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This paper suggests a model of EP representation with a new measure of electoral outcomes. The major concern is how we understand the EP elections under multi-level European political system and by what factors the MEPs' voting behaviors are determined. National constituents are, in my model, assumed to reveal different levels of diversity and intensity of preferences by their electoral choices in EP elections. Moreover, the differences are assumed to be caused by their relative assessment of national representation. Under these assumptions, my model tests MEPs' responsiveness to their national constituents revealed by the election results. From the theoretical perspective of party representation, it is also considered whether MEPs' responsive voting behaviors function as policy alternatives in the EP elections. Methodologically, a simultaneous equation model is presented to reflect the endogenous relationship between European citizens' electoral choices and MEPs' responsiveness. The results reported in this paper find that MEPs tend to respond to the elected party disparity between the EP and national parliament. Absenteeism and seniority also have influence on MEPs'responsiveness. In addition, MEPs' responsive voting patterns work as clear policy alternatives to European citizens as well. However, because of the lack of data currently available, the endogenous relationship is not conclusive. The possible improvements of future results are discussed in this respect. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains the recent eletoral rise of anti-establishment parties in Eastern Europe in terms of voter rejection of mainstream political elites in third-generation post-communist elections. Using survey data from the 2000 and 2004 Romanian parliamentary elections, the paper identifies the circumstances under which prospective or retrospective considerations dominate electoral choices of voters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social network studies suggest that congruence in the social background of network members has effects on voting choices, but the research has not extended to the subject of the effect of congruence in political opinions within social networks. Incorporating social networks into congressional election studies, this paper suggests that besides partisanship and other demographic factors, the heterogeneity of opinion within social networks also has an effect on voting choices. Based on the logistic regression analysis of NAES 2000 dataset, the findings show the following: first, the low heterogeneity or high homogeneity of political opinion within strong-tie social networks (i.e. family and close friends) increases the likelihood of favoring House and Senate incumbents. Second, the access to political news in the newspaper has a positive influence on favoring the incumbents in the Senate election. This paper then discusses the limitations and implications of the findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper re-examines the empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory of seat change in U.S. House elections. The theory contends, in short, that a substantial part of the impact of national electoral forces on seat change acts indirectly through the intervening variable of challenger quality. District and aggregate level models of challenger quality are estimated using a new database of House challengers. Jacobson's district level model is estimated using pooled data from the 1946-2002 elections. Krasno and Green's district level model and a revised version of their model are estimated for each of the 1946-2002 elections. Jacobson's aggregate level models of relative challenger quality are estimated using data from the 1946-2002 elections. A new aggregate level model of challenger quality is developed in this paper. The overall performance of the new model as measured by explained variance is comparatively greater than for earlier models. The impact of national forces on challenger quality is moderate at best. A new seat change model including challenger quality as a causal variable is introduced and estimated for the 1954-2002 elections. Estimates of this model demonstrate that challenger quality is an important cause of seat change. In addition, the impact of both national and district electoral forces on seat change, acting through the intervening variable of challenger quality, is estimated using data from the 1954-2002 elections. The indirect impact of national forces on seat change is moderate. Finally, an alternative measure of challenger quality constructed from data originally gathered in order to construct Krasno and Green's measure of challenger quality is substituted for Jacobson's traditional measure. The substitution improves the overall performance of the new aggregate level model of challenger quality presented here, but the additional gain in the performance is small. In conclusion, the analysis presented here provides empirical support for Jacobson and Kernell's strategic politicians theory. However, the theory has limited explanatory power. The impact of national forces on seat change acting through challenger quality is not large enough to account for much of the observed seat change that occurs from one election to the next. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1994 elections gave the Republicans majorities in both chambers of Congress for the first time since the 83rd Congress (1953-55). With this new Republican majority came not only a change in the institutional workings of the Congress, but a change in the voting patterns of the legislative body. This paper examines how the institutional change following the 1994 elections specifically affected voting and support for environmental legislation. This paper extends the existing research on environmental voting patterns in the Congress by examining relationships between partisanship and member support for environmental legislation from 1992 to 2002. Differing from previous analyses of environmental voting, we examine both houses of Congress and examine Congressional behavior over five different Congresses. We also extend the literature by developing a multivariate model of environmental voting behavior. Voting results obtained from League of Conservation Voter (LCV) scorecards serve as the dependent variable in this study. The League of Conservation Voters is a political interest group focusing on issues concerning the environment. The LCV scorecard targets votes on the most important issues of environmental health and safety protection, resource conservation, and spending for environmental programs. Relying primarily on bivariate analysis, the literature suggests that certain demographic variables associated with a Congressional District or state as well as a particular legislator influence his or her vote. These variables include party identification, race, gender, ideology, and membership on environmentally-related committees. At the district level, the literature shows that region of the country, percent urban, and median household income are potentially influential independent variables. We include these variables in our model. The data was collected on individual House and Senate members and state and district demographic data for the 103-107 Congresses. This ten-year period permits measurement of change