Partisan Affiliation Research Articles

The Influence of Evangelical and Political Identity on Climate Change Views

The roles religion and politics play in the climate change arena have received greater attention in the past decade. Nonetheless, the relationship between religion and politics in how they shape climate change views is poorly understood, particularly among American evangelicals. This study uses data from a probability-based mail survey of residents in the political swing state of Florida, USA to examine the relationships between evangelical identity, religiosity, partisan affiliation and three measures of climate-related views: global warming knowledge, belief, and risk perception. Findings from structural equation modeling demonstrate that evangelical identity, mediated by religiosity, exerts significant negative influences on climate measures, even when partisan affiliation is considered. We discuss these results, exploring the nuanced relationships between these variables and the implications they have on the climate change views of a large and influential segment of the public.

Division Does Not Imply Predictability: Demographics Continue to Reveal Little About Voting and Partisanship

What are the political consequences of ongoing social sorting? We evaluate the degree of social sorting and mass polarization using the predictability of partisanship and voting decisions as quantities of interest. Contrary to expectations, demographic sorting has not produced a very predictable electorate. Models trained on nothing more than demographic labels from public opinion surveys (1952–2020) predict only 63.9% of two-party vote choices and 63.4% of partisan IDs correctly out-of-sample—whether they be based on logistic regressions or tree-based machine learning models. Moreover, demographics’ predictive power over vote choice or partisan affiliation shows a surprising stability over time. We argue that while select demographics’ marginal effects may appear to be evidence of social sorting, the joint predictability of political behavior using only demographic characteristics has been, and still is, modest at best.

Partisan discrimination without explicit partisan cues

Much research has demonstrated that Democrats and Republicans use information about party affiliation to discriminate against one another. However, we know little about how people gain the necessary information about other people’s partisanship to engage in discriminatory behavior. We explore whether people perceive partisanship when shown only images of faces, and whether they then use these perceptions to engage in partisan discrimination. We find that they do. Using two studies we show that the partisan perceptions people derive from seeing images of faces influence discrimination of job applicants, and propensities to engage is a wide range of social interactions. People appear to be making judgements about partisanship using only facial appearance, and are willing act on that perception. The implication of this finding is that partisan discrimination is likely widespread, and does not require the explicit communication of partisan affiliations.

American Transcendentalism and the Twenty-First Century

ABSTRACT American Transcendentalism, as a nineteenth-century intellectual and social movement, can inform both the academic debate surrounding post-liberalism and the social, political, and economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. Global capitalism, and globalization more generally, defined the era subsequent to World War II until the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The manifestation of global capitalism/globalization took place as a function of the rejection, whether conscious or unconscious, of the values embodied in American Transcendentalism as a modern reincarnation of immaterial and idealist Platonism. For example, American Transcendentalism valued renunciation (of economic consumption, dogmatic theology, and political participation), nature, and spirituality as the means for attaining an ideal personal life while also providing the building blocks for the attainment of a higher form of government and politics at the collective level. As a climactic global modern development, the COVID-19 pandemic provides empirical evidence for the diminishing returns that are inherent to the hegemonic commitment to materialist economy at the expense of corresponding devaluation of commitments to the ideals of transcendentalism. Ralph Waldo Emerson forecast the realization of such diminishing returns, in which he asserted the longevity of the impact of transcendentalism would be greater than that of the materialism in his era. Immediately prior to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, American youth as a generation exhibited “transcendentalist” attributes such as decreasing commitments to religious and partisan affiliations and a trajectory of disillusionment with political participation. American Transcendentalism can be considered and applied as a source of inspiration to inform nascent deliberations on post-liberalism that invoke Platonism and the “transcendental.” In the context of the confluence of demographic changes, calls for post-liberalism, and the fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, transcendentalism and its prospective popular reincarnation in the twenty-first century can be applied to generate a new and heretofore hidden transcendental “end of history” narrative as an alternative to the bipolarity of the “end of history” debate (between materialist liberalism and materialist communism).

Trade Wars and Election Interference

In response to the Trump trade war, China, the EU, and other countries enacted politically-targeted trade retaliation (PTTR) against swing states and Republican strongholds in the United States. We argue that PTTR increases public concerns about foreign election interference and assess the effects of such retaliation across partisan affiliations. We test our predictions using a national survey experiment in the United States fielded before the 2020 election. In contrast to findings about sanctions and foreign endorsements, we find strong evidence that PTTR increases fears of election interference among both Republicans and Democrats. Partisan double standards in reaction to PTTR were strongest for retaliation targeting swing states and smaller for retaliation targeting the President’s base. Overall, the evidence shows that economic policies which are not primarily intended to influence elections may nevertheless come to be viewed by the public as foreign election interference.

