State Selection Research Articles

Disinformation as Hybrid Warfare and its Strategic Use in the United States 2024 Election

This article examines the growing role of disinformation in hybrid warfare, centering on its use in social media during the 2024 United States Presidential Election. While disinformation is as old as time, the methods and its mediums have evolved rapidly since Cold-War era propaganda and towards social media infiltration. These social media campaigns, first notably observed in the 2016 United States Presidential Election, highlights a new age of conflict and foreign meddling, highlighting the global shift from classical military warfare to more subversive tactics. The article argues that disinformation, as a form of hybrid warfare, that emphasizes exploiting a target’s societal vulnerabilities, exacerbating them to ultimately weaken the target from the inside-out and destabilizing, eroding, or even destroying, their political systems. Via an analysis of the 2024 United States election disinformation interference, following a recapitulation of its first presence in the 2016 election, this article examines the geopolitical dimensions and draws of disinformation warfare, the motives behind the foreign actors’ interference, and the destabilizing results it fosters within the general public. Additionally, it begins a discussion of how similar disinformation strategies can be and have been utilized across other democracies in Europe, Asia, and beyond, threatening the current global order of liberalism and democratic superiority. The article concludes by emphasizing the importance of nations to invest into understanding and countering these new technological warfare tactics in order to properly protect, defend, and safeguard the integrity of their democratic governance. With disinformation and information hybrid warfare, amongst social media in particular, becomes the increasingly preferred method of confrontation with adversaries due to its low-risk, high-reward quality, it poses possibly the largest threat to global stability and threatens to upend the entire system, necessitating direct and immediate attention to address this vulnerability of our global infosphere.

Policies, politics or participation? Exploring the political understanding of non-voters in the 2022 North Rhine-Westphalian election

AbstractAbstention has long been treated as a residual category in electoral research. However, a research interest in understanding non-voters emerged in the 1990s following declines in turnout in the 1980s. Existing research on non-voters largely focusses on socio-economic attributes (e.g. education), demographic characteristics (e.g. age) and political attitudes (e.g. political apathy) to explain abstention. This study explores how non-voters understand politics and the political process. It draws inspiration from studies of political culture, such as those by Fuchs (2002) and Rohe (1984), and uses data from eight focus group discussions conducted with 52 total participants who reported not voting during the 2022 North Rhine-Westphalian state elections. The analysis reveals that participants focus primarily on the output dimension of the political process and that input dimensions are secondary. At the same time, participants report a lack of representation by political decision-makers and display limited political knowledge.

On measuring change in networked publics: a case study of United States election publics on Twitter from 2020 to 2022

ABSTRACT Networked publics are the imagined communities that form on technologically-mediated spaces, often to deliberate on current events and enduring issues. Measuring change in networked publics is practically difficult because of the different ways that change in such communities can be operationalized. Yet measuring how networked publics are changing is particularly pressing, as researchers, platforms, and civil society have proposed interventions to curb some of their behaviors in the wake of digitally-mediated disinformation and incitement to violence. Here, I propose a tri-factor model for measuring change in publics centered on creators, audiences, and platforms, and demonstrate this model on a case study of United States ‘networked election publics’ on Twitter from 2020 to 2022. Analyzing over 600M posts from 2020 to 2022, I find that right-leaning creators and audiences decreased in their activity relative to left-leaning publics in 2022, and faced increased platform moderation via suspensions and shadowbanning. However, these negative signs are offset by a relative growth in the size of right-leaning publics due to higher user entry, and a sustained interest in non-election topics. I discuss these changes as well as the uses and limitations of this model within a research and policy environment increasingly concerned with intervening in networked publics.

