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Estimating incumbency advantage and its variation, as an example of a before/after study Gelman, Andrew Huang, Zaiying Uploaded 02-07-2003 Keywords Bayesian inference before-after study Congressional elections Gibbs Abstract Incumbency advantage is one of the most studied features in American legislative elections. In this paper, we construct and implement an estimate that allows incumbency advantage to vary between individual incumbents. This model predicts that open-seat elections will be less variable than those with incumbents running, an observed empirical pattern that is not explained by previous models. We apply our method to the U.S. House of Representatives in the twentieth century: our estimate of the overall pattern of incumbency advantage over time is similar to previous estimates (although slightly lower), and we also find a pattern of increasing variation. In addition to the application to incumbency advantage, our approach represents a new method, using multilevel modeling, for estimating effects in before/after studies.

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Coordination, Moderation and Institutional Balancing in American House Elections at Midterm Mebane, Walter R. Wand, Jonathan Uploaded 09-02-1999 Keywords campaign finance itemized contributions congressional elections generalized linear mixed model Monte Carlo EM random effects conditional compound Poisson process Abstract We use Federal Election Commission itemized contributions data from 1984 to estimate a model of campaign contributions in U.S. House elections. The model is a dynamic system of conditional compound Poisson processes in which there are contributions from both individuals and political action committees (PACs). The model includes random effects to allow for unobserved heterogeneity among districts and candidates. The dynamic effects measure how contributions to one candidate react to contributions to other candidates, as well as how contributions from individuals interact with contributions from PACs. We test the hypothesis that some candidates received higher contributions because of PAC endorsements. We also test whether national expectations about presidential election outcomes affect contributions to House candidates, as predicted by a policy moderating model. We use a Monte Carlo EM algorithm to optimize the likelihood of the model in specifications that include more than one random effect.

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Generic Tests for a Nonlinear Model of Congressional Campaign Dynamics Mebane, Walter R. Uploaded 08-25-1996 Keywords Congress elections campaigns differential equations Hopf bifurcation non-nested hypothesis tests Cox tests bootstrap nonlinear models Abstract I develop a statistical model based on a generic third-order Taylor series approximation for differential equation systems that exhibit Hopf bifurcation in order to use district-level cross-sectional data to test a nonlinear dynamic formal model of campaign contributions, district service and voting during and after a U.S. House election. The statistical model represents the key nonlinearities of the formal model's Cournot-Nash equilibrium in a highly robust fashion. For data from the years 1984--85 and 1986--87, non-nested hypothesis tests (implemented using a calibrated, parametric bootstrap method) show that under assumptions of multivariate normality, the nonlinear model is vastly superior to the generic linear alternative defined by the sample mean vector and covariance matrix.

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A method for measuring and decomposing electoral bias for the three-party case Borisyuk, Galina Johnston, Ron Rallings, Colin Thrasher, Michael Uploaded 03-26-2008 Keywords electoral bias decomposition of bias British parliamentary elections Abstract The paper provides a method for measuring and decomposing electoral bias for the three-party case. It builds on the two-party method first developed by Ralph Brookes in the late 1950s. Modifications to the original Brookes method developed in the early 1990s were designed to capture the third party effect in the overall distribution of bias but that bias continued to be expressed in terms of the two major parties. Recent general election results in Britain continue to show strong voter support for the third party. This new method specifically considers the three party situation and calculates both overall bias and also its decomposition at the 2005 general election. The results from this new method are then compared with those found by the Brookes method for each election held since 1983.

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Standard Voting Power Indexes Don't Work: An Empirical Analysis Gelman, Andrew Katz, Jonathan Bafumi, Joseph Uploaded 11-02-2002 Keywords Banzhaf index decisive vote elections electoral college Shapley value voting power Abstract Voting power indexes such as that of Banzhaf (1965) are derived, explicitly or implicitly, from the assumption that all votes are equally likely (i.e., random voting). That assumption can be generalized to hold that the probability of a vote being decisive in a jurisdiction with $n$ voters is proportional to $1/sqrt{n}$. We test---and reject---this hypothesis empirically, using data from several different U.S. and European elections. We find that the probability of a decisive vote is approximately proportional to $1/n$. The random voting model (or its generalization, the square-root rule) overestimates the probability of close elections in larger jurisdictions. As a result, classical voting power indexes make voters in large jurisdictions appear more powerful than they really are. The most important political implication of our result is that proportionally weighted voting systems (that is, each jurisdiction gets a number of votes proportional to $n$) are basically fair. This contradicts the claim in the voting power literature that weights should be approximately proportional to $sqrt{n}$.

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The `Turnout Twist' in Japanese Elections Horiuchi, Yusaku Uploaded 09-07-1999 Keywords voter turnout Japanese elections local elections multiple imputation random-effect model simulation Abstract In the United States, as well as in most other democracies, national elections usually attract more votes than local elections. In Japan, they attract more votes in large municipalities but attract less votes in small municipalities. This paper attempts to explain such a puzzling turnout pattern, which is defined as the ``turnout twist''. The random-effect model estimation and the post-estimation simulation find that the most important variable explaining the turnout twist is the voting-age population per seat. The simulation analysis shows that if this variable did not have any significant effect, national elections would attract more votes than local elections in all municipalities. Since this variable itself and its effect on turnout are largely determined by the disproportional apportionment of seats in both national and local elections, the restrictive regulations to mobilizational activities, and the minimal roles played by political parties in mobilizing votes under the multimember constituency system, the paper concludes that the puzzling turnout twist observed in Japanese elections is a product of Japan's unique institutional arrangements.

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Estimating the Probability of Events That have Never Occurred: When Does Your Vote Matter? Gelman, Andrew King, Gary Boscardin, John Uploaded 10-27-1997 Keywords conditional probability decision analysis elections electoral campaigning forecasting political science presidential elections rare events rational choice subjective probability voting power Abstract Researchers sometimes argue that statisticians have little to contribute when few realizations of the process being estimated are observed. We show that this argument is incorrect even in the extreme situation of estimating the probabilities of events so rare that they have never occurred. We show how statistical forecasting models allow us to use empirical data to improve inferences about the probabilities of these events. Our application is estimating the probability that your vote will be decisive in a U.S. presidential election, a problem that has been studied by political scientists for more than two decades. The exact value of this probability is of only minor interest, but the number has important implications for understanding the optimal allocation of campaign resources, whether states and voter groups receive their fair share of attention from prospective presidents, and how formal ``rational choice'' models of voter behavior might be able to explain why people vote at all. We show how the probability of a decisive vote can be estimated empirically from state-level forecasts of the presidential election and illustrate with the example of 1992. Based on generalizations of standard political science forecasting models, we estimate the (prospective) probability of a single vote being decisive as about 1 in 10 million for close national elections such as 1992, varying by about a factor of 10 among states. Our results support the argument that subjective probabilities of many types are best obtained via empirically-based statistical prediction models rather than solely mathematical reasoning. We discuss the implications of our findings for the types of decision analyses that are used in public choice studies.

