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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.

Governments issue "stay-at-home" orders to reduce the spread of contagious diseases, but the magnitude of such orders' effectiveness remains uncertain. In the United States these orders were not coordinated at the national level during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which creates an opportunity to use spatial and temporal variation to measure the policies' effect. Here, we combine data on the timing of stay-at-home orders with daily confirmed COVID-19 cases and fatalities at the county level during the first seven weeks of the outbreak in the United States. We estimate the association between stay-at-home orders and alterations in COVID-19 cases and fatalities using a difference-in-differences design that accounts for unmeasured local variation in factors like health systems and demographics and for unmeasured temporal variation in factors like national mitigation actions and access to tests. Compared to counties that did not implement stay-at-home orders, the results show that the orders are associated with a 30.2 percent (11.0 to 45.2) average reduction in weekly incident cases after one week, a 40.0 percent (23.4 to 53.0) reduction after two weeks, and a 48.6 percent (31.1 to 61.7) reduction after three weeks. Stay-at-home orders are also associated with a 59.8 percent (18.3 to 80.2) average reduction in weekly fatalities after three weeks. These results suggest that stay-at-home orders might have reduced confirmed cases by 390,000 (170,000 to 680,000) and fatalities by 41,000 (27,000 to 59,000) within the first three weeks in localities that implemented stay-at-home orders.

Are voters as polarized as political leaders when it comes to their preferences about how to cast their ballots in November 2020 and their policy positions on how elections should be run in light of the COVID-19 outbreak? Prior research has shown little party divide on voting by mail, with nearly equal percentages of voters in both parties choosing to vote this way where it is an option. Has a divide opened up this year in how voters aligned with the Democratic and Republican parties prefer to cast a ballot? We address these questions with two nationally diverse, online surveys fielded from April 8 to 10 and June 11 to 13, of 5,612 and 5,818 eligible voters, respectively, with an embedded experiment providing treated respondents with scientific projections about the COVID-19 outbreak. We find a nearly 10 percentage point difference between Democrats and Republicans in their preference for voting by mail in April, which had doubled in size to nearly 20 percentage points in June. This partisan gap is wider still for those exposed to scientific projections about the pandemic. We also find that support for national legislation requiring states to offer no-excuse absentee ballots has emerged as an increasingly polarized issue.

Evidence across social science indicates that average effects of persuasive messages are small. One commonly offered explanation for these small effects is heterogeneity: Persuasion may only work well in specific circumstances. To evaluate heterogeneity, we repeated an experiment weekly in real time using 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign advertisements. We tested 49 political advertisements in 59 unique experiments on 34,000 people. We investigate heterogeneous effects by sender (candidates or groups), receiver (subject partisanship), content (attack or promotional), and context (battleground versus non-battleground, primary versus general election, and early versus late). We find small average effects on candidate favorability and vote. These small effects, however, do not mask substantial heterogeneity even where theory from political science suggests that we should find it. During the primary and general election, in battleground states, for Democrats, Republicans, and Independents, effects are similarly small. Heterogeneity with large offsetting effects is not the source of small average effects.

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.

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.

Millions of California voters regularly turn out in November but abstain from primary elections.A randomized Get Out the Vote experiment conducted in the state’s 2014 primary contestshows that this dormant electorate can be mobilized if campaigns target these unlikely voters.Here, we extend these findings to examine whether the electoral context of the district shapes theeffectiveness of a primary mobilization effort. To do so, we develop two conceptualizations ofcampaign context. The first is based on a district’s typical level of competitiveness. The secondlooks at total spending levels in the current campaign. Theories of voter information processingpredict differential responsiveness by voters to mobilization efforts in these different contexts.To test these predictions, we analyze a field experiment that sends direct mail to 149,596 registeredlow-propensity California voters. Consistent with theory, we find that voter mobilizationmailings have different effects in these two distinct contexts. Although mobilization efforts alwaysincrease turnout, in districts that are typically competitive we find that mobilization effortsare more effective. In contrast, in districts that saw large amounts of spending in the 2014 race,the same treatments are less effective. This suggests that a campaign looking for the largest marginalreturn should target races that have been competitive in prior races but that are receivinglittle attention in the present contest.

Those who turn out in American primary elections are a small and unrepresentative subset of the population. Why do citizens forgo participation in nominating contests yet vote in general elections? We argue that limited contact lowers participation in primary elections. We present results from a randomized field experiment with near 150,000 letters in California’s 2014 primary. Each letter went to one of the four million Californians who had participated in recent general elections but not in primaries. We find that a single letter increased turnout by 0.5 points from a base rate of 9.3 percent. This increase is more than twice the average effect calculated in a recent meta-analysis and represents a proportional increase of 5.4 percent. Our experiment shows that registrants who typically abstain from primaries—and who are thus often ignored by campaigns—can be effectively mobilized.

