US Midterm Elections Research Articles

In-person or convenience voting? The role of the direct costs in explaining preferences for voting modalities

High turnout is crucial for political legitimacy. By reducing the direct costs of voting in person, such as queuing and taking time off work, convenience voting modalities are expected to increase turnout. Yet, little is known about the role these costs play in explaining how citizens want to vote. This paper investigates whether perceptions of the direct costs of voting influence individual preferences for in-person compared to convenience forms of balloting such as voting by mail, or absentee voting. Using original cross-sectional data and a preregistered survey experiment encompassing the 2022 US midterm elections, I find that higher direct costs reduce individual preferences for in-person voting. Importantly, this reduction is not compensated by higher preferences for convenience modalities.

Partisanship, Social Desirability, and Belief in Election Fraud: Evidence from the 2022 US Midterm Elections

Partisanship, Social Desirability, and Belief in Election Fraud: Evidence from the 2022 US Midterm Elections

Cyber democracy in the digital age: Characterizing hate networks in the 2022 US midterm elections

Social media has become integral to societal discourse and play a role in shaping public engagement, particularly in democratic electoral processes. This paper addresses the pressing issue of hate speech on social media during the 2022 US midterm elections. Unlike previous research, which often relies on limited datasets and classic methodologies, we leverage Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) techniques to analyze Twitter data through advanced models of entity recognition, sentiment analysis, and community extraction, having persistence in Knowledge Graphs for consuming the intelligence efficiently. Results indicate that in the US midterm elections 2022, Arizona was the state that provided more content (507,551 tweets) related to a Chief Electoral Official, with 31.58% of them identified in the most aggressive cluster due to its mean attribute values of “attack on commenter” (0.7), “inflammatory” (∼0.3), “attack on author” (∼0.2), and “toxicity” (∼0.2). The name entity recognition model also identified an association between those aggressive tweets and the previous 2020 US Presidential campaign, characterized by attacks on election officials based on conspiracy theories campaigns. Knowledge graphs contributed to understanding the concentration of attacks and connectivity between topics commonly mentioned in hate speech content. Thus, our results offer detailed insights into the actors and dynamics of online harassment in electoral contexts, illuminating the challenges posed by harassment and proposing preventive mechanisms applicable to diverse electoral processes worldwide.

Morality and partisan social media engagement: a natural language examination of moral political messaging and engagement during the 2018 US midterm elections

Morality and partisan social media engagement: a natural language examination of moral political messaging and engagement during the 2018 US midterm elections

Significance of the 2022 United States midterm elections for the African American community

The article is devoted to the study of the factor of black voters and politicians in the 2022 US midterm elections and their significance for the African American community as a whole. The paper examines the main reasons that contributed to the fall of Joe Biden's rating among the black population in the first two years of his presidency, as well as the measures taken by the White House administration to overcome this negative trend. The author of the article also touches on the topic of further strengthening the attention of the Republican and Democratic parties to the African American electorate during the 2022 election campaign. Finally, the study examines the results of the past congressional elections for the African American community, related to the assessment of the turnout of black voters, their electoral preferences, as well as the results of the performance of African American candidates.

You are lying! How misinformation accusations spread on Twitter

PurposeMisinformation is notoriously difficult to combat. Although social media firms have focused on combating the publication of misinformation, misinformation accusations, an important by-product of the spread of misinformation, have been neglected. The authors offer insights into factors contributing to the spread of misinformation accusations on social media platforms.Design/methodology/approachThe authors use a corpus of 234,556 tweets about the 2020 US presidential election (Study 1) and 99,032 tweets about the 2022 US midterm elections (Study 2) to show how the sharing of misinformation accusations is explained by locomotion orientation.FindingsThe study findings indicate that the sharing of misinformation accusations is explained by writers' lower locomotion orientation, which is amplified among liberal tweet writers.Research limitations/implicationsPractitioners and policymakers can use the study findings to track and reduce the spread of misinformation accusations by developing algorithms to analyze the language of posts. A limitation of this research is that it focuses on political misinformation accusations. Future research in different contexts, such as vaccines, would be pertinent.Practical implicationsThe authors show how social media firms can identify messages containing misinformation accusations with the potential to become viral by considering the tweet writer's locomotion language and geographical data.Social implicationsEarly identification of messages containing misinformation accusations can help to improve the quality of the political conversation and electoral decision-making.Originality/valueStrategies used by social media platforms to identify misinformation lack scale and perform poorly, making it important for social media platforms to manage misinformation accusations in an effort to retain trust. The authors identify linguistic and geographical factors that drive misinformation accusation retweets.

The Role of Health Care in the 2022 Midterm Elections

This Viewpoint discusses the extent to which health care issues played a role in the 2022 US midterm elections.

