National Election Studies Surveys Research Articles

Testing Generational, Life Cycle, and Period Effects of Age on Agenda Setting

This study explores the relationship between age and the media's agenda-setting effects both by cross-sectional and longitudinal analysis. Using American National Election Studies surveys and the New York Times Index data from 1960 to 2004, we test three possible effects of age on the agenda-setting process: generational, life-cycle, and period effects. Findings show the public agenda is fairly stable across generations and age cohorts despite increasing signs of media diversification and audience specialization. More important, different generations’ agendas were overall correlated with the media agenda in each year, indicating robust agenda-setting effects of the media on the public, except for baby boomers. The findings generally support the hypothesis of period effects. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Are Confident Partisans Disloyal? The Role of Defensive Confidence in Party Defection

People who feel comfortable defending their views—defensively confident—may also eventually change those views and corresponding behaviors. National Election Studies surveys showed that defensive confidence predicted defection in the 2006 U.S. House elections, above and beyond the impact of various demographic and political variables. Moreover, defensive confidence was also associated with political knowledge and attention to politics and government affairs, but not attention to the news. Finally, males, more educated citizens, ethnic minorities, and older respondents had higher reported defensive confidence than did females, less educated citizens, European Americans, and younger respondents. Defensive confidence may be a crucial factor for a deeper understanding of political behavior.

Who Advocates? Determinants of Political Advocacy in Presidential Election Years

Political discussion research often focuses on general discussion without analyzing interesting subsets of interpersonal communication, such as political advocacy. Political advocacy is crucial to study because it is where citizens make clear statements of their beliefs when trying to influence others, which democratic theorists cite as valuable in spreading information in discussion networks. In this project, we test theoretically relevant determinants of political advocacy, focusing on campaign spending. Using multilevel logistic regression models of American National Election Study survey data from presidential elections between 1976 and 2008, we find that campaign spending correlates with an increase in the likelihood of advocating. We also find that the likelihood of being an advocate correlates with greater political discussion, television usage, interest in politics, partisanship, efficacy, and socioeconomic status. Additionally, we break these results down by party spending and party identification, and find differentiated results by party. Generally, these results show how the electoral environment shapes interpersonal communication.

Changing Strategies in Grassroots Canvassing: 1956-2008

Grass-roots party contacts with voters have become an important feature of recent presidential campaigns. Using respondent reports of party contacts from the 1956-2008 time series of American National Election Studies survey, this paper describes the increase in contacting of the elections of the 2000s and explains it as a function of changes in party capabilities and strategies. In a bygone era, grassroots contacting efforts were the work of the local party organizations – the product of their various capabilities and needs and, consequently, less patterned across the country. With the demise of the local organizations, these grassroots efforts declined; by 1992, contacting had fallen to its lowest point (reaching only 18% of the electorate) in almost four decades. In recent elections, though, the national parties and presidential campaigns have filled this void through their personal contacts with voters that now reach over 40% of the electorate. The ANES evidence shows that this surge in party grassroots contacting is tied to the strategic priorities of the national parties and presidential campaigns. They concentrate their efforts in the most competitive, battleground, states; on the most likely voters as defined by age, income, campaign activities, and registration status; and, especially in 2008, on mobilizing their partisan base. In ramping up party contacted, who is contacted has changed – and become more readily predictable – and the American electoral process has been transformed.

How Explicit Racial Prejudice Hurt Obama in the 2008 Election

Some commentators claim that white Americans put prejudice behind them when evaluating presidential candidates in 2008. Previous research examining whether white racism hurts black candidates has yielded mixed results. Fortunately, the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama provides an opportunity to examine more rigorously whether prejudice disadvantages black candidates. I also make use of an innovation in the measurement of racial stereotypes in the 2008 American National Election Studies survey, which yields higher levels of reporting of racial stereotypes among white respondents. I find that negative stereotypes about blacks significantly eroded white support for Barack Obama. Further, racial stereotypes do not predict support for previous Democratic presidential candidates or current prominent Democrats, indicating that white voters punished Obama for his race rather than his party affiliation. Finally, prejudice had a particularly large impact on the voting decisions of Independents and a substantial impact on Democrats but very little influence on Republicans.