Analyzing LinkedIn data to explore the relationships between sustainable development goals, circular economy, and electoral dynamics

In 2015, all United Nations Member States adopted 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) for the 2030 agenda. Addressing the issue of employing alternative data sources for exploring aspects of utilizing said goals, this paper explores the Circular Economy dimension within the SDG12 score, focusing on responsible production and consumption and the broader SDG index. Data from LinkedIn are collected, examining profiles, companies, job postings, and services using the keywords ‘Sustainable Development Goals’ and ‘Circular Economy’. Furthermore, the SDG index (including the SDG12 score) for the United States is integrated in the analysis; SDG is a published metric evaluating the progress of sustainable communities within each state. Finally, data on the past five US general elections are retrieved, in order to explore the relationship between SDGs, Circular Economy, and voting behavior. Regression analyses incorporating PCA components and state election data reveal that the LinkedIn-derived SDG and circular economy components exhibit positive impacts on the corresponding indices. Notably, a state’s political inclination toward the Republican or the Democratic parties highlights contrasting effects on the SDG and SDG12 indices, indicating divergent trends based on electoral choices. Overall, this study underscores LinkedIn’s potential as a valuable source for assessing SDG and Circular Economy position in the US, and highlights the interplay between political factors and sustainable communities at state level.

National Influences on Election Outcomes for State Executive Offices

Abstract Many argue that American elections at all levels of government are now national affairs. Yet to what extent are state executive election outcomes influenced by national factors? Individual election outcomes are used to test the relative influences of national, state, and individual factors in elections for governor and secondary executive offices. The results reinforce the federalist nature of American elections by indicating that individual and state factors exert greater influence than national factors on state executive elections, especially for high-profile offices and, to a somewhat lesser degree for other, lesser-profile offices. Similar outcomes in national and state elections appear to result from the partisan composition of the electorate rather than top-down influences. The analysis supports the view that American federalism is alive and well in the electoral arena.

The #TrustedInfo2022 Dataset: States’ Trust-Building Social Media Campaigns during the 2022 Election Cycle

AbstractWe introduce a dynamic dataset of all communications by state election officials (EOs) on social media during the 2022 election cycle and develop metrics to assess the effectiveness of trust-building strategies on voter confidence. We employ quantitative manual content analysis of 10,000 organic posts from 118 state EOs’ accounts on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter between September 10 and November 30, 2022, and code for the presence of variables that measure EOs’ efforts to combat misinformation and build trusted networks of communications. The measures we present here address two questions: (1) How much coordination was there among states in terms of incorporating the #TrustedInfo2022 campaign, promoted by the National Association of Secretaries of State, in their social media communications, and (2) How much of states’ social media communications explicitly signaled that EOs are trusted sources of information? We demonstrate the applicability of our data on research that evaluates the impact of trust-building campaigns on voter confidence in elections, which is grounded on theories of deliberative democracy and democratic listening.

Insecurity and political apathy in Nigeria’s elections: a study of Kano State elections (2011 - 2019)

This paper explores insecurity as a cause of political apathy that hinders political participation in Nigeria, taking Kano State as the context of the research. It adopts qualitative approach, simultaneously using both primary and secondary sources; in-depth interviews, scholarly articles and journals. Interviewees were purposively sampled. Rational Choice Theory is used as the theoretical pedestal to elucidate that partaking in political activity though an element of liberal democracy happens based on the choice and volition of citizens. Such a right could be taken away when citizens are disenfranchised as a result of insecurity; political violence, hooliganism etc. The study finds out among other things that violence emanates from the misconduct of thugs, sponsored or hired by politicians to rig elections, intimidate voters and scare off opponents at polling units. Also, belief of politicians that elections must be won by hook or crook and at all cost scares voters from falling victims at the hands of politicians and their political soldiers. Accordingly, the study recommends adequate civic education and political sensitization to citizens at early age through conventional schools and otherwise. Also, the electoral body should sanitize the system by employing stringent rules in the electoral process to ensure safe and violent-free environment before, during and after elections. Vetting and screening to-be political officers should also be rigorous, entailing character, records, use of drugs and association with political hooligans.

Political Breakthrough in a Rural Community during the 2011 Sarawak State Election: An Ethnographic Perspective

This article draws on empirical data and ethnographic evidence as a springboard to explore issues affecting narratives and observations made during the 2011 Sarawak State Election. It throws light on ways in which communities and cultures at the periphery of the Malaysian nation state grapple with the potentials and consequences of elections in the process of economic, political and social transformation. Eschewing aspects of candidates’ selections, electoral campaign process and actual voting behaviour of individual voters, the main analysis is of the formulation of local understandings and meanings of the state elections in two rural settlements of Ba’ Kelalan and Bario located close to the border between Sarawak and Kalimantan. This article suggests that an account of their experiences is a necessity in order to understand what functions and whose interest elections serve, and most importantly what election actually does and means within particular circumstances of local history. As a political phenomenon, elections can look different from the perspective of those close to the centre of power in contrast to those with little power within a political hierarchy.

