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The violent conclusion of Trump's 2017–21 presidency has produced sobering reassessments of American democracy. Elected officials' actions necessarily implicate public opinion, but to what extent did Trump's presidency and its anti-democratic efforts reflect shifts in public opinion in prior years? Were there attitudinal changes that served as early-warning signs? We answer those questions via a fifteen-wave, population-based panel spanning 2007 to 2020. Specifically, we track attitudes on system legitimacy and election fairness, assessments of Trump and other politicians, and open-ended explanations of vote choice and party perceptions. Across measures, there was little movement in public opinion foreshadowing Trump's norm-upending presidency, though levels of out-party animus were consistently high. Recent shifts in public opinion were thus not a primary engine of the Trump presidency's anti-democratic efforts or their violent culmination. Such stability suggests that understanding the precipitating causes of those efforts requires attention to other actors, including activists and elites.

Political scientists have increasingly deployed conjoint survey experiments to understand multidimensional choices in various settings. In this paper, we show that the average marginal component effect (AMCE) constitutes an aggregation of individual-level preferences that is meaningful both theoretically and empirically. First, extending previous results to allow for arbitrary randomization distributions, we show how the AMCE represents a summary of voters’ multidimensional preferences that combines directionality and intensity according to a probabilistic generalization of the Borda rule. We demonstrate why incorporating both the directionality and intensity of multi-attribute preferences is essential for analyzing real-world elections, in whichceteris paribuscomparisons almost never occur. Second, and in further empirical support of this point, we show how this aggregation translates directly into a primary quantity of interest to election scholars: the effect of a change in an attribute on a candidate’s or party’s expected vote share. These properties hold irrespective of the heterogeneity, strength, or interactivity of voters’ preferences and regardless of how votes are aggregated into seats. Finally, we propose, formalize, and evaluate the feasibility of using conjoint data to estimate alternative quantities of interest to electoral studies, including the effect of an attribute on the probability of winning.

Many contend that U.S. state parties are increasingly polarized and nationalized, meaning that they have adopted divergent positions matching their national counterparts’ positions. Such trends reflect a transformation of America's historically decentralized party system. Yet, the precise timing of these related trends—as well as the mechanisms underpinning them—remain unclear. We assess these dynamics using a novel data set of 1,783 state party platforms between 1918 and 2017. Applying tools from automated and manual content analysis, we document a dramatic divergence in the topics emphasized by Democrats and Republicans starting in the mid-1990s, just as congressional speech became polarized. During this period, cross-state differences in each party's agenda decreased and regional/sectoral issues became less prominent, suggesting tight connections between polarization, nationalization, and state agendas. We also find that innovative phrases increasingly debut in state (not national) platforms. Overall, the evidence undercuts claims of top-down polarization emanating from national party leaders in Washington, DC. Polarization at the state and federal levels coincided with the development of an integrated network of activists spanning multiple levels of the polity.

Although prior scholarship has made considerable progress in measuring politicians’ positions, it has only rarely considered voters’ or activists’ perceptions of those positions. Here, we present a novel measure of U.S. senators’ perceived ideologies derived from 9,030 pairwise comparisons elicited from party activists in three 2016 YouGov surveys. By focusing on activists, we study a most-likely case for perceiving within-party ideological distinctions. We also gain empirical leverage from Donald Trump’s nomination and heterodox positions on some issues. Our measure of perceived ideology is correlated with nominate but differs in informative ways: senators with very conservative voting records were sometimes perceived as less conservative if they did not support Trump. A confirmatory test shows these trends extended into 2021. Even among activists, perceived ideology appears to be anchored by prominent people as well as policy positions.

The US welfare state provides key benefits indirectly. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), for example, uses a package including exchanges, subsidies, and penalties to increase health insurance enrollme...

Extensive research on racial contexts suggests that white Americans living near black Americans adopt more negative racial attitudes. Theoretically, local intergroup exposure has been conceptualize...