“Bands of Others”? Attitudes toward Muslims in Contemporary American Society

The obvious explanation for the unpopularity of Muslims in contemporary American society centers on the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However, we contend that feelings about Muslims are shaped primarily by a general sense of affect for groups that fall outside of the cultural mainstream and the personality and value orientations typically associated with such affect. Thus, the current structure of Muslim evaluations should not differ much from that before the 9/11 attacks. Moreover, Muslims may be distinctive in that, unlike most minority groups, they are associated with both positively viewed racial and religious minority groups and with negatively viewed cultural minority groups. Analyses of data from the 2004 American National Election Study and other surveys conducted between 2000 and 2007 strongly support our argument.

Viewing Representative Behavior through the Lens of Social and Political Identity

Much scholarly attention has been paid to the representative activities of members of the national legislature. Equally important to representative democracy, however, are the perceptions and evaluations of these members by their constituents. Using the 2000 American National Election Studies survey, this article assesses the impact of social and political identity in the formation of constituency perceptions of members of the U.S. House of Representatives. Demographic characteristics and political predispositions affect the relevance of the four measures of legislator responsiveness--policy, casework, district service, and symbolic responsiveness--to each constituent's evaluation. Ethnicity, age, gender, and education affect the degree of importance of each measure to constituents; women, minorities, and older citizens are more concerned with symbolic actions on the part of their representatives. Furthermore, the descriptive composition of a representative's constituency has an influence not only with respect to policy choices the member may make, but also with regard to understanding how particular behaviors are successful in establishing a relationship between the representative and those represented.

Morality, Equality, or Locality: Analyzing the Determinants of Support for Same-sex Marriage

In this article, the authors develop a model in which they depict individuals’ support for same-sex marriage as a function of several clusters of independent variables, including symbolic politics, moral and religious attitudes and attachments, feelings toward gays and lesbians, women’s rights and gender roles, concern for minority and civil rights, demographic attributes, and the local context. Using data from the 2004 American National Election Studies survey and the U.S. Census, the authors find that attitudes toward same-sex marriage are a function of moral and religious considerations, attitudes toward gays and lesbians, and gender roles. They find little evidence that attitudes toward women’s rights and civil rights for African Americans affect attitudes toward same-sex marriage. Finally, they find that contextual effects are limited only to those respondents who reside in counties with a very high percentage of same-sex partnered couples.

The Social Basis of Voting Correctly

A large literature has established that people learn from political discussion, and some scholars suggest that people will make better choices if they engage in political discussion with opinion leaders. To establish that discussion promotes better vote choices, however, we have to create a measure of rational choice to test the impact of discussion. Recently, scholars have used Lau and Redlawsk's voting correctly measure to test the impact of various influences on the rationality of vote choice. Using this new measure of rationality—voting correctly—I determine whether political discussion has the predicted positive impact. To test this theory, I use 2000 American National Election Study survey data, and show that greater political discussion with knowledgeable discussants leads to more correct voting.

A Method of Linking Surveys Using Affective 'Signatures' with an Application to Racial/Ethnic Groups in the U.S.

This paper addresses a concern often faced by social scientists who study subgroups within a given population, as they are frequently limited in the scope and breadth of their research questions due the quality of available survey data (i.e. inadequate sample size or lack of comprehensive questions). To address this problem, we develop a procedure for linking respondents from different surveys based on their internal (subjective) utility for political stimuli, which we capture by using an individual's responses to a set of feeling thermometer questions. Feeling thermometer questions, as demonstrated in previous research, are an accurate measure of an individual's subjective utility because they are measures of affect. We apply this technique to the 2004 National Annenberg Election survey and the 2004 American National Election Studies survey. Linking survey respondents based on their thermometer scores not only recovers the distributions on group demographics such as race/ethnicity, gender, and education but it also recovers the distributions of these groups' preferences across a wide array of issues and policies as well.

