. Authoritarianism also seems to have been primed by Trump appealing to racial animus, anti-immigration sentiment, nativism, and anti-Muslim prejudice. Authoritarianism is likely to remain a salient determinant of vote choice during the Trump era. Indeed, a widening and deepening of this cleavage means its effects are likely to be apparent in elections below the presidency.

Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment by Christian G. Samito

Reviewed by: Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment by Christian G. Samito Daniel W. Crofts Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment. Christian G. Samito. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2015. ISBN 978-0-8093-3424-7, 184pp., cloth, $24.95. “We should not see Lincoln’s career as a straight line leading to emancipation,” Eric Foner once wisely cautioned. But Christian G. Samito thinks Lincoln’s apparent deviations from the straight line never were more than tactical. This brisk new study for the Concise Lincoln Library places Lincoln on a high pedestal. He understood all along, Samito contends, that slavery contradicted the American nation’s most basic principles and endangered its existence. He saw slavery as a cancer that needed to be excised. He was, furthermore, a champion of equal rights. Samito marginalizes instances in which Lincoln deviated from the straight line, and he recognizes that Lincoln long opposed any interference with slavery in the states where it already existed and even went so far as to accept a constitutional amendment to this effect in his first inaugural address. Samito dutifully discusses Lincoln’s annual message to Congress in December 1862, which offered the slave states a plan for compensated, gradual emancipation extending to the year 1900, with freed slaves to be colonized overseas. But in the end, Samito judges, these “ill conceived” and “expedient” proposals did not show the real Lincoln (25, 38, 41). Samito’s book necessarily focuses on events of 1864 and 1865, when the Thirteenth Amendment cleared both houses of Congress by two-thirds majorities and became part of the Constitution once it was ratified by three quarters of the states. Having long resisted a constitutional amendment, after his reelection in November 1864, Lincoln became its forceful advocate. The key arena was the House of Representatives, which had failed to reach the necessary two-thirds threshold when it first voted in June 1864, with Lincoln largely on the sidelines. But a second vote on January 31, 1865, had a different result. Samito applauds Lincoln’s leadership and exonerates him from persistent accusations that he used underhanded means; the president relied instead on “moral and political suasion” (102). Many of this book’s readers will be familiar with Steven Spielberg’s film, Lincoln, which offers a dramatized version of the struggle to reverse the initial House vote. Samito made an “explicit choice” to steer clear of the movie (3). But his account implicitly questions Spielberg’s use of sources. For example, Samito rejects a long-after-the-fact reminiscence that had Lincoln purportedly announcing: “I am President of the United States, clothed with immense [End Page 74] power, and I expect you to procure those votes.” Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Team of Rivals legitimized this bombastic fiction, but Samito sensibly decides that such language was “overly dramatic and out of character” (95). In the end, this book is celebratory—a lawyer’s brief that Lincoln always did everything he could to rid the nation of slavery and secure equal rights. Samito provides a crisp, tightly written case for a Lincoln that modern Americans can feel good about. It will appeal to those who want history to inspire and reassure. And even if Lincoln and the Thirteenth Amendment offers less detail than related books by Michael Vorenberg and Leonard Richards, it stands as one of the three authoritative studies of the subject. But an honest assessment of America’s bittersweet history requires more nuance. A growing body of scholarship on Atlantic history and the history of the Early American Republic reminds us that slavery was central to the entire New World enterprise, including the United States. Samito, like Lincoln, contends that slavery endangered “the principles imparted by the Founders” (1). It did, but Union mattered more for the Founders than antislavery principles, and so they wrote a Constitution with safeguards for slavery. Lincoln abhorred slavery and looked forward to its “ultimate extinction.” Yet he revered the Constitution and the Union, and he feared the antislavery cause was stalled. Emancipation, he once candidly admitted, might require a century. Slavery came to a sudden and unexpected end only because white southerners made the rash and suicidal decision to risk a war for...