in level of environmental support across time and more importantly this time period allows for measurement of a before and after level of environmental policy support relative to Republican Party control of the Congress. Including both Houses enables us to examine if the change in party leadership has similar or differing effects in each body. We examine environmental policy across two dimensions. First we examine Democratic and Republican mean LCV scores by year and by legislative body to examine whether changes in environmental support is a function of changing majority control. Second, we use OLS regression to incorporate voter partisanship and demographic factors into five separate multivariate models of legislator support for environmental policy representing each Congress in the study. This enables us to examine changes in the strength of these independent variables over successive Congresses and the similarities and differences across the House and Senate. We believe that the increased importance and visibility of environmental issues in American Politics makes this an interesting topic for study. The presence of the Green Party in the 2000 election and its influence on the election highlights how important environmental issues are to the electorate. Moreover, the change in majority party status allows us to address questions about the substantive nature of environmental votes in our study and changes in individual and party behavior within each institution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic voting has been one of the enduring themes of political science for several decades (Dorussen et al. 2002: xxiii). A lot of literature on economic voting has examined how macroeconomic conditions shape election outcomes in western democracies and evinces that incumbents are rewarded or punished for their economic performance. (Jacobson, 1991: 33). Surprisingly, however, very few studies have examined if electorates of new democracies also assign the responsibility of economic performance to incumbents. One reason for the limited scope of the research is related to a conventional belief that electorates in the Third World are not “highly informed, policy-oriented economic voters” (Dorussen et al. 2002: 2). This paper is one of very few cross-national macro level studies on economic voting in the Third World. Even though there have been a couple of case studies based on survey data, cross-national studies analyzing elections in new democracies are very rare. This paper analyzes 70 legislative elections and 50 presidential elections in 35 new democracies. Using Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSEs) estimation method, this paper tests three controversial hypotheses: first, that economic conditions shape election results in new democracies (the economic voting hypothesis); second, that the economic impact on the vote share of incumbent parties is constrained by the level of institutional clarity that affect electorates’ perception of incumbents’ responsibility for economic performance (the clarity hypothesis); third, the economic impact also depends on other economic and socio-political conditions that affect the relative importance of economic issues in elections of new democracies (the relative importance hypothesis). The expansion of the research on economic voting to new democracies provides us important clues to the features of transitional societies because “economic voting as a mechanism of democratic accountability” is a useful indicator of democratic consolidation (Dorussen et al. 2002: 2). As Richard Rose (1999) argued, a fully democratic regime “must be accountable to the electorate” (p. 35). Therefore, research on the conditions under which electorates realize democratic accountability through economic voting may improve our understanding of the democratization processes in the Third World. Analyzing an original dataset, this study shows that the economic voting function is not consistent in new democracies and is strongly constrained by economic and socio-political conditions. Except for some poor countries, voters did respond to economic performance of incumbents in presidential elections. Furthermore, this paper shows that political contexts, which influence voters’ perceptions of incumbents’ responsibility for economic performance, were also important determinants of the economic voting function in new democracies; the bicameral system and the proportional electoral system reduce economic voting function. Lastly, the relative importance of economic issues determined by the level of economic development, ethnic fractionalization and the level of democracy also affected the economic voting function. However, the effect of economic conditions on the voting share of incumbent parties in legislative elections was very limited. No robust evidence that corroborates economic voting theory was found in the analysis of legislative elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting, Early Voting and Party Mobilization: Is Timing Everything? The adoption of many electoral reforms (e.g., election day registration, early voting and motor-voter registration) have been designed and justified in terms of increasing voter participation. Research has shown that the promise of these reforms has fallen far short of expectations in two particular ways. First, the effect of electoral reforms has had a limited direct effect on overall turnout levels. And, second, the effects appear to be concentrated among likely voters: the reforms simply enable election day voters to vote by mail or to vote early (thus not increasing the size of the electorate nor changing its composition as reformers argue is the case). We have demonstrated in previous research that one explanation for these findings is that scholars have ignored the important role of partisan campaign mobilization in linking the reform to overall turnout levels. That is, we find that early voting is associated with greater turnout when party elites use early voting as part of their campaign strategy. And we conclude that previous research has misspecified the basic causal factors in predicting overall turnout, resulting in incorrect estimates of the effect of electoral reforms on voter turnout. In this paper we extend this research agenda by exploring in greater detail whether reconceptualizing the dependent variable provides more leverage on the question of the impact of electoral reforms. More specifically, we test whether the availability of early voting increases the likelihood that a voter will vote early (as opposed to voting on election day or abstaining) and what types of voters are so affected. We explore the conditions under which candidates and party officials use early voting in Texas to mobilize voters to support their party’s candidates for Governor and U.S. Senator in the 2002 midterm election and whether such efforts yield a substantial effect on election day and early voting turnout. We draw upon a unique database that studies a panel of registered voters and matches their reported and validated voting behavior with partisan campaign activities in each voter’s respective county. Our measure of validated voting also includes the method of balloting for each voter: in-person early balloting, mail-in balloting and, in-person election day balloting. To measure county-level campaign activities we interviewed Texas county party