US midterm election results show that voters support the right to abortion

US midterm election results show that voters support the right to abortion

Solarium Reimagined: Containing the Rise of China

The following paper studies the nature and plausible justifications to current trade war between the US and China. The theory of hegemonic power runs through the narrative embodied in this paper and postulates that the trade war has been initiated as an instrument to counter the rise of China in the global political economy. The lineages of the trade war can be traced back to trade deficit between China and the US, rivalry for global economic dominance and the US midterm elections. This paper will unpack the nature of the trade war looking at the history of other trade wars before this one. The second part will engage international relations theory, particularly hegemonic power and status to examine the validity of the idea that the rise of China threatens the US national interests and security. The third part will reflect on the above, revisit a project Solarium that president Eisenhower formulated in 1953 to counter the soviet expansionism during the Cold War era and postulate what could be expected next through the prism of hegemonic power in global politics. This paper concludes with an empirical case for caution that just as project solarium was a long-term strategy to counter Soviet expansionism during the Cold War, the US will need a similar long term policy position to counter the Rise of China.

Anti-pluralist arguments in the Tea Party online discourse: A mixed method analysis of populist rhetoric

Populism can be treated as an ideological attribute of political parties, but in this study, it is operationalized as a feature of argumentation that allows populists to claim to be the only ones to represent the interests of the nation. Such anti-pluralist arguments could be observed during US midterm elections in 2018 in online discourses of the right-wing political movement Tea Party. This article reports on a mixed-method study of the Tea Party’s official website obtained through scraping the All News feed. The quantitative linguistic analysis of keywords, concordances and couplings in the newsfeed sample is complemented with a qualitative rhetorical analysis of some topoi and argumentative fallacies. The analyses reveal such strategies as: (1) homogenizing the representation of true patriots, (2) polarizing between “good us” and “evil them,” (3) discrediting opponents through analogies, “worst” examples and ad hominem attacks (4) conspiracy theorizing, and (5) mobilizing modes of pathos and ethos in relation to mediatized and historicized cultural imaginaries. The study showcases the advantages of a mixed-method approach to the so-called populist rhetoric.

Waiting for the Fall? Joe Biden and the 2022 US Midterm Elections

Waiting for the Fall? Joe Biden and the 2022 US Midterm Elections

Local temperature anomalies increase climate policy interest and support: Analysis of internet searches and US congressional vote shares

Two studies examine the effects of temperature anomalies (relative to ten-year averages) on interest in and support for climate policies. Study 1 analyzes the impacts of local temperature anomalies on information acquisition, namely Google searches, about climate change and climate policies. We find strong evidence that temperature anomalies are associated with increased climate change information acquisition. Our results show that deviations from seasonal norms in both directions (i.e., temperatures higher or lower than expected) predict increased interest. Study 2 analyzes voting for Republican candidates, who in the timeframe of our data were not likely to support climate policies. Analysis of voting records from ten US midterm elections from 2002 to 2020 shows that greater local temperature anomalies are significantly associated with lower vote shares for Republican candidates.

Platformed antisemitism on Twitter: Anti-Jewish rhetoric in political discourse surrounding the 2018 US midterm election

What does antisemitism look like in the context of political discussions on Twitter? In this article, we introduce the notion of platformed antisemitism. We first define it as a platform-agnostic concept, and then explore it through an exemplary case study of Twitter and its affordances by way of a mixed-methods analysis of discourse surrounding the 2018 US midterm election. Via qualitative textual analysis, we document how political discourse on Twitter is marred by antisemitic conspiracy theories that intersect with QAnon and Trump/MAGA support. Through quantitative content analysis of a sample of 99,062 tweets, we highlight a list of terms and hashtags most often associated with antisemitic speech on Twitter and showcase how specific affordances on the platform (quote-tweets, hashtags) amplify and/or diminutize antisemitic speech. Via Lasso regression, we introduce an antisemitism classifier that can be used to further refine future detection efforts of antisemitic speech.

The mood of the electorate in the election campaign of 2022

In the final stage of election campaign in the US midterm elections, the main problems of concern to voters have been revealed, and the choice of voters will mainly depend on the conceptions of Americans, which party and which candidate is more capable of solving them. The greatest concern among the voters is caused by economic problems, primarily high inflation, especially the rise in gasoline prices. Republicans, partly justifiably, argue that the Republican administration under Trump's leadership has handled this problem better. The main negative factor reducing support for Republican candidates is the investigation of Trump's role in the failed attempt to cancel the results of the 2020 election during the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters in January 2021. Republican candidates' support for Trump and his claims of "stealing" his victory serves for many Republican candidates as a test of party loyalty, but can serve as a negative factor in the election due to growth of Trump’s criticism in public opinion. Unexpectedly, the issue of abortion, caused by the decision of the Supreme Court, which actually imposed a ban on abortions, was put forward in the third place in the campaign in terms of importance for voters. Both the majority of the population and the candidates of the Democratic Party have criticized the abortion ban, which will bring them additional support from voters. Other important issues widely discussed in the press, such as the conflict in Ukraine and relations with Russia, racial issues, gun control, health issues, did not become major topics for the election campaign.