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How Similar Are They? Rethinking Electoral Congruence Wittenberg, Jason Uploaded 07-05-2008 Keywords voting elections volatility persistence correlation concordance Abstract Electoral continuity and discontinuity have been a staple of voting research for decades. Most researchers have employed Pearson's r as a measure of congruence between two electoral outcomes across a set of geographic units. This paper argues that that practice should be abandoned. The correlation coefficient is almost always\r\nthe wrong measure. The paper recommends other quantities that better accord with\r\nwhat researchers usually mean by electoral persistence. Replications of prior studies in American and comparative politics demonstrate that the consequences of using r\r\nwhen it is inappropriate can be stark. In some cases what we think are continuities are actually discontinuities.

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Is Abortion A Wedge Issue for Latino Voters? Abrajano, Marisa A. Nagler, Jonathan Alvarez, R. Michael Uploaded 09-02-2002 Keywords elections voters abortion issues latino ethnic Abstract In 2000 both major parties courted the growing Latino vote. Republicans hoped to benefit among this group based on the party's pro-life position and the belief that Latinos tend to be ideologically conservative, and that Latinos, in general, are Catholic. We present evidence indicating that this strategy of appealing to Latinos based on George Bush's pro-life stance garnered him fewer votes from the Latino electorate than Republican strategists hoped. While our results confirm that abortion is influential on vote choice at the individual level, abortion's impact at the aggregate level is smaller. When we say abortion is influential at the individual level, we mean that an individual voter is affected by the candidate's position on abortion. The `effect' of abortion we talk about in this case is the change in the probability of a voter choosing Bush (or Gore) if the voter were to change his or her position on abortion while the candidates' positions on abortion remained fixed. However, at the aggregate level we are looking at what would happen if one or the other of the candidates changed his position on abortion. A change in Bush's position would affect all voters. However, abortion's relatively small aggregate level of influence when compared to its impact at the individual level is due to the fact that such a change of position by a candidate would cause him to win some Latino votes based on his abortion stance, and at the same time it would also cause him to lose Latino votes from those who have the opposite view of abortion. As such, when these Latino votes are aggregated, the overall impact of abortion on the total vote is minimal, because the two effects tend to cancel each other out. Our findings are the first we are aware of to measure this overall impact of abortion, though several previous studies (Abramowitz 1995, Alvarez and Nagler 1995 and 1998) have demonstrated the importance of abortion at the individual level. We expect our findings to be applicable to the entire electorate, not just Latinos.

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Uncertainty and Candidate Personality Traits Alvarez, R. Michael Glasgow, Garrett Uploaded 04-16-1998 Keywords uncertainty direct measures of uncertainty survey response ordered probit candidate evaluation candidate traits presidential elections Abstract Recently, some scholars have focused attention on the role of uncertainty in elections (Alvarez 1997, Bartels 1986, Franklin 1991). They reveal that there is a great deal of uncertainty about the issue positions of candidates, and thus the costs of issue voting are burdensome for the average citizen. Further, this uncertainty affects how voters evaluate candidates in two ways. First, voters are less likely to evaluate a candidate in terms of an issue when they are uncertain about the candidate's position on that issue. Second, uncertainty about candidate issue positions has a negative impact on voter evaluations of a candidate. However, it is important to realize that for most individuals, information about the personality traits of candidates comes from the same sources as information about the issue positions of the candidates, generally media outlets. This means that information about the the personalities of candidates is passed through the same noisy channels as information about their issue positions, and is thus subject to the same types of distortions and biases that contribute to the cost of issue information. Although it is likely easier to interpret than issue information, trait information is still subject to uncertainty. In this paper we introduce direct survey measures of candidate personality trait uncertainty. Using survey data drawn from the 1995 and 1996 National Election Studies, we first establish that the direct measure of uncertainty used in this paper is a valid measure. We then examine the effect of trait opinions on candidate evaluations and test the effects that uncertainty about those opinions has on the use of traits in candidate evaluation.

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Economics, Entitlements and Social Issues: Voter Choice in the 1996 Presidential Election Alvarez, R. Michael Nagler, Jonathan Uploaded 08-21-1997 Keywords elections issues ideology economic voting economy multinomial probit Abstract In this paper we examine three sets of explanations for the outcome of the 1996 presidential election campaign. First, we look at the effects of voter perceptions of the national economy on voter support for Clinton. Second we look at the effects of candidate and voter positions on a number of issues and on ideology. Last, we seek to understand whether other issues --- social issues such as abortion as well as issues revolving around entitlements and taxation --- played significant roles in this election. Thus this work extends the work of Alvarez and Nagler (1995), and enriches it with analysis of a more comprehensive set of issues considered. In the end, we are able to pull together each of these different sets of explanations into a consistent analysis of the 1996 presidential election which shows why Clinton won this race, but which also helps us understand why it was that both Dole and Perot fell so far from electoral victory.

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Voter transition estimation in multiparty systems Andreadis, Ioannis Uploaded 07-07-2008 Keywords Elections Voter transition rates Ecological inference Multiparty systems Abstract Recent advances in the field of ecological inference have provided researchers with new tools to estimate voter transition in two-party systems. Although some researchers have dealt with the R x C ecological inference problem, voter transition estimation remains a difficult and tedious goal. As a result scholars of multi-party systems still struggle with their electoral data. In this paper we present a new approach and we propose a new method that deals with this issue.

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The Ordinary Election of Adolf Hitler: A Modern Voting Behavior Approach King, Gary Rosen, Ori Wagner, Alexander F. Uploaded 08-23-2002 Keywords Voting Behavior Ecological Inference Elections Abstract How did free and fair democratic elections lead to the extrordinarily anti-democratic Nazi Party winning control of the Weimar Republic? The profound implications of this question have led scholars to make the Weimar elections the most studied elections in history and ``who voted for Hitler'' the single most asked question in elections research. Yet, despite this overwhelming attention, mostly from historians, the Nazi voting literature has treated these elections as largely unique events and thus comparison with other democratic elections as mostly irrelevant. The literature has also ignored most voting behavior theory and research in political science, and it has only rarely used modern statistical methods. In this paper, we adapt existing political science theories and new methods and find that many of the explanations offered in the Nazi voting literature, while probably correct, do not distinguish this election from almost any other, occuring in any country. For example, the prevailing explanation in the literature, that the Nazis were a ``catch all party'' because most social groups shifted in their favor by roughly the same amount, is a characteristic of the vast majority of election swings in every democracy, and so does not provide a useful explanation. We also show that a standard ``retrospective voting'' account of Nazi voting fits the distinctive aspects of this election well, once we recognize that the voters who were most hurt by the economic depression and hence most likely to oppose the government fall into two separate groups that have divergent interests. Those who were unemployed or at high risk of becomming unemployed shifted to the Communists, whose platform was designed to appeal mainly to this group, whereas the working poor, those at low risk of unemployment but still poor because of the economy (such as self-employed shop keepers and professionals, domestic workers, and helping family members), shifted disproportionately towards the Nazis, and accounted for most of the unusual dynamics of this election. The consequences of the election of Hitler were extraordinary, but the voting behavior that led to it was not.

