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In the United States, elections are often administered by directly elected local officials who run as members of a political party. Do these officials use their office to give their party an edge in elections? Using a newly collected dataset of nearly 5,900 clerk elections and a close-election regression discontinuity design, we compare counties that narrowly elect a Democratic election administrator to those that narrowly elect a Republican. We find that Democrats and Republicans serving similar counties oversee similar election results, turnout, and policies. We also find that reelection is not the primary moderating force on clerks. Instead, clerks may be more likely to agree on election policies across parties than the general public and selecting different election policies may only modestly affect outcomes. While we cannot rule out small effects that nevertheless tip close elections, our results imply that clerks are not typically and noticeably advantaging their preferred party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industries use persuasion strategies to gain public support when challenged by activist groups on consumer-relevant issues. This marketing practice, termed "direct-to-public persuasion," has received limited attention in the field, and thus we have little understanding of when such campaigns fail or succeed. This research introduces a theoretically derived and empirically supported framework that draws from multiple areas, including marketing persuasion, political campaign strategy, sociopolitical legitimacy, and perceptual fit, to identify important differences in the effectiveness of these persuasion strategies on attitudes and voting behavior. The multimethod approach includes a field study of ballot measure voting during a national U.S. election and three experimental studies. The findings contribute new knowledge of asymmetries in public response to industry and activist arguments. Stronger arguments from both sides lead to more favorable outcomes, but activist groups benefit most. Suspicion of activist arguments weakens the impact on attitudes and voting; industry argument suspicion has limited impact, though it does increase the likelihood of voter switching. A financial argumentation strategy works best for the industry side, while societal argumentation is more effective for the activist side. The insights offer guidance for industries and activist groups as argument strategy success is contingent on the side that uses it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interest group influence in the policy process is often theorized to occur through a mechanism of exchange, persuasion, or subsidy. Here, we explore how business groups may also exert influence by intimidating policymakers—a form of persuasion, but one based on the provision not of policy information but of political information. We develop a theory in which a business firm lobbies a regulator to communicate political information about its capacity to commit to future influence-seeking activities that would sanction the regulator. The regulator assesses the credibility of this message by evaluating the firm's commitment to lobbying. Guided by our theory, we present empirical evidence consistent with expectations that intimidation can shape regulatory outcomes to the advantage of certain firms, both through a chilling effect, by which lobbying derails nascent regulatory plans, as well as a retreating effect, by which opposition to published proposals leads to their withdrawal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politics & Policy is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In this paper, we study how a combination of random ballot ordering and concurrent elections can increase invalid votes in the context of South Korea. In South Korea, elections for the nonpartisan superintendent of education are held concurrently with other partisan races. Whereas the ballot order for candidates in the nonpartisan superintendent of education elections is randomized and rotated, this order for other partisan races is determined according to the number of seats each party has in the national legislature. In this study, we found that a match between candidates' partisan preferences and their ballot positions decreases invalid votes. Our findings suggest that combining two different ballot-order schemes for concurrently held elections can confuse voters and increase invalid votes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Ranked choice voting [RCV] is currently seeing a spike in interest and is expanding in practice throughout the United States. However, the impacts and effects of RCV in the United States are not well understood and neither are the driving forces behind voters. engagement with it. This article explores what drives a voter's willingness to engage with ranking and to what extent. Methods: We use New York City exit poll data to analyze what increased the likelihood of voters to both participate in any ranking activity whatsoever as well as what drove voters to rank several candidates. Using both logistic and ordinal logistic regression we analyze how a voter's engagement with ranking is impacted by their socioeconomic background, their understanding of RCV, and campaign‐centered variables. Results: Our results show that wealthier, better educated, white voters who perceived a more positive campaign environment were more likely to engage in ranking. Gender, education, income, campaign tone, and being asked to rank a candidate as second or third are shown to be predictors of a voter's propensity to rank several