Social media news deserts: Digital inequalities and incidental news exposure on social media platforms

Some people live in social media “news deserts,” while others are embedded in online networks that are rich in news content. These news deserts represent a new form of digital inequality—distinct from problems of access, resources, or civic skills—that could foreclose one of the ways social media are believed to contribute to informing citizens and engaging them in democratic processes: providing opportunities for incidental news exposure. This study investigates incidental exposure on social media platforms, drawing on an online survey administered just before the 2018 US Midterm Elections ( N = 1493). The study finds that even after controlling for key individual-level factors, characteristics of social media discussion networks play a role in explaining variation in incidental exposure. The results are discussed in light of prevailing theory about incidental exposure, public engagement, and digital inequalities.

Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections

Previous research investigating the transmission of political messaging has primarily taken a valence-based approach leaving it unclear how specific emotions influence the spread of candidates’ messages, particularly in a social media context. Moreover, such work does not examine if any differences exist across major political parties (i.e., Democrats vs. Republicans) in their responses to each type of emotional content. Leveraging more than 7000 original messages published by Senate candidates on Twitter leading up to the 2018 US mid-term elections, the present study utilizes an advanced natural language tool (i.e., IBM Tone Analyzer) to examine how candidates’ multidimensional discrete emotions (i.e., joy, anger, fear, sadness, and confidence) displayed in a given tweet—might be more likely to garner the public’s attention online. While the results indicate that positive joy-signaling tweets are less likely to be retweeted or favorited on both sides of the political spectrum, the presence of anger- and fear-signaling tweets were significantly associated with increased diffusion among Republican and Democrat networks, respectively. Neither expressions of confidence nor sadness had an impact on retweet or favorite counts. Given the ubiquity of social media in contemporary politics, here we provide a starting point from which to disentangle the role of specific emotions in the proliferation of political messages, shedding light on the ways in which political candidates gain potential exposure throughout the election cycle.

Teaching the US 2018 midterm elections: a survey of secondary social studies teachers

ABSTRACT The goal of this study was to identify teacher-reported practices related to teaching the 2018 US Midterm Elections and contemporary social and policy issues. In particular, we sought to identify factors that helped explain why teachers were or were not engaging students in the midterm elections and related contemporary issues and what contextual factors may influence their teaching of these contemporary events. We also examined how the teachers’ political views and those of the school community, personal political engagement and engagement with current events were associated with teaching the midterms. Respondents to our online survey, conducted using a regionally stratified sample in late 2018, include 813 US secondary social studies teachers from 48 states. We found that teachers who identified shared goals with colleagues and administrators and who reported having autonomy over their curriculum and teaching said they engaged students in the election and issues regardless of the political context. We also found that teachers in more politically competitive states reported developing skills, norms and classroom contexts conducive for engaging in controversial issues. These findings are important given the rise in populism, partisanship and social stratification in the US and globally.

Temporal associations between character strengths and civic action: A daily diary study

ABSTRACT Positive youth development (PYD) models propose that character is an important antecedent to civic action, yet few studies have examined temporal links between character strengths and civic behavior. Using a daily diary design, this study tests temporal associations between character and civic behavior during the 2018 US midterm elections. Participants (N = 235, Mage = 19.43) completed seven daily assessments of three character strengths (purpose, future-mindedness, gratitude) and four types of civic behavior (volunteering/helping behavior, environmentalism, standard political behavior, social movement behavior). There were between-person weekly effects and within-person daily effects for most character strengths, volunteering/helping behavior, and environmentalism. Higher daily purpose was associated with greater daily standard political and social movement involvement. Greater social movement involvement predicted higher next-day purpose and future-mindedness. Greater volunteering/helping behavior predicted higher next-day future-mindedness. Higher purpose predicted greater next-day standard political and social movement involvement. Findings support PYD models by documenting nuanced associations between character and civic action.

Interaction (Election Campaigning Communication)

Interaction (Election Campaigning Communication)

Asset prices, midterm elections, and political uncertainty

This study attests to the important role of US midterm elections in asset pricing, even more important than presidential elections. In months following the midterms, equity premiums, mutual fund flows, and real investment growth rates are significantly higher and Treasury premiums are lower. This is consistent with theoretical models relating higher asset prices to lower future discount rates when post-election political uncertainty decreases. The results are robust to different measures of uncertainty. Also, market betas relate positively to the cross section of average returns in post-midterm months, but the relation is flat in other months.