Purpose To investigate partisanship in COVID-19 attitudes, and assess partisan or scientific messaging effects on COVID-19 vaccination intentions. Design Two-wave survey with two-arm randomized experiment. Setting Recruited Pennsylvania residents online. Sample 2037 (May 2020) and 1577 (October 2020) Pennsylvania residents, aged 18–94 years. Intervention Respondents saw messaging that presented either President Trump or scientists endorsing the vaccine, then reported their vaccination intentions. Measures Likert scale items measuring COVID-19 attitudes (May), including mask wearing and vaccination intentions (May and October). Analysis Partisan differences in attitudes were analyzed by chi-square; differences in support for mask wearing and vaccination intentions were also analyzed by Mann–Whitney U. The messaging experiment was analyzed by chi-square, Mann–Whitney U, and survey-weighted multivariate logistic regression. Results Significant partisan differences were found in all attitudes. The partisan split in support for mask wearing increased from May to October, whereas the split in vaccination intentions decreased. Compared to partisan messaging, scientific messaging increased overall odds of intending to vaccinate by 32% in May (adjusted odds ratio [AOR]=1.32, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.06-1.65), and increased odds among Democrats by 142% in October (AOR = 2.42, CI = 1.29-4.55). Scientific messaging had no significant effect on independents or Republicans. Conclusion Partisan COVID-19 attitudes were widespread and persistent. Partisan endorsement of the vaccine positively influenced those with congruent beliefs, while scientific messaging produced consistent effects across political affiliation.

Every year during the open enrollment period, hundreds of thousands of individuals across the Affordable Care Act marketplaces begin the enrollment process but fail to complete it, thereby resulting in coverage gaps or going uninsured.To investigate if low-cost ($0.55 per person) letters can increase health insurance enrollment.This intent-to-treat randomized clinical trial was conducted during the final 2 weeks of the 2015 open enrollment period among the 37 states on the HealthCare.gov platform. The trial targeted 744 510 individuals who started the enrollment process but had yet to complete it. Data were analyzed from January through August 2021.Study participants were randomized to either a no-letter control group or to 1 of 8 letter variants that drew on evidence from the behavioral sciences about what motivates individuals to take action.The primary outcome was the health insurance enrollment rate at the end of the open enrollment period.Of the 744 510 individuals (mean [SD] age, 41.9 [19.6] years; 53.9% women), 136 122 (18.3%) were in the control group and 608 388 (81.7%) were in the treatment group. Most lived in Medicaid nonexpansion states (72.7%), and a plurality were between 30 and 50 years old (41.0%). For race and ethnicity, 3.0% self-identified as Asian, 14.0% as Black, 5.1% as Hispanic, 39.8% as non-Hispanic White, and 38.2% as other or unknown. By the end of the open enrollment period, 4.0% of the control group enrolled in health insurance coverage. Comparatively, the enrollment rate in the pooled treatment group was 4.3%, which demonstrated an increase of 0.3 percentage points (95% CI, 0.2-0.4 percentage points;This randomized clinical trial shows that letters designed with best practices from the behavioral sciences literature were a low-cost way to increase health insurance enrollment in the Affordable Care Act marketplaces. More research is needed to understand what messages are most effective amid the recently passed American Rescue Plan.ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT05010395.

In his campaign and first few years in office, Donald Trump consistently defied contemporary norms by using explicit, negative rhetoric targeting ethnic/racial minorities. Did this rhetoric lead White Americans to express more or less prejudiced views of African Americans or Hispanics, whether through changing norms around racial prejudice or other mechanisms? We assess that question using a thirteen-wave panel conducted with a population-based sample of Americans between 2008 and 2018. We find that via most measures, White Americans’ expressed anti-Black and anti-Hispanic prejudice declined after Trump’s political emergence, and we can rule out even small increases in the expression of prejudice. These results suggest the limits of racially charged rhetoric’s capacity to heighten prejudice among White Americans overall. They also indicate that rather than being a fixed predisposition, prejudice can shift by reacting against changing presidential rhetoric.