candidates. Conclusion: Voters engage with RCV when they are provided with information on how RCV works and the benefits that come with it. Voters who perceive a more positive campaign environment and are explicitly asked by candidates to include them in their rankings are more likely to maximize their ranking activity. Practitioner Points: Ranked choice voting was successfully rolled out in NYC, but more voter education efforts are needed among minority voters.Cultivating a more positive campaign environment can increase participation with ranking activity.Candidates who ask voters to include them in their rankings, even if not the voter's first choice, are likely to be included in that voter's rankings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral management bodies have a responsibility to ensure voters have equitable access to the election process, starting with providing information to successfully navigate it. In this article, we assess the educative effects of different modes of election official voter education on completing the voter registration process. We use surveys of voter education activities submitted by the state of Florida's 67 County local election officials (LEOs) in the United States to evaluate their impact on new voter registrations between 2014 and 2018. We also use a dataset of Florida election officials' monthly Facebook activity during the 2020 election to examine the relationship between content-specific social media posts and new voter registrations, and usage of Florida's online voter registration (OVR) portal. We find that traditional media, specifically newspaper ads, and face-to-face outreach – visits to local communities, and training for third-party voter registration drives – increase new registrations. We also find that sharing Facebook posts about voter registration specifically during the 2020 election cycle increased new registrations and usage of Florida's OVR system. Our findings have important implications about the breadth of tools electoral management bodies across the world have to inform voters, and how they can use them to facilitate voter access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a theory of democratic backsliding where citizens' retrospective assessment of an incumbent politician depends on expectations that are endogenous to the incumbent's behaviour. We show that democratic backsliding can occur even when most citizens and most politicians intrinsically value democracy. By challenging norms of democracy, an incumbent can lower citizens' expectations; by not doubling down on this challenge, he can then beat this lowered standard. As a result, gradual backsliding can actually enhance an incumbent's popular support not despite but because of citizens' opposition to backsliding. This mechanism can only arise when citizens are uncertain enough about incumbents' preferences (e.g. owing to programmatically weak parties). Mass polarization, instead, can reduce the occurrence of backsliding while simultaneously increasing its severity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A central tenet in the electoral systems subfield is that parties seek desired outcomes via the strategic adoption of electoral rules. Such partisan self‐interest, however, is merely one explanation for reform: A second is that an actor may attempt to maximize her core values, which constitute her perception of the "common good." Although the extant literature has demonstrated the motivational power of core values, their effect on electoral rule choice has not been tested. Using a factorial experimental design that manipulates the partisan‐ and values‐implications of a fictitious reform proposal, I find evidence in favor of core values: Not only do they have an effect net of partisan concerns, but they also attenuate the effect of partisan self‐interest when the two predispositions countervail. The results provide evidence that partisan self‐interest offers an incomplete picture: Actors hold—and pursue through electoral reform—objectives that are not immediately partisan in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We demonstrate material origin of strategic preference expression in authoritarian systems, where firms express dissent against or conform to the government's position based on what they seek to obtain from the government: politically powerful firms are more likely to dissent to negotiate policy concessions while politically weak firms are more likely to conform to the government's position to obtain side payments or to avoid punishment. We test this argument using survey experiments with firm executives in China. A treatment that signals the government's commitment to liberalize inward foreign direct investment increases the percentage of firms that report to "benefit" from the policy between 14 and 36 percentage points. Powerful firms (state- and foreign-owned) conform the least to the government and politically vulnerable firms and the recipients of government contracts conform the most. Our results suggest that political standing is a key driver of business position-taking in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of new voting channels, voting technologies and other voting innovations are often thought to improve voter participation in elections and democracy. However, it frequently happens at the expense of administrators, who needs to deliver even more complex elections. This article traces how the introduction of a new voting channel, Internet voting, affects frontline administrators through a qualitative in-depth case study of the 2017 local elections in Estonia. Findings show that the local election