Chasing the Vote

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Does voting location influence vote choice?

Does where you vote influence how you vote?  This article in the Washington Post discusses numerous academic studies that evaluate the role of churches and schools in aggregate vote decisions on topics such as same sex marriage and school funding referenda.

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Justice Scalia’s views on public participation

Do we have a right to anonymous political participation?  Scalia makes a compelling case that we don’t.  This is relevant not only to topics such as petition signatures, but also disclosure of campaign donations.

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Trump voters, the GOP, and perceptions of Muslims

Lynn Vavreck analyzes recent political science research and YouGov polls on what makes Trump supporters unique among GOP potential voters in this recent NYT article.  Trump supporters, far more than other GOP voters, are more inclined to be fearful of Muslims.  Cruz supporters share some elements of these beliefs.

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The use of neuroscience in political campaigns

The New York Times describes how political campaigns around the world have used neuroscience techniques to attempt to tweak appeals to voters as candidates and parties continue to embrace new technology in an effort to get an edge on their opponent at the ballot box.

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I asked psychologists to analyze Trump supporters. This is what I learned.

The public's support for Donald Trump makes a lot of sense, psychologists say.

Social psychologists explain why some people may find Trump appealing-- and these traits represent a somewhat distinctive worldview.  Some of Trump’s appeal can be found in the behavior of other historic candidates as well; the idea that it is desirable for a candidate to appear decisive, regardless of the content of those decisions, pervades many decision making settings.

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If you have voter ID laws, it matters if you close your DMVs

The NYT has this piece on Alabama’s decision to close numerous DMV offices, many of them in the historic “black belt” of the state, and the effect of this decision on the voting rights of citizens.

MSNBC discusses the request for a federal probe of the Alabama DMV closures

TPM also covers this topic, with more input from Alabama public officials on their explanations for the closure

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HUFFPOLLSTER: Support For The GOP Frontrunner Might Just Be Overstated

A different kind of poll finds support for Donald Trump could be overstated, but he still runs ahead.

This post from Pollster seems to indicate that those who are likely voters may have different presidential preferences than the larger pool of those who simply self-identify as Republicans.  Since only a small percentage of those who identify as Republicans vote in primaries (compared to general elections), this difference seems notable.  

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Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight examines prospects for a GOP takeover of the House and Senate in historical context-- including baselines that we might want to use for assessing this outcome. So, should we be comparing 2014 to 2012? To 2010? To something else? What is an appropriate baseline for evaluating midterm election outcomes? And, how can we make determinations of political change on the basis of such outcomes?

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The Brennan Center for Justice at the NYU law school studied line length in the 2012 elections by examining precinct level data on wait time, resource allocation, and precinct demographics. They find evidence to suggest that voters in precincts with higher percentages of non-white voters waited significantly longer than voters in precincts with higher percentages of white voters. Moreover, these wait times can be explained, in part, by resource allocation-- such districts received fewer voting machines per person, and fewer poll workers per person, than mostly white districts. In South Carolina, the minimum federal requirements for precinct resource allocation were not met in a sizable number of precincts, particularly those with more non-white voters. These findings are particularly important in light of a recently published GAO study (link to be posted shortly), which indicates that there are racial differences in rates of in-person and absentee voting. Specifically, whites are increasingly likely to vote absentee (relative to non-whites), and non-whites are increasingly likely to vote in person (relative to whites). Thus, minority voters are far more vulnerable to being shorted on election day resources, since this is when they are most likely to cast their ballots. The white vote is more insulated from the consequences of long lines to begin with (as well as voter ID requirements); being additionally advantaged by more favorable resource allocation creates a system of unequal political access.

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Chris Cillizza discusses two candidates (one Democrat and one Republican) who have made and abided by a "no negative ad" pledge in this electoral cycle. Cillizza's view is that such pledges might hamper a candidate's ability to respond to attacks against them, and he compares differences in the electoral landscape that make it easier or more difficult for candidates to maintain a positive-ad-only strategy.

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Trying to predict the likelihood that a professional athlete will become bankrupt at some point in the future is a dodgy effort at best. Most of the factors that one would actually want to take into account probably wouldn't have much to do with their on-court or on-field performance. Yet, a labor economist has managed to find a correlation between a basketball player's 3-point shooting frequency and their bankruptcy rates. And, he's concocted an entire explanation (basically out of thin air, as there is no existing theory) to justify why this isn't simply a spurious correlation. The problem is that there are a lot of more reasonable predictors of bankruptcy that he doesn't look at. Arguing that taking 3-point shots is the best measure of risk acceptant behavior is problematic in and of itself (by this measure, someone like Dennis Rodman is a very risk averse person-- does this make any sense?). This study is the double whammy of bad research-- in that it ignores potentially good measures of player behavior (on and off the field) and other potential indicators of financial stability like pay rates, number of years in the league, etc., and instead emphasizes a lousy measure. Henry has to essentially make up a reason why looking at 3-point frequency is legit in the first place for this study to be an exercise in anything but spurious correlation. Generally, the more tortured the explanation, the more unlikely it is (this is known as Occam's Razor-- the simplest explanation is most often the correct one).

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Historian Paul D. Escott authored this detailed article in Salon about the role that attitudes about race and slavery played in the formation of the GOP at the beginning of the Third Party System. As Escott explains, the GOP was a product of numerous factions and actors, each with their own agendas and beliefs about the legitimacy of slavery, and the equality of persons. These groups joined together for strategic reasons, but the story of how and why they formed a coalition-- one that proved powerful enough and lasting enough to displace an existing major party-- is not a simple one.