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.

Divisions between Whites and Blacks have long influenced voting. Yet given America’s growing Latino population, will Whites’ attitudes toward Blacks continue to predict their voting behavior? Might anti-Latino prejudice join or supplant them? These questions took on newfound importance after the 2016 campaign, in which the Republican candidate’s rhetoric targeted immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere. We examine the relationship between Whites’ prejudices, immigration attitudes, and voting behavior using a population-based panel spanning 9 years. Donald Trump’s candidacy activated anti-Black but not anti-Latino prejudice, while other GOP candidates had no such effect. This and other evidence suggests that Whites’ prejudice against Blacks is potentially activated even when salient political rhetoric does not target them exclusively. These results shed light on the continued political impact of anti-Black prejudice while deepening our understanding of the mobilization of prejudice and the associated psychological mechanisms.

Perceived discrimination (PD) is reliably and strongly associated with partisan identity (PID) among US immigrant minorities such as Latinos and Asian Americans. Yet whether PD causes PID remains unclear, since it is possible that partisanship influences perceptions of discrimination or that other factors drive the observed association. Here, we assess the causal influence of group-level PD on PID using five experiments with Latino and Asian American adults. These experiments varied in important ways: they took place inside and outside the lab, occurred prior to and during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, and tested different manifestations of PD and partisan attitudes (total n = 2,528). These efforts point to a simple but unexpected conclusion: our experiments and operationalizations do not support the claim that group-targeted PD directly causes PID. These results have important implications for understanding partisanship among immigrants and their co-ethnics and the political incorporation of Latinos and Asian Americans.

Evidence from 30,000 election precincts: Voters switching from Obama to Trump substantially drove vote change, 2012 to 2016., 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.

Recent years have seen a renaissance of conjoint survey designs within social science. To date, however, researchers have lacked guidance on how many attributes they can include within conjoint profiles before survey satisficing leads to unacceptable declines in response quality. This paper addresses that question using pre-registered, two-stage experiments examining choices among hypothetical candidates for US Senate or hotel rooms. In each experiment, we use the first stage to identify attributes which are perceived to be uncorrelated with the attribute of interest, so that their effects are not masked by those of the core attributes. In the second stage, we randomly assign respondents to conjoint designs with varying numbers of those filler attributes. We report the results of these experiments implemented via Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Survey Sampling International. They demonstrate that our core quantities of interest are generally stable, with relatively modest increases in survey satisficing when respondents face large numbers of attributes.

The violent conclusion of Trump's 2017-2021 presidency has produced sobering reassessments of American democracy. Elected officials' actions necessarily implicate public opinion, but to what extent did Trump's presidency and its anti-democratic efforts reflect shifts in public opinion in prior years? Were there attitudinal changes that served as early-warning signs? We answer those questions via a 15-wave, population-based panel 2007-2020. Specifically, we track attitudes including system legitimacy and election fairness, assessments of Trump and other politicians, open-ended explanations of vote choice and party perceptions, and Whites’ racial attitudes. Across measures, there was little movement in public opinion foreshadowing Trump's norm-upending presidency, although levels of out-party animus were consistently high. Recent shifts in public opinion were thus not a primary engine of the Trump presidency's anti-democratic efforts or their violent conclusion. Such stability suggests understanding the precipitating causes of those efforts requires attention to other actors including activists and elites.