chairs in all 254 Texas counties about the level and nature of their campaign activities. Specific questions are asked about how the party and their candidates emphasize early voting among target populations relative to other types or targets of campaign mobilization. We believe this paper will be an important second step in more accurately assessing the importance of electoral reforms to voter turnout in contemporary American elections. It should be of interest to scholars of electoral procedures and reform, voter turnout and party politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we challenge convention wisdom that bemoans the perceived deterioration of the presidential election information environment in the U.S. We begin by acknowledging the much lamented decline in both news quality and news viewership, but argue that the rise in paid political advertising has served as a substitute information source for many Americans. As a consequence, presidential voting decisions are as firmly based on the candidates’ policy stances and personal characteristics today as they were 50 years ago. Moreover (and also contrary to conventional wisdom) the shift toward paid advertising as an information source has led to an increase in the extent to which Americans draw upon policy-related as opposed to character-related considerations in making their presidential vote decisions. The proposed paper will be our first presentation of findings form this ongoing project. Our analyses combine three kinds of data: measures of the public’s knowledge and perceptions of presidential candidates from the National Election Studies, records of political advertising by media market from the CMAG data, and our own coding of presidential election news coverage, candidate speeches, and paid advertising. To date, our analyses show that (1) the total number of reasons Americans offer to vote for or against the major party candidates (their candidate likes and dislikes) as been remarkably steady over the pat 50 years; (2) there is a slight trend toward more policy-oriented and less character-oriented likes and dislikes; (3) the variation from election to election in the ratio of policy- to character-oriented likes and dislikes tracks quite closely with the ratio of policy- to character-oriented content in candidates’ paid advertising but not with the ratio of policy- to character-oriented content in news coverage of the elections; and (4) NES respondents living in media markets with more presidential campaign advertising offer more policy-oriented likes and dislikes than those living in media markets with less advertising (net of education, partisan identification, etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent work on voter decision making has suggested that our old cognitive-based information processing approaches need to be updated to consider the role affect plays in the updating of candidate evaluations. In particular, the idea that voters can dispassionately evaluate new information about candidates for whom they already have developed evaluations (that is, whom they already like or dislike) has been challenged by evidence of motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoners seem to stick to their evaluations even in the face of countervailing information. Studies by Lodge and Taber, Steenbergen, Meffert and colleagues and my own work have all shown attitude strengthening or polarization when voters encounter negative information about a liked candidate. By rational updating standards, a liked candidate for whom something disliked is encountered should then be liked less. But instead voters often seem to become even more supportive, counterarguing or otherwise discounting the new information. This paper reports on a series of ongoing studies using dynamic process tracing in a laboratory setting where subjects engage in a simulated presidential campaign, during which the affective value of the information they examine is manipulated in order to assess its effects on evaluation and updating. While we know that attitude strengthening occurs, we do not yet understand the mechanism and conditions in which it operates. In particular, this paper focuses on the question of how much negative information about a liked candidate must be encountered before the attitude strengthening function is overcome and voters adjust their evaluations to more accurately reflect the information that is encountered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the consequences of permitting crossover voting in presidential primaries? Our paper addresses this question by investigating the extent, sources, and effects of crossover voting in the 2000 primaries. We employ data from the 2000 National Annenberg Election Survey, which permits close scrutiny of several primary electorates and an account of dynamics. The 2000 primaries challenge us to think of the primary electorate not as unitary but as nonetheless collective. Crossover voting, we find, was common in the 2000 presidential primaries. John McCain was its beneficiary, and the benefits came mainly at the expense of Bill Bradley. The extent of crossover varied from primary to primary, depending on the openness of the electoral rules and the electorate’s long-standing party commitments, but also on the relative appeal of specific candidates and on voters’ reckoning of each candidate’s chances of winning his party’s nomination. The impact of crossover in large numbers is to create a more centrist primary electorate, enhancing the chances of more moderate candidates. But beyond that, if an influx of crossover voters can change the character of a particular primary electorate, how does that affect the nature of the contest for the nomination? In particular, how does the potential for crossover voting influence the strategic choices of the candidates? The paper provides both an account of the dynamics of the 2000 primary seasons, Republican and Democratic, and a more general exploration of the political import of opening primaries to the participation of independents and members of the opposing camp. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are the parties more likely to court minority groups when they vote together? Some scholars have suggested that Latinos can attract more attention from the parties by concentrating their votes (DeSipio, de la Garza and Setzler 1999 and Guerra 1992). Others have found that minority groups that vote together are unsuccessful in attracting appeals from the parties (Frymer 1999 and Bartels 1998). This paper asks: what is the historical pattern of Hispanic voting concentration and party appeals? Do changes in Latino voting concentration empirically affect the amount that the parties spend on appeals to Latinos? DeSipio et al. (1999) seem to support a pluralist model arguing that a group best represents its interests by voting together. Accordingly, if Latinos vote together, the party that wins their support reaches out to them in the next election and the party that they ignore disregards them. The racial disruption model posits that party elites are inhibited from appealing to certain racial minorities due to concerns of coalition disruption. This model is drawn from the work of Paul Frymer (1999) who found that black allegiance to the Democrats failed to increase appeals for black votes from either party. The critical mass model sees group