What are the effects of a mobilized party base on elections? I present a new behavioral measure of the enthusiasm gap in a set of American elections to identify how the turnout rate of the party faithful varies across different contexts. I find that the advantaged party can see its registrants turn out by four percentage points more than the disadvantaged party in some elections, and that this effect can be even larger in competitive House districts. I estimate the net benefit to party vote share of the mobilized base, which is around one percentage point statewide, and up to one and one half points in competitive House contests. These results suggest that the partisan characteristics of an election have consequences not just for vote choice, but for the composition of the electorate.

Scholars do not usually test for the duration of the effects of mass communication, but when they do, they typically find rapid decay. Persuasive impact may end almost as soon as communication ends. Why so much decay? Does mass communication produce any long-term effects? How should this decay color our understanding of the effects of mass communication? We examine these questions with data from the effects of advertising in the 2000 presidential election and 2006 subnational elections, but argue that our model and results are broadly applicable within the field of political communication. We find that the bulk of the persuasive impact of advertising decays quickly, but that some effect in the presidential campaign endures for at least 6 weeks. These results, which are similar in rolling cross-section survey data and county-level data on actual presidential vote, appear to reflect a mix of memory-based processing (whose effects last only as long as short-term memory lasts) and online processing (whose effects are more durable). Finally, we find that immediate effects of advertising are larger in subnational than presidential elections, but decay more quickly and more completely. [Supplementary material is available for this article. Go to the publisher's online edition of Political Communication for the following free supplemental resource(s): discussion of methodological issues; results for a alternative specifications of key models; full reports of model results.]. © 2013 Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Previous research finds that nominating more centrist candidates increases vote share and win probability in congressional general elections. Yet party primary elections often nominate non‐centrist candidates, increasing polarization between the American parties. We develop a model of choice in nomination politics that shows when and how actors respond to incentives of the general election. We then combine 200 million contribution records with data on 22,400 candidates in 7100 House primary elections from 1980 through 2016. We find that potential candidates and primary voters respond to general election incentives but do not find clear evidence for contributors or the winnowing process. Connecting these results back to our model, this implies that actors in the invisible primary either place higher value on in‐party candidate ideology or have different beliefs about the general election than do primary voters. Our evidence adds to a body of research that suggests primary voters are a larger moderating force than elites in American party politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2020 presidential election brought expanded vote-by-mail opportunities, a rise in attacks on this process's integrity, and the implementation of novel programs such as California's Where's My Ballot? system to ensure confidence in mail balloting. Can heightening awareness of this ballot-tracking system and other election protections alleviate fraud concerns and raise turnout? We assess whether messages reinforcing election integrity increased participation in the 2020 election through a large-scale voter mobilization field experiment. California registrants were mailed a letter that described either existing safeguards to prevent vote-by-mail fraud or the ability to track one's ballot and ensure that it was counted. Analysis of state voter records reveals that neither message increased turnout over a simple election reminder or even no contact, even among subgroups where larger effects might be expected. In the context of a high-profile, high-turnout presidential election, assurances about ballot and electoral integrity did not increase turnout. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars, pundits, and politicians use opinion surveys to study citizen beliefs about political facts, such as the current unemployment rate, and more conspiratorial beliefs, such as whether Barack Obama was born abroad. Many studies, however, ignore acquiescence-response bias, the tendency for survey respondents to endorse any assertion made in a survey question regardless of content. With new surveys fielding questions asked in recent scholarship, we show that acquiescence bias inflates estimated incidence of conspiratorial beliefs and political misperceptions in the United States and China by up to 50%. Acquiescence bias is disproportionately prevalent among more ideological respondents, inflating correlations between political ideology such as conservatism and endorsement of conspiracies or misperception of facts. We propose and demonstrate two methods to correct for acquiescence bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Moderates are often overlooked in contemporary research on American voters. Many scholars who have examined moderates argue that these individuals are only classified as such due to a lack of political sophistication or conflicted views across issues. We develop a method to distinguish three ways an individual might be classified as moderate: having genuinely moderate views across issues, being inattentive to politics or political surveys, or holding views poorly summarized by a single liberal–conservative dimension. We find that a single ideological dimension accurately describes most, but not all, Americans' policy views. Using the classifications from our model, we demonstrate that moderates and those whose views are not well explained by a single dimension are especially consequential for electoral selection and accountability. These results suggest a need for renewed attention to the middle of the American political spectrum. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 2008 Presidential election took place in the shadow of a national economic crisis characterized by the bursting of a housing bubble, a sharp decline in financial markets, and growing [...]

Many believe primary elections distort representation in American legislatures because unrepresentative actors nominate extremist candidates. Advocates have reformed primaries to broaden voter participation and increase representation. Empirical evidence, however, is quite variable on the effects of reform. I argue that when institutional reform narrows one pathway of political influence, aggrieved actors take political action elsewhere to circumvent reform. I use a difference-in-differences design in the American states and find that although changing primary rules increases primary turnout, campaign contributions also increase with reform. Implementing nonpartisan primaries and reforming partisan primaries lead to estimated 9 and 21 percent increases in individual campaign contributions per cycle. This suggests actors substitute action across avenues of political influence to limit effects of institutional reform. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]