Two prominent, compatible accounts contend that Asian Americans and Latinos are not strongly connected to America's political parties and that their partisanship is responsive to identity threats. Donald Trump's political ascent presents a critical test, as Trump reoriented the Republican Party by foregrounding anti-immigrant hostility. Here, we test these perspectives using one of the first-ever population-based panels of Asian Americans and Latinos fielded 2016 to 2018. Across various empirical tests, we uncover surprising strength and stability in respondents’ partisan identities. In a period of pronounced anti-immigrant rhetoric, these groups remained steadfast in their party affiliation. We also show that pan-ethnic identities were stable over this period, that partisanship can shape subsequent pan-ethnic identities, and that few respondents describe the parties with reference to ethnic/racial groups in either year. By 2016, pan-ethnic identities were already stably integrated with partisanship, with little evidence of situational shifts in response to identity threats.

COVID-19 compelled government officials in the U.S. and elsewhere to institute social distancing policies, shuttering much of the economy. At a time of low trust and high polarization, Americans may only support such disruptive policies when recommended by same-party politicians. A related concern is that some may resist advice from “elite” sources such as government officials or public health experts. We test these possibilities using novel data from two online surveys with embedded experiments conducted with approximately 2,000 Pennsylvania residents each, in spring 2020 (Study 1 in April and Study 2 in May-June). We uncover partisan differences in views on several coronavirus-related policies, which grew larger between surveys. Yet overall, Study 1 respondents report strong support for social distancing policies and high trust in medical experts. Moreover, an experiment in Study 1 finds no evidence of reduced support for social distancing policies when advocated by elites, broadly defined. A second experiment in Study 2 finds no backlash for a policy described as being backed by public health experts, but a cross-party decline in support for the same policy when backed by government officials. This suggests that, in polarized times, public health experts might be better advocates for collectively beneficial public policies during public health crises than government officials.

Enacted in 2010, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) has reshaped U.S. health policy. Yet overall opinions on the law remained relatively stable during the few years before and after enactment. In a polarized era, can the implementation of a complex program such as the ACA influence public opinion through a policy feedback? Research on policy feedbacks and self-interest provide competing expectations. To address that question, we consider the impact of the Medicaid expansion which took place in select states. Using differences-in-differences estimation and 2010-2017 surveys of more than 51,000 non-elderly American adults, we show that the Medicaid expansion made low-income Americans on average 4.4 percentage points more favorable toward the ACA (SD=1.7) relative to those in non-expansion states. Given that we find no such effect for high-income respondents, these results are consistent with an impact via self-interest and with a policy feedback on public opinion.

Prior research finds that exposure to outgroup exemplars reduces prejudice, but it has focused on most-likely cases. We examine whether salient outgroup exemplars can reduce prejudice under more challenging conditions, such as when they are counter-stereotypical but not well-liked, and the audience is heterogeneous and holds strong priors. Specifically, we assess the impact of the Obama exemplar under the less auspicious conditions of the 2012 U.S. presidential campaign. Using panel data, we find that racial prejudice declined during the campaign, especially among Whites with the most exposure to Obama through political television. Liking Obama proved irrelevant to these effects, as did partisanship. Racial prejudice increased slightly after the campaign ended, but the effects remained largely intact weeks later.

© 2018 by the Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved. Previous research shows that people commonly exaggerate the size of minority populations. Theories of intergroup threat predict that the larger people perceive minority groups to be, the less favorably they feel toward them. We investigate whether correcting Americans’ misperceptions about one such population—immigrants—affects related attitudes. We confirm that non-Hispanic Americans overestimate the percentage of the population that is foreign-born or in the United States without authorization. However, in seven separate survey experiments over 11 years, we find that providing accurate information does little to affect attitudes toward immigration, even though it does reduce the perceived size of the foreign-born population. This is true even when people’s misperceptions are explicitly corrected. These results call into question a potential cognitive mechanism that could underpin intergroup threat theory. Misperceptions about the size of minority groups may be a consequence, rather than a cause, of attitudes toward those groups.