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Parties, Issue Spaces, and Voting: A Comparative Perspective Alvarez, R. Michael Nagler, Jonathan Willette, Jennifer R. Uploaded 04-20-1998 Keywords elections parties issues comparative Abstract An important property of any party system is the set of choices it presents to the electorate. In this paper we analyze the distribution of the parties in the multidimensional issue space, and introduce the notion of compactness of the party system. We show how compactness can be measured using standard survey items found on national election surveys. By measuring the spacing of the parties relative to the distribution of the voters, we are able to compute a metric-free measure of compactness of the party system. Comparing the compactness of party systems across countries allows us to determine the relative amount of issue choice afforded voters in different polities. We test the impact compactness of the party space has on voter choice in four countries: the United States, the Netherlands, Canada, and Great Britain. We demonstrate that the more compact the issue space on any issue, the less voters weight that issue in making their vote decision. Thus we provide evidence for theories of issue voting.

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Economic Conditions and Presidential Elections Nagler, Jonathan Willette, Jennifer R. Uploaded 08-21-1997 Keywords Elections economic voting replication Abstract One of the more robust findings over the last 50 years in research on elections has been the importance of macroeconomic conditions on voting in U.S. presidential elections. An important contribution to that literature was made by Steven Weatherford in a 1978 article demonstrating that working class voters are more sensitive to economic conditions than are middle class voters in their vote choice. Weatherford's result was based on the 1956 through 1960 elections. We replicate Weatherford's result for 1960, and show that the substantive finding is extremely sensitive to the definition of class. When using occupation groups as the measure of class, we are able to essentially replicate Weatherford's result. However, using income as the measure of class we do not find any evidence to support the same finding for 1960. We then extend the analysis to cover the period 1956 thru 1996 using both an income-based measure of class and an occupation-based measure of class. We show that there does not appear to be a clear pattern distinguishing levels of economic voting between working-class and middle-class voters; though using the occupation-based measure working class voters appear more sensitive to the economy in recent elections. Finally, we offer a new theory of economic voting. We propose that voters vote based on the economic performance of their economic reference group - rather than on their own personal finances or on the state of the national economy.

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Buying Votes with Public Funds in the US Presidential Election: Are Swing or Core Voters Easier to Buy Off? Chen, Jowei Uploaded 07-09-2008 Keywords distributive politics voting turnout elections Abstract In the aftermath of the summer 2004 Florida hurricane season, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) distributed $1.2 billion in disaster aid among 2.6 million individual applications for assistance. This research measures the relative costs and benefits of using FEMA aid to buy votes from swing voters and core voters. First, I compare precinct-level vote counts and individual voter turnout records from the post-hurricane (November 2004) and pre-hurricane (2000 and 2002) elections to measure the effect of FEMA aid on Bush's vote share. Using a two-stage least squares estimator, with hurricane severity measures as instruments for FEMA aid, this analysis reveals that core Republican voters are most electorally responsive to FEMA aid -- $7,000 buys one additional vote for Bush. By contrast, in moderate precincts, each additional Bush vote costs $21,000, while voters in Democratic neighborhoods are unresponsive to receiving FEMA aid. Additionally, by tracking the geographic location of each aid recipient, the data reveal that FEMA favored applicants from Republican neighborhoods over those from Democratic or moderate neighborhoods, even conditioning on hurricane severity, average home values, and demographics. Collectively, these results demonstrate the Bush administration's disproportionate distribution of FEMA disaster aid toward core Republican areas was the optimal strategy for maximizing votes in the Presidential election.

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Rational Voting Gelman, Andrew Kaplan, Noah Edlin, Aaron Uploaded 08-02-2002 Keywords elections rational choice sociotropic voting turnout Abstract By separating the assumptions of ``rationality'' and ``selfishness,'' we show that it can be rational to vote if one is motivated by the effects of the election on society as a whole. For voters with ``social'' preferences the expected utility of voting is approximately independent of the size of the electorate, suggesting that rational voter turnouts can be substantial even in large elections. Less important elections are predicted to have lower turnout, but a feedback mechanism keeps turnout at a reasonable level under a wide range of conditions. We show how this feedback mechanism distinguishes voting from other free-rider problems. Our theory is consistent with several empirical findings in political science, including survey results that suggest that people vote based on perceived social benefit, the positive relation between turnout and (anticipated) closeness of the election, other forms of political participation, and declining response rates in opinion polls. Since our ''social'' theory of rational voting is instrumental, it creates a rich foundation to study {em how} people vote as well as why. A rational person should make voting decisions almost entirely based on perceived social benefits of the election outcome.

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No Evidence on Proximity vs. Directional Voting Lewis, Jeffrey B. King, Gary Uploaded 06-05-1998 Keywords spatial models voting elections decision models Abstract The directional and proximity models offer dramatically different theories for how voters make decisions. We demonstrate here that the empirical tests in the large and growing literature on this subject amount to theoretical debates about which statistical assumption is right. The key statistical assumptions in this literature have not been empirically tested, and indeed turn out to be effectively untestable with existing methods and data. Unfortunately, these assumptions are also crucial since changing them leads to different conclusions about voter decision processes.

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Minority Representation in Multi-member Districts Gerber, Elisabeth R. Morton, Becky Rietz, Thomas Uploaded 08-13-1997 Keywords cumulative voting multi-member districts minority representation laboratory elections Abstract We present a theoretical and experimental examination of cumulative voting versus straight (non-cumulative) voting in multi-member district elections. Cumulative voting has been proposed as a method for increasing minority representation. Given the recent court rulings against racial gerrymandering to achieve minority representation in single-member districts, the effect of multi- member district elections on minority representation is an important issue. We present a model of voting in double-member district elections with two majority candidates and one minority candidate and consider the voting equilibria under the two voting systems. In straight voting, we find that while an equilibrium always exists where the two majority candidates are expected to win the two seats, equilibria also exist where minority candidates may be elected. In cumulative voting, we find that equilibrium minority candidate wins are also possible but are less likely when minority voters prefer one majority candidate over another. We then describe experimental evidence on voting behavior and outcomes in straight and cumulative voting elections. We find that minority candidates win significantly more seats in cumulative than in straight voting elections, as predicted, but win fewer elections when minority voters prefer one majority candidate over another.