power as the key variable in party appeals. Larry Bartels (1998) finds that groups without significant campaign finance power that vote together decrease their power because they are seen as “committed.” Thus, both parties ignore a unified minority group vote because the supported party is confident of their allegiance, and the unsupported party knows that appeals to them are useless. If the group votes more diffusely and is “up for grabs,” both parties appeal for their votes. In this paper I will examine the history of party appeals to Latinos from 1980 to 2000 and evaluate these three minority voting behavior theories. I ask: is Latino voter concentration in the preceding presidential election a useful explanatory variable in predicting party appeals to the group? If it is not, which other variables predict party appeals to Latinos? Latinos are an interesting group to examine because there is significant variation on both the key independent variable (voter concentration) and the dependent variable (party appeals). While most of the historical evidence is anecdotal, the 2000 presidential election data is extensive as it was collected by the Wisconsin Advertising Project. This project records and tabulates political television advertising in the largest 75 media markets. The paper will analyze two measures of the dependent variable (party appeals): expenditures on Spanish language advertising and English language advertising on “Latino issues.” The paper will conclude by discussing the effect of the empirical findings on the three theories and the normative question of whether Latinos should vote together. In addition it will ask to what extent these results can be generalized to other minority groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper presents an application of conditional logit models for individual voting behavior at national elections in Denmark 1998-2001 including the effects of party sympathy, issue vot-ing and party identification. Although party sympathies explain a lot of individual variation in voting behavior they seem not to fully express the utility of the parties since they cannot predict the election results. The paper shows that there is no difference in the fit of a proximity model and a directional model for issue voting if they both include party intercepts. However, in the directional model the intercepts seem to clearly indicate the general popularity of each party, while this is not the case with the proximity model. Including the effect of party identi-fication enhances the fit of the model for issue voting and gives a clearer picture of the floating voters, but as less clear estimate of the general popularity of the parties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Starting point for an empirical estimation of spatial voting models in mass elections is the construction of a party/candidate competition space. For more than thirty years researchers often have used the feeling thermometer scores among the other variables for this purpose. A basic assumption is thereby that the feeling thermometer scores deliver informations not only on the distance between the party and the respondent, but also on the (ideological) distance between parties. This assumption, however, has got neither theoretical nor empirical support which this paper aims to deliver. After approaching to historical and theoretical background of use of the feeling thermometer scores in survey, this paper delivers empirical evidence of the assumption above from USA, Germany and Japan. This paper assumes, like Enelow and Hinich (1984), that the feeling thermometer scores include not only the ideological distance, but also more components. one of the most important additional components should be the party competence. Differently from Enelow and Hinich, this paper assumes the heterogenity of the competence among voters. A preliminary empirical analysis supports these basic assumptions. This paper provides an important basis to a wide range of electoral studies, because the feeling thermometer scores have been used in various areas since its first appearance in the 60’s. As an implication the paper also proposes a new method for the estimation of a party competition space which is compatible with the assumption supported by the empirical evidences above. It finds a stable and reasonable solution of the party and the voter ideal points configuration. Reference Enelow, James and Hinich, Melvin J. The Spatial Theory of Voting. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; 1984. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a party competition theory of welfare state development for Australia and Canada. Australia was called social laboratory of the world after the Second World War. In barely twenty years Canada had become the social laboratory, priding itself on social benefits which stretch the definition of liberal welfare states. Australia meanwhile failed to acquire any of these benefits, redistributed the welfare state away from the poor, and became a welfare laggard by the early 1970s. This paper examines why the two liberal welfare states went completely separate ways during the Golden Age. Australia and Canada share many similarities such as federalism and dominion economies. These similarities make the two countries a perfect case for a “most-similar-systems” comparative research design. Also because of these similarities, both the traditional state-centered and industrialist theories of welfare state development cannot adequately explain the contrast between Australia and Canada during the Golden Age. Even the power resources theory fails because Canada, with much weaker unions and left party strength compared to Australia, ended up with a much more generous welfare state at the end of the Golden Age. Faced with the puzzling failure of all the three conventional theories of welfare state development, this paper locks onto the degree of party system polarization in the two countries. Through a deductive process, this paper takes advantage of the dispute between the Rabinowitz-Macdonald directional and Downsian proximity-based party competition models to argue that the more polarized a party system becomes, the more likely it is for parties to adopt a directional strategy in policy competition; the less polarized the party system, the more likely a proximity-based strategy will be adopted. These deductions are projected onto Australia and Canada during the Golden Age, when the latter country, with a centrist and dominant Liberal Party, had a much less polarized party system than Australia.Since the left was out of power in both countries during the Golden Age, these deductions lead to the prediction that, between the two countries, the governing Canadian Liberals would adopt a much more proximity-based strategy by co-opting popular welfare policy proposals from the left (CCF/NDP), whereas the governing Australian Liberals would adopt a much more directional strategy by contrasting themselves with the traditional welfare policies of the left (Australian Labor Party) and making the Australian welfare state even less redistributive towards the poor. This deductive prediction is then substantiated with historical analysis of party social policy strategies in both countries during the Golden Age. The contrast between directional and proximity-based social policy strategies of the governing parties