The President, the Tea Party, and Voting Behavior in 2010: Insights from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gary C. Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Tea Party ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Election Study

Partisanship and Perceptions of Party-Line Voting in Congress

2017 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Logan Dancey ◽  
Geoffrey Sheagley
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Political Knowledge ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
The Other ◽  
Separate Experiment ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Opposing Party ◽  
Favorable Impression ◽  
Party Line

This paper explores public perceptions of congressional partisanship in an era of polarized parties. We use data from a module on the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) that asks respondents about the voting behavior of their legislators. Our results show that individuals underestimate the extent to which legislators from their own party vote the party line—even when primed with information about high levels of party-line voting in Congress—while fairly accurately perceiving levels of unity in the opposing party. We also find evidence that this perceptual gap endures, and at times widens, at higher levels of political knowledge and in the presence of elections. Finally, in a separate experiment, we explore how voters respond to differential levels of party-line voting by a hypothetical legislator. The combined results from the experiment and CCES module suggest voters’ perceptions often align with what allows them to have the most favorable impression of their party’s senators or unfavorable impression of the other party’s senators. The results suggest that biases in how voters process information about levels of partisanship in Congress may limit accountability in meaningful ways.

scholarly journals Changes in perceptions of media bias

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316802098744
Author(s):  
Kirby Goidel ◽  
Nicholas T. Davis ◽  
Spencer Goidel
Keyword(s):  
Attitude Change ◽  
Media Bias ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Change Perceptions ◽  
Individual Perceptions ◽  
2016 Election ◽  
The Media

In this paper, we utilize a module from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study to explore how individual perceptions of media bias changed over the course of the 2016 presidential campaign. While previous literature has documented the role of partisan affiliation in perceptions of bias, we know considerably less about how these perceptions change during a presidential election. Consistent with existing theories of attitude change, perceptions of bias polarize with strong Democrats moving toward believing the media were biased against Hillary Clinton (and in favor of Donald Trump) and independent-leaning Republicans moving toward believing the media were biased against Donald Trump. At the end of the 2016 election, more individuals believed the media were biased against their side. These effects were moderated by how much attention individuals paid to the campaign.

Introduction to the Volume

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Aldrich ◽  
Kathleen M. McGraw
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Gold Standard ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Campaigns And Elections ◽  
Science Projects ◽  
Public Opinion Surveys ◽  
Time Series Analyses ◽  
Election Studies

This chapter is an overview of the American National Election Studies (ANES) as well as its functions and overall significance for study. It indicates how and why the ANES achieved its status as the gold standard among public opinion surveys and how this volume seeks to extend that standard. First used in 1948, the ANES has been in the field in every presidential election and nearly every congressional election since. It is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as one of its three “big social science” projects. Moreover, the ANES's sixty years of measuring public opinion and voting behavior has made possible the compilation of time-series analyses that are now starting to show real insights into, and to change how we view, campaigns and elections. To conclude, the chapter provides some insights into the future of survey research.

Descriptive Representation and Black Political Involvement

Gaining Voice ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 97-