Experiments demonstrate that elites can influence public opinion through framing. Yet outside laboratories or surveys, real-world constraints are likely to limit elites’ ability to reshape public opinion. Additionally, it is difficult to distinguish framing from related processes empirically. This paper uses the 2009–2010 health care debate, coupled with automated content analyses of elite- and mass-level language, to study real-world framing effects. Multiple empirical tests uncover limited but real evidence of elite influence. The language Americans use to explain their opinions proves generally stable, although there is also evidence that the public adopts the language of both parties’ elites symmetrically. Elite rhetoric does not appear to have strong effects on Americans’ overall evaluations of health care reform, but it can influence the reasons they provide for their evaluations. Methodologically, the automated analysis of elite rhetoric and open-ended questions shows promise in distinguishing framing from other communication effects and illuminating elite-mass interactions.

One contentious question in contemporary election administration is the impact of voter identification requirements. We study a Virginia law that allows us to isolate the impact of requiring voters to show photo identification. Using novel, precinct-level data, we find that the percentage of registered voters without a driver's license and over age 85 are both positively associated with the number of provisional ballots cast due to a lack of a photo ID. To examine the law's impact on turnout, we associate precinct-level demographics with the change in turnout between the 2013 gubernatorial and 2014 midterm elections. All else equal, turnout was higher in places where more active registered voters lacked a driver's license. This unexpected relationship might be explained by a targeted Department of Elections mailing, suggesting that the initial impact of voter ID laws may hinge on efforts to notify voters likely to be affected.

Retrospective voting is a central explanation for voters’ support of incumbents. Yet, despite the variety of conditions facing American cities, past research has devoted little attention to retrospective voting for mayors. This paper first develops hypotheses about how local retrospective voting might differ from its national analog, due to both differing information sources and the presence of national benchmarks. It then analyzes retrospective voting using the largest data set on big-city mayoral elections between 1990 and 2011 to date. Neither crime rates nor property values consistently influence incumbent mayors’ vote shares, nor do changes in local conditions. However, low city-level unemployment relative to national unemployment correlates with higher incumbent support. The urban voter is a particular type of retrospective voter, one who compares local economic performance to conditions elsewhere. Moreover, these effects appear to be present only in cities that dominate their media markets, suggesting media outlets’ role in facilitating retrospective voting.

The ability to cast a mail ballot can be an important safeguard to the franchise. But because there are often additional procedural protections to ensure that a ballot cast in person is counted, voting by mail can also jeopardize people's ability to cast a ballot that is counted. An experiment carried out during the COVID-19 pandemic illustrates both of these forces. Philadelphia city officials randomly sent approximately 47,000 Philadelphia voters postcards encouraging them to apply to vote by mail in the lead-up to the June 2, 2020 primary election. While the intervention increased the share of Philadelphia voters who cast a mail ballot by 0.4 percentage points (p=0.017)--or 3%--many of these additional mail ballots counted only because a last-minute policy intervention allowing mail ballots postmarked by Election Day to count.

COVID-19 has compelled officials to institute social distancing policies, shuttering much of the economy. At a time of low trust in government and high political polarization, Americans may only support such disruptive policies if recommended by politicians of their own party. A related concern is that some Americans may resist advice coming from "elite" sources such as government officials, public health experts, or the news media. We test these possibilities using novel data from an April 2020 online survey of 1,912 Pennsylvania residents. We uncover partisan differences in views on several coronavirus-related policies. Yet overall, respondents report strong support for social distancing policies and high levels of trust in medical experts. Moreover, a survey experiment finds no evidence of more negative reactions to or less support for social distancing policies when they are advocated by elites, broadly defined. Instead, respondents over 65 prove more likely to adopt expert-advocated positions.

