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The COVID-19 pandemic made salient the risks posed by an infectious disease at a polling place. To what degree did such health risks, as with other changes to voting costs, affect the willingness to vote in person? Could highlighting safety measures reduce the association between COVID fears and unwillingness to vote in person? Using both a representative survey of Connecticut voters and a survey experiment, we examine whether concerns about health diminish willingness to vote in person. We find correlational evidence that those who are more worried about COVID-19 are less likely to report they will vote in person, even when considering risk mitigation efforts. We then present causal evidence that mentioning the safety measures being taken does little to offset the negative effect of priming COVID-19 risk on willingness to vote in person. These results contribute to a growing literature that assesses how health risks affect in person voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In their reply to our article, "Irrelevant Events and Voting Behavior," Fowler and Montagnes reanalyze our replication study of college football's effect on election outcomes. Although we agree with Fowler and Montagnes that the evidence supporting the irrelevant events hypothesis is weaker than earlier research suggested, they overstate this case. Philosophically, we disagree with Fowler and Montagnes's preference for (1) running a plethora of tests rather than focusing on the most theoretically motivated tests and (2) privileging out-of-sample data over the full sample of available data. Empirically, we show that their claim that out-of-sample data weaken the original results depends on (1) an incorrect definition of out-of-sample years and (2) assigning two-thirds weight to the same hypothesis regarding heterogeneous effects. An amended version of Fowler and Montagnes's analysis affirms our initial assessment: although the original finding was overstated, adding out-of-sample data strengthens it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior research on economic voting generally finds that national economic performance affects incumbent support. However, the degree to which one's personal economic situation shapes vote choice remains less clear. In this study, we use novel survey data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide more credible evidence about the effect of changes in personal economic experiences on intended vote choice. Our design uses an objective measure of change in personal economic situation by asking respondents their employment status prior to the pandemic and at the time of the survey. Given the widespread and abrupt way in which the pandemic induced unemployment, we argue that this design reduces concerns about confounders that explain both vote choice and job loss. Our analysis demonstrates that individuals whose personal economic conditions worsened during the pandemic were significantly less like to intend to vote for Trump in the 2020 election. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When does increasing mobilization effort increase turnout? Recent experiments find second calls containing a reminder to vote increase turnout beyond an initial contact. We argue existing studies cannot explain why reminder calls are effective because they test bundled treatments including a late mobilization attempt, a late mobilization attempt given earlier contact, and potentially activating reciprocity established in earlier contact. We report results from a two-round voter mobilization field experiment that allows us to isolate these different mechanisms. We find that reminder calls increase turnout by 1.2% points among subjects contacted in an earlier attempt, but that enhancing reciprocity by providing a reminder call offer during an early call does not increase turnout beyond a second call. Additionally, we fail to find heterogeneous effects of reminder calls by stated preference for a reminder or by stated vote intention, suggesting certain mechanisms do not explain the effects of reminder calls. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 antiimmigration 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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proparticipatory norms play a central role in driving turnout. However, a broad norm that people are supposed to vote cannot explain why some people fail to participate or why rates of participation vary sharply across elections. We argue that the norm of voting extends beyond the mere act of voting. We present empirical evidence supporting the position that the social rewards for participating are conditional. The social rewards for casting an ill-informed vote are far smaller than those associated with casting an informed ballot. Moreover, some low-information voting strategies are viewed as less desirable than simply abstaining. Our findings illustrate an important constraint on the capacity of social norms to foster turnout. The effectiveness of efforts to translate norms into higher rates of turnout may depend on ensuring that voters are informed enough to cast a meaningful ballot. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are mobilization appeals that include information about descriptive voting norms more effective at increasing turnout when the descriptive norm is framed positively (by highlighting a referent’s desirable behavior and encouraging consistent behavior) instead of negatively (by highlighting a referent’s lack of desirable behavior as problematic but also encouraging that behavior)? Few published studies have experimentally assessed this question and yield mixed results. We address the need for additional replication by designing and analyzing data from two field experiments conducted across four states in the 2014 primary and general elections. We find no differential effects on turnout of framing descriptive voting norms positively or negatively. The results are not sensitive to election context, the mode of treatment delivery, or whether the descriptive norm appeals involve a group or self-referent. Additional research is needed to understand the conditions under which positive versus negative descriptive norm framing has distinguishable effects on turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ongoing debate in political psychology is about whether small wording differences have outsized behavioral effects. A leading example is whether subtle linguistic cues embedded in voter mobilization messages dramatically increase turnout. An initial study