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Exploiting a Rare Shift in Communication Flows to Document News Media Persuasion: The 1997 United Kingdom General Election Ladd, Jonathan Lenz, Gabriel Uploaded 07-30-2008 Keywords Media persuasion endorsements campaigns elections matching causal inference Abstract Using panel data and matching techniques, we exploit a rare change in communication flows -- the endorsement switch to the Labour Party by several prominent British newspapers before the 1997 United Kingdom general election -- to study the persuasive power of the news media. These unusual events provide an opportunity to test for news media persuasion while avoiding methodological pitfalls that have plagued previous studies. By comparing readers of newspapers that switched endorsements to similar individuals who did not read these newspapers, we estimate that these papers persuaded a considerable share of their readers to vote for Labour. Depending on the statistical approach, the point estimates vary from about 10 percent to as high as 25 percent of readers. These findings provide rare, compelling evidence that the news media exert a powerful influence on mass political behavior.

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State-Level Opinions from National Surveys: Poststratification using Hierarchical Logistic Regression Park, David K. Gelman, Andrew Bafumi, Joseph Uploaded 07-12-2002 Keywords Bayesian Inference Hierarchical Logit Poststratification Public Opinion States Elections Abstract Previous researchers have pooled national surveys in order to construct state-level opinions. However, in order to overcome the small n problem for less populous states, they have aggregated a decade or more of national surveys to construct their measures. For example, Erikson, Wright and McIver (1993) pooled 122 national surveys conducted over 13 years to produce state-level partisan and ideology estimates. Brace, Sims-Butler, Arceneaux, and Johnson (2002) pooled 22 surveys over a 25-year period to produce state-level opinions on a number of specific issues. We construct a hierarchical logistic regression model for the mean of a binary response variable conditional on poststratification cells. This approach combines the modeling approach often used in small-area estimation with the population information used in poststratification (see Gelman and Little 1997). We produce state-level estimates pooling seven national surveys conducted over a nine-day period. We first apply the method to a set of U.S pre-election polls, poststratified by state, region, as well as the usual demographic variables and evaluate the model by comparing it to state-level election outcomes. We then produce state-level partisan and ideology estimates by comparing it to Erikson, Wright and McIver's estimates.

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Rational Expectations Coordinating Voting in American Presidential and House Elections Mebane, Walter R. Uploaded 07-08-1998 Keywords coordinating voting probabilistic voting spatial voting retrospective voting policy moderation presidential elections congressional elections ticket splitting rational expectations voter equilibrium Bayesian-Nash equilibrium generalized extreme value model nonparametric Monte Carlo integration maximum likelihood Abstract I define a probabilistic model of individuals' presidential-year vote choices for President and for the House of Representatives in which there is a coordinating (Bayesian Nash) equilibrium among voters based on rational expectations each voter has about the election outcomes. I estimate the model using data from the six American National Election Study Pre-/Post-Election Surveys of years 1976--1996. The coordinating model passes a variety of tests, including a test against a majoritarian model in which there is rational ticket splitting but no coordination. The results give strong individual-level support to Alesina and Rosenthal's theory that voters balance institutions in order to moderate policy. The estimates describe vote choices that strongly emphasize the presidential candidates. I also find that a voter who says economic conditions have improved puts more weight on a discrepancy between the voter's ideal point and government policy with a Democratic President than on a discrepancy of the same size with a Republican President.

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Congressional Campaign Contributions, District Service and Electoral Outcomes in the United States: Statistical Tests of a Formal Game Model with Nonlinear Dynamics Mebane, Walter R. Uploaded 07-22-1997 Keywords congressional elections campaign contributions campaign finance district service intergovernmental transfers formal model game theory Cournot-Nash equilibrium Nash equilibrium differential equations dynamical system nonlinear dynamics Hopf bifurcation normal form Whitney embedding theorem divergence theorem Liouville's theorem multivariate normal distribution maximum likelihood Wald test stability asymptotic stability Abstract Using a two-stage game model of congressional campaigns, the second stage being a system of ordinary differential equations, I argue that candidates, political parties and financial contributors interact strategically in American congressional elections in a way that is inherently nonlinear. Congressional races in which the incumbent faces a challenge are generated by dynamical systems that have Hopf bifurcations: a small change in the challenger's quality or in the type of district service can change a stable incumbent advantage into an oscillating race in which the incumbent's chances are uncertain. The normal form equations for such a system inspire a statistical model that can recover qualitative features of the dynamics from cross-sectional data. I estimate and test the model using data from the 1984 and 1986 election periods for political action committee campaign contributions, intergovernmental transfers and general election vote shares.

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Tobler's Law, Urbanization, and Electoral Bias: Why Compact, Contiguous Districts are Bad for the Democrats Chen, Jowei Rodden, Jonathan Uploaded 11-11-2009 Keywords elections voting party competition legislative districting simulations electoral geography spatial autocorrelation Abstract When one of the major parties in the United States wins a substantially larger share of the seats than its vote share would seem to warrant, the conventional explanation lies in manipulation of maps by the party that controls the redistricting process. Yet this paper uses a unique data set from Florida to demonstrate a common mechanism through which substantial partisan bias can emerge purely from residential patterns. When partisan preferences are spatially dependent and partisanship is highly correlated with population density, any districting scheme that generates relatively compact, contiguous districts will tend to produce bias against the urban party. In order to demonstrate this empirically, we apply automated districting algorithms driven solely by compactness and contiguity parameters, building winner-take-all districts out of the precinct-level results of the tied Florida presidential election of 2000. The simulation results demonstrate that with 50 percent of the votes statewide, the Republicans can expect to win around 59 percent of the seats without any "intentional" gerrymandering. This occurs because urban districts tend to be homogeneous and Democratic while suburban and rural districts tend to be moderately Republican. Thus in Florida and other states where Democrats are highly concentrated in cities, the seemingly apolitical practice of requiring compact, contiguous districts will produce systematic pro-Republican electoral bias.

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Estimating Voters' Taste for Risk: Candidate Choice under Uncertainty Berinsky, Adam Lewis, Jeffrey B. Uploaded 07-08-2002 Keywords elections risk preferences Abstract Recent work in political science has taken up the question of issue voting under conditions of uncertainty -- situations in which voters have imperfect information about the policy positions of candidates. Models that recognize this principle are realistic portrayals of the campaign environment, but may be limited in important respects. To date, the study of vote choice under uncertainty has made a common assumption of quadratic preferences. Such preferences implying that citizens behave in a very risk-averse manner when casting votes But this assumption is simply that; an assumption. Many other utility functions consistent with ``proximity'' voting could be chosen, including functions that imply risk neutral and risk acceptant behavior The assumption of risk-aversion is, after all, not simply a technical choice: it has important implications for how we view the process of citizen choice in elections and campaigns. If voters are risk-averse, candidates can benefit by making clear their positions on issues that they know will appeal to the electorate. Risk-averse voters therefore improve the quality of campaign discourse because candidates are punished for taking vague positions. But this scenario is only one among several possibilities. If voters are risk-neutral or risk-acceptant, candidates may have incentive to muddle the details of their policy plans and send ambiguous signals about their positions. Such a story of the campaign process may be less normatively appealing than one in which voters are risk-averse, but it might also more accurate portray the dynamics of political campaigns. We believe that the nature of risk preferences among the electorate should, therefore, be subject to greater scrutiny. In this paper, we move beyond the assumption of a particular spatial utility function and estimate voter's preferences for risk. We find that, contrary to the literature, voters are less risk averse than the quadratic model implies. Indeed, by the definition of risk preference developed in the paper, we find voters to be generally (nearly) risk-neutral and, in some cases, risk-acceptant.

