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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.

Immigration and demographic change have become highly salient in American politics, partly because of the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump. Previous research indicates that local influxes of immigrants or unfamiliar ethnic groups can generate threatened responses, but has either focused on nonelectoral outcomes or analyzed elections in large geographic units, such as counties. Here, we examine whether demographic changes at low levels of aggregation were associated with vote shifts toward an anti-immigration presidential candidate between 2012 and 2016. To do so, we compile a precinct-level dataset of election results and demographic measures for almost 32,000 precincts in the states of Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington. We employ regression analyses varying model specifications and measures of demographic change. Our estimates uncover little evidence that influxes of Hispanics or noncitizen immigrants benefited Trump relative to past Republicans, instead consistently showing that such changes were associated with shifts to Trump's opponent.

Immigration and demographic change have become highly salient in American politics, partly because of the 2016 campaign of Donald Trump. Previous research indicates that local influxes of immigrants or unfamiliar ethnic groups can generate threatened responses, but has either focused on nonelectoral outcomes or analyzed elections in large geographic units, such as counties. Here, we examine whether demographic changes at low levels of aggregation were associated with vote shifts toward an anti-immigration presidential candidate between 2012 and 2016. To do so, we compile a precinct-level dataset of election results and demographic measures for almost 32,000 precincts in the states of Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington. We employ regression analyses varying model specifications and measures of demographic change. Our estimates uncover little evidence that influxes of Hispanics or noncitizen immigrants benefited Trump relative to past Republicans, instead consistently showing that such changes were associated with shifts to Trumps opponent.

New democracies go to great lengths to implement institutional protections of the electoral process. However, in this paper we present evidence that shows that even in the United States-where the secret ballot has been in place for generations-doubts about the secrecy of the voting process are surprisingly prevalent. Many say that their cast ballot can be matched to their name or that others could observe their vote choices while they were voting. We find that people who have not previously voted are particularly likely to harbor doubts about the secrecy of voters' ballots. Those who vote by mail in the privacy of their own homes also feel that others are able to discover their vote choices. Taken together, these findings suggest an important divergence between public perceptions about and the institutional status of the secret ballot in the United States, a divergence that may affect patterns of voting behavior and political participation.

Policies that promote the common good may be politically infeasible if legislators representing 'losing' constituencies are punished for failing to promote their district's welfare. We investigate how varying the local and aggregate returns to a policy affects voter support for their incumbent. In our first study, we find that an incumbent who favours a welfare-enhancing policy enjoys a discontinuous jump in support when their district moves from losing to at least breaking even, while the additional incremental political returns for the district doing better than breaking even are modest. This feature of voter response, which we replicate, has significant implications for legislative politics generally and, in particular, how to construct politically feasible social welfare-enhancing policies. In a second study, we investigate the robustness of this finding in a competitive environment in which a challenger can call attention to a legislator's absolute and relative performance in delivering resources to their district. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does candidate ideology affect donors' contribution decisions in U.S. House elections? Studies of donor motivations have struggled with confounding of candidate, donor, and district characteristics in observational data and the difficulty of assessing trade-offs in surveys. We investigate how these factors affect contribution decisions using experimental vignettes administered to 7,000 verified midterm donors. While ideological congruence influences donors' likelihood of contributing to a candidate, district competitiveness and opponent extremity are equally important. Moreover, the response to ideology is asymmetric and heterogeneous: donors penalize more moderate candidates five times more heavily than more extreme candidates, with the most extreme donors exhibiting the greatest preference for candidates even more extreme than themselves. Republicans also exhibit a greater relative preference for extremism than Democrats, although partisan differences are smaller than differences by donor extremism. Our findings suggest that strategic considerations matter, and donors incentivize candidate extremism even more than previously thought. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The accountability relationship between voters and elected members of Congress (MCs) hinges on the potential for citizens to learn about legislator behaviour. In an era of declining local newspapers, local television coverage of MCs potentially fulfils this important role. However, few studies have comprehensively examined the determinants of contemporary MC coverage by local television news broadcasts. In this paper, we leverage a vast database of local television news broadcast transcripts spanning two years to identify which factors explain MC coverage. We find that MCs receive little coverage outside the general election campaign season. Media market and campaign-specific factors are associated with more exposure when coverage occurs. Finally, we find that within competitive elections, incumbents receive only a marginal advantage in coverage. These findings provide a springboard to explore further questions regarding Congress, local media, and political accountability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Partisan Americans like members of their own party more than members of the opposing party. Scholars often interpret this as evidence that party identity or loyalty influence interpersonal affect. First, we reassess previous studies and demonstrate that prior results are also consistent with what we would predict if people cared only about policy agreement. Next, we demonstrate the difficulty of manipulating perceptions of party identity without also manipulating beliefs about policy agreement and vice versa. Finally, we show that partisans care much more about policy agreement than they do about party loyalty when the two come into conflict. Our analyses suggest that partisan Americans care about policy agreement; we have little convincing evidence that they care about partisan identity or loyalty per se, and scholars will have to find new research designs if they want to convincingly estimate the effects of identity or loyalty independent of policy substance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]