The Coevolution of Affect toward Presidents and Their Parties

This article reports the results of new research undertaken as part of a broader project examining how postwar U.S. presidents have influenced their party's popular standing, reputation, electoral fortunes, and attractiveness as an object of identification over both the short and long runs. The research published so far has found the president's influence to be strong and pervasive. Popular ratings of the president's party generally, and of its congressional wing and its leaders specifically, vary directly with presidential job approval and favorability ratings. Perceptions of the president's ideology shape perceptions of his party's ideology. Opinions of the president's performance have strongly influenced judgments of relative party competence in dealing with the nation's most important problem in every administration since Harry Truman's. The president's perceived success in handling specific policy domains also shapes his party's reputation for managing them. Performance evaluations of presidents affect their parties' electoral prospects as measured between elections by the generic House vote intention question as well as their actual fortunes on election day, both directly and through their impact on party identification (or party ID), which moves systematically in response to changes in evaluations of the president's performance at both the individual and aggregate levels (Jacobson 2009a, 2012, 2013, 2015). These findings leave no doubt that postwar presidencies have had both specific and diffuse effects on how Americans come to perceive, evaluate, feel about, and identify with the national parties. Presidents do not assume office with a blank partisan canvas, of course. Existing partisan biases and party images shape reactions to future presidents as soon as they arrive on the national stage and continue to exert a powerful influence on evaluations of their performance throughout their time in office (Jacobson 2011, 5-6). In previous analyses, I treated the initial reactions to each administration as a starting point, the product of existing configurations of public attitudes toward and beliefs about parties that were subsequently updated and revised in response to developments during a president's years of service. For the research reported here, I move backward from this starting point to examine the ways in which attitudes toward presidents and their parties come to be linked in the public mind. I also move forward beyond the president's years in office to gauge how this linkage decays when presidents are no longer on the ballot and new candidates emerge to take up their party's banner. Constrained by the available data, my focus here is on the affective component of political evaluations: how partisanship influences affect toward presidential candidates and presidents, and how affect toward these party figures in turn influences feelings about their parties, over the course of political careers. To anticipate, I find clear and consistent evidence that links between party and candidate affect are comparatively modest at first, increase sharply during the initial campaign for the White House for both candidates, tighten further when the winner seeks reelection, and then atrophy once the president leaves office. In this sequence, the causal arrow runs first from party affect (manifest in party identification) to candidate affect but gradually shifts direction to run from candidate or president affect to party affect (and party identification). I also find that the relative impact on party affect of the president and prospective or actual successors within the same party varies over time in a way that underlines the president's leading role in shaping feelings about his party. Theoretical Considerations These patterns, detailed and documented in the sections to follow, are fully consistent with constructivist models of the survey response. According to Zaller and Feldman's version, most citizens do not hold preformed attitudes that they express when questioned in a survey; rather they carry around in their heads a mix of only partially consistent ideas and considerations. …

Field applauds historic House vote to repeal SGR formula

Mental Health WeeklyVolume 25, Issue 13 p. 5-6 Articles Field applauds historic House vote to repeal SGR formula Valerie A. Canady, Valerie A. CanadySearch for more papers by this author Valerie A. Canady, Valerie A. CanadySearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 March 2015 https://doi.org/10.1002/mhw.30132Read 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. Volume25, Issue1330 March 2015Pages 5-6 RelatedInformation

The House Vote to Overturn the Moratorium on Offshore Drilling: Jobs, PACs, Ideology, and Spills

In 2011 the House of Representatives passed a bill that would overturn the Obama administration’s moratorium on offshore drilling. This paper explores the factors affecting the way legislators voted on the bill. Empirical results show that potential employment effects, legislator ideology, and proximity to the Gulf Coast affected the way legislators voted. In addition, Political Action Committee (PAC) money from those who supported/opposed the bill was also found to be an important determinant of voting behavior. Furthermore, examination of the timing of PAC contributions supports the view that contributions were made with the aim of influencing the outcome of this specific vote.