is the key to the explanation as to why the two liberal welfare states went in opposite directions during the Golden Age. Finally, since both governing parties adopted the directional or proximity-based strategies in reaction to the social democratic left, a connection is made between this paper’s party competition theory and traditional power resources theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent studies of political behavior in the United States have stressed the growing importance of cultural values and social issues as determinants vote choice and party identification. The emergence of a new line of cleavage is indicative of realignment, however realignment scholarship suggests that change will first be evident at the presidential level before filtering down to political offices at the subpresidential level. This paper examines whether cultural and social issues have come to structure vote choice in U.S. House elections in the same way that many scholars argue that they have in presidential elections. The paper is also concerned as to whether cultural issues condition the impact of party identification on U.S. House vote choice, that are moral and cultural “traditional” Democrats and “tolerant” Republicans more likely to defect and vote for the other party. Overall, it is hoped that this study will enhance our understanding of social and cultural issues on vote choice as well as more generally illuminating recent partisan changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political participation is a key ingredient for a solid democratic system. Politicians respond consistently to their constituencies, thus it is important to understand who votes in order to assess the responsiveness of a particular democratic system. The analysis of the socio-economic composition of the electorate can help us elucidate the mechanics of prevailing political biases in societies. Scholars studying consolidated democracies in the industrialized world have long concluded that there exists a significant bias in favor of the more privileged citizens. In those democracies, higher electoral turnout is positively correlated with higher socio-economic status. Patterns of electoral participation in the United States and Western Europe have extensively been examined, but they appear to be less understood in emerging democracies such as Mexico. The aim of this paper is to show that, in Mexico, as electoral competition became more acute, the poorest groups in society started voting more in comparison to other socioeconomic groups. Since the late seventies, opposition parties in Mexico started gaining power at the local and national level. The climax of such liberalization process came in the 2000 presidential election when the Partido Acción Nacional (PAN) lead by Vicente Fox, defeated for the first time after seven decades, the Partido Revolucionario Institutional (PRI). The profile of the electorate drastically changed during the nineties. For instance, in the 2000 election, the electoral participation fell at the national level and in particular for the richer municipalities. Yet, the electoral participation of the poorest municipalities increased substantially. The relationship between higher socio-economic status and electoral turnout at the municipality level seems quite clear for the 1994 election. Interestingly, once electoral competition increased, this pattern changed. In the 2000 election, the turnout of the richest municipalities decreased while the poorest municipalities registered the highest level of electoral participation. On average, participation fell more than 10 percent in 39 percent of the municipalities when comparing the 2000 presidential election to the previous one. Yet participation fell more than 10 percent in almost 60 percent of the richest municipalities while only 29 percent of the poorest municipalities experienced such a drop. Similarly, turnout increased by more than 10 percent in 27 percent of the poorest municipalities while only 8 percent of the richest municipalities experienced an increase in turnout of this magnitude. These results clearly reveal that between 1994 and 2000, the socioeconomic composition of the Mexican electorate experienced a drastic change. The findings of this paper challenge the common idea that poor constituencies are less active in electoral terms than rich constituencies. A detailed analysis of the socioeconomic composition of the Mexican electorate in the two past presidential elections clearly reveals that marginalized municipalities are increasingly decisive. This change will have a profound implication on the representative nature of the democratic system in Mexico, by creating a bias in favor of the unprivileged groups. This paper will contribute to our understanding of the public policy implications of this electoral dynamism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Whereas many studies argue that roll call voting in the House of Representatives is increasingly partisan, this paper focuses on the fact that Congressmen are casting their vote based on the position of both the president and leaders simultaneously. Another objective of this paper is to test whether the strength of presidential influence is different across the type of policy. The analyses, using a path model and the CQ key vote for the 1953-1996 period, demonstrate that 1) presidents are more likely to take their position in foreign and defense policy or a policy with a national constituency, 2) presidents? position taking generally makes voting results partisan, and 3) presidents wield a stronger positive influence on their party in bills having a national constituency than those without a national constituency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the link between economic insecurity and voter transition. Individual-level subjective insecurity induces voter transition to a Left party in demands for social protection. In particular, a fraction of middle-of-road voters have incentives to make a transition to Left to bring about their preferred policy outcomes. This extended voter balancing argument is tested against the data. Estimation of a Markov chain voter transition model finds evidence that supports my arguments. Voters’ likelihood of transition to Labour increases in economic insecurity. Moreover, middle income voters are more likely to switch their electoral support toward Labour when faced with economic insecurity. The paper provides a theoretical framework and individual-level evidence of dynamic electoral consequences of economic insecurity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars have studied South Korea elections in terms of regionalism, economic development, and political elite leadership. But few of them has tried to find out the relationship between people’s religious affiliation and their political behavior. In this paper, I will shed some light on how people’s religious background affects people’s voting behavior as well as people’s political attitudes. In terms of religious role in politics, many scholars suggest that religion plays a prominent role in politics, operating along three important pathways. First, religious beliefs often influenced politics directly, particularly when articulated and applied to contemporary problems by religious leaders. Second, religious organizations often supplied vital resources to political movements and to more durable party organizations, mobilized and directed by religious activities. And third, religious identifications were often a crucial source of political allegiance in the mass public. Moreover, religion had its greatest impact on politics when the pronouncements of leaders, the resources of activists, and the identifications of believers operated in a mutually-reinforcing fashion. In this paper, I will find out what are the role of religion in South Korean politics by analyzing the survey data conducted in Spring, 2003. The survey questionaires composes of three parts: people’s political attitudes and voting choice in 2002 Presidential election, Poeple’s religious affiliation and activities, and general demographic questionaires. By using multiple regression with the data, I will try to shed some light on the relationship between religion and politics in South Korea. Futhermore, I wll assess what is the impact of religion on political development (democratization) in South Korea. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the relationship between electoral reform and change in voter registration and turnout rates in the American states. Using pooled cross-sections of state-level data, I assess the effects of various registration reforms on registration and turnout in national elections from 1972-2000. Earlier analyses that evaluated the potential impact of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) were based on a limited, pre-NVRA time-series ? as such, they suffered from two chronic weaknesses: 1). The sixteen (mostly southern) states that did not implement the NVRA until they were forced to in 1996 were omitted. 2). Lacking a sufficiently long time-series, previous work failed to capture the lag time between a state?s implementation of the motor-voter program and its effects on voter registration and turnout rates. By employing a more expansive time-series, this paper allows the effects of the 1993 National Voter Registration Act to be thoroughly investigated. Motor-voter and election-day registration exhibit a strong relationship with higher voter turnout, whereas mail-in registration and eased non-voting purge provisions do not. As a result, this analysis demonstrates more robust turnout gains due to the 1993 NVRA?s cost-reducing reforms than pre-NVRA forecasts suggested. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does low voter turnout affect politics and policy? This paper examines how turnout fluctuations bring systematic changes to the composition of the electorate which in turn affects the political orientations of representatives being elected. More specifically, this paper looks at midterm House contests as a prototype of low-turnout elections and test whether members first elected in midterm years are more ideological or partisan in their orientations. If they are, voter turnout has serious implications to the partisan and ideological polarization of Congress. There is one highly consistent and recurring pattern of turnout fluctuation in the United States. Candidates run for the U.S. House of Representatives every two years. Within each redistricting decade, they run in exact same district (for the most part) election after election. However, they run in markedly different electoral environments every other election cycle. From 1960 to 2000, the national average turnout ( percent of VAP) for elections which included a presidential race was 55.1 percent . It was 40.6 percent for midterm (off-year) elections. The difference is highly statistically significant and this pattern of ups and downs has been remarkably consistent. The electorate is qualitatively as well as quantitatively different between presidential and midterm elections. One of the most significant and relevant characteristics of the midterm electorate is its composition in terms of partisan and ideological orientation. In low-turnout midterm elections, the active electorate becomes more partisan. The distributions of Democratic and Republican voters are expected to get respectively more skewed toward partisan extremes as strong partisans remain active at the polls but independents and leaners abstain. As a consequence, more extreme Democratic electorate is expected to produce more extreme Democratic candidates. The same is true for Republicans. To empirically test these propositions, first I examine whether the two median voters--one voting for Republican and the other for Democrat-- diverge to partisan extremes in midterm years. And secondly, if they do, partisan and ideological orientations of members who won their first term in midterm years are compared to that of members who first won in presidential years I focus on the 1990s U.S. House of Representatives and test the potential “midterm effects” on the partisan and ideological polarization of the members of Congress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper details the design and implementation of an Election Day field study targeting the operation of polling stations. This pilot study represents the first systematic attempt to determine how common lines are on Election Day, at what times of day lines are most likely to form, bottlenecks in the voting process, and how long it takes an average citizen to cast his or her ballot. We collected data during the 2008 presidential primary election in California measuring the efficiency of the operational components of 30 polling stations across three counties. During the Election Day, voter arrivals peaked twice: in the early morning and the early evening. Our data also suggest that experienced poll workers are not more efficient than first-time poll workers, even controlling for age. We also find that voters who used a DRE machine took a full minute longer to cast their ballot than voters marking paper ballots that were subsequently scanned. This study illustrates the need for further and more extensive data collection about the operation of polling stations. The study also shows how better data can help election officials make critical decisions on the allocation of capital, labor and other resources. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religious fundamentalists have been vocal in their opposition to embryonic stem (ES) cell research. In this paper, I investigate the influence one's religious beliefs have on political behavior. Specifically, the paper explores the impact Christian fundamentalism has on opposition/support for the 2006 Missouri Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative. Using the Roper Center for Public Opinion's exit polling, the findings suggest that white, conservative, Republicans who self-identify as Evangelical Christian and attend religious services at least once a week were significantly more likely to vote against the ballot measure in the 2006 mid-term election. Therefore, political scientists should consider the influence religion has on voting behavior, particularly concerning controversial biomedical research using human embryos. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Political and managerial leadership change has been shown to have a relationship with the subsequent performance of public organisations. Research also suggests that prior performance is related to leadership change, with poor performance leading to changes at the top. However, hardly any work has brought these relationships together in an unbroken chain of events, in part because of the difficulties of obtaining suitable data. In this paper we estimate such a chain, using the opportunity created by a balanced and compact panel data set of 142 English local governments that includes political and managerial changes and a comprehensive set of performance measures. We develop a recursive set of equations to analyse the relationships between initial performance and leadership change and leadership change and subsequent performance. Our findings provide some evidence in accordance with a 'virtuous cycle' for the more broadly-based of the two performance measures we use: Low performance increases the likelihood of political change and raises the rate of managerial change, and the consequence of this increase in the rate of managerial turnover is performance improvement. Overall, this paper shows how panel data allow a set of interconnected question to be answered in a recursive set of equations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we examine the resilience of Republican voting patterns in the American South during the era Republican decline, beginning in 2006 and (presumably) continuing through 2008. The paper will provide thorough review of the more traditional non-empirical literature on the causes of a unique Southern political culture and derive from that literature a set of hypotheses that can be simply tested through an analysis of voting behavior in the 2008 elections. Specifically we will examine factors not normally found in empirical studies of voting behavior that we derive from the southern culture literature â€" factors like Celtic heritage, Southern nativism and history of tenant farming as well as the more conventional measures of southern culture. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent decades moderates have steadily declined in Congress. This decline is often seen as an unusual matter, but there were few moderates in Congress from the 1870s until the late 1920s. They emerged in both houses within the Democratic Party, because of a developing split within the party. Southern Democrats were once the base of the party, but found themselves in opposition to the growing Northern wing of the party over cultural issues such as race, immigration and alcohol. These issues split the party and pushed the Southern Democrats into moderate voting records. In later years moderates also emerged within the Republican Party as a result of a split within that party, with the Northeast wing moving from the core to moderate as the party changed. In each case, therefore, the former core of the party shifted to being the moderate wing. The paper will present trends in the presence of moderates overall and by party from 1900-2006, and then review and analyze the type of legislation that created splits and the rise of moderates within each party over time. The paper will explain the emergence of moderates and it will also indicate how internal party conflicts declined, resulting in the decline of moderates. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If only part of a legislature engages in sophisticated voting, a different outcome (compared to everyone voting sincere) results; this paper focuses on such cases. First, ideal points are estimated on a restricted subsample (final votes) where sophisticated and sincere voting are not observationally distinguishable. Second, ideological coordinates of amendments (all but final votes) are estimated for each ideological faction separately by excluding the resp. group. Given ideological coordinates for an amendment the group’s residuals are estimated. Finally, if these residuals for the group are not distributed around 0 but tend to be all positive or negative,the case is flagged. Flagged cases can be inspected closely to check if sophisticated voting occurred or not. Roll call data analysis is performed without violating its assumptions -â€" a similar work around as proposed by Clinton,Jackman,Rivers (2004) is used. This paper presents a systematic approach to recovering sophisticated voting and applies the theory to the Swiss parliament which has several theoretical relevant features which distinguishes it from the U.S. Congress. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considerable research has accumulated evidence of voter learning about candidate issue positions during the course of a political campaign. Presidential campaigns present a particularly information-rich environment that makes it easier for voters to learn about candidates and their policy positions. The evidence is less clear as to the extent to which the issue positions of voters influence the decisions they make at the ballot box. Previous research on these two topics, campaign learning and issue voting, has focused on measuring the extent to which such learning or voting occurs, but it has not thoroughly considered heterogeneity in these relationships. Do all voters learn about the same issues and learn about them equally? Do evaluations about issue voting turn on whose issues and which voters are considered? In this paper I will show how the interests of issue publics mediate both campaign learning and issue voting. Specifically, seniors and non-seniors are compared over the course of three campaigns on: 1) The levels and changes in knowledge of candidates' positions on social security over the course of a campaign; and 2) The levels and changes in the correlation between attitudes on this issue and vote choice. This paper utilizes multiple data sources, including the 2008 Associated Press-Yahoo News panel study as well as the rolling cross section and panel components of the 2000 and 2004 National Annenberg Election Surveys. The analysis finds that belonging to an issue public, rather than just general political knowledge, explains differences in knowledge and learning about candidate positions. The evidence for heterogeneity of issue voting is more mixed. In both cases, the relationships appear to depend in part upon the contexts of particular campaigns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using aggregate-level data, this paper examines the institutional causes of class bias in state electorates. In particular, this paper examines the impact of election registration and voting laws, party organizations, and labor unions. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will explore differences in voting behavior of males and females, and those who are married and those who are not. Finally this paper will discuss if/how marital status affects the gender gap in voting. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 1982 amendments in Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act determined that electoral structural features were significant determinants of minority representation. The research regarding electoral system structure and representation, however, has produced conflicting results. This paper seeks to address two puzzles that remain in understanding black representation. The first puzzle examines the impact of at-large elections on African American representation. The second puzzle examines the quality of representation in different electoral structures; at-large and single member districts. Quality in this sense is defined as African-American representatives' ability to generate higher levels of benefits for the African-American community (more administrative and teaching positions for African Americans). This paper first provides a formal argument that explains the connection between electoral structures and representation for African Americans. It then moves to an empirical study using the 1800 largest school districts in the United States (based on an original survey conducted in 2001). In addition to explaining these puzzles, this paper includes how region (North and South) affects representation for African Americans in different electoral structures. It also shows how Democratic competitive states and Republican dominant states are the underlying explanation of these regional differences. