Vote Changes Research Articles

The role of negative affect in shaping populist support: Converging field evidence from across the globe.

Support for populism has grown substantially during the past 2 decades, a development that has coincided with a marked increase in the experience of negative affect around the world. We use a multimodal, multimethod empirical approach, with data from a diverse set of geographical and political contexts, to investigate the extent to which the rising electoral demand for populism can be explained by negative affect. We demonstrate that negative affect-measured via (a) self-reported emotions in surveys as well as (b) automated text analyses of Twitter data-predicts individual-level populist attitudes in two global surveys (Studies 1a and 1b), longitudinal changes in populist party vote shares at general elections in Europe (Study 2), district-level Brexit voting in the 2016 U.K. referendum (Study 3), and county-level vote shares for Donald Trump in the 2016 and 2020 U.S. presidential elections (Studies 4a and 4b). We find that negative emotions-such as fear and anger as well as more often overlooked low-arousal negative emotions like depression and sadness-are predictive of populist beliefs as well as voting and election results at scale. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

A study of street trees and their effects on pedestrians’ perceptions during summer

Poor thermal and light climates can have significant negative effects on human living qualities. Exploring sustainable ways to address these issues is an urgent task, and at the street level, trees pose a potential solution. This study aimed to determine the effect of street trees on pedestrians’ physiological comfort under different conditions. This was accomplished by field surveys, including questionnaires distributed at several forested streets in the Qingbaijiang District (QBD), a suburban area of Chengdu, China. Data analysis showed that people had different responses towards either physical or meteorological factors. They responded differently to various environmental factors, and the responses varied over physical and meteorological contexts. It was found that pedestrians’ neutral temperature and lighting levels were 28.64 °C, as indicated by physiologically equivalent temperature (PET, °C), and 0.91 klx, as indicated by illumination (klx). The percentage of people in favor of larger tree crowns increased considerably for PET (from 60 % at 30 °C to 90 % at 45 °C) and illumination (from 30 % at 0 klx to 100 % at 20 klx) elevations under small-sized trees. People preferred larger crowns and shorter trunks as they made them more comfortable. Their responses were also different for various PETs and daily periods. This is evident from the change in either thermal sensation vote (TSV) or overall comfort vote (OCV). The increase of either PET or illumination might result in TSV increase and OCV decrease. In relative terms, tree crown sizes (diameter, TCD) had a significant influence on pedestrians’ comfort. Increasing TCD by 1 m resulted in a TSV reduction of 0.449 and/or an OCV increase of 0.475 (sig. < 0.001). Results from this study may aid in future urban design and forestation works with the goal of improving pedestrians’ comfort.

The Targeting and Impact of Partisan Gerrymandering: Evidence from a Legislative Discontinuity

Abstract A party’s influence over redistricting increases discontinuously when its seat share in the state legislature exceeds 50%. We apply bunching tests to show that, in the election before redistricting, parties systematically win narrow majorities in legislatures of states where they have lost recent U.S. House races. This trend of losses is reversed after redistricting despite no change in overall House vote shares in states near the cutoff. The pre-to-post-redistricting change in regression discontinuity estimates implies that the party that controls redistricting engineers an 11 percentage point increase in its probability of winning a House race.

Sequential Polarization: The Development of the Rural-Urban Political Divide, 1976–2020

As recently as the early 1990s, Americans living in rural and urban areas voted similarly in presidential elections, yet in the decades since, they have diverged sharply as rural people in all regions of the country have increasingly supported the Republican Party. We seek to explain the sources of this growing cleavage by examining two interrelated processes of change: political-economic transformation that elevated many urban areas and marginalized rural ones, and the nationalization of policy goals. Our analytical approach is developmental, probing the timing and sequencing of trends across more than four decades. It is also comprehensive, testing theories related to economic decline, the educational gap, organizational mobilization, and racism and racial and ethnic threat. Our analysis reveals that while rural and urban counties resembled each other in several respects in the 1970s, they have since moved apart. We examine how key trends relate to political change in presidential voting. We find that in the 1990s and early 2000s, rural dwellers in places experiencing population loss or economic stagnation began to support Republican candidates. Then from 2008 to 2020, those in areas with higher percentages of less-educated residents, a higher presence of evangelical congregations per capita, and higher levels of anti-Black racism, each more prevalent in rural areas than urban areas, shifted their support to Republicans. Through sequential processes of polarization, with political-economic forces leading the way and activating rural resistance to the nationalization of policy goals subsequently, the rural-urban political divide emerged as a major fault line in the nation’s politics.