Political scientists have increasingly deployed conjoint survey experiments to understand multi-dimensional choices in various settings. We demonstrate that the Average Marginal Component Effect (AMCE) constitutes an aggregation of individual-level preferences that translates into a primary quantity of interest to empirical election scholars: the effect of a change in an attribute on a candidate or party's expected vote share. This property holds irrespective of the heterogeneity, strength, or interactivity of voters' preferences and regardless of how votes are aggregated into seats. Overall, our results indicate the AMCE's central role in understanding elections, a conclusion buttressed by a corresponding literature review. We also provide practical advice on interpreting AMCEs. Finally, we propose, formalize, and evaluate the feasibility of using conjoint data to estimate alternative quantities of interest to electoral studies, including the effect of an attribute on the probability of winning.

Changes in partisan outcomes between consecutive elections must come from changes in the composition of electorate or changes in the vote choices of consistent voters. The extent to which electoral change is driven by composition versus conversion has critical implications for political systems including the nature of the electoral connection and politicians' strategies while campaigning and governing. Here, we analyze electoral change between the 2012 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections using administrative data. At the precinct level, the smallest geography at which vote counts are available, we merge election returns with individual-level turnout records from 37 million registered voters in six key states. While both factors aided the GOP in 2016 in some places, our analysis suggests that pro-GOP conversion among two-election voters was particularly impactful, especially in states including Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania where the pro-GOP swings were largest. Conversion among two-election voters remains critical to electoral change.

To date, field experiments on campaign tactics have focused overwhelmingly on mobilization and voter turnout, with far more limited attention to persuasion and vote choice. In this paper, we analyze a field experiment with 56,000 Wisconsin voters designed to measure the persuasive effects of canvassing, phone calls, and mailings during the 2008 presidential election. Focusing on the canvassing treatment, we find that persuasive appeals had two unintended consequences. First, they reduced responsiveness to a follow-up survey among infrequent voters, a substantively meaningful behavioral response that has the potential to induce bias in estimates of persuasion effects as well. Second, the persuasive appeals possibly reduced candidate support and almost certainly did not increase it. This counterintuitive finding is reinforced by multiple statistical methods and suggests that contact by a political campaign may engender a backlash.

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 non-electoral outcomes or has 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 novel, precinct-level data set of election results and demographic measures for more than 26,000 precincts in Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. We employ regression analyses varying model specifications and measures of demographic change. Our estimates uncover little evidence that influxes of Hispanics or non-citizen immigrants benefitted Trump relative to past Republicans, and in fact suggest that these changes helped his opponent, Hillary Clinton.

The U.S. welfare state provides key benefits indirectly. The Affordable Care Act (ACA), for example, uses a package including exchanges, subsidies, and penalties to increase health insurance enrollment. Prior research indicates that indirect policies do not produce feedback effects on public opinion, but the ACA was unusually salient and complex. Can such indirect policies produce feedback effects, and are any such effects heterogeneous? Here, we use several data sets and inferential strategies to show that groups especially affected by the exchanges and the associated insurance mandate did shift their ACA attitudes, albeit in opposing directions and with more limited effects than descriptive analyses suggest. Among our findings, those who experienced rising local prices became more opposed to the ACA while those who stood to benefit from some changes to the individual markets became more favorable. Overall, positive changes in attitudes were offset by demographically concentrated, negative shifts among the uninsured.

In his campaign and first few years in office, Donald Trump consistently defied contemporary norms by using explicit, negative rhetoric targeting ethnic/racial minorities. Did this rhetoric lead white Americans to express more or less prejudiced views of African Americans or Hispanics, whether through changing norms around racial prejudice or other mechanisms? We assess that question using a 13-wave panel conducted with a population-based sample of Americans between 2008 and 2018. We find that via most measures, white Americans' expressed anti-Black and anti-Hispanic prejudice declined after Trump's political emergence, and we can rule out even small increases in the expression of prejudice. These results suggest the limits of racially charged rhetoric's capacity to heighten prejudice among white Americans overall. They also indicate that rather than being a fixed predisposition, prejudice can shift by reacting against changing presidential rhetoric.