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the motivation of the framers on issues of slavery at the Constitutional convention and analyzes which types of constituent interests affected votes on slavery issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Voting "correctly" assumes an individual makes their vote decision the same way they would have under the conditions of full information. This paper examines whether or not individuals vote "correctly" in US House and Senate elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores whether voters in developing economies have growth-compatible policy preferences?the empirical results are based on public opinion surveys conducted in Argentina, Colombia, and Venezuela. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines support for sovereignty as expressed by voting in national and provincial elections and referenda at discrete locations in Quebec from 1976 to 2004. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In order to disentangle the different sources of party cohesion, this paper seeks to account for variation in partisanship by reference to the substantive issues at stake in roll call votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the existing evidence for priming stands on a weak foundation. Although many experiments have found evidence of priming, their designs only randomly assign part of the treatment necessary to test for priming, and the part they do assign seems likely to influence the part they only observe. Consequently, the findings of these studies are potentially biased, probably upwards. The most troublesome of these biases results from the treatments in the studies causing people to adopt attitudes that are consistent with the dependent variable, usually presidential approval or vote choice. Although the amount of bias this causes is unknown, I illustrate its potential dangers by assuming a simple model of attitudes, calculating the potential biases, and showing that they can be very large. I also review attempts by researchers to avoid this bias, and find that they most likely fail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ability of the National Rifle Association to affect turnout in House races in 1994, 1996, and 1998. We construct models of turnout in congressional elections that include NRA candidate endorsements and membership numbers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the influence of voter turnout and voter support for incumbent members of Congress on policy responsiveness. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the prevalence and influence of partisan incongruities -- competing pressures between party identification and ideological issue positions. The authors argue that the growing conventional wisdom of extreme partisanship overlooks the remarkable extent to which incongruities between issue positions and party identification not only exist among large segments of the electorate, but also powerfully shape voter decision making by mediating the influence of party identification on vote choice. Partisans disagreeing with their political party on a just a single issue are as much as 24% points more likely to vote for the opposing party candidate.

This paper looks at the impact of changing voting technology on intended and unintended consequences measured through different forms of voting behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the impact of perceived discrimination on voting and participation beyond voting. I find that perceived discrimination has a significant effect on voting, signing petitions, and contributing money. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper connects the formal theory surrounding Duverger's Law with an empirical specification and test to examine the empirical evidence for strategic voting in the 2001 General Election in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine state legislators' behavior in supporting or opposing state regulation of local land-use. Voting patterns of legislators from inner and outer suburbs will be compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on a study which examined relations between income and presidential voting preference in rich and poor states in the U.S. at the individual, county and state levels. The aim of the paper is to provide a framework to understand Republican strength among richer votes and in poorer states. Survey data show a correlation between income and support for the Republican party, but at the aggregate level, it is the Democrats who do better in the richer states. The poor people red states tend to be Democrats; the rich people in blue states tend to be Republicans. Income matters within states and geography also matters. With the 2000 presidential election richer states voted for a Democrat.

This paper builds a model of primary elections in a two-party system with a unidimensional policy space, in which candidates must first compete inside their parties to obtain the nomination before competing in the general election to get elected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares four models used to predict voter turnout: one used by grassroots organizers, one developed by a commercial voter file vendor, and two based on the political behavior literature. Using the voter file for the state of Nebraska, we apply the models to develop predictions for turnout in the 2002 general election. Following the election, we verified whether or not each individual on the list turned out to vote and then assessed the performance of each model at predicting turnout. We find that the models based on the political behavior literature are best at predicting whether or not an individual will turnout to vote and that the model sold by the commercial vendor does no better at predicting turnout than the simple (and free) model employed by many grassroots organizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores a link between the levels of perceived party differentiation and the levels of voter turnout. The Downsian hypothesis of party convergence and the consequential decrease in the benefits of voting are tested through survey data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper expands on the experimental findings of the motivated reasoning literature to numerous election studies in the U.S., Britain, and Germany. Conclusions inform both the information processing and campaign effects literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper modifies the retrospective voting model to incorporate the approach of economists studying durable goods. We posit a relationship with the incumbent party that is similar to consumers' relationship with durable goods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]