Local Thermal Comfort and Physiological Responses in Uniform Environments

The thermal perception of different body parts can vary greatly throughout the human body and have different influences on overall thermal sensation and comfort. Various personal comfort systems (PCS) have been developed to stimulate local body parts for the purpose of enhancing human thermal comfort, yet the most effective body parts for intervention remain undetermined. Therefore, a series of climate chamber experiments under five uniform environments with three sets of suits were conducted in this study. The results showed that the head, chest, belly, and hands tended to feel no cooler than overall in cooler environments, but arms and legs felt generally no warmer than overall in warmer environments. The head, trunk and upper arms were more likely to be the comfort-dominant body parts. Additionally, the upper arms and upper back expected temperature regulation measures the most under non-neutral environments, thus they seem to be the two most needed and effective targeted body parts that a PCS could be applied to. The skin temperature and thermal sensation of limbs were more sensitive to indoor air temperatures than those of the torso. However, variations in the skin temperature of the head, chest, upper back, and calves had the strongest correlation with overall sensation vote changes. The above results and conclusions can not only serve as the basis for the future studies of local thermal comfort, but also provide theoretical guidance for the design of future PCS products.

Effects of thermal environment and air quality on outdoor thermal comfort in urban parks of Tianjin, China.

The comfort level of outdoor thermal environments is affected by several factors. Previous studies of thermal comfort have generally investigated the main microclimatic factors as dependent variables, such as the temperature, wind speed, humidity, and thermal radiation, but the influence of the air quality has rarely been explored. In this study, we acquired meteorological element observations and conducted questionnaire surveys in Peach Blossom Park, Hebei University of Technology, and Xigu Park in Tianjin. We analyzed the effects of the outdoor air quality and thermal environment on the thermal comfort in order to provide a theoretical basis for comprehensive evaluations of the outdoor environment and the mechanism. The results showed that thermal resistance of clothing and ambient temperature followed a negative step change, where people generally reduced the minimum amount of clothing when the temperature exceeded 28 °C. One unit change in the thermal sensation vote (TSV) occurred for every 11 °C rise in the physiological equivalent temperature (PET). The neutral PET was 21.68 °C, and the comfortable PET was about 23 °C. The air quality index (AQI) and air satisfaction were negatively correlated, and satisfaction decreased by 1 unit for every change of 230 AQI. The transitional season was most comfortable when the temperature felt slightly cool (TSV = -0.70). The neutral TSV was 0.507 in the summer and -0.334 in the winter. Air quality had a significant effect on the thermal comfort vote (TCV) (p = 0.0485 < 0.05). The effect of PET on TCV was highly significant (p < 0.01).

Momentum in the polls raises electoral expectations

Voters rely on opinion polls to help them predict who is going to win elections. But they are regularly exposed to different polling results over time. How do changes in the polls affect their expectations? I show that when the polls indicate that a party’s support has increased, voters’ expectations for that party’s performance will be higher than they would be at the same vote share but without such evidence of growth, because the party appears to have momentum. Across six survey experiments in Britain (total N > 14,000), I find that this effect persists even when changes in vote share are well within the margin of error, when comparing a small change in vote share to consistently polling at the larger vote share, when the change makes little difference to a party’s objective probability of victory, and when voters have strong preferences that might colour their interpretation of the polls. In short, the appearance of momentum in the polls robustly raises voters’ expectations that a party will win an election. This finding has major implications for any area of research in political science where expectations feature, for theoretical understandings of how people perceive the future, and for salient policy debates about the regulation of opinion polls.

The 1990s party realignment of U.S. presidential elections: Geographic sorting of counties by blue or red

AbstractIntroductionThis paper addresses the issue of partisan polarization in the U.S. in presidential voting at the county level. The literature on the growing partisan sorting and/or polarization is extensive, and controversies are pervasive. This paper focuses on the timing and sequence of changes in partisan vote shares at the county level from 1952 through the 2020 election.MethodsWe apply confirmatory factor analysis to identify the structures of partisan competition in counties from 1952 to 2020, and multiscale geographically weighted regression (MGWR) to uncover the social processes that influence the growing partisan polarization in the U.S.ResultsWe find that the growing partisan segregation coincides with the beginning of a secular change in the structure of partisan competition at the presidential level among counties that has intensified over the past quarter century. Polarization, segregation of partisans in communities, and a rise in sectionalism are the predominant characteristics of this new alignment.ConclusionThis study confirms a secular realignment in the structure of party competition among counties in presidential elections starting in 1996 and solidifying in 2008 when Obama is elected. The segregation of counties by dark shades of red or blue is the unique fingerprint of this new alignment that we call the "Geographic Sort" alignment.

