US Midterm 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

For the good of the party, for the good of the nation: ingroup projection can motivate support for political violence

Support for political violence in the United States appears to be growing. We outline a model that positions ingroup projection—seeing ingroup values as the shared values of a larger inclusive societal group—as a key psychological process through which identification with political ingroups (Democrats/Republicans) and with national superordinate categories (Americans) influence support for political violence. We tested this model in two studies. Study 1 (N = 297) included original survey data collected during the 2016 US Presidential election, and analyses revealed that identification with Democrats or Republicans and identification with Americans both had positive indirect effects on support for political violence that were mediated by ingroup projection. Study 2 (N = 642) provided a preregistered replication of these results using original data collected during the 2022 US Midterm Senate elections. These results provide insight into the psychological processes that underlie support for political violence in the United States and elucidate a generalizable model for understanding destructive intergroup behaviors in a variety of real-world intergroup contexts.

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

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.

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.

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)

A Digital Field Experiment Reveals Large Effects of Friend-to-Friend Texting on Voter Turnout

Two decades of field experiments on get-out-the-vote tactics suggest that impersonal tactics, like mass emails, have only a modest or negligible effect on voter turnout, while more personal tactics, like door-to-door canvassing, are more effective. However, the COVID-19 pandemic threatens to upend the vast face-to-face voter mobilization efforts that have figured prominently in recent presidential election campaigns. If campaigns can no longer send canvassers to voters' doors, what tactics can they turn to in order to mobilize their supporters? This paper evaluates a promising alternative to face-to-face get-out-the-vote tactics: mobile app technology that enables millions of people to message their friends to urge them to vote. Prior to the most recent US midterm elections in 2018, the mobile app Outvote randomized an aspect of their system, hoping to unobtrusively assess the causal effect of their users' messages on voter turnout. We develop a statistical methodology to address the challenges of such data, and then analyze the Outvote study. Our analysis reveals evidence of very large and statistically significant treatment effects from friend-to-friend mobilization efforts ($\widehat{\textrm{CACE}}$= 8.3, $\textrm{CI}$ = (1.2, 15.3)). Further, the statistical methodology can be used to study other friend-to-friend messaging efforts. These results suggest that friend-to-friend texting, which is a personal voter mobilization effort that does not require face-to-face contact, is an effective alternative to conventional voter mobilization tactics.

The Heightened Importance of Racism and Sexism in the 2018 US Midterm Elections

AbstractIn 2016, attitudes related to racism and sexism were strong predictors of vote choice for president. Since then, issues related to race and gender have continued to be an important part of the political agenda. This letter shows that hostile sexism and denial of racism emerged as stronger predictors of the House vote in the 2018 cycle than they had been in 2016. The results show that the increased importance of these factors came largely from the shifting of less sexist and less racist voters from voting Republican in 2016 to voting for Democrats in 2018. Overall, the results suggest that Trump's hostility towards women and minorities is becoming part of the Republican Party's brand, and that this appears to have created an electoral penalty for Republican candidates in 2018.

Local Warming Increases Climate Policy Support: Analysis of Behavioral Intentions, Internet Searches, and US Congressional Vote Shares

We report on four studies that examine the effects of abnormal temperature experiences on climate policy support. Study 1 shows perceived weather abnormality to be correlated with self-reported climate policy support, an effect that is robust across USA, Italy, and China but strongest in the USA. Study 2 identifies a significant effect of objective temperature abnormality on climate policy support in a large US sample. Study 3 analyzes the impacts of objective temperature abnormality on information acquisition behavior, namely Google searches about climate change and climate policies, finding strong evidence that weather abnormalities increase such searches. Lastly, Study 4 analyzes a high-effort and highly consequential behavioral outcome, voting for candidates who support climate policies, showing that experienced temperature abnormalities significantly decreased Republican candidates’ vote shares in the 2018 US midterm elections.

The Preference for Moderation Scale

Abstract We propose that individual differences in the value placed on the principle of moderation exist and influence many aspects of consumer decision-making. The idea that moderation is an important guiding norm of human behavior is prevalent throughout history and an explicit theme in many philosophies, religions, and cultures. Yet, moderation has not been studied as an individual-level determinant of consumer behavior. We develop a scale that measures the degree to which individuals have a Preference for Moderation (PFM). The PFM scale predicts consequential behavior in many decision contexts. We first report on scale development, including the generation and selection of items. We then report analyses showing that PFM is distinct from several popular individual-difference variables. Related to cultural background, PFM reliably predicts the use of compromise (study 1) and balancing (vs. highlighting) strategies (study 2), as well as various decision-making behaviors, including reliance on the representativeness heuristic (study 3), self-reported financial habits and outcomes (studies 4–5), real-world online-reviewing behavior (study 6), and split-ticket voting behavior in the 2018 US midterm elections (study 7).

Perceptions of mis- or disinformation exposure predict political cynicism: Evidence from a two-wave survey during the 2018 US midterm elections

Despite a fast-growing body of literature on fake news and mis-/disinformation, there remains surprisingly little empirical work on the social/political consequences of exposure to false information. Addressing this issue, this study provides initial evidence that perceptions of false information exposure catalyze political cynicism. The findings from a two-wave panel survey during the 2018 US midterm elections reveal that perceptions of false information exposure 2 weeks before the election significantly predict the changes in political cynicism immediately after the election day. We also find that social media news use in Wave 1 significantly relates to political cynicism in Wave 2 indirectly through perceptions of mis-/disinformation exposure. The autoregressive regression model indicates that our findings are robust after controlling for prior levels of cynicism.