Improving the Security of United States Elections with Robust Optimization

The preservation of democracy hinges on the reality and perception that votes in elections are counted properly. In the paper “Improving the Security of United States Elections with Robust Optimization,” Crimmins, Halderman, and Sturt provide a low-cost approach to reducing the security risks of voting machines that are used to scan ballots and count votes. Their approach consists of applying robust optimization to a century-old testing procedure called logic and accuracy testing (LAT), which is performed by election officials on each voting machine before each election. The authors show that their robust optimization approach is guaranteed to detect any misconfiguration of voting machines that would cause votes to be swapped across candidates. Applying their approach to Michigan’s November 2022 election, the authors show that their approach to LAT would have only required a 1.2% increase in cost to election officials compared with current practice. Their approach, which is forthcoming in the Societal Impact section, has been successfully piloted in real-world elections by the Michigan Bureau of Elections since Summer 2023 as a cost-efficient way to enhance election security and public trust in election outcomes.

United States Precinct Boundaries and Statewide Partisan Election Results

We describe the creation and verification of databases of all precinct boundaries used in the United States 2016, 2018, and 2020 November general elections, enhanced with election results for all partisan statewide offices. United States election officials report election results in the smallest geographic reporting known as the precinct. Scholars and practitioners find these election results valuable for numerous use cases. However, these data cannot be augmented with other geographically-bound data, such as U.S. Census data, without precinct boundaries. Here we describe the collection of precinct boundary data from state and local election officials, sometimes provided in GIS formats, images, text descriptions, and – in rare cases – verbally. We describe how we verify boundaries with other election data, such as geocoded voter registration files. Our open-source data has appeared in redistricting litigation argued before the United States Supreme Court; and has been used by state and local redistricting authorities, media organizations, advocacy groups, scholars, and a vibrant community of mapping enthusiasts.

Disability Status and Voting Behavior in United States Elections in Older Men and Women: Findings from the 2020 Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement

Disability Status and Voting Behavior in United States Elections in Older Men and Women: Findings from the 2020 Current Population Survey Voting and Registration Supplement

Extraordinary parliamentary elections in Ukraine during martial law

The article is devoted to the little-studied issue in Ukraine of the legislative ban on extraordinary, or early, parliamentary elections during the period of the special legal regime of martial law. The subject of the study is such a type of early parliamentary elections as interim elections of people’s deputies. The relevance of the researched issue is determined by the ongoing martial law regime in Ukraine and the legislative ban on holding any elections, the necessity of which arises during this martial law. It is noted that the difference between ordinary and extraordinary parliamentary elections in the conditions of this martial law is that the ban on holding ordinary parliamentary elections leaves the country with a valid parliament, and the ban on holding extraordinary parliamentary elections deprives the country of a valid parliament. In order to investigate the legality of the application of this ban to the interim elections of people’s deputies, the following was analyzed: first, the legislative justification of the state election management body in Ukraine regarding the non-appointment and non-holding of these interim parliamentary elections during this martial law, using the example of the latest case from December 13, 2023; and secondly, the publications of Ukrainian scientists regarding these interim parliamentary elections in the conditions of this martial law. It was found out, firstly, that this ban is not a norm of the Constitution of Ukraine neither for scientists nor for the state election management body, and secondly, that this ban does not have an indisputable link of consistency with the Constitution of Ukraine: some legal researchers claim , that this ban corresponds to Article 64 of the Constitution of Ukraine, but other researchers of this Article 64 come to conclusions that exclude the possibility of consistency of this ban with this article of the Constitution of Ukraine. It is substantiated that the content of Article 64 of the Constitution of Ukraine has three meanings regarding the interim elections of people’s deputies during this martial law: 1) they can be held, 2) they can not be held, 3) they can be held with a limited number of voters. It is proposed to consider as an alternative to this prohibition of by-elections of people’s deputies during this state of war martial law electoral qualification - a special and temporary restriction of the circle of voters for holding these by-elections in the conditions of this war. A variant of this qualification is proposed - the qualification of a legal entity.