A Woman for U.S. President? Gender and Leadership Traits Before and After 9/11

ABSTRACT A public agenda focused on terrorism and war may have added to voters' doubts about women's leadership, but popular support for electing a woman has rebounded since 2001–2003. An analysis of candidates' traits using American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys found that the “strong leader” cue actually became less rather than more important as a predictor of the presidential vote in 2004 than in 2000. The trait “candidate cares about you” was significantly more important in 2004 than in many previous election years, especially for women. Women politicians who can prove their “toughness” or their skills at crisis management may have an advantage with voters (especially women voters) if they can take advantage of their perceived edge in compassion.

Not for Members Only: Group Endorsements as Electoral Information Cues

Endorsements by groups in American politics have typically been studied as voting cues only for members of the given organization. Using both the formal theoretical and low-information cognitive voting literatures, this article argues for a broader electoral role for group endorsements. Specifically, if groups that have clear ideological or policy preferences endorse candidates, these endorsements should provide all voters with ideological or issue information about the endorsed candidates. This inferred information should then impact voters’ behavior, especially in low-information scenarios. Using both an experimental test and a test with American National Election Studies (ANES) survey data, this study analyzes the hypothesis in terms of elections to the U.S. House of Representatives. It finds that when the AFL-CIO endorses Democratic candidates, voters behave as though a liberal message has been sent—liberals are significantly more supportive while conservatives are significantly less supportive than they are when no endorsement is given, regardless of whether or not they are union members. At the same time, however, the analysis finds no support that endorsements of Republicans have any ideological impact on voting.

The Effects of Issue Advocacy Advertising on Voters' Candidate Issue Knowledge and Turnout

This study examined the effects of issue advocacy ads on voters' candidate issue knowledge and turnout, using the 2000 National Election Study survey combined with ad tracking data by Campaign Media Analysis Group. The results showed that those who lived in an area where more issue ads were aired had higher candidate issue knowledge than those in an area with fewer issue ads. Those in an area with more issue ads were more likely to vote than those with fewer issue ads.

Does the Candidate Really Matter?

Differences between the character traits of candidates are thought to critically influence presidential elections. Yet most research assessing the impact of candidate traits relies on citizen perceptions, which may be biased by a citizen’s prior dispositions toward candidates. In this article, the author addresses two questions that together have not been directly addressed in previous studies of candidate effects in presidential elections: First, how do candidates influence citizen perceptions of candidate traits? Second, to what extent are perceptions a cause and consequence of an overall candidate evaluation? With data from National Election Studies (NES) surveys, this article models the traits and perceptions of Democratic and Republican presidential candidates from 1980 to 2000. The author finds that despite the tendency of citizens to perceive more favorable traits in candidates they like, the candidates’own traits do condition citizen perceptions, yet this effect varies across traits and is surprisingly modest. The implications of these results for understanding the role of candidates in U.S. presidential elections are discussed.

Reputational capital, opportunism, and self-policing in legislatures

This paper examines the question of whether reputational capital can deter opportunistic behavior among legislators preparing to exit the House of Representatives. I create a measure of reputational trustworthiness, based upon pooled samples of constituency opinion derived from the National Election Studies surveys. I then examine the extent to which such reputational good will among constituents deters lame-duck foreign travel by exiting House incumbents within the context of a quasi-experimental research design. The analysis suggests that legislators may be ‘self-policed’ by their reputations for honesty and trustworthiness to the point of discouraging unethical activity. urveys. I then examine the extent to which such s derived from the National Election Studies

Issue Attitudes and Survey Continuity across Interview Mode in the 2000 NES

Can researchers draw consistent inferences about the U.S. public's issue attitudes when studying survey results from both the in-person and telephone interview modes of the 2000 National Election Studies (NES) survey? We address this question through an analysis contrasting the distribution of issue attitudes across modes in the dual sample design of the 2000 NES. We find clear differences across mode even when applying a method devised by the NES to improve comparability by recoding issue attitude scales from the in-person mode. We present an alternative method of recoding these scales, which substantially improves comparability between modes. Through an analysis of the covariance structure of the issues and simple models of vote choice, we discuss the implications of the results for the study of issue attitudes in the 2000 NES.