Postmortems of the 2010 Midterm Election Forecasts: Forecasting House Seats from Generic Congressional Polls: A Post-Mortem

Based on information available in July, we predicted that the Republicans would receive 52.9% of the total House vote and end up holding 229 seats, gaining control from the Democrats in the process (Bafumi, Erikson, and Wlezien 2010b). Our national vote forecast proved to be nearly correct, undershooting the actual Republican share (53.8%) by slightly less than one percentage point. Our seat forecast was a little less accurate. Although we did foresee the House changing hands, we did not predict such a large Republican windfall in seats—we forecast a “mere” swing of 50 seats, which was short of the actual outcome by about 13 seats. The Republican seat total of 242, however, was well within the 95% confidence interval (199 to 259).

Postmortems of the 2010 Midterm Election Forecasts: Congressional Forecasts: Theory Versus Tracking in 2010

In our recent article forecasting the 2010 U.S. congressional elections, we argue for a model based on theory rather than tracking (Lewis-Beck and Tien 2010). A sound theoretical explanation of vote choice in House races should, ceteris paribus, predict better than a simple dependence on variables that proxy the vote, such as the generic ballot question. We posited a simple but classical explanation of the 2010 House vote—the referendum model—in which voters punish or reward the party in power according to its performance in office and the time available for that performance. In words, the model reads: House Seat Change = f(Economy, Popularity, Midterm). A measurement of these variables, at lags appropriate for forecasting, yields the estimates (OLS) of model 1, shown in column 1 of table 1. Model 1 gives a forecast of −22 seats for the Democrats in 2010, when, in fact, they scored about −60 seats. The model 1 forecast appears “wrong” in two senses. First, substantively, it fails to predict the Republican takeover of the House. Second, scientifically, it is off by over two standard errors of estimate (i.e., 38/17 > 2.0). Why did the model get it wrong this time, when the forecast was off by only one seat in the last midterm in 2006? To answer this question, the specifications of the model need consideration. Such consideration signals the scientific value of the forecasting exercise in providing a systematic trial-and-error method for model improvement.

Presidential Power, the Panay Incident, and the Defeat of the Ludlow Amendment

Presidential Power, the Panay Incident, and the Defeat of the Ludlow Amendment

House vote on NASA authorization bill stalls

House vote on NASA authorization bill stalls

House Passes Major Expansion of Access to Health Insurance

House Passes Major Expansion of Access to Health Insurance

House Vote Seen as Big Step Toward Cooling the Greenhouse

Its praises have been sung as an energy security bill and a jobs bill. But the American Clean Energy and Security Act passed last Friday by the U.S. House of Representatives is in fact milestone greenhouse legislation.

Presidential and Congressional Vote‐Share Equations

Three vote‐share equations are estimated and analyzed in this article, one for presidential elections, one for on‐term House elections, and one for midterm House elections. The sample period is 1916–2006. Considering the three equations together allows one to test whether the same economic variables affect each and to examine various serial correlation and coattail possibilities. The main conclusions are (1) there is strong evidence that the economy affects all three vote shares and in remarkably similar ways; (2) there is no evidence of any presidential coattail effects on the on‐term House elections; (3) there is positive serial correlation in the House vote, which likely reflects a positive incumbency effect for elected representatives; and (4) the presidential vote share has a negative effect on the next midterm House vote share, which is likely explained by a balance argument.

Table of Contents

AbstractMethadone Clinic Move Facing NIMBY and ‘Redevelopment’ Barriers in Camden, NJMaricopa Analysis Highlights Widespread Substance Use Problems in Jail PopulationFirst Drink Under Age 15 Raises Risk of Adult AUDPoll Looks at American Attitudes Toward RecoveryParity's Fate Hinged to House Vote on Bailout PackagePainkiller Initiation Rates Keep RisingBriefly NotedState WatchComing up

National Forces and the U.S. House Vote, 1980-2004: The Uncertain Progress of Nationalization

Much recent scholarly attention has focused on the theme of growing nationalization in U.S. House elections. In this study, I reach a mixed verdict concerning the extent to which national forces have become more determinative of the House vote from 1980 to 2004. Only voter partisanship, but not ideology, economic evaluations, or assessments of presidential candidates' personal qualities, has increased in importance during presidential year elections. Since presidential voting, on the other hand, has come to depend more heavily on all these factors except the last, this means that contrary to the conventional wisdom, the bases of House and presidential voting actually have grown less, rather than more, similar over time.