A Geometric Model of Elections in Five Federal Democracies

Abstract In an analysis of 1,825 state or provincial election outcomes in five federal democracies the rate of decay of incumbency (K) serves to partition the distribution of the vote for the incumbent party, the party of the head of government, between those who win a subsequent term and those who do not. In conjunction with the mean and standard deviation of the distribution, the weighted mean of the vote in re-election and defeat is identified. The model’s predictions are generally within 2–3 percentage points of the actual outcome.

Pengaruh Media Sosial Terhadap Partisipasi Pemilih Pemula Pada Pemilihan Presiden dan Wakil Presiden Tahun 2024

In presidential elections or head of state elections, of course, the people have the right to participate in politics both in voting and being elected. General elections or elections are still considered the most tangible form of public participation in the administration of government. One of them is participation through social media which is often used by teenagers who are also known as beginner voters. With the development of the age, social media has become a part of daily life, especially for the younger generation. This study aims to find out whether there is an influence of social media on the participation of novice voters in the presidential election, to find out how much influence social media has on the participation of the presidential election, and to find out what factors can affect the participation of novice voters in the presidential and vice presidential elections. This research method uses a quantitative method by conducting a survey by distributing a questionnaire in the form of a google form to social media users who follow the social media accounts of the Tangerang Regency General Election Commission (KPU). The sample used consisted of novice voters aged 17-21 years who actively used social media and followed the social media accounts of the General Election Commission (KPU) of Tangerang Regency. Based on the hypothesis test using the F test, Fcal = (0.515) > F table (4.56) is obtained, because Fcal > Ftable, H₀ is rejected and Ha is rejected with a significance of 0.000 < 0.05. So it can be interpreted that simultaneously (Together) there is a positive and insignificant influence between the variables of Social Media and Beginner Voters on the Presidential and Vice Presidential Elections.

Reconstituting the ‘good woman’: Gendered visual politics on social media during 2021 state election in West Bengal, India

This paper explores the visual politics of gender in electoral politics in West Bengal (WB). We examine how women political candidates visually construct their non-verbal political performance on social media, and how such visuals relate to social mores and societal expectations surrounding femininity. Drawing on theories of the social construction of gender and visual political communication, we conducted a content analysis of 1,033 visual artefacts from eight individual women candidates and 205 from the Facebook and X (formerly Twitter) pages of the four main political parties taking part in the January-April 2021 electoral campaign for state-level elections in WB. We analysed how these candidates construct gendered relationships with the electorate through different cues on the platforms, such as sartorial choices (traditional or Western attire), use of culture-specific religious symbols (sindoor or vermillion, bindi – forehead marking worn by married Hindu women), and gendered/non-gendered political actions like cooking or serving food, giving speeches or meeting constituents in political processions. Our findings about the visually performed politics show a combination of cultural, political, and gender signifiers, which are mediated and remain connected to societal expectations, and historical narratives. The candidates’ negotiation of these aspects, in turn, underscores a reproduction of colonial legacies and, in the present day, an ongoing production of societal differences. This study contributes to the growing body of literature on visual politics of gender, particularly in Asian contexts. It sheds light on the nuanced ways women politicians use social media to construct their visual identities, and how the deployment of body politics into the relatively ‘new’ online sphere reifies ‘old’ social, political, cultural symbolisms, and norms regarding gender. In this way, this article highlights the importance of considering pre-digital forms of gendered identity construction and visual representation when analysing the contested terrain of digital visibilities.

