Road investments are intended to promote economic development and enhance access to social services. Ideally, such infrastructure projects should be prioritized based on objective assessments of local needs and development potential. However, political considerations often influence public road investment decisions, favoring specific electoral groups. This study analyzes the role of electoral motives in road development in Kenya using a hybrid modeling approach and regression discontinuity design (RDD) on a spatial panel dataset (2002−2023). Our findings reveal both correlational and causal evidence of preferential road allocation to constituencies that (1) supported ruling coalition candidates in presidential and parliamentary elections and (2) experienced closely contested elections. Despite constitutional reforms aimed at equitable resource distribution, electoral dynamics continue to shape road development. To mitigate political influence in road allocation, we recommend further devolution of road development responsibilities, increased transparency and adherence to needs-based expansion of road infrastructure.

The performance of masculinities in the 2025 presidential elections in Romania

Hope’s Role in Responding to U.S. Climate and Environmental Policy

ABSTRACT We provide evidence of a political lending cycle in U.S. presidential elections characterized by an increase in credit supply by large banks in swing states. The credit expansion is independent of the incumbent's party, revealing a non‐partisan preference for political continuity. Growth in mortgage and small business loans is substantial, but does not affect credit quality.

This article examines potential scenarios for the candidacies’ nomination in the upcoming 2030 Presidential Election of the Russian Federation. The authors analyze the architecture of the political process through the lens of the country’s political elite. Based on comparative analysis, hypothetical models of candidate nomination are formulated, examined through the prism of succession strategy. The research is prognostic in nature and relies on open sources. The methodological foundation is the authors’ proprietary matrix model, the “Matrix of Russia’s Political Prospects,” which enables a structured comparison of political figures against key criteria. The study is of a predictive nature and is based on open sources. The methodological basis is the author’s matrix model “Matrix reflecting the political perspective of the Russian Federation,” which allows for a structured comparison of political figures based on the key criteria introduced by the authors. The theological perspective on this issue is observed as well in the presented study. The main conclusions of the study are distilled into two fundamental scenarios. The most probable is recognized as the scenario involving the participation and victory of the current President of the Russian Federation, V.V. Putin, which ensures maximum stability of the political course. The alternative scenario considers a possible transfer of power, analyzing key representatives of the political elite as potential candidates: M.V. Mishustin, D.A. Medvedev, A.R. Belousov, A.G. Dyumin, S.V. Kiriyenko, L.E. Slutsky, A.G. Nechaev, and S.A. Gavrilov.

ABSTRACT During the financial crisis of 2008, the US economy experienced a sharp contraction in mortgage credit supply. Previous research indicates that voters responded to the 2007–2008 financial crisis by punishing the incumbent party in the presidential election of 2008. To further investigate the electoral consequences of the crisis, we use an individual‐level data set comprising millions of loan application outcomes to study the impact of mortgage credit contractions on the 2008 House and Gubernatorial elections. We employ a two‐stage approach to estimate the effect of mortgage market conditions on election outcomes. In the first stage, we construct a measure of the change in mortgage credit supply from 2004 to 2008, controlling for demand‐side factors. In the second stage, we estimate the effect of this change on the change in the challenger party's vote share. Our results indicate no statistically significant impact of mortgage credit contractions on House or Gubernatorial election outcomes. This finding suggests that voters primarily hold the president accountable for changes in mortgage credit conditions, while lower level officials are not perceived as responsible for these shifts.

ABSTRACT Public perceptions about electoral integrity are vital for the health of a democracy. One factor that can shape these perceptions is how media outlets cover issues such as voter fraud and foreign interference. This study examined the influence of partisan media use (i.e. liberal, conservative) on concerns about voter fraud and foreign interference in the past three presidential elections. We also assessed whether party identification moderates these relationships. Cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses from the 2016, 2020, and 2024 American National Election Studies (ANES) and the 2020 Annenberg Institutions of Democracy (AIOD) data sets revealed that conservative media use predicted increased voter fraud concerns and lower foreign interference concerns, while liberal media use was associated with lower voter fraud concerns and higher foreign interference concerns, particularly in 2020. Moderation analyses found limited support for partisan differences, although, notably, counter-attitudinal media use had stronger effects than ideologically congruent media use. Ultimately, this study highlights the complex role of partisan media use in shaping public opinion regarding voter fraud and foreign interference in US elections.