ADA's Sedation and Anesthesia Guidelines Pass: Will They Be Universally Accepted?

The American Dental Association's newly revised “Guidelines for the Use of Sedation and General Anesthesia by Dentists” and “Guidelines for Teaching Pain Control and Sedation to Dentists and Dental Students” overwhelmingly passed the ADA's 2007 House of Delegates by more than 92%. What was formerly defined as “anxiolysis” is now “minimal sedation.” Minimal sedation includes nitrous oxide-oxygen alone, or enteral minimal sedation alone, or a combination of the two. It is limited by the administration of no more than the maximum recommended dose for unmonitored home use of a single enteral sedative, with the possibility of giving another half-maximum dose later in the procedure, if needed, when the original effect begins to wane. There was little controversy associated with the minimal sedation guidelines. The parenteral moderate sedation guidelines, formerly called “parenteral conscious sedation,” and the deep sedation/general anesthesia practice guidelines had only minor changes and were not significantly debated at several preliminary open discussion meetings preceding the House vote. The only controversial section of the new guidelines involved a new entity called “moderate enteral sedation,” for which there had been no teaching or practice guidelines in the past. Because the old guidelines did not address this area, they merely cautioned against administering multiple doses of oral sedatives because of an increased risk for producing a level of sedation deeper than what the dentist intended. Moderate enteral sedation necessitates more training than needed for administering minimal enteral sedation because the dentist could be giving more than the maximum recommended dose contained in the FDA-approved labeling for unmonitored home use. It typically involves titration of an enteral sedative to an endpoint that may be a little deeper than that attained with minimal sedation, yet this level still must provide a margin of safety wide enough to make it “unlikely” that the patient will drift into deep sedation. The ADA's experts in sedation education believed that the following course content could adequately teach the necessary principles for dentists to administer enteral moderate sedation safely: 1. 24 Hours of didactic training. 2. Observation of at least 10 enteral moderate sedation cases, including at least 3 actual hands-on cases with no more than 5 students per teacher in an adequately equipped clinical facility, including the rescue of a patient from deep sedation. 3. Advanced cardiac life support training (typically 2 days) or an acceptable sedation emergency course with emphasis on airway management and ventilation. 4. Basic life support for the healthcare provider that includes training in positive pressure ventilation with a bag-valve-mask. 5. For additional safety, the course director must certify the competency of each dentist. A dentist cannot just sign up for the competency course, leave early, and still pass the course. 6. Finally, these are minimal teaching standards. Because the course director must certify the competency of each participant, additional hours may be required for teachers and their students to meet this requirement. The total number of hours and experiences in moderate enteral sedation are considerably more than the “mere 24 hours” of training that some dentists erroneously proclaim is the weak link in the guidelines. While these dentists argue that the didactic hours for moderate enteral sedation are too low or that the number of moderate enteral sedation cases observed or actually participated in by the student are too few, others have said that the new guidelines are much too rigorous. Who is right? The truthful answer is that we do not know for certain at this point. What we do know is that the educators believe that the guidelines are reasonable in all areas and that we should give them a chance to prove it. It is your editor's hope that when moderate enteral sedation courses are developed, the ADA community will receive feedback on whether competency can be attained with the recommended hours or whether they should be increased or reduced. Until then, I recommend that all dentists, dental organizations, state dental boards, and legislators universally accept the ADA guidelines as an integral part of their rules and regulations. The guidelines will surely change over the years as new technologies, techniques, drugs, and standards evolve. If the term “According to the Current ADA Guidelines” is written into the dental board's rules, they would not have to be reworded every time the guidelines are updated. We must realize that no additional amount of required hours of training or continuing education or stricter dental board rules will totally eliminate human errors or their dire consequences. Poor outcomes do not necessarily mean that the guidelines and rules are faulty or that they must be immediately changed. My hope is that universal acceptance of the ADA guidelines will lead to reasonable rules to increase the margin of safety for our patients without unnecessarily overregulating our profession.