administration plays a substantial role in delivering Internet voting, despite the centralized election hierarchy. The case shows little evidence to support the expectation that Internet voting decreases the administrative burden of local election officials. The article outlines the vulnerabilities in Internet voting administration, resulting from the complexity of delivering multi-channel elections, particularly the ones integrating Internet- and paper-based voting channels. The article makes important recommendations for improving the implementation of electronic voting and improving the quality of elections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The political impact of Dr. Eleanor Lansing Dulles has not been assessed in her capacity as a power broker who brought her theological understandings to Cold War United States policy. The deep influence of both her brothers—Allen, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and John Foster, Secretary of State under Dwight D. Eisenhower—on global affairs and diplomacy has been the topic of myriad studies. Works draw extensively on family biography, noting that both "nature and nurture" brought religion to US foreign policy. Including Dr. Dulles in the analysis provides nuance and complexity to definitions of Christian nationalism and underscores the legacy of both missionaries and religious thought in US foreign relations during the early Cold War. Contextualizing religiosity through a study of gender and the Dulles family legacy of female missionaries into the Cold War narrative builds upon the existing literature of the Dulles family, religion, and Cold War diplomacy to challenge concepts such as Christian internationalism, Christian nationalism, and Left–Right binaries. Diplomacy is revealed as her form of Christian missionary work in the secular sphere. Eleanor Lansing Dulles became a missionary not for a religion, but for a nation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Electoral Studies is the property of National Chengchi University, Election Study Center and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Moderne Staat is the property of Verlag Barbara Budrich GmbH and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

COVID-19 had a major impact on how some states administered the 2020 election and little effect on others. Using a new dataset, we identify the options states introduced to make voting safer, the measures they took to encourage voters to use these options, and the options' effects on voter turnout. We show that most states introduced few, if any, significant changes in voting policies. We identify relationships between the states' responses and preexisting election policies, party control of government, and other state characteristics. We also demonstrate the introduction of safe voting options had an effect on aggregate voter turnout. The results give insights into factors that influence election policymaking and the prospects for future election reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Canadian Public Administration is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Voter identification (ID) laws have sparked concerns of vote suppression, but existing evidence relies on aggregate analyses or survey self-reports. We leverage unique information from Texas, where registrants without ID filed "reasonable impediment declarations" (RIDs) before voting. Linking 16,000 RID forms to the Texas voter file, we provide the first direct documentation of the traits of voters who would be stopped from voting under strict identification laws. Our preregistered analysis finds registrants voting without ID in 2016 were disproportionately Black and Latinx when compared to voters voting with ID. Examining voters' stated reasons for not providing ID, we find socioeconomic hardships are not the most commonly cited impediment, but voters with hardships were less likely to vote in a strict-ID election than those who previously had identification. Our findings indicate that strict identification laws will stop a disproportionately minority, otherwise-willing set of registered voters from voting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why have Russians largely approved of the government's pandemic response despite having one of the highest excess death rates in the world? The explanation is not that the government has done a good job, that citizens have come to expect little from the state in general, nor entirely because of a pro-government media. Drawing on pre-pandemic survey data, I argue that Russians' opinions about state-provided healthcare shape their evaluation of the government's response to COVID-19, and help explain approval of the government's pandemic reaction. Future research on Russian pandemic politics should account for the importance of prior assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: Partisan bias occurs when votes are distributed across districts in such a way that even if the vote between two parties were equal, one party would win more seats than the other. Gerrymandering is a well‐established cause of partisan bias, but it is not the only one. In this article, we ask whether the decline of voter turnout can also influence partisan bias. Methods: We modified the Gelman–King partisan symmetry measure to make it sensitive to turnout differences across U.S. House elections from 1972 to 2018. Results: We found that turnout variation has caused partisan bias in U.S. House elections in the Democratic Party's favor since at least 1972, though turnout bias has gotten weaker in recent elections. Conclusion: While turnout bias can buffer the impact of turnout reductions, it has the potential to dramatically increase the number of seats a party loses when its supporters fail to vote. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Estudios Politicos (01215167) is the property of Universidad de Antioquia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The level of spending for public services is known to be influenced by spending on other services. This interdependency is known in the literature in public budgeting and finance as budgetary tradeoffs. While it is well known that spending in one area affects spending in other areas, the factors that influence budgetary tradeoff decisions are not well understood, and specifically how intertemporal evaluation of funding influences budgetary tradeoffs is not currently addressed in the public budgeting and finance literature. Building on Jacob's theory of intertemporal policy choice, we develop a tradeoff model to test the key predictions of intertemporal policy choice theory. Using data from counties in North Carolina, we find that partisanship and time horizon generally influence budgetary tradeoffs in ways that are consistent with intertemporal policy choice. This research informs the budgetary tradeoff choices that are made at the local level, and it specifically informs the unique case of election administration spending. Our findings lend theoretical support to assertions that election administration is underfunded in the United States because the budgetary tradeoff models suggest that election administration suffers from not having a natural constituency to advocate for it in county governments and because the outcomes from funding or underfunding are only observed intermittently. Applications For Practice: Using data from North Carolina counties, we find partisanship and time horizon generally influence budgetary tradeoffs in ways consistent with intertemporal policy choice.The budgetary tradeoff model suggests that elections administration is underfunded in part because it lacks a natural constituency, likely because outcomes are observed intermittently.Jacobs' (2011, 2016) intertemporal and distributive policy choice framework can be a useful guide for understanding the policy choices that are made at the local level.The political context of the county affects expenditure decisions indicating that budgetary tradeoffs may be an important avenue for future research in other areas of policy.Elections administration is a clear case that fits into the theory of distributive and intertemporal policy choice. There is a need to study a range of policies that have no clear constituency and only future observed impacts is evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Politische Vierteljahresschrift is the property of Springer Nature and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Internet voting has been available for French citizens living abroad since 2006, and 43.21% of them filled out their ballots online for the first election of their consular delegates in 2014. Using a multivariate analysis of turnout figures at the district and country levels, this research note explores if ballot box and Internet voters differ in their electoral participation patterns. It concludes that turnout must be understood based on the voting modality that French voters choose. While the characteristics of the electoral district (community size, geographical, and historical proximity with France, and party competition) impact ballot box voter turnout, Internet voter turnout is most influenced by the host country's economic and infrastructure development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Information is central to designing effective policy, and policy makers often rely on competing interests to separate useful from biased information. We show how this logic of virtuous competition can break down, using a new and comprehensive data set on U.S. federal regulatory rulemaking for 2003–2016. For-profit corporations and nonprofit entities are active in the rulemaking process and are arguably expected to provide independent viewpoints. Policy makers, however, may not be fully aware of the financial ties between some firms and nonprofits—grants that are legal and tax-exempt but hard to trace. We document three patterns that suggest that these grants may distort policy. First, we show that shortly after a firm donates to a nonprofit, the nonprofit is more likely to comment on rules on which the firm has also commented. Second, when a firm comments on a rule, the comments by nonprofits that recently received grants from the firm's foundation are systematically closer in content to the firm's own comments, relative to comments submitted by other nonprofits. Third, the final rule's discussion by a regulator is more similar to the firm's comments on that rule when the firm's recent grantees also commented on it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A ballot reform was adopted in Colombia in early 1990s. The traditional paper ballots, which were printed and distributed by parties, were replaced by an Australian ballot—an office-centered design in which the electoral authority was responsible for its distribution. The article examines about 5,800 department-level legislative lists, during 10 election cycles between 1970 and 2002, to evaluate the consequences of the reform. The evidence shows that candidates expanded the geographical scope of their campaigns after the ballot reform and that party bases became more geographically dispersed. Moreover, the evidence indicates that the new ballot undermined the power of party leaders to coordinate factions, resulting in a considerable increase