Groups, Behaviors, and Issues as Cues of Partisan Attachments in the Public

What factors do people most associate with the partisan identity of others: group identity, political issue positions, or social behaviors? In this research note, we report the results of a conjoint experiment in which we test the predictive power of descriptive identities against other attributes such as social behaviors and issue positions. We find that when presented with a randomized biography to predict partisanship, people rely on issue positions over descriptive group identities or behaviors. Most issues outperform group affiliations and behaviors, with sexual orientation as the partial exception. We then compared these results to the correlation between the same factors in respondents’ own biographies and their own partisan identification. We find that political issues are far less important to people’s own partisan affiliations, while group identity is more predictive. We conclude that an understanding or perception of ideological concepts and their association with the political parties in others should be distinguished from adoption of such concepts by individuals themselves.

Harvesting Influence: Agrarian Elites and Democracy in Brazil

With size, voting discipline, and technical resources superior to those of most Brazilian parties, in the last two decades, the support of the Agrarian Caucus has become crucial for the realization of presidents’ legislative agenda. In a country where 87 percent of the population is urban, how have representatives of the agrarian elites become key players in bargaining on nonagrarian issues? This article argues that Brazilian agrarian elites have been so successful because they have devised an electoral strategy that maximizes their leverage in a fragmented party system with ideologically weak right-wing parties. Empirically, I show how agrarian elites in Brazil finance legislative campaigns, mobilize voters, and subsidize the legislative work of politicians from their ranks, independently of their partisan affiliation. Theoretically, I discuss the advantages of a candidate-centered electoral strategy: self-representation and multipartisanship. While self-representation has granted agrarian elites direct access to agenda-setting positions within Congress, having members in many parties has increased the number of agenda-setting positions they can control and guaranteed their presence in the legislative coalition of right- and left-wing presidents alike.

Municipal investment expenditures by pork-barrel mayors: evidence from a transition economy

Abstract The focus of this study is electoral accounting practices employed by mayors in municipalities in a selected, exemplary region in a post-socialist country – the Lodz region in Central Poland. The goal is to identify characteristics of pork-barrel mayors responsible for municipal investment expenditures: their terms of office, partisan affiliation, and gender. The generalised method of moments was applied to estimate the impact that the electoral accounting practices of mayors had on municipal investment expenditures. All 177 municipalities in the Lodz region were investigated, from 2003 until 2019. Contrary to expectations, it was found that electoral accounting was practised by next-term and independent mayors rather than first-term or party-affiliated ones.

Relatively accurate but absolutely off: U.S. residents’ estimates of relative and absolute economic mobility

ABSTRACT Using results from two treatment arms of a larger nationwide survey experiment in the United States, we add evidence on how Americans perceive social mobility. In one arm, respondents estimate both upward and downward relative economic mobility, while in the other, respondents estimate the absolute economic mobility (that is, do children out-earn their parents?) for each quintile of the parental income distribution. This latter question has been overlooked in the literature. We find respondentsʻ average estimates of relative downward mobility to be remarkably close to reality. The average estimate of relative upward mobility is also close, though both estimates underestimate relative mobility. There are small partisan differences in accuracy on relative mobility, with Republican-leaning respondents providing the most accurate estimates, but respondentsʻ perception of absolute mobility significantly underestimate (overestimate) mobility for the poorest (highest-income) children irrespective of partisan affiliation. Our results provide important insights on the implementation of redistribution policies.

Are the U.S. Military’s Nonpartisan Norms Eroding?

The U.S. military’s nonpartisan norms are an important part of healthy civil–military relations. Some research, however, suggest these norms are weakening. This study examines the evidence for eroding nonpartisan norms by analyzing U.S. military servicemembers’ partisan affiliations and political activism levels from 2008 to 2018. It finds that since 2008, military servicemembers have become more likely to identify as partisans. Servicemembers have also become more politically active than civilians, although this is due to decreasing activism among the American public. It also finds that longer-serving service members have stronger nonpartisan norms, but that newer servicemembers are more politically active than both longer-serving servicemembers and civilians. These findings provide a firmer empirical foundation for previous claims of eroding norms and suggest more research is needed to understand how increased partisanship and political activism impacts military readiness and civil–military relations.

Bayesian Analysis of State Voter Registration Database Integrity

Abstract How do we ensure a statewide voter registration database’s accuracy and integrity, especially when the database depends on aggregating decentralized, sub-state data with different list maintenance practices? We develop a Bayesian multivariate multilevel model to account for correlated patterns of change over time in multiple response variables, and label statewide anomalies using deviations from model predictions. We apply our model to California’s 22 million registered voters, using 25 snapshots from the 2020 presidential election. We estimate countywide change rates for multiple response variables such as changes in voter’s partisan affiliation and jointly model these changes. The model outperforms a simple interquartile range (IQR) detection when tested with synthetic data. This is a proof-of-concept that demonstrates the utility of the Bayesian methodology, as despite the heterogeneity in list maintenance practices, a principled, statistical approach is useful. At the county level, the total numbers of anomalies are positively correlated with the average election cost per registered voter between 2017 and 2019. Given the recent efforts to modernize and secure voter list maintenance procedures in the For the People Act of 2021, we argue that checking whether counties or municipalities are behaving similarly at the state level is also an essential step in ensuring electoral integrity.