The 2000 US Presidential Election: Can Retrospective Voting Be Saved?

According to a portrait of elections widely held in academic political science, election outcomes depend on the ‘fundamentals’, especially peace and prosperity. Al Gore's election showing in 2000 runs counter to the preceding interpretation of elections. Objective conditions pointed to a comfortable victory, if not a landslide, but Gore's narrow popular vote margin fell well below the expectations held by many political scientists. This article attempts to account for Gore's under-performance via detailed analyses of National Election Studies surveys. We find that Gore's often criticized personality was not a cause of his under-performance. Rather, the major cause was his failure to receive a historically normal amount of credit for the performance of the Clinton administration. Secondary contributors were the drag of Clinton's personal affairs and Gore's decision to run to the left of where Clinton had positioned the Democratic party. Quite possibly these three factors are logically related: failure to get normal credit reflected Gore's peculiar campaign, which in turn reflected fear of association with Clinton's behaviour.

Values, Political Knowledge, and Public Opinion about Gay Rights

This study examines how political knowledge has shaped the effects of two values-egalitarianism and traditional morality-on American public opinion about gay rights and whether media framing accounts for the role that knowledge has played. An analysis of mass media coverage during the peak years of the debate over gay rights (1990-97) showed that the implications of moral traditionalism were virtually undisputed in this debate, whereas both sides laid claim to egalitarianism. Analysis of American National Election Studies survey data demonstrated that in 1992 and 1996 the impact of moral traditionalism on public opinion grew stronger as political knowledge increased, whereas the impact of egalitarianism did not vary across levels of knowledge. Thus, the results suggest that the extent to which political knowledge moderates a value's effect on opinion can depend on whether public debate provides an undisputed frame or competing frames for that value. One could, in turn, frame the implications of this finding for democratic politics in more than one way

Partisanship and Participation in Political Campaign Activities, 1952-1996

In 1972, Verba and Nie identified a “puzzle” of Republican “hyperactivity” in political participation over the 1952-1968 period. Verba and Nie argue that higher levels of Republican participation (after controlling for socioeconomic variables) result from the differential motivating influence of policy preferences for identifiers of the two parties. Using National Election Studies (NES) surveys from 1952 to 1996, I examine the possibility that Verba and Nie's findings are time-bound and/or contextbound. I find that the partisanship-participation relationship is variable. Republican hyperactivity has not continued since 1968, and among weak and leaning partisans no “puzzle” exists even in the 1952-1968 period. I also show that while opinion extremity did provide greater motivation for strong Republicans than for strong Democrats up to 1968, this difference does not extend to the weak and leaning partisan ranks. In addition, since 1972 opinion extremity appears to be more important to Democrats than to Republicans as an impetus to participate in campaigns. I conclude by suggesting that future research should examine more closely the role of contextual variables as determinants of participation.

Coordination and Policy Moderation at Midterm

Eligible voters have been coordinating their turnout and vote decisions for the House of Representatives in midterm elections. Coordination is a noncooperative rational expectations equilibrium. Stochastic choice models estimated using individual-level data from U.S. National Election Studies surveys of the years 1978–1998 support the coordinating model and reject a nonstrategic model. The coordinating model shows that many voters have incentives to change their votes between the presidential year and midterm after learning the outcome of the presidential election. But this mechanism alone does not explain the size of midterm cycles. The largest source of loss of support for the president's party at midterm is a regular pattern in which the median differences between the voters' ideal points and the parties' policy positions have become less favorable for the president's party than they were at the time of the presidential election (nonvoters show the same pattern). The interelection changes are not consistent with the theory of surge and decline.