analyzing two small‐scale field experiments argued that describing someone as a voter (noun) instead of one who votes (verb) increases turnout rates 11 to 14 points because the noun activates a person's social identity as a voter. A subsequent study analyzing a large‐scale field experiment challenged this claim and found no effect. But questions about the initial claim's domain of applicability persist. The subsequent study may not have reproduced the conditions necessary for the psychological phenomenon to occur, specifically the electoral contexts were not competitive or important enough for the social identity to matter. To address the first of these critiques, as well as other potential explanations for different results between the first two studies, we conduct a large‐scale replication field experiment. We find no evidence that this minor wording change increases turnout levels. This research provides new evidence that the strategy of invoking the self does not appear to consistently increase turnout and calls into question whether subtle linguistic cues have outsized behavioral effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Testing theories of how candidate positions affect voting is often complicated by the strong correlation between candidate partisanship and candidate positions. We take advantage of Donald Trump's unusual candidacy to understand how candidates who depart from standard party positions affect perceptions of ideology and voting. We show in both 2016 and 2008 that respondents were more likely to report voting for the more ideologically proximate candidate, an advantage enjoyed by Trump in 2016 at much higher rates, in part because he was perceived as more moderate than prior candidates. What is most exceptional about Trump relative to previous candidates, however, is that voters were much less willing to place him anywhere in an ideological space. Being unwilling to place Trump was correlated with being much less likely to vote for him and suggests that some voters do not reward ambiguous or nonstandard issue positioning. More generally, we find evidence that in the contemporary era of strong partisan attachments, some voters still appear to decide which candidate to support, in part, on assessments of candidate ideology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in mass incarceration provides a growing impetus to understand the effect that interactions with the criminal justice system have on political participation. While a substantial body of prior research studies the political consequences of criminal disenfranchisement, less work examines why eligible ex-felons vote at very low rates. We use administrative data on voting and interactions with the criminal justice system from Pennsylvania to assess whether the association between incarceration and reduced voting is causal. Using administrative records that reduce the possibility of measurement error, we employ several different research designs to investigate the possibility that the observed negative correlation between incarceration and voting might result from differences across individuals that lead both to incarceration and to low participation. As this selection bias issue is addressed, we find that the estimated effect of serving time in prison on voting falls dramatically and for some research designs vanishes entirely. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Only a small portion of Americans make campaign donations, yet because ambitious politicians need these resources, this group may be particularly important for shaping political outcomes. We investigate the characteristics and motivations of the donorate using a novel dataset that combines administrative records of two types of political participation, contributing and voting, with a rich set of survey variables. These merged observations allow us to examine differences in demographics, validated voting, and ideology across subgroups of the population and to evaluate the motivations of those who donate. We find that in both parties donors are consistently and notably divergent from non-donors to a larger degree than voters are divergent from non-voters. Of great interest, in both parties donors are more ideologically extreme than other partisans, including primary voters. With respect to why individuals contribute, we show that donors appear responsive to their perception of the stakes in the election. We also present evidence that inferences about donor ideology derived from the candidates donors give to may not closely reflect the within-party policy ideology of those donors. Overall, our results suggest that donations are a way for citizens motivated by the perceived stakes of elections to increase their participation beyond solely turning out. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article measures the social rewards and sanctions associated with voting. A series of survey experiments shows that information about whether a person votes directly affects how favorably that person is viewed. Importantly, the study also compares the rewards and sanctions associated with voting to other activities, including the decisions to recycle, volunteer and return one’s library books on time. It presents a behavioral test of the consequences of non-voting and finds that individuals are willing to take costly action in a dictator game to reward political participation. Finally, it shows that survey measures of social norms about voting are correlated with county-level voter turnout. The study adds to the growing literature documenting the important influence of social concerns on turnout and other political choices. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Should people discuss their vote choices with others? On one hand, many people argue that openly deliberating with others can lead to better decision-making. On the other hand, institutions like the secret ballot imply that keeping these choices secret has value, perhaps as a means of insulating people from unwanted social pressures. This paper examines public attitudes about whether it is best to discuss one’s choices with others or to treat them as personal matters. We find that the American public is evenly divided on this issue. We also find that those who are least confident in their political capabilities—those who arguably could benefit most from deliberating about their vote choices—are most likely to say that choices should be treated as personal matters. Our findings have implications for understanding the role of political deliberation in the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]