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States have recently stepped up the requirements it takes to demonstrate your identity at the polling place. (Voting absentee is another matter entirely, and the people who tend to vote absentee are quite different than those who tend to vote in person.) States like Virginia have moved from non-photographic forms of identification to requiring identification with a photograph. Other states have even stricter requirements, which serve to limit the types of photo identification that they will accept (in extreme cases, only accepting a driver's license or a passport). These efforts have resulted in a plethora of lawsuits, usually on the grounds that such laws unfairly burden poor and/ or minority voters who often lack such identification, and who may be faced with paying large fees to obtain the necessary forms of identification that are needed to obtain the photo identification that the state now requires to vote. Young voters are often overlooked in this controversy-- even though may voter identification laws are aimed at them specifically. The Supreme Court ruled long ago that college students may vote where they attend college-- and that they can claim their dorms or student apartments as their residences for the purpose of voting. This makes sense-- this is where students live for most of the year. More importantly, this is where the Census counts students as living, and thus means that students are counted at their school residences for things like congressional apportionment. But, some states refuse to permit students to use their school ID as a valid form of photo ID for the purpose of voting-- even if it is issued by a state agency. Using an out-of-state driver's license to cast a ballot will likely result in a residency challenge, and thus cause the student to be disenfranchised (even if they have other documentation to prove a legal residence where they attend school). In some instances, the targeting of students is especially egregious; some states are willing to accept other forms of ID beyond the driver's license, but those are forms of identification that young people are unlikely to possess (i.e., concealed weapons permits, hunting licenses). Moreover, many states waive ID requirements for voters over the age of 65, thus privileging them in the voting process.

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Historian Heather Cox Richardson provides a useful historical analysis of the history of the GOP, from its inception as a populist anti-slavery party to the current day. She focuses on the tension that the party has faced throughout its history between those who favor government investment in economic opportunity for poor and working class members of society, and those who want to protect the interests of the affluent. Richardson shows how both forces have contributed to GOP policies over time, and suggests that leaders such as Lincoln, Roosevelt, and Eisenhower represented a very different economic ideology than other leaders such as Hoover and Reagan. Differences in policy also lead to differences in coalitions; one of the noteworthy elements of Richardson's analysis is the role that such leaders played in keeping their party competitive during the political eras in which they lived. The first two helped to create a GOP resurgence, whereas Eisenhower helped to bring the GOP back from the brink of extinction after FDR swept the Democrats into power in the 1930s. Does the GOP Richardson described look like the GOP of today? How and why has the party evolved? What internal and external forces can we expect to contribute to the party's continued evolution?

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Curtis Wilkie examines the relationship between nativism (and racism) and populism among working class whites in the South at various points in history. For our purposes, the time periods that Wilkie is discussing occur around the time of the political realignment of 1896, as well as the later responses to Brown versus Board of Education (and the subsequent party readjustments on the issue of race that occur during the 1960s). Many other authors have written on the link between populism and nativism-- and Southerners were not the only group in society susceptible to either social force. What is particular about whites in the South is the manner in which they responded to nativist appeals-- in part, perhaps, due to the unique socio-demographic make-up of the South at this time. Most of the black population in the U.S. in the late 1800s still resided in the South (although this would soon change). At the same time, immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe tended to settle outside of the South-- which therefore remained, among the white population, mostly Protestant. While working class whites in other parts of the nation directed their anger at poor white newly arrived immigrants who represented potential economic threats (and perhaps cultural threats due to religious and language differences), for Southern whites, the "other" was even more clearly defined: the newly emancipated African American (who, unlike the white Southerner, would be likely voting for the GOP). This is overly simplified, of course. Even if the economy of the South had been booming, it is likely that white Southerners would have sought to limit the rights of blacks-- witness the post-Reconstruction antics of the states and localities involved. And, the 50s and 60s were hardly a time of economic downturn, yet Massive Resistance showed that white Southerners were willing to close the public schools rather than let black children attend them. But, populism as a sentiment is real, and it fuels political movements. Even during good economic times, sometimes large groups of people get left behind, fostering resentment-- resentment that can influence political behaviors, particularly if it becomes organized. Some of the most revealing books about the tea party movement tap into this notion of resentment-- although they differ with this author about the exact social class that is experiencing the resentment and why (is it working class people who have been left behind? or, a lightly educated middle class who feel that the world has changed somehow, and that their values are no longer the dominant ones and that what it takes to be in charge in this economy is somehow not what it used to be?). Journalists like to believe that there is a sameness to populist movements. We may need to look at more evidence to evaluate these claims.

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Rather than buying ad time, political parties and candidates are now buying voter information, and targeting individuals directly through their satellite TV systems. They know who you are and how you are likely to vote, and are using that information to insert their ads into whatever shows you happen to be viewing. This seems to suggest that viewers will be far less likely to be exposed to opposite party ads-- unlike the days of yore (i.e., 2014 and prior), when living in a battleground state/ media market meant being bombarded with ads from both parties' candidates virtually non-stop. Will this affect our images of political candidates?

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Socialist candidate Matt Erard fell far short of the number of signatures he needed to get on the ballot in Michigan, so he took the state to court over its strict ballot access laws. Erard's complaint was that third parties in Michigan (and also in Kansas) must get almost twice as many signatures to get on the ballot as a major party candidate-- something that he argued was inherently unfair for third parties. While Erard's candidacy wasn't a "serious" one (he could not have met either ballot access standard), the issue he raised was an interesting one. Why should third party candidates have to invest twice the resources to get on the ballot as a major party candidate? The lack of equality in ballot access is troubling, in that third parties already face vast inequalities in other types of resources (media coverage, funding). Unfortunately for Michigan socialists and for third parties more generally, a federal appeals judge did not find this difference in ballot access to be inherently discriminatory. Thus, for the foreseeable future, states can set the bar for ballot access for parties such as the Socialists, the Greens, and the Libertarians far higher than for the Democrats and the Republicans if they so choose.