The roles of governors, local legislatures, and national politics in allocating disaster recovery payments: Evidence from Japan

This study explores how congressional and local politics influence the allocation of disaster recovery payments using Japanese prefectural-level panel data from 1989 to 2015. The main findings are as follows. First, gubernatorial years in office positively affect allocation. This holds true even after substituting terms in office for years in office. Second, the share of prefectural legislators belonging to the governing parties is negatively correlated with payments. This connection was strongest when the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was the sole governing party or part of coalitions with other governing parties. Third, governors' role in increasing funds for disaster recovery has deepened since the 2000s, but in the 1990s, the distribution system of specific-purpose grants (which the LDP had developed over a long period of time) helped to dispense payments. Fourth, gubernatorial election year, a governor's partisan affiliation, and other legislative and congressional political factors do not explain disaster payment allocation.

Inter-Party Competition, Public Electoral Pressure, and Democratic Strength: Refining Political Explanations of Incarceration Trends in the U.S., 1980 – 2010

The purpose of this research is to advance the politics of mass imprisonment literature by testing and specifying the macro-explanations of the state-level incarceration change in the United States (U.S.) between 1980 and 2010. Specifically, I account for mechanisms of inter-party competition and public electoral pressure neglected in prior research. To accomplish this goal, I utilize random coefficient models designed to control for repeated annual measures of state-level data that overwhelm traditional analytic techniques. Findings suggest that violent crime, partisan affiliation of state legislators and governors, probation rates, citizen ideology, marijuana decriminalization, and recidivist-focused laws are associated with incarceration as hypothesized, as well as the African American presence net of crime and socioeconomic disadvantage. Contributing to the theoretical debates on democracy and punishment, this paper demonstrates that inter-party competition and public electoral pressure amplify incarceration in the context of Democratic Party dominance, where no liberalizing effects of competition were found. I conclude that legal and extralegal factors are associated with incarceration and suggest that the public did not oppose criminal justice expansion via democratic feedback mechanisms, so both penal populism (Pratt, 2008) and popular punitivism (Campbell et al., 2017) are valid interpretations of imprisonment politics during the analyzed period.

The Unmasked Electorate: Co-Partisanship, Personal Experience, and Perceptions of COVID-19 Risk in Mexico

Research suggests partisanship influences individual perceptions of COVID-19 risk and preventative behaviors. We ask a distinct but equally urgent question: what factors are associated with variation in risk perception among co-partisans? Even among members of the same party, some individuals’ risk perceptions reflect the party line while others deviate from it. We explore this question in Mexico, where the president utilized his rhetoric to downplay the severity of the pandemic. Why do some of the presidents’ co-partisans perceive COVID-19 as a serious risk (despite partisan appeals to the contrary), while others do not? Drawing on theories of risk perception, we hypothesize that this variation is associated with personal risk experience, like knowing someone who contracted COVID-19. We test this hypothesis via a large-n survey of MORENA supporters. We find that personal experiences are consistently associated with variation in risk perception. Strength of partisan ties, meanwhile, is only activated when paired with risk experience.

Testing the cognitive involvement hypothesis on social media: 'News finds me' perceptions, partisanship, and fake news credibility

Social media has been implicated in the proliferation of fabricated news narratives posing as professional journalism. In response, scholars have prioritized the study of the antecedents and outcomes of citizen's ability to detect so-called ‘fake news’. Growing evidence supports the cognitive involvement hypothesis, which states that deeper reflection and elaboration on news content increases one's tendency to correctly identify fake news. This study adds to this literature by exploring connections between reliance on social media for news and emergent scholarship on the News Finds Me Perception (NFMP). We argue that the NFMP represents a low-effort cognitive style of attention to news and therefore, high NFMP respondents are more likely to evaluate fake news as credible. Furthermore, we examine whether this association holds despite partisan affiliation. Panel survey data from the United States provide robust evidence that the NFMP is associated with inaccurate assessments of both apolitical and pro-conservative fake news stories. Moderation analyses show that NFMP is a boundary condition for media effects; reliance on social media for news only leads to fake news acceptance when people hold the NFMP, and this effect exacerbates partisan motivated reasoning. Implications for theory building are discussed.

