State Legislative Elections Research Articles

Federal Judges, States Legislators, and State Voting Rights Rollback

Abstract This article claims that recent Supreme Court decisions have allowed state lawmakers to suppress and skew but not subvert the vote. The Court relaxed federal oversight of state election administration in Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Abbott v. Perez (2018), and Brnovich v. Democratic National Committee (2021), and gerrymandering in Rucho v. Common Cause (2019), while prohibiting independent state legislative election regulation in Moore v. Harper (2023). These decisions guided state lawmakers toward vote suppression and skewing, and away from election subversion. Consequently, Republican state legislatures have passed state constitutional amendments and statutes limiting ballot access and reforming state redistricting practices. While some Democratic state legislatures have protected ballot access and independent redistricting, these recent Supreme Court decisions help Republicans win a disproportionate share of state legislative seats. National courts thus help preserve the national party coalition by opening subnational jurisdictions to party entrenchment.

PROPAGANDA IN AIADMK'S 2021 CAMPAIGN SONG: A MULTIMODAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Campaign songs have long been utilized to communicate political parties’ ideas and promote unity, particularly in the political landscape of Tamil Nadu. However, recent election campaigns have leveraged advancements in technology and innovative multimedia marketing techniques, giving campaign songs a distinct significance for shaping public opinion and swaying voters. This study examines the campaign song “Thodarattum Vetrinadai Endrendrum Eratailai” (May the success continue forever for two leaves) released by the All-India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) party during the 2021 Tamil Nadu state legislative election. Employing multimodal discourse analysis and Kress and Van Leeuwen’s visual grammar, the research analyzes the song’s content to identify the presence of propaganda techniques. The study reveals that Bandwagon, Plain Folk, and Card Stacking are prominent propaganda tools employed in the song. Furthermore, the visual grammar analysis unveils the strategic use of visual elements in the video that synchronously aligns with the party’s campaign objectives.

Evaluating the Minority Candidate Penalty with a Regression Discontinuity Approach

Abstract Do parties face an electoral penalty when they nominate candidates of colour? We employ a regression discontinuity design using state legislative election data from 2018, 2019, and 2020 to isolate the effect of nominating a candidate of colour on a party's general election performance. Utilising this approach with real-world data heightens external validity relative to existing racial penalty studies, largely supported by surveys and experiments. We find no evidence that candidates of colour are disadvantaged in state legislative general elections relative to narrowly nominated white candidates from the same party. These findings challenge the leading explanations for the underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority groups, with implications for candidate selection across the United States.

Political Rhetoric Typology in the 2022 US State Legislative Elections

Political Rhetoric Typology in the 2022 US State Legislative Elections

Nationalization of State Legislative Elections: Evidence From the Minnesota State Senate

This investigation explores the evolution of the relationship between national and local factors in Minnesota’s state legislative elections. Correlations demonstrate a growing connection between presidential and state legislative results between 1992 and 2020. Further, the findings reveal that national factors have exercised an outsized influence on State Senate election results in recent years, even when the strongest rival explanations are included in the analysis. In fact, when presidential vote and previous vote for a State Senate seat are assessed alongside incumbency and campaign spending in the 2020 election, presidential vote demonstrates the strongest influence on outcomes, while incumbency and candidate spending show negligible effects. The findings suggest that national factors thoroughly dominate state legislative elections. This has implications for policy responsiveness and raises the specter that the mismatch between a federal system and nationalized politics may prove unsustainable.

Spatial patterns in Brazilian state legislative elections

In this paper we explore spatial patterns in voting behavior of the Brazilian electorate in the state legislative elections of 2014. With data aggregated at the municipality level, we employ a Beta regression model augmented with spatially correlated random effects to model the share of votes received by the three largest political parties: PMDB, PSDB, and PT. Results suggest PT is more preferred by the electorate in poorer and more densely populated areas, specially in states of the Northwest and South regions, while PSDB performs better in municipalities with relatively higher standards of living. Also, analysis of the spatial random effects indicates this component is especially important to account for the major stylized fact that is the simultaneous PSDB hegemony and relative lack of PMDB presence in the state of São Paulo.

Local Candidate Roots and Electoral Advantages in US State Legislatures

AbstractA growing literature has revealed a notable electoral advantage for congressional and gubernatorial candidates with deep local roots in their home districts or states. However, there is a dearth of research on the presence and impact of local roots in state legislative races. In this paper, we close that gap by demonstrating the consistent and significant electoral impacts that state legislators’ local roots have on their reelection efforts. We use data capturing a representative cross-section of state legislative incumbents (N = ~5,000) and calculate a novel index measuring the depth of their local roots modeled after Hunt’s (2022, Home Field Advantage: Roots, Reelection, and Representation in the Modern Congress) measure for the US House. We present evidence that state legislators with deep local roots in the districts they represent run unopposed in their general elections nearly twice as often as incumbents with no such roots. Of those who do attract challengers in their reelection efforts, deeply rooted incumbents enjoy an average of three extra percentage points of vote share. Our results have important implications for candidate emergence in state legislative elections during a time when so many are uncontested. They also demonstrate the limits of electoral nationalization for understanding state politics.