ABSTRACT This study analyses political business cycle (PBC) dynamics in an authoratian country, Türkiye, during the period between the June 2018 and May 2023 presidential and parliamentary elections, employing the conditional PBC framework to interpret an institutionally distinctive case. It argues that the transition to the Presidential Government System in 2018 did not merely operate within a weakly constrained environment but actively dismantled the institutional safeguards, central bank independence, parliamentary fiscal oversight, and statistical credibility, that would otherwise have limited electoral economic manipulation. The Turkish case advances the conditional PBC literature by documenting how institutional constraints can be rapidly dismantled through constitutionally sanctioned mechanisms, how financially open economies can temporarily circumvent the trilemma constraint through unorthodox instruments, and how competitive authoritarian settings amplify the electoral returns to pre-election economic manipulation.

The 2016 United States presidential election was marked by the abuse of targeted advertising on Facebook. Concerned with the risk of the same kind of abuse to happen in the 2018 Brazilian elections, we designed and deployed an independent auditing system to monitor political ads on Meta in Brazil. To do that we first adapted a browser plugin to gather ads from the timeline of volunteers using Facebook. We managed to convince more than 2,000 volunteers to help our project and install our tool. Then, we use a Convolution Neural Network (CNN) to detect political Meta ads using word embeddings. To evaluate our approach, we manually label a data collection of 10k ads as political or non-political and then we provide an in-depth evaluation of proposed approach for identifying political ads by comparing it with classic supervised machine learning methods. Finally, we deployed a real system that shows the ads identified as related to politics during the 2018 National Brazilian elections. We also investigated early electoral advertisement before the 2020 local Brazilian elections using our model on unsponsored content (regular posts in groups and pages). We noticed that not all political ads we detected were present in the Meta Ad Library for political ads on 2018. Additionally, we found possible early electoral advertisements in 2020, which is forbidden in Brazil. Our results emphasize the importance of enforcement mechanisms for declaring political ads and the need for independent auditing platforms.

Digital media have reshaped electoral communication, yet official campaign websites, owned and strategically controlled media spaces, remain underexamined within hybrid media systems. This study investigates how these websites function in Portugal’s 2026 presidential election, focusing on the tension between participatory affordances and strategic control. A qualitative-dominant comparative content analysis of all eleven candidate websites is conducted using an integrated multi-model framework combining interactivity, web campaigning, functional analysis, digital sophistication, and political framing. The findings reveal a stratified digital landscape in which most websites operate as unidirectional communication hubs prioritizing narrative coherence and mobilization over deliberative interaction. Rather than functioning as democratic equalizers, campaign websites reproduce and amplify pre-existing strategic and organizational asymmetries. A key contribution of the study is the identification of a systematic association between the strength of campaign framing and the level of digital infrastructural investment. The study contributes by conceptualizing campaign websites as central media infrastructures and by reframing digital campaigning as a strategy-driven, rather than technology-driven, process.

In the 2024 U.S. presidential election, Donald Trump captured a substantial share of the Latinx vote, renewing debates about identity, media effects, and political behavior. This study examines how nativist attitudes and hyper-conservative media consumption shape support for Trump, with particular attention to racial and national identity. Using a moderated mediation model, we find that nativism and hyper-conservative media consumption both increase support for Trump. Racial/ethnic identity buffers these media effects among non-Latinx respondents but intensifies them among Latinx individuals with high identity salience. These findings complicate assumptions about the role of ethnic or racialized identities in polarized media environments.