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The Spatial Model and Specification of Choice Models Alvarez, R. Michael Nagler, Jonathan Uploaded 01-01-1995 Keywords Multinomial Logit Spatial Model Conditional Logit Elections Abstract The spatial model has been in use in political science for close to 30 years, and in that period it has achieved a place of prime importance as our paradigm of the process of candidate-choice used by voters. For much of this time political scientists have estimated models of candidate-choice using binary logit or probit, even in cases where there were more than two choices facing voters. Recently discrete choices models beyond binary logit and probit have been making their way into use in political science with increasing frequency. The properties of these models, and their relationship to the spatial model, are frequently misunderstood. This paper demonstrates four essential points. First, the popular multinomial logit model is in fact equivalent to running a series of binary logit models. It involves nothing more than pairwise comparisons of the choices. Second, despite containing no information about the choices, the multinomial logit model provides reduced form estimates of the effect of characteristics of choices that are equivalent to the estimates of such effects provided by the conditional logit model - which does utilize information about the characteristics of the choices. Third, the multinomial logit model cannot offer any inferences as to effects of changing the characteristics of the choices, or introducing additional choices; whereas the conditional logit model can offer such inferences. Fourth, the classic spatial model has a flaw in multi-candidate settings that has been overlooked, with more than two candidates the spatial model explicitly contradicts an aspect of voter behaviour widely believed to be prevalent: the tendency of voters to view certain candidates as `similar' alternatives, and thus for the presence of additional candidates to effect asymettrically the probability of existing candidates being chosen.

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Coordinating Voting in American Presidential and House Elections Mebane, Walter R. Uploaded 07-21-1997 Keywords coordinating voting moderating voting probabilistic voting spatial voting retrospective voting presidential elections congressional elections split-ticket voting pivotal voter theorem beta distribution multinomial logit maximum likelihood Abstract I describe and estimate a probabilistic voting model designed to test whether individuals' votes for President and for the House of Representatives are coordinated with respect to two cutpoints on a single spatial dimension, in the way that Alesina and Rosenthal's pivotal voter theorem suggests they should be. In my model the cutpoints are random variables about which each individual has a subjective probability distribution. Each person's probabilistic coordinating voting behavior occurs relative to the cutpoints' expected values under the distribution. The model implements the idea the pattern of coordination depends on an individual's evaluation of the economy. The economic bias in the coordinating pattern implies that voters punish a Democratic President for success in improving the economy. The economically successful Democratic President can avoid losses only if the voters who rate the economy as having improved also believe that the policy position of the Democratic party has shifted to the right.

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Language Access and Initiative Outcomes: Did the Voting Rights Act Influence Support for Bilingual Education? Uploaded 12-17-2009 Keywords regression discontinuity design multilevel modeling immigrant political incorporation language access elections Voting Rights Act Abstract This paper investigates one tool designed to enfranchise immigrants: foreign-language election materials. Specifically, it estimates the impact of Spanish-language assistance provided under Section 203 of the Voting Rights Act. Focusing on a California initiative on bilingual education, it tests how Spanish-language materials influenced turnout and election outcomes in Latino neighborhoods. It also considers the possibility of an anti-Spanish backlash in non-Hispanic white neighborhoods. Empirically, the analysis couples a regression discontinuity design with multilevel modeling to isolate the impact of Section 203. The analysis finds that Spanish-language assistance increased turnout and reduced support for ending bilingual education in Latino neighborhoods with many Spanish speakers. It finds hints of backlash among non-Hispanic white precincts, but not with the same certainty. The turnout finding gains additional support from multilevel regression discontinuity analyses of 2004 Latino voter turnout nationwide. For Latino citizens who speak little English, the availability of Spanish ballots increases turnout and influences election outcomes as well.

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Optimal Campaigning in Presidential Elections: The Probability of Being Florida Stromberg, David Uploaded 03-07-2002 Keywords elections political campaigns public expenditures Abstract This paper delivers a precise recommendation for how presidential candidates should allocate their resources to maximize the probability of gaining a majority in the Electoral College. A two-candidate, probabilistic-voting model reveals that more resources should be devoted to states which are likely to be decisive in the electoral college and, at the same time, have very close state elections. The optimal strategies are empirically estimated using state-level opinion-polls available in September of the election year. The model's recommended campaign strategies closely resemble those used in actual campaigns. The paper also analyses how the allocation of resources would change under the alternative electoral rule of a direct national vote for president.

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Economics, Issues and the Perot Candidacy: Voter Choice in the 1992 Presidential Election Alvarez, R. Michael Nagler, Jonathan Uploaded 01-01-1995 Keywords Elections Campaigns Perot Multinomial Probit Economic Voting Angry Voters Abstract Theory: Theories of presidential elections (economic voting and spatial issue and ideology models), combined with the popular explanation of "angry voting", are used to account for voter choice in the 1992 Presidential Election. Hypotheses: Voter choice in this three-candidate race is a function of economic perceptions, issue and ideological positions of voters and candidates, or ``voter anger.'' Methods: Multinomial probit analysis of 1992 National Election Studies data including individual-specific and alternative-specific variables. Simulations based on counterfactual scenarios of ideological positions of the candidates and of voter perceptions of the economy. Results: The economy was the dominant factor in accounting for voter decisions in 1992, and Clinton, not Perot, was the beneficiary of economic discontent. While issues (mainly abortion) and ideology did play some role, Clinton was not perceived by the electorate as a ``New Democrat.'' We find little support for the hypothesis of ``angry voting.'' Last, Perot took more votes from Bush than from Clinton.

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A Statistical Model for Multiparty Electoral Data Katz, Jonathan King, Gary Uploaded 07-16-1997 Keywords multiparty elections compositional data multivariate-t Abstract We propose an internally consistent and comprehensive statistical model for analyzing multiparty, district-level aggregate election data. This model can be used to explain or predict how the geographic distribution of electoral results depends upon economic conditions, neighborhood ethnic compositions, campaign spending, and other features of the election campaign or characteristics of the aggregate areas. We also provide several new graphical representations for help in data exploration, model evaluation, and substantive interpretation. Although the model applies more generally, we use it to resolve an important controversy over the size of and trend in the electoral advantage of incumbency in Great Britain. Contrary to previous analyses, which are all based on measures now known to be biased, we demonstrate that the incumbency advantage is about 1% for the major parties and 4% for the Liberal party and its successors. Also contrary to previous research, we show that these effects have not grown in recent years. Finally, we are able to estimate from which party each party's incumbency advantage is predominantly drawn.