La sélectivité spatiale de l’élite politique locale: Une analyse exploratoire du lieu de résidence des élus communaux de Zurich et Lausanne (1980‐2016)

AbstractThis article studies the spatial dimension of the social selection of local elected officials that takes shape through the geographical selectivity of the elected officials’ places of residence. Based on data on the places of residence of local elected officials in Zurich and Lausanne (1980‐2016), we show that the residential dispersion of local elected officials is not random but driven by a logic of class socio‐spatial selectivity. We also show that this spatial selectivity varies according to the partisan affiliation of elected officials and the existence or not of electoral districts at the municipal level. By analysing the concentration or absence of elected officials according to the socio‐economic level of the neighbourhoods of Lausanne and Zurich, this article explores a new approach to the sociology of political elites: by adding a spatial dimension – the place of residence – we thus refine the study of the profile of elected officials and their representativeness.

The normalization of intolerance: The 2019 presidential election in Indonesia

The perceived social acceptability of intolerance is believed to drive individual intolerance, a process we refer to as normalization. Social intolerance can be particularly high during election campaigns, when divisive candidates are likely to disparage minorities and outgroups in their rhetoric. Despite the electoral connection, it remains unclear how normalization interacts with partisanship. Does normalization only affect supporters of intolerant candidates, or does normalization spread across the population—even among supporters of the opposition? Relatedly, are the targets of intolerance group-specific, or are all minorities and outgroups at risk? To address these questions, this paper draws on results from a survey experiment conducted during the 2019 Indonesian presidential election. Our findings suggest that normalization affects all voters, albeit in ways that reflect partisan affiliation and rhetoric, which has implications for the study of identity politicization and the conditions under which intolerance is likely to propagate.

Wikipedia: a challenger’s best friend? Utilizing information-seeking behaviour patterns to predict US congressional elections

ABSTRACT Election prediction has long been an evergreen in political science literature. Traditionally, such efforts included polling aggregates, economic indicators, partisan affiliation, and campaign effects to predict aggregate voting outcomes. With increasing secondary usage of online-generated data in social science, researchers have begun to consult metadata from widely used web-based platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Google Trends and Wikipedia to calibrate forecasting models. Web-based platforms offer the means for voters to retrieve detailed campaign-related information, and for researchers to study the popularity of campaigns and public sentiment surrounding them. However, past contributions have often overlooked the interaction between conventional election variables and information-seeking behaviour patterns. In this work, we aim to unify traditional and novel methodology by considering how information retrieval differs between incumbent and challenger campaigns, as well as the effect of perceived candidate viability and media coverage on Wikipedia’s predictive ability. In order to test our hypotheses, we use election data from United States Congressional (Senate and House) elections between 2016 and 2018. We demonstrate that Wikipedia data, as a proxy for information-seeking behaviour patterns, is particularly useful for predicting the success of well-funded challengers who are relatively less prevalent in the media. In general, our findings underline the importance of a mixed-data approach to predictive analytics in computational social science.

Don’t You be My Neighbor: Support for Racial-Exclusion Constitutional Provisions in Mid-19th Century Indiana and Illinois

Racially discriminatory provisions in the U.S. Constitution and southern state constitutions have been extensively analyzed, but insufficient attention has been brought to these provisions when included in northern state constitutions. We examine constitutional provisions excluding blacks from entering the state that were adopted by various northern states in the mid-19th Century. Previous scholarship has focused on the statements and votes of the convention delegates who framed these provisions. However, positions taken by delegates need not have aligned with the views of their constituents. Delegates to state constitutional conventions held in Illinois in 1847, Indiana in 1850 and 1851, and Oregon in 1857 opted to submit to voters racial-exclusion provisions separate from the vote to approve the rest of the constitution. We exploit this institutional feature by using county-level election returns in Illinois and Indiana to test claims about the importance of partisan affiliation, religious denomination, social-welfare policy concerns, labor competition, and racial-threat theory in motivating popular support for entrenching racially discriminatory policies in constitutions. We find greater levels of support for racial exclusion in areas where Democratic candidates polled better and in areas closer to slave-holding states where social-welfare policy concerns would be heightened. We find lower levels of support for racial exclusion in areas (in Indiana) with greater concentrations of Quakers. Our findings are not consistent with labor competition or racial-threat theories.

A Comparative Analysis of the Social and Demographic Factors in Ghanaian Political Party Affiliations

ABSTRACT Since 1992, political power in Ghana alternates between the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Yet beyond extrapolations from previous election results not much is known about the socio-demographic characteristics of the core membership of these two political parties. Using data from the Ghana Opinion Poll study conducted by the Centre for Policy Research and the Fredrich Ebert Stiftung, Ghana in April 2018, this study employed a multinomial logistic regression model to understand the social and demographic features around which support for the political parties in Ghana coalesced. We found that age of the respondent, education, employment, region of residence, ethnicity and religion are significant predictors of partisan affiliation. Notwithstanding the NDC’s electoral success over the years, we observe a process of political realignment that favours the NPP across most of the demographic variables analysed. The study has implications for the mobilisation and recruitment strategies of both political parties.