in the number of lists—and with it, of wasted votes. These findings suggest that an arguably minor reform, such as the adoption of a new ballot form, may have major implications for democratic representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Electoral Studies is the property of National Chengchi University, Election Study Center and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article analyses the Czech Republic's ability to promote its interests in international organizations (IOs) through its citizens' personnel representation. It defines two levels of such ability. First, the selection and preparation, coordination, and use of a state's human capital in the IOs. Second, agenda-setting, the presence of a „national perspective" in the IOs, and the adoption of common objectives of the IOs. The analysis is primarily based on the 46 semi-structured interviews with Czech citizens, current and past employees in selected IOs (European Defence Agency, OSCE, NATO, Council of Europe, International Organization for Migration, OECD) conducted between the years of 2018 and 2019. The Czech case analysis identified several shortcomings in the setting, coordination, and the use of the personnel policy. It confirmed the role of the personnel policy on the state's ability to promote its interests in the IOs and showed that success in promoting the interests of the state does not depend so much on the „volume," but instead on the „quality" of personnel representation, and the ability of the state personnel policy to use its citizens in the IOs to achieve its goals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is to analyze invalid votes under compulsory voting in Peru. I analyzed three Peruvian presidential elections (held in 2006, 2011, and 2016). I investigated the results of these elections at the municipal level, examining the first and second rounds separately. Thus, I created an original dataset that includes 5,478 cases from each round. I used the ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models to test theories related to invalid votes. First, I found that the higher the level of development in municipalities, the lower the number of invalid votes in municipalities. Second, I examined a feature of runoff voting and found that the higher the share of votes for eliminated candidates in the first round, the greater the number of invalid votes in the second round. These results suggest that invalid voting is linked to socioeconomic grievances and that electoral abstention under non-compulsory voting transforms into invalid votes in the second round under compulsory voting when voters' choices are limited. These findings contribute to the current research on invalid voting, electoral systems, and electoral behavior in Peruvian municipalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Lua Nova is the property of CEDEC and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Public distrust in politicians is widespread across Western democracies. This general pattern suggests that the problem reflects dissatisfaction with not only government performance and misconduct—the main focus in existing research—but also how democratic politics is generally conducted. This article identifies a mismatch between the representation facilitated by modern democracies and the representation wanted by a majority of citizens. Because political representation is organized around cohesive parties, several institutions incentivize politicians to exhibit loyalty to party policy over other considerations (partisan representation). Observational and experimental data from three countries demonstrate that citizens generally perceive politicians as conducting partisan representation, but they prefer that politicians follow their own conscience (trustee representation) and constituency (delegate representation) over party policy. This mismatch translates into distrust in politicians, even in countries with strong norms for party discipline and among politicians' own party supporters. The findings have implications for understanding and counteracting political distrust. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many scholars paint a somber picture of the political status of racially and economically marginalized groups in the United States. In particular, seminal studies on cities—places where race and class strikingly intersect—emphasize economic and political elites as primary drivers of urban politics, underscoring the disempowerment of those at the margins. This article offers a different, theoretically instructive perspective. Through a qualitative analysis of two major expansions of the legal right to counsel in civil courts, I describe political processes that afforded race–class subjugated communities pivotal influence over urban policy. I demonstrate how groups that many theories of political science do not expect to have substantive political influence, nonetheless profoundly shaped the course of urban policy development in the civil legal domain. I find an especially crucial role for membership-driven local organizations focused on building equitable community power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A public agency's capacity to implement policy and achieve valued public outcomes has been a long‐running area of research in public administration. Many articles provide theory and empirics regarding the capacity to implement policy, but relatively few examine multiple types of agency capacity within the same analysis. This article develops a model based on the election administration literature in political science and public administration to examine the effects