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Election Fraud or Strategic Voting? Can Second-digit Tests Tell the Difference? Mebane, Walter Uploaded 07-06-2010 Keywords election fraud strategic voting gerrymander Benford's Law 2BL American elections turnout presidential House state House state Senate Abstract I simulate a mixture process that generates individual preferences that, when aggregated into precincts, have counts whose second significant digits approximately satisfy Benford's Law. By deriving sincere, strategic, gerrymandered and coerced votes from these preferences under a plurality voting rule, I find that tests based on the second digits of the precinct counts are sensitive to differences in how the counts are derived. The tests can sometimes distinguish coercion from strategic voting and gerrymanders. The tests may be able to distinguish strategic voting according to a party balancing logic from strategic voting due purely to wasted-vote logic, and strategic from nonstrategic voting. These simulation findings are supported by data from federal and state elections in the United States during the 1980s and 2000s.

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Is All Politics and Economics Local? National Elections and Local Wawro, Gregory Himmelberg, Charles P. Uploaded 07-14-2001 Keywords elections economic conditions voting behavior aggregation Abstract Scholars have long sought to understand the causal relationships between economics and political participation. Of particular concern has been how economic experiences have affected individuals' decisions to participate in elections and cast votes for candidates of different political parties. Practically all of the studies on elections in the United States have focused on national aggregate economic conditions and national aggregate political outcomes, while only a handful of studies have focused on whether state and local economic conditions affect federal elections. The conclusion one would reach from these studies is that the adage ``all politics is local'' does not apply to economics and elections. In fact, despite the findings of some early studies (e.g. Tufte 1975), recent research would lead us to conclude that economic conditions have no direct effects on congressional elections (Erikson 1990; Alesina and Rosenthal 1995). According to these recent studies, the economy is related to congressional elections only indirectly through its effects on presidential elections. And even in presidential elections, a key economic indicator---unemployment---appears to have little to no effect on presidential elections. In this paper, we question the conclusions of previous studies by considering how the failure to correctly model vote shares at the local level could produce misleading results on the effects for economic conditions on elections in local analysis. We develop a model for local vote shares by adapting a model derived in the empirical literature on demand for differentiated products. Our model explicitly accounts for nonlinearity and aggregation in vote share functions and so avoids some of the problems of standard linear specifications of vote shares that are common in the literature. We estimate our model using data at the local level to assess the impact of economic conditions on presidential vote shares and turnout in the 1992 election. We find that local unemployment does affect presidential votes and these effects vary by demographic groups in interesting ways.

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Issues, Economics and the Dynamics of Multi-Party Elections: The British 1987 General Election Alvarez, R. Michael Nagler, Jonathan Bowler, Shaun Uploaded 00-00-0000 Keywords Elections Multinomial Probit Economic Voting Issue Voting Spatial Model Multicandidate Elections British Elections Abstract This paper offers a model of three-party elections which allows voters to combine retrospective economic evaluations with considerations of the positions of the parties in the issue-space as well as the issue-preferences of the voters. We describe a model of British elections which allows voters to consider simultaneously all three parties, rather than limiting voters to choices among pairs of parties as is usually done. Using this model we show that both policy issues and the state of the national economy matter in British elections. We also show how voters framed their decisions. Voters first made a retrospective evaluation of the Conservative party based on economic performance; and those voters that rejected the Conservative party chose between Labour and Alliance based on issue positions. Through simulations of the effects of issues -- we move the parties in the issue space and re-estimate vote-shares -- and the economy -- we hypothesize an alternative distribution of views of the economy for voters -- we show that Labour has virtually no chance to win with the Alliance as a viable alternative. Even if the Alliance (or the Liberal Democrats) disappears, Labour will need to significantly moderate its policy positions to have a chance of competing with the Conservative party. We argue that the methodological technique we employ, multinomial probit, is a superior mechanism for studying three-party elections as it allows for a richer formulation of politics than do competing methods.

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Economic Voting: Enlightened Self-Interest and Economic Reference Groups Nagler, Jonathan Willette, Jennifer R. Jackman, Simon Uploaded 04-09-1997 Keywords elections economy presidential elections economic voting Abstract One of the more robust findings over the last 50 years in research on\r\nelections has been the importance of macroeconomic conditions on\r\nvoting in U.S. presidential elections. An important finding in that\r\nresearch was made by Steven Weatherford in a 1978 article\r\ndemonstrating that working class voters are more sensitive to economic\r\nconditions than are middle class voters in their vote choice.\r\nWeatherford's result was based on the 1956 through 1960 elections. We\r\nextend Weatherford's analysis for the 1956 thru 1992 elections. We are\r\nunable to produce evidence that poor voters are consistently more\r\nsensitive to the economy than are middle class and rich voters in\r\ntheir electoral behavior. We also offer a new theory of economic\r\nvoting. We propose that voters vote based on the economic performance\r\nof their economic reference group - rather than on their own personal\r\nfinances or on the state of the national economy. We offer a very\r\npreliminary and very crude initial test of this theory using NES data\r\nfor 1956 to 1992.

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Using Legislative Districting Simulations to Measure Electoral Bias in Legislatures Chen, Jowei Rodden, Jonathan Uploaded 07-19-2010 Keywords redistricting elections legislatures Abstract When one of the major parties in the United States wins a substantially larger share of the seats than its vote share would seem to warrant, the conventional explanation lies in overt partisan or racial gerrymandering. Yet this paper uses a unique data set from Florida to demonstrate a common mechanism through which substantial partisan bias can emerge purely from residential patterns. When partisan preferences are spatially dependent and partisanship is highly correlated with population density, any districting scheme that generates relatively compact, contiguous districts will tend to produce bias against the urban party. We apply automated districting algorithms driven solely by compactness and contiguity parameters, building winner-take-all districts out of the precinct-level results of the tied Florida presidential election of 2000. The simulation results demonstrate that with 50 percent of the votes statewide, the Republicans can expect to win around 59 percent of the seats without any “intentional” gerrymandering. This is because urban districts tend to be homogeneous and Democratic while suburban and rural districts tend to be moderately Republican. Thus in Florida and other states where Democrats are highly concentrated in cities, the seemingly apolitical practice of requiring compact, contiguous districts will produce systematic pro- Republican electoral bias.

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A Seemingly Unrelated Regression Model for Analyzing Multiparty Elections Jackson, John Uploaded 07-11-2001 Keywords elections multiparty methods Abstract This paper presents a model for analyzing the returns in multiparty elections. The dependent variable is the log of the ratio of each party's vote to the vote share of a base party, as in the King-Katz model. The estimator is a version of the seemingly unrelated regression model, thereby taking advantage of the properties and computational convenience of the linear model. The error structure is composed of two elements. The first is the conventional SUR type errors that are homoscedastic across voting districts. The second is a district specific error structure that is derived by treating the observed votes as a sample from a multivariate normal distribution of true party support. The paper derives the small sample properties of the estimator, which are important in many applications where there are not a large number of districts. The model is applied to the 1993 Polish parliamentary elections. The results from this analysis form the basis for monte carlo simulations comparing several different estimators.