Terrorist Attacks, Cultural Incidents, and the Vote for Radical Parties: Analyzing Text from Twitter

AbstractWe study the role of perceived threats from other cultures induced by terrorist attacks and criminal events on public discourse and support for radical‐right parties. We develop a rule which allocates Twitter users to electoral districts in Germany and use a machine‐learning method to compute measures of textual similarity between the tweets they produce and tweets by accounts of the main German parties. Using the exogenous timing of attacks, we find that, after an event, Twitter language becomes on average more similar to that of the main radical‐right party, AfD. The result is driven by a larger share of tweets discussing immigrants and Muslims, common AfD topics, and by a more negative sentiment of these tweets. Shifts in language similarity are correlated with changes in vote shares between federal elections. These results point to the role of perceived threats from minorities on the success of nationalist parties.

Political Power Shift in the House of Representative of North Sumatra Province, Indonesia: A Political Communication of Post-election

The results of the 2013 regional head election (Pilkada) in the context of the executive and 2014 legislative elections at the level of North Sumatra Province produced new leadership accompanied by a coalition posture of supporting parties. In the context of the legislative institution, it also resulted in changes in votes or seats. Normatively, in the context of executive-legislative relations, it will be more effective if a coalition of executive-supporting parties gets a majority in the legislature since it will facilitate political communication that is involved in the discussion of a regional regulation draft. This study attempts to depict the political power shift in the regional house of representatives of North Sumatra province (RHRNSP), Indonesia. This study employed a descriptive qualitative approach with a content analysis technique. The data were obtained through the documentation method. The results showed that there were obstacles from several factions outside the coalition party, specifically in discussing the regional regulation draft. However, these obstacles were still in the form of criticism and input from several factions against the draft regional regulation to be ratified. This is known through the ongoing political communication.

Evaluation of thermal comfort in library buildings in the tropical climate of Kumasi, Ghana

Adaptive comfort considerations and passive design are crucial in tropical, hot and humid climates where the straightforward response to discomfort in this climate, such as in Ghana, has been the adoption of air conditioners and mechanical cooling. This approach, along with following the provisions of current international comfort standards, has resulted in higher electricity demand and excessive emissions of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. This paper presents an adaptive thermal comfort field study in library buildings in the tropical Aw climate of Kumasi, Ghana considering naturally-ventilated (NV) and air-conditioned (AC) buildings. The proposed models in this study are compared with existing studies and current international standards. Using the Griffiths coefficient of 0.5, the mean neutral temperature of 27.4 °C and 30.3 °C were predicted for AC and NV mode, respectively. Although Fanger's predicted mean vote (PMV) method overestimates the extent of changes in thermal sensation votes (TSV) by indoor operative temperature in AC mode, the neutral temperature predicted from PMV (27.8 °C) is analogous to the one estimated using TSV. The adaptive equations for Kumasi's hot and humid climate predict higher slopes of 0.17 K−1 and 0.41 K−1 in AC and NV modes, respectively, than the standards; this indicates that the Ghanaian respondents were more sensitive to the outdoor temperature changes. The average difference of 2.1 °C in AC mode and 1.8–3.3 °C in NV mode were estimated when comparing the proposed model with those in the international standards

Age, period and cohort effects in a dealigned electorate: comparing late deciders and vote switchers

AbstractWhereas many advanced democracies experience a long‐term process of dealignment, the impact of age, period and cohort on late deciders and vote switchers is still unclear. In addition, extant research fails to systematically examine the determinants that account for the time of vote decision compared to explanations of vote change at the individual level. Drawing on pooled data that include election surveys for Portuguese legislative elections held between 2002 and 2019, this study analyses the impact of age, period and cohort on late deciders and vote switchers. The findings indicate that age has a significant impact on both phenomena, while period effects are important only for the time of vote decision. Finally, the lack of partisan identities and short‐term factors, in particular ambivalence towards the main party leaders, are relevant for explaining electoral indecision and inter‐election volatility.