Immigrants' perceptions of discrimination (PD) correlate strongly with various political outcomes, including group consciousness and partisan identity. Here, we examine the hypothesis that immigrants' PD vary across US localities, as threatened responses by native-born residents may increase perceived discrimination among neighboring immigrants. We also consider the alternative hypothesis that barriers to the expression and detection of discrimination decouple native-born attitudes from immigrants' perceptions about their treatment. We test these claims by analyzing three national surveys of almost 11,000 first-generation Latino, Asian, and Muslim immigrants. The results indicate that immigrants' PD hardly vary across localities. While anti-immigrant attitudes are known to be geographically clustered, immigrants' PD prove not to be. This mismatch helps us narrow the potential causes of perceived discrimination, and it suggests the value of further research into perceived discrimination's consequen...

In recent years, political and social scientists have made increasing use of conjoint survey designs to study decision-making. Here, we study a consequential question which researchers confront when implementing conjoint designs: How many choice tasks can respondents perform before survey satisficing degrades response quality? To answer the question, we run a set of experiments where respondents are asked to complete as many as 30 conjoint tasks. Experiments conducted through Amazon's Mechanical Turk and Survey Sampling International demonstrate the surprising robustness of conjoint designs, as there are detectable but quite limited increases in survey satisficing as the number of tasks increases. Our evidence suggests that in similar study contexts researchers can assign dozens of tasks without substantial declines in response quality. Key Words: conjoint analysis, survey experiments, survey fatigue, response bias

Divisions between Whites and Blacks have long influenced voting. Yet given America's growing Latino population, will Whites' attitudes toward Blacks continue to predict their voting behavior? Might anti-Latino prejudice join or supplant them? These questions took on newfound importance after the 2016 campaign, in which the Republican candidate's rhetoric targeted immigrants from Mexico and elsewhere. We examine the relationship between Whites' prejudices, immigration attitudes, and voting behavior using a population-based panel spanning 9 years. Donald Trump's candidacy activated anti-Black but not anti-Latino prejudice, while other GOP candidates had no such effect. This and other evidence suggests that Whites' prejudice against Blacks is potentially activated even when salient political rhetoric does not target them exclusively. These results shed light on the continued political impact of anti-Black prejudice while deepening our understanding of the mobilization of prejudice. %They also illustrate a psychological mechanism through which rhetoric targeting one group may evoke longstanding cognitive associations about another.

Citizens’ economic perceptions can shape their political and economic behavior, making the origins of those perceptions an important question. Research commonly posits that media coverage is a central source. Here, we test that prospect while considering the alternative hypothesis that media coverage instead echoes public perceptions. This paper applies a straightforward automated measure of the tone of economic coverage to 490,039 articles from 24 national and local media outlets over more than three decades. By matching the 245,947 survey respondents in the Survey of Consumer Attitudes and Behavior to measures of contemporaneous media coverage, we can assess the sequencing of changes in media coverage and public perceptions. Together, these data illustrate that newspaper coverage does not systematically precede public perceptions of the economy, a finding which analyses of television transcripts reinforce. Neither national nor local newspapers appear to strongly influence economic perceptions.

Many studies have examined Americans' immigration attitudes. Yet prior research frequently confounds multiple questions, including which immigrants to admit and how many to admit. To isolate attitudes on the former question, we use a conjoint experiment that simultaneously tests the influence of nine immigrant attributes in generating support for admission. Drawing on a two-wave, population-based survey, we demonstrate that Americans view educated immigrants in high-status jobs favorably, whereas they view those who lack plans to work, entered without authorization, are Iraqi, or do not speak English unfavorably. Strikingly, Americans' preferences vary little with their own education, partisanship, labor market position, ethnocentrism, or other attributes. Beneath partisan divisions over immigration lies a broad consensus about who should be admitted to the country. The results are consistent with norms-based and sociotropic explanations of immigration attitudes. This consensus points to limits in both theories emphasizing economic and cultural threats, and sheds new light on an ongoing policy debate