ABSTRACT Transformative digital platforms, including generative artificial intelligence (GenAI), have accelerated the production and circulation of misinformation in contemporary political communication. While the creation of false or misleading content is a significant concern, the perceived credibility of such material and the ways it is taken up within online discourse generate negative externalities that extend beyond individual users. This study examines how AI-driven deepfake artifacts related to the 2024 U.S. presidential election are framed and discussed within polarized political discourse on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). Using qualitative content analysis, the study analyzes AI-generated deepfake images and videos alongside user comments responding to these artifacts. The findings show that deepfake content is embedded within highly polarized discourse characterized by emotional intensity, partisan alignment, and antagonistic representations of political figures. Recurring themes include emotional polarization, political satire and humor, and manipulative framing strategies that structure how candidates and political issues are portrayed in deepfake artifacts and subsequent user responses. Rather than assessing behavioral effects or audience influence, the analysis highlights how deepfakes circulate within online environments that reflect and reproduce polarized narratives. Based on these patterns, the study proposes the Deepfake-Driven Framing and Polarization Framework (DDFPF) to conceptualize how different types of deepfake images and videos correspond to distinct patterns of framing and commenter engagement in polarized political contexts.

Racial differences in partisan vote have been studied extensively, with recent work documenting shifts in longstanding differences. Recently, attention has shifted to education as a dividing line in American politics. I analyze data from extremely large surveys in each of the last five presidential election years, focusing on the average ideological positions of racial and educational subgroups. I show that ideological differences have decreased sharply by race, driven primarily by Blacks becoming more conservative, but also Hispanics moving to the right. Over the same time period, differences in average ideology by education have grown dramatically, with less educated Americans being much more conservative and more educated Americans being much more liberal. These trends by education have occurred across different racial groups, but have been most dramatic among whites.

ABSTRACT Racial realism is an ideological stance and a mind-set or philosophy substantiating the permanence of racism in U.S. society. It originates from critical race theory. It incriminates white supremacy. It eviscerates racial progress narratives. Yet racial realism simultaneously offers Blacks strategies to achieve fulfillment and even triumph. With nationally representative data from the 2008–2009 National Annenberg Election Study (NAES08-Online) panel survey, we investigate racial realism’s prevalence and predictors. Specifically, we create a proxy measure of racial realism using Blacks’ perceptions of race relations before versus after Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential election, which most Blacks (and whites) interpreted as indicating white supremacy’s decline. We next construct a profile of racial realists using (1) social location variables, (2) a feeling thermometer rating of Barack Obama, (3) a summary score capturing Blacks’ awareness of white stereotypes, and (4) Black solidarity variables. We estimate 30 percent of Black adults are potential racial realists. We find racial realists are aware of white stereotypes, supportive of racial and economic uplift, and likely to feel linked fate.

In this study, we examine voting intentions during the later stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in relation to risk perceptions and performance evaluations. Although prior research has documented rally-around-the-flag effects during the early phase of the pandemic, less is known about how vote choice is structured once acute crisis conditions have waned. This study draws on a nationally representative survey conducted in South Korea around the March 2022 presidential election. The analysis examines associations between affective and cognitive risk perceptions, evaluations of the government’s COVID-19 countermeasures, overall government approval, economic evaluations and expectations, and voting intention. The results show that cognitive risk perception was associated with voting intention to a limited degree, whereas affective risk perception was not. More importantly, voting intentions were associated with conventional performance evaluations—overall government approval and economic evaluations and expectations—alongside pandemic-response approval, rather than being explained solely by the latter. This study addresses the need to better understand electoral behavior during the later phase of a prolonged crisis, a period that has received far less scholarly attention than the acute onset of the pandemic.

Over the past decade, we have witnessed the rise of influencers and the proliferation of websites forming what is commonly referred to as the Manosphere: online forums where men from around the world congregate to discuss dating, self-improvement, and gender roles. However, these spaces are frequently associated with misogyny and extremism-the most prominent example being Incels. This paper examines the development of a central forum within the Manosphere: The Red Pill. Specifically, it investigates the formation and enforcement of group identity within the forum. By analysing how identity markers are rewarded through user engagement and approval, the study traces the evolution of group identity over time, its impact on the forum's user base, and the influence of the 2016United States presidential election on the group's identity. More broadly, this research proposes a methodology grounded in Social Identity Theory and Signalling Theory, operationalized through social network analysis and natural language processing.