Do citizens vote against incumbents who permit local immigration? Evidence from the Mariel Boatlift

AbstractDoes exposure to a mass migration event cause citizens to vote against incumbents? I offer an answer to this question by studying one of the largest acute periods of migration in the US, the case of the 1980 Mariel Boatlift during which roughly 125,000 Cubans fled to South Florida. I estimate the change in support for Republican presidential candidates in Miami using the synthetic control method and fixed effects regressions with a panel of county-level and archival precinct-level election results. I find that, while Miami voters dramatically increased their support of the Republican candidate in 1980, this shift was not a local consequence of the Boatlift. Instead, the evidence suggests that Cuban support for Reagan was not a local Miami response to the Boatlift—it happened in Cuban communities throughout the US—but it was most noticeable in Miami because Miami had the largest Cuban population in the US even before the Boatlift. I also present evidence that this change in Cuban voting may have been specific to Reagan and not a broader shift against incumbents or toward Republicans. These findings suggest that, in this case, direct exposure to migration did not lead citizens to dramatically change their voting behavior.

Assessing the outdoor thermal comfort conditions of exercising people in the semi-arid region of India

● Field surveys were conducted for people exercising outdoor. ● Calibrated the ranges of thermal comfort indices for BSh climate ● Various ranges of microclimate parameters and thermal indices were determined. The present study investigated the thermal perceptions of people exercising outdoor during the late summer and monsoon season in the hot semi-arid region of India. The field surveys were conducted in parallel with onsite monitoring of microclimate parameters. Thermal comfort indices-Wet Bulb Globe Temperature (WBGT), Physiological equivalent temperature (PET), and Universal Thermal Climate Index (UTCI) were applied to explore the outdoor thermal comfort conditions. The neutral temperature range of people exercising was found to be 23.8-28.1°C in WBGT,26-36.4°C for PET, and 27.7-35.7°C in UTCI. It was observed that with a unit change in Mean thermal sensation votes, there was an approximately 4°C increase in dry bulb temperature; wind speed increased by 1.24 m/s; mean radiant temperature was reported to rise by 25°C. Calibration of thermal stress categories of applied indices demonstrated that all the training should be stopped when WBGT ≥40.8°C, PET ≥67.3°C, and UTCI ≥ 59.2°C. In pleasant weather conditions, the median value of T a , RH, W s , T g , T mrt , WBGT, PET, UTCI were 29°C,67.2%,0.9m/s,29.2°C,27.4°C,25.6°C,28.1°C,30.3°C respectively. The findings could be helpful in developing the sports stadium or places dedicated to exercise and preparing schedules of the sports events in the arid regions to avoid overexposure in the hot thermal environment.

Issue characterization of electoral change (and how recent elections in Western Europe were won on economic issues)

Results of the last electoral season in Western Europe have been mostly seen in the light of the success of challenger, anti-establishment parties. According to this narrative, past elections have been overwhelmingly dominated by cultural issues such as immigration and the EU. However, these accounts suffer from several limitations. First, they generally focus on the determinants of the static component of electoral results (i.e. vote choice) rather than the factors leading to vote change (i.e. the individual-level component of aggregate electoral change). Second, relying on party manifestos and programmatic platforms, they usually offer a party-based reconstruction of the general climate of elections. As a consequence, they provide only an indirect, at best limited, overview of the actual political issues that might have driven electoral results. To overcome these limitations, in this paper we introduce a new methodological strategy to characterize electoral results in comparative perspective. To do so we leverage an issue-rich public opinion dataset to estimate individual-level vote change towards each party as a function of issue-based party-voter affinity measures in 6 European countries. Relying on 38 logistic regression models (one for each party), our results contradict many current interpretations of electoral results in Western Europe, in fact showing that economic issues, rather than broad cultural ones, emerged as the most relevant predictors of vote inflows. Furthermore, it also demonstrates the relevance of “cross-ideological” mobilization across all the 6 countries covered in this study.