Local Democracy in America: How Access, Competition, and Place Shape Turnout in Mayoral Races

The vast majority of the roughly half-million elected officials in the U.S. occupy local offices, however, research examining how they get elected to remains scant. The present study examines turnout in local elections, focusing on the effects of electoral rules, the competitiveness of local races, and whether and how place matters. Based on a sample of roughly 10,000 mayoral elections, this study represents the most systematic empirical analysis of local turnout to date. While we find substantial differences in turnout across rural towns, suburbs, and central cities, these differences are largely explained by electoral and contextual factors that are unevenly distributed across the local landscape. Though election timing is far and away the most important factor, uncontested mayoral races, local elections in states with restrictive voting laws as well as those mid-sized municipalities are associated with significantly lower turnout.

Edgy Conservatives? The Late-Twentieth Century Rise of the Mortgage Belt in Australian Electoral Politics

The expansion of home ownership in Australia in the second half of the twentieth century was accompanied by a new vernacular geography – the mortgage belt. From the 1970s, such belts around major cities were frequently said to be crucial to federal and state elections. This article examines where political commentary located mortgage belt areas in Sydney and Melbourne and finds that it encompassed a diverse range of places often, but not always, on their urban edges. Their residents were believed to be particularly sensitive about interest rates but also other risks. While the politics of outer suburbia has often been posited as conservative, it is argued that such areas were electorally nuanced and reflected longstanding contingency in Australia around expectations of government that stands in contrast to conservatism elsewhere. These areas also highlight the continuing significance of popular access to property ownership as a theme of Australian political history.

Effects of Gerrymandering on State Social Policy

Partisan bias occurs when one party gets something the other party does not. If a given district map results in one party gleaning a higher proportion of the legislative seats than the proportion of votes cast for that party, since this effect is only possible for one party, then partisan bias has occurred. It can be strategically produced via gerrymandering and is thought by many to circumvent the basic principles of democracy. This study uses recent state election results to compute a measure of partisan bias, as well as secondary data measuring the levels of five state social policies, to assess the effect of gerrymandering on those policies. It also tests whether the state’s redistricting method is related to partisan bias. Partisan bias correlated with, and explained significant variance in, all five social policies measured. The redistricting method was related to the direction and intensity of partisan bias. The results indicate gerrymandering of state districts results in more extreme social policies than preferred by the majority of voters.

Democracy in distress? Examining the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on voter behavior in the 2020 general election in the Greater Boston Area

The conditions of a highly anticipated election during the COVID-19 pandemic present an opportunity to further understand how voting accessibility influenced voting behavior in the 2020 United States general election. At the time of the election, nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as wearing a facemask, physical distancing, and crowd avoidance, were the primary defenses against contracting and spreading the virus. In response to the pandemic, several states enacted emergency voting laws that extended early voting days, loosened restrictions on acquiring an absentee ballot, and provided accessible ballot drop-off locations to reduce health and safety barriers to voters during the pandemic. This study uses a mixed methods design to investigate the motivating factors of voting behavior among Democrat and Independent voters in the Greater Boston Area in the 2020 general election. Based on data from an original survey of 169 individuals and 56 follow-up interviews conducted in early 2021, we find that the predicted probability of being a convenience voter (voting by mail, early voting, ballot drop box, or dropping their ballot at their polling location) goes from 50 % (p < .001) among those who did not express safety concerns related to voting to 82 % (p < .0001), an increase of 32 %. These findings were further triangulated in follow-up interviews with the survey participants. In our follow-up interviews, we also found that electoral integrity was a concern among both traditional and convenience voters; many individuals made a plan to vote in person, vote early, or drop their ballot off at a polling site or drop box to ensure their vote was counted. More broadly, the implications of this research place importance on state election law and election administration in a time of crisis. We expect that in a future crisis, such as a natural disaster or disease outbreak, convenience voting such as extended early voting options, ballot drop boxes, and relaxed restrictions around absentee voting options, may reduce barriers to voting experienced during uncertain or unsafe conditions and facilitate institutional certainty.

Teichert: 'Thinking healthcare in an integrated way'

With a view to the upcoming state elections in Brandenburg on 22 September 2024, politicians discussed the challenges and opportunities for healthcare in the state as part of the 'AOK Forum live' talk format at the Old Town Hall in Potsdam, within sight of the Brandenburg state parliament. The title of the event: 'Brandenburg has the choice: For healthcare with a future'.