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Studying Congressional and Gubernatorial Campaigns Alvarez, R. Michael Uploaded 00-00-0000 Keywords campaigns congressional elections public opinionpolling National Election Studies Abstract This paper was presented at the recent NES Congressional Elections Research and Development Conference. I argue that the NES ought to redesign the congressional election survey so that campaigns can be studied in more depth. I provide four empirical examples from my recent research which demonstrate some of the directions the NES can take. I conclude with a series of proposals for changes to the NES survey instrument, new questions which could be included in the NES congressional election studies, and discussion about the integration of contextual data with the NES survey data.

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Paper

A Statistical Model for Multiparty Electoral Data Katz, Jonathan King, Gary Uploaded 04-08-1997 Keywords multiparty elections compositional data multivariate-t Abstract This paper proposes an internally consistent and comprehensive statistical model for analyzing multiparty, district-level aggregate election data. This model can be used to explain or predict how the geographic distribution of electoral results depends upon economic conditions, neighborhood ethnic compositions, campaign spending, and other features of the election campaign or characteristics of the aggregate areas. We also provide several new graphical representations for help in data exploration, model evaluation, and substantive interpretation. The model is more general, but we apply it resolve a controversy over the size of and trend in the electoral advantage of incumbency in Great Britain.

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The Immigration Issue and the 2010 House Elections: A Research Design Monogan, Jamie Uploaded 11-02-2010 Keywords causal inference propensity score elections immigration Abstract This paper proposes a research design for evaluating the effect of Republican candidates' immigration stances on House election outcomes. It develops a measure of immigration stance which is based on the text of each candidate's issue statement. With this as the treatment, propensities to support a harsh line on immigration are calculated for each candidate based on a variety of covariates that also may influence election outcomes. In this way, a research design is developed before election outcomes are observed. Thus, this project clearly reflects the advice of Rubin, who argues that the research design ought to be set before the outcome is even observed.

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Racial and Ethnic Heterogeneity and Competition in House Branton, Regina P. Jones, Bradford S. Uploaded 04-13-2001 Keywords House elections race and politics Abstract The principal focus of this paper is to examine how a U.S. House district's level of racial and ethnic heterogeneity is related to various indicators of electoral competition. Prior research examining the relationship between race and electoral competition has tended to focus on how a district's African American population is related to electoral outcomes. As much of this literature has focused on the important issue of racial redistricting, the primary interest in the distribution of the African American population has been reasonable (and appropriate given the research questions asked). The focus here is not directly on matters pertaining to redistricting and as such, we argue that the exclusive focus on black-white competition belies the fact that the United States is a considerably diverse country, in terms of the distribution of racial and ethnic minority groups. To understand how racial and ethnic heterogeneity impacts electoral competition in the House, we collected data on the distribution of whites, African Americans, Latinos, Asians, and Native Americans residing in U.S. House districts (using U.S. Census Bureau data). We then use an indicator measuring the degree of racial and ethnic fractionalization in district. This measure is used as a covariate in various models of incumbent electoral success. The data we use are longitudinal data on incumbent electoral success during the period 1972 to 1998. We estimate several models of electoral competition and find that racial and ethnic heterogeneity is associated with greater electoral volatility in primary elections and less volatility in general elections. Because minority group preferences tend toward the Democratic party, these relationships are more pronounced for Democrats than for Republicans. The implications of the differences in the kinds of districts Democrats represent compared to the kinds of districts Republicans represent are then discussed.

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When Politics and Models Collide: Estimating Models of Multi-PartyElections Alvarez, R. Michael Nagler, Jonathan Uploaded 00-00-0000 Keywords elections parties probit logit multinomial logit model-specification spatial model multinomial probit discrete-choice Abstract Theory: The spatial model of elections can better be represented by using conditional logit than by multinomial logit. The spatial model, and random utility models in general, suffer from a failure to adequately consider the substitutability of candidates sharing similar or identical issue positions. Hypotheses: Multinomial logit is not much better than successive applications of binomial logit. Conditional logit allows for considering more interesting political questions than does multinomial logit. The spatial model may not correspond to voter decision-making in multiple-candidate settings. Multinomial probit allows for a relaxation of the IIA condition and this should improve estimates of the effect of adding or removing parties. Methods: Comparisons of binomial logit, multinomial logit, conditional logit, and multinomial probit on simulated data and survey data from a three-party election. Results: Multinomial logit offers almost no benefits over binomial logit. Conditional logit is capable of examining movements by parties, whereas multinomial logit is not. Multinomial probit performs better than conditional logit when considering the effects of altering the set of choices available to voters.

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Estimating the Probability of Events That have Never Occurred: When Does Your Vote Matter? Gelman, Andrew King, Gary Boscardin, John Uploaded 02-14-1997 Keywords conditional probability decision analysis elections electoral campaigning forecasting political science presidential elections rare events rational choice subjective probability voting power Abstract Researchers sometimes argue that statisticians have little to contribute when few realizations of the process being estimated are observed. We show that this argument is incorrect even in the extreme situation of estimating the probabilities of events so rare that they have never occurred. We show how statistical forecasting models allow us to use empirical data to improve inferences about the probabilities of these events. Our application is estimating the probability that your vote will be decisive in a U.S. presidential election, a problem that has been studied by researchers in political science for more than two decades. The exact value of this probability is of only minor interest, but the number has important implications for understanding the optimal allocation of campaign resources, whether states and voter groups receive their fair share of attention from prospective presidents, and how formal ``rational choice'' models of voter behavior might be able to explain why people vote at all. We show how the probability of a decisive vote can be estimated empirically from state-level forecasts of the presidential election and illustrate with the example of 1992. Based on generalizations of standard political science forecasting models, we estimate the (prospective) probability of a single vote being decisive as about 1 in 10 million for close national elections such as 1992, varying by about a factor of 10 among states. Our results support the argument that subjective probabilities of many types are best obtained via empirically-based statistical prediction models rather than solely mathematical reasoning. We discuss the implications of our findings for the types of decision analyses that are used in public choice studies.