Preaching to the Choir or Proselytizing to the Opposition: Examining the Use of Campaign Websites in State Legislative Elections

AbstractThe Internet has spawned a renewed hope for facilitating increased access to candidate information for voters. However, the nationalization and polarization of constituents have left many candidates averse to the risks of personalized campaigns, especially in subnational elections. Under what conditions are state candidates willing to establish a personalized web presence as opposed to relying on partisanship? This study introduces a novel dataset of campaign website presence for the 2018 and 2020 state legislative elections. During this time, approximately one-third of state legislative candidates opted to forgo a personalized campaign website. District-level constituent ideology was significantly correlated with the website use, even when controlling for district education, income, age, and race, and the candidate’s competitive position. District ideological homogeneity encouraged website use across both parties, while adversarial district ideology corresponded to low website use among Republicans. The results indicate that state legislative candidates, especially Republican candidates, are far more likely to preach to their partisan choir rather than incur the risks of proselytizing among their partisan opposition. The results reiterate the divergent responses of the political parties regarding partisan polarization and shed light on the impact of nationalization within state legislative campaigns.

Gender Bias & Religious Discrimination: Positive Framing of News Report Coverage on Mauree Turner

Mass media plays an important role in our lives and society to a greater degree. As a primary source of information that people tend to go for, the kind of information mass media provides matters. The problem is that every message we see in the media is constructed and that even texts like news reports are not entirely authentic. Previous studies have shown that news media do have their own tendency in writing their news reports, through which the minority communities are usually the ones to receive the short end of the stick. On that account, this study, through conducting critical discourse analysis, attempts to see the media framing in Mauree Turner’s 2020 Oklahoma state legislative election news reports and find an underlying motive behind such framing. The finding shows that in general, the media framed Turner positively in their reports and that this positive frame implies an inherent gender bias and religious discrimination within American society.

Redistricting and Incarceration: Examining the Electoral Consequences of New York’s Prohibition on Prison Gerrymandering

AbstractDuring the most recent round of redistricting, many states have enacted a number of reforms to their mapmaking practices. One reform that has received increased attention in recent years is a ban on prison gerrymandering—the practice of counting incarcerated individuals in prisons instead of their home addresses. Eleven states drew districts while counting incarcerated persons in their homes after the 2020 Census. Though substantial research has investigated redistricting practices, far less attention has been paid to empirically examining the effect of prison gerrymandering on elections. We seek to fill this void by evaluating the effect of New York’s ban on prison gerrymandering on state legislative elections between 2002 and 2020. We find that altering how the prison population is counted, indeed, altered the electoral dynamics across the state.

The Politics of Welfare Retrenchment: Evidence from Mass Medicaid Disenrollment in Two States

AbstractIn 2005, Missouri and Tennessee tightened eligibility for their public health insurance programs, resulting in widespread coverage losses. Leveraging county-level variation in subsequent disenrollment, I show that voters in Tennessee punished the incumbent governor for the Medicaid cuts. In Missouri, by contrast, disenrollment had no impact on the subsequent gubernatorial election but did increase support for Democrats in 2006 state legislative elections, possibly due to the strategic entry and exit of candidates. In both states, the loss of Medicaid coverage was associated with lower support for Democratic presidential candidates, although these declines appear part of a longer-term trend that preceded the coverage loss. The results speak to the potential political costs of welfare spending cuts and the electoral consequences of reducing income-targeted social programs.

Does Public Financing Motivate Electoral Challengers?

AbstractDo attempts to level the financial playing field lead more candidates to run for office? In theory, public financing should increase competition, presumably because additional funding from taxpayers motivates more challengers to run for office. I provide a novel test of this logic with data on all candidates running for state legislature across all US states between 1976 and 2018. The results suggest that public financing exerts a generally positive effect on the total number of candidates running for state legislative office and specifically increases the number of candidates running in elections for every additional year after the passage of public financing. This effect is amplified in states that offer greater amounts of public funds. I conclude that the availability of public financing can be an equalizing force in elections, and that state legislative elections continue to experience increased competition in the years after the introduction of public financing.

Final Reflections on the Farmers’ Movement

The end of the yearlong farmers agitation on November 19, 2021, led mostly by farmers from Punjab and Haryana at the borders of Delhi marked a tremendous success in its resistance to legislation of the central government and corporatization of agriculture in India. The movement defeated forces internal to India that favored agro-industries as well as larger global policy-making that favors the same. In India,
 such policies date back to at least the 1990s and the shift to “liberalize” India.1 As documented in the two previous issues published by Sikh Research Journal, the farmers’ movement witnessed participation from a cross section of the Indian population, cutting across societal, professional and geographical barriers. The farmers even traveled to various states of the country to influence state legislative elections of 2021 in an effort to defeat the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). Although those efforts were successful only in some instances, the movement was able to create an alternative vision for the people of the nation. The movement brought together actors and groups with disparate interests and goals. Many observers have found those unexpected alliances and extensions in the movement to be noteworthy. Also, the success of the farmers’ movement can be attributed to Punjab’s long history of peasant struggles.