According to the Constitutional Court’s case law, petitions concerning disputes over presidential election results fall into two categories: quantitative petitions, which relate to vote-counting results, and qualitative petitions, which concern alleged procedural violations or irregularities in the conduct of elections.. Although the Constitutional Court more frequently decides cases on quantitative grounds, it has also considered qualitative claims relating to electoral violations that may undermine the legitimacy of the electoral process. This study examines the dynamics of the Constitutional Court’s authority in adjudicating presidential election disputes, as well as the challenges it faces in upholding the principle of electoral justice. The study concludes that constitutional rulings lacking decisiveness, such as those in the 2024 presidential election dispute cases, may weaken public perceptions of electoral legitimacy and further impede the realization of electoral justice. Therefore, the Constitutional Court needs to strengthen clear legal procedures that reflect electoral justice while safeguarding the legitimacy of Indonesia’s democracy

Introduction: Elections are vital in democracy, enabling people to choose leaders. In Indonesia, the General Election Supervisory Body (Bawaslu) ensures transparency, integrity, and fairness in every election stage, nationally and regionally. Its role is crucial for overseeing the 2024 Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections to guarantee free and fair processes.Purposes of the Research: This study aims to analyze Bawaslu's legal standing within Indonesia's constitutional framework and evaluate the supervisory mechanisms implemented by Bawaslu for the 2024 Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections.Methods of the Research: The study adopts a normative juridical approach by examining various relevant laws and regulations, particularly Law Number 7 of 2017 on Elections. Additionally, a case study approach is utilized to gain a deeper understanding of the challenges faced by Bawaslu in performing its oversight duties.Results Main Findings of the Research: This study finds that Bawaslu's legal standing as an independent election oversight institution is clearly established in Law Number 7 of 2017. Despite its authority to address violations, challenges like evidence sufficiency and bias allegations persist, often escalating cases to the Constitutional Court. Reforming oversight mechanisms is essential to strengthen accountability and public trust in elections.

Inclusion and preference relations are fundamental comparison tools in intuitionistic fuzzy set (IFS) theory and play an important role in decision analysis under uncertainty. In IFS representations, the hesitation degree reflects information that is not captured by membership and non-membership values alone. This study investigates the structural relationship between hesitation and the inclusion and preference relations of IFSs. A proposed interpretation of membership and non-membership degrees is employed to provide a geometric perspective on hesitation. Within this framework, analytical relations between hesitation inequalities and preference conditions are derived. In particular, it is shown that the hesitation inequality constitutes a necessary condition for preference, whereas inclusion relations remain compatible with a wider range of hesitation configurations. The theoretical observations are illustrated using electoral datasets from the 2002 South Korean presidential election and the 2000 United States presidential election in Florida. Regional vote shares are transformed into intuitionistic fuzzy representations to analyze the distribution of hesitation across regions. The examples demonstrate how hesitation may influence the stability of preference relations while inclusion relations remain structurally preserved.

ABSTRACT Affective forecasting, the process of predicting future feelings, is key for decision-making, but prone to errors. Prior research suggests that age differences in forecasting accuracy vary by event valence such that older adults tend to be more accurate than younger adults when imagining how they will feel following positive events but less accurate when imagining how they will feel following negative events. This study tested whether a brief defocusing instruction could reduce affective forecasting errors and attenuate these age differences. In the week prior to the 2024 U.S. presidential election, younger (ages 18–35) and older (ages 58–79) U.S. voters (N = 670) predicted how they would feel in the week following the election under three scenarios: their preferred candidate winning, their preferred candidate losing, or the result being too close to call. Prior to making these forecasts, participants were randomly assigned to either a control or defocusing condition. Those in the defocusing condition were reminded to consider not only the election but also other daily life events that might shape their feelings. One week after the election, participants reported their actual post-election feelings. Results replicated prior findings: older adults made more accurate forecasts than younger adults when their preferred candidate won, but less accurate forecasts when their candidate lost. However, the defocusing instruction did not improve affective forecasting accuracy for either age group. This null finding suggests that simply prompting participants to consider daily life is insufficient to counter focalism, highlighting the need for more structured interventions in future research.