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Shaken, Not Stirred: Evidence on Ballot Order Effects from the California Alphabet Lottery, 1978 - 2002 Ho, Daniel E. Imai, Kosuke Uploaded 02-02-2004 Keywords ballots elections causal inference natural experiment randomization fisher test partisan cue Abstract We analyze a natural experiment to answer the longstanding question of whether the name order of candidates on ballots affects election outcomes. Since 1975, California law has mandated randomizing the ballot order with a lottery, where alphabet letters would be shaken vigorously and selected from a container. Previous studies, relying overwhelmingly on non-randomized data, have yielded conflicting results about whether ballot order effects even exist. Using improved statistical methods, our analysis of statewide elections from 1978 to 2002 reveals that in general elections ballot order has a significant impact only on minor party candidates and candidates for nonpartisan offices. In primaries, however, being listed first benefits everyone. In fact, ballot order might have changed the winner in roughly nine percent of all primary races examined. These results are largely consistent with a theory of partisan cuing. We propose that all electoral jurisdictions randomize ballot order to minimize ballot effects.

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Strategic voting in mixed-member electoral systems: The Italian case Benoit, Kenneth Laver, Michael Giannetti, Daniela Uploaded 08-26-2000 Keywords elections italy strategic voting ecological inference Abstract The new Italian electoral system has two elements, a plurality element in single member districts and a PR element in larger multimember constituencies. The plurality element provides strong incentives for groups of parties to form pre-electoral coalitions. The PR element offers incentives for parties to contest the elections individually. We can think of two types of voter. The first type, whom we characterize as "strategic," votes for his or her first choice party in the PR election since there is no strategy that can improve on this. In the plurality election, a strategic voter supports the candidate sponsored by the coalition with which his or her first choice party is affiliated, even if this is not from the first choice party. The second type of voter, whom we characterize as "non-strategic," also votes for his or her first choice party in the PR election. In the plurality election, the non-strategic voter will vote for a first choice party if a candidate of this party is on the ballot but, if not, votes unpredictably. In this paper, we model the "strategic" and "non- strategic" elements of the vote flowing to candidates in the plurality element of the election. Using data from the 1996 and 1994 elections on both PR and plurality voting patterns in each single member district, and confining ourselves to districts where there is a run-off between two coalitions, we are able to estimate the relative numbers of strategic and non- strategic voters in each district, and characterize this in terms of a range of strategic variables.

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Campaign Advertising and Candidate Strategy Alvarez, R. Michael Roberts, Reginald Uploaded 00-00-0000 Keywords Campaigns television advertising campaign strategy negative advertising voter learning senate elections gubernatorialelections Abstract Here we present a series of preliminary analyses of data collected during the final eight weeks of two state-wide campaigns in California during 1994: the races for governor and Senate. These campaigns were hard-fought in that year, and provide an interesting laboratory in which to study intense campaigns over time, and to compare the advertising strategies between races. We first begin by presenting data from the television advertisements of these two races. Our database of television advertisements from the last eight weeks of these races gives us an unique opportunity to understand and to examine the strategies used by each campaign as they tried to get their messages through to the electorate. Then we turn to the politically relevant question --- did these advertisements matter? Did the messages the candidates send through their television advertisements influence the electorate? To answer these questions we use two sets of polling data from this election to see if these television advertisements effectively got the messages of each candidate across to the intended audience. We conclude with a discussion of our results, and with an agenda for future research.

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Voting cycles and institutional paradoxes: a model of partisan control and change in state politics Brierly, Allen Uploaded 11-05-2004 Keywords EITM election and voting cycles measurement of political party competition state elections Abstract This study applies a formal model of political competition to analyze partisan control and changes in partisan control of state government. The analysis is a straightforward application of both traditional theories of political parties and a social choice understanding of the role agenda setting plays in electoral competition. The models incorporate the traditional classification and estimation of party competition, while extending the more formal analysis of agenda setting to duopoly competition in a long-run electoral context. The findings synethesize a variety of recent and traditional hypotheses concerning state politics, governance, and elections. The results describe the extent and scope of divided government and compare the stability of unified versus divided partisan control. Theories of party change are also incorporated in the model to test the stability of partisan control and to classify different types of political competition. This study presents both a description and a discussion of the arguments for competition, linking the merits of increasing competition to the consequences of unstable party changes and divided partisan control.

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Dynamic Bayesian Forecasting of Presidential Elections in the States Linzer, Drew Uploaded 07-16-2012 Keywords President Forecasting Public Opinion Elections Abstract I present a dynamic Bayesian forecasting model that enables early and accurate prediction of U.S. presidential election outcomes at the state level. The method systematically combines information from historical forecasting models in real time with results from the large number of state-level opinion surveys that are released publicly during the campaign. The result is a set of forecasts that are initially as good as the historical model, then gradually increase in accuracy as Election Day nears. I employ a hierarchical specification to overcome the limitation that not every state is polled on every day, allowing the model to borrow strength both across states and, through the use of random-walk priors, across time. The model also filters away day-to-day variation in the polls due to sampling error and national campaign eects, which enables daily tracking of voter preferences towards the presidential candidates at the state and national levels. Simulation techniques are used to estimate the candidates' probability of winning each state and, consequently, a majority of votes in the Electoral College. I apply the model to pre-election polls from the 2008 presidential campaign and demonstrate that the victory of Barack Obama was never realistically in doubt. The model is currently ready to be deployed for forecasting the outcome of the 2012 presidential election. Project website: votamatic.org

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Randomization Inference with Natural Experiments: An Analysis of Ballot Effects in the 2003 California Recall Election Imai, Kosuke Ho, Daniel Uploaded 07-21-2004 Keywords casual inference Fisher/'s exact test inversion political science voting behavior elections Abstract Since the 2000 U.S. Presidential election, social scientists have rediscovered a long tradition of research that investigates the effects of ballot format on voting. Using a new dataset collected by the New York Times, we investigate the causal effects of being listed on the first ballot page in the 2003 California gubernatorial recall election. California law mandates a complex randomization procedure of ballot order that approximates a classical randomized experiment in real world settings. The recall election also poses particular statistical challenges with an unprecedented 135 candidates running for the office. We apply (nonparametric) randomization inference based on Fisher's exact test, which incorporates the complex randomization procedure and yields accurate confidence intervals. Conventional asymptotic model-based inferences are found to be highly sensitive to assumptions and model specification. Randomization inference suggests that roughly half of the candidates gained more votes when listed on the first page of ballot.

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Measuring the Relative Impact of Issues and the Economy in Democratic Elections Alvarez, R. Michael Nagler, Jonathan Willette, Jennifer R. Uploaded 01-12-1999 Keywords multinomial probit discrete choice multiparty elections multicandidate elections Canadian elections Abstract It is generally accepted that issues and economic outcomes influence elections. In this paper we analyze the relative importance of issues and the economy in Canadian elections. We estimate a model of the 1988 and 1993 Canadian elections in which we include voter evaluations of the parties on a variety of issues, and voter evaluations of the national economy and their personal finances. We demonstrate that it is possible to compare the effects of issues and the econocy on election outcomes. And we put this in the context of the impact of issues and elections in several other democracies. We show that even in elections where other factors are dominant, we can still see the impact of economic voting. And we argue that given the tenuous connection between the actions of elected officials and macroeconomic outcomes, this suggests that voters may be giving elected officials undue leeway in their non-economic policy-making functions.