of managerial capacity, financial capacity, and technology on the election management outcome of the residual vote rate in North Carolina election jurisdictions. The results indicate that higher levels of management capacity and technology significantly reduce problems with voting as measured by the residual vote rate. Financial capacity shows a negative association with the residual vote rate but is not significant. The article concludes by discussing how studying election administration provides an important and uniquely good administrative context for developing administrative theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marriage rights were extended to same‐sex couples in the United States in 2015. However, anecdotes of bureaucratic noncompliance (in the form of bias or denial of license issuance) raise the possibility that de jure marriage equality has not led to equality in practice. We investigate this by conducting a nationwide audit experiment of local‐level marriage license–granting officials in the United States. These officials vary in the constituencies they serve, as well as how they are selected, allowing us to evaluate long‐standing hypotheses about bureaucratic responsiveness. Overall, we find no evidence of systematic discrimination against same‐sex couples—regardless of responsiveness measure, institutions, ideology, or prior state legal history. We find, however, that among same‐sex couples, officials tended to be more responsive to lesbian couples. In contrast to evidence in other areas of service provision, such as policing and federal assistance programs, we find bureaucrats tasked with provision of marriage services show little evidence of discrimination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We explore whether officials in county governments follow their partisan allegiances when selecting and siting early voting locations. Because low‐turnout elections are said to benefit Republicans and high‐turnout elections to benefit Democrats, we hypothesize that majority‐Republican county governments create fewer early voting sites than majority‐Democrat county governments. Moreover, we expect the partisan composition of key officials in county government to affect the accessibility of early voting sites, with Republican‐dominated county governments placing sites such that less of the population resides proximately. Methods: Using an originally collected data set, we assess how counties' commissioners courts affect the number of sites generally. We then geocode early voting locations in Texas from the 2014, 2016, and 2017 general elections to determine the accessibility of such locations. Results: Our results provide support for our theory that partisan county officials strategically maintain early voting sites to benefit their party's electoral fortunes. Specifically, Republican‐majority county governments employ fewer early voting locations than Democrat‐majority county governments. Yet, both Democrat and Republican courts site early voting locations similarly. Conclusion: These findings suggest that Republican‐majority county governments make decisions that increase the costs of voting by providing fewer sites, while Democrat‐majority county governments seek to decrease the costs of voting by offering more sites, with both parties attempting to provide their party an electoral edge. Still, Republican‐ and Democratic‐majority county governments site their early voting locations in similarly accessible ways, suggesting that other factors, besides partisanship, structure site location. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do political parties respond to interest group mobilization? While party responsiveness to voters has received widespread attention, little is known about how interest groups affect parties' policy agendas. I argue that political parties respond to interest groups as lobbyists offer valuable information, campaign contributions, electoral support and personal rewards, but that party responsiveness is conditioned by voter preferences. Based on a novel longitudinal analysis studying the responsiveness of German parties to interest groups across eleven issue areas and seven elections from 1987 until 2009, it is shown that parties adjust their policy agendas in response to interest group mobilization and that interest groups are more successful in shaping party policy when their priorities coincide with those of the electorate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: We analyze the significant increase in the residual vote rate in the 2016 presidential election. The residual vote rate, which is the percentage of ballots cast in a presidential election that contain no vote for president, rose nationwide from 0.99 to 1.41 percent between 2012 and 2016. Method: We use election return data and public opinion data to examine why the residual vote rate increased in 2016. Results: The primary explanation for this rise is an increase in abstentions, which we argue results primarily from disaffected Republican voters rather than alienated Democratic voters. In addition, other factors related to election administration and electoral competition explain variation in the residual vote rates across states, particularly the use of mail/absentee ballots and the lack of competition at the top of the ticket in nonbattleground states. However, we note that the rise in the residual vote rate was not due to changes in voting technologies. Conclusion: Our research has implications for the use of the residual vote as a metric for studying election administration and voting technologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]