There’s No Women’s Mafia: Women’s Donor Groups in State Legislative Elections

ABSTRACT Little is known about the presence of women’s donor groups in state legislative elections. This work investigates their role in both primary and general election contests. As an exploratory analysis, it utilizes elite interviews to probe new questions about gender and campaign finance. Women’s donor groups are not solely a congressional election phenomenon. They are active in state legislative races, provide resources other than money, and impact the perceptions of female candidates. This study offers insights to practitioners and scholars concerned with women’s representation. For practitioners, it highlights opportunities for strategic behavior to maximize the impact of women’s donor groups of all political affiliations. For scholars, it suggests new pathways for research on Republican women’s groups specifically as well as the impact of these organizations in general, especially during primary elections and regarding candidates of color.

New medium, old habits: Use of twitter during 2017 state legislative election campaign in India

Politicians utilize media to urge the populace to vote and support them, particularly during elections. Communication has evolved significantly since the dawn of the Internet era, from social media to chat rooms and instant messaging. Social media has become a vital aspect of political communication during election campaigns during the previous two decades. During India's 2014 general election, all political parties and candidates made substantial use of social media to rally voters. Social media has emerged as a critical campaigning tool in India's electoral system. These new media platforms are expected to play a vital role in attracting voters, particularly the new generation of young adults.

Political Connections, Allocation of Stimulus Spending, and the Jobs Multiplier

<ns3:p>Using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) data, we show that firms lever their political connections to win stimulus grants and that public expenditure channeled through politically connected firms hinders job creation. We build a unique database that links information on campaign contributions, state legislative elections, firm characteristics, and ARRA grant allocation. Using exogenous variation in political connections based on ex-post close elections held before ARRA, we causally show that politically connected firms are 38 percent more likely to secure a grant. Based on an instrumental variable approach, we also establish that a one standard deviation increase in the share of politically connected ARRA spending lowers the number of jobs created per $1 million spent by 7.1 jobs. Therefore, the impact of fiscal stimulus is not only determined by how much is spent, but also by how the expenditure is allocated across recipients.</ns3:p>

Up the Political Ladder: Gender Parity in the Effects of Electoral Defeats

This paper investigates whether an electoral defeat has different effects on the subsequent political involvement of male and female candidates for state office. Using US state legislative election returns from 1972 to 2010 and a regression discontinuity design, I find that there is no gender difference in the effects of an electoral defeat on the propensity to run again for state legislature. I discuss possible explanations for why the gender gap in persistence documented among novice local politicians disappears among state politicians, focusing on the role of prior office-holding experience.

Political Connections, Allocation of Stimulus Spending, and the Jobs Multiplier

<ns3:p>Using American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) data, we show that firms lever their political connections to win stimulus grants and public expenditure channeled through politically connected firms hinders job creation. We build a unique database that links campaign contributions and state legislative election outcomes to ARRA grant allocation. Using exogenous variation in political connections based on ex-post close elections held before ARRA, we causally show that politically connected firms are 64 percent more likely to secure a grant. Based on an instrumental variable approach, we also establish that state-level employment creation associated with grants channeled through politically connected firms is nil. Therefore, the impact of fiscal stimulus is not only determined by how much is spent, but also by how the expenditure is allocated across recipients.</ns3:p>

When Social Capital Becomes Political Capital: Understanding the Social Contexts of Minority Candidates' Electoral Success in the American States

AbstractPolitical scientists have long been interested in studying the elective office-holding of disadvantaged groups. However, this line of research primarily focuses on the representation of ethnic minorities in the U.S. Congress and identifies three types of determinants of minority candidates' electoral success: the demographic and political make-up of constituents, candidates' personal traits, and macro-level electoral rules. Much less attention is given to minority candidates' electoral success in statehouses. In this paper, we ask: what factors promote the electoral success of minority candidates in state legislatures? Beyond voter characteristics and electoral rules, we attribute minority candidates' electoral success to the social capital possessed by their in-group constituents. We theorize that social capital manifested as civic engagement and social connectedness, can become political capital for minority candidates. Using the Current Population Surveys Civic Engagement Supplement, we validate state-level measures of social capital by race and ethnicity. Linking group social capital to state legislative election outcomes, we find the stock of minority social capital contributes to the electoral success of minority candidates, while white social capital decreases minority candidates' electoral success. Key findings suggest social capital is a form of political capital for disadvantaged groups with private benefits for in-group candidates.

The State Legislative Elections of 2018: Symposium Introduction

This symposium consists of six articles that examine the 2018 state legislative elections. The first article by Adam S. Myers sets the stage by highlighting the unprecedented level of contestation in state legislative elections, especially by Democratic candidates.