County-level association of COVID-19 mortality with 2020 United States presidential voting

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to assess the association between United States county-level COVID-19 mortality and changes in presidential voting between 2016 and 2020. Study designThe study design is a county-level ecological study. MethodsWe analysed county-level population-weighted differences in partisan vote change, voter turnout and sociodemographic and health status characteristics across pre-election COVID-19 mortality quartiles. We estimated a population-weighted linear regression of the 2020–2016 Democratic vote change testing the significance of differences between quartiles of COVID-19 mortality, controlling for other county characteristics. ResultsThe overall change in the 2020–2016 Democratic vote was +2.9% but ranged from a +4.3% increase in the lowest mortality quartile counties to +0.9% in the highest mortality quartile counties. Change in turnout ranged from +9.1% in the lowest mortality counties to only +6.2% in highest mortality counties. In regression estimates, the highest mortality quartile was associated with a −1.26% change in the Democratic 2020–2016 vote compared with the lowest quartile (P < 0.001). ConclusionsHigher county-level COVID-19 mortality was associated with smaller increases in Democratic vote share in 2020 compared with 2016. Possible explanations to be explored in future research could include fear of in-person voting in heavily Democratic, high-mortality counties, fear of the economic effects of perceived Democratic support for tighter lockdowns and stay-at-home orders and general exhaustion that lowered political participation in hard-hit counties.

Investigation on human thermal comfort of the ecological community in arid area of Lanzhou, China

A coupling model was established to investigate the influencing factors of outdoor thermal-humidity environment, in which it is considered for the water-evaporation from porous pavement and plant transpiration. The model was verified by the experimental method. The influence of building height and spacing is also analyzed by simulation method for the thermal-humidity environment of the ecological community in Lanzhou. The results show that the apparent temperature becomes more and more sensitive to the ambient temperature with building height. While the sensitivity value of the Predicted Mean Vote to relative humidity gradually increased with the increase in building height. The Predicted Mean Vote changes from the minimum value of 1.571–1.752 as the building height changes from 75 m to 100 m, resulting in the moderate heat stress of people while the building height was 100 m. It is inappropriate for super high-rise buildings to be used when the building spacing is 25 m. The apparent temperature and Predicted Mean Vote decline with the increase in building spacing, meaning a larger building spacing lead to a better human thermal comfort. Therefore, to increase building spacing and adopt porous pavement can significantly improve the thermal comfort of the ecological community in arid areas.

Not by turnout alone: Measuring the sources of electoral change, 2012 to 2016

Changes in partisan outcomes between consecutive elections must come from changes in the composition of the electorate or changes in the vote choices of consistent voters. How much composition versus conversion drives electoral change has critical implications for the policy mandates of election victories and campaigning and governing strategies. Here, we analyze electoral change between the 2012 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections using administrative data. We merge precinct-level election returns, the smallest geography at which vote counts are available, with individual-level turnout records from 37 million registered voters in six key states. We find that both factors were substantively meaningful drivers of electoral change, but the balance varied by state. We estimate that pro-Republican Party (GOP) conversion among two-election voters was particularly important in states including Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania where the pro-GOP swings were largest. Our results suggest conversion remains a crucial component of electoral change.

An Improved Blockchain Consensus Algorithm Based on Raft

To address the problem of performance degradation caused by the blockchain backup mechanism as well as the high throughput and low latency requirements characteristic of blockchain applications, this paper optimizes the Raft consensus algorithm for the Hyperledger Fabric platform in terms of both log replication and leader election. In the log replication phase, the improvement of log replication based on apportionment idea aims to reduce the communication complexity of leader node by involving peer node in distributing log information. In the leader election phase, the improvement of leader election based on vote change mechanism changes the vote affiliation of peer node based on a comparison of votes from candidate nodes, aims to reach consensus in a round of election and reduces the election time. Through the performance test of the blockchain, it is demonstrated that the improved AdRaft algorithm improves 5.8% in throughput and reduces 1.3% in latency over the original Raft algorithm.

The COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 US presidential election.

What is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 US presidential election? Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we estimate the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths on the change in county-level voting for Donald Trump between 2016 and 2020. To account for potential confounders, we include a large number of COVID-19-related controls as well as demographic and socioeconomic variables. Moreover, we instrument the numbers of cases and deaths with the share of workers employed in meat-processing factories to sharpen our identification strategy. We find that COVID-19 cases negatively affected Trump’s vote share. The estimated effect appears strongest in urban counties, in states without stay-at-home orders, in swing states, and in states that Trump won in 2016. A simple counterfactual analysis suggests that Trump would likely have won re-election if COVID-19 cases had been 5 percent lower. We also find some evidence that COVID-19 incidence had a positive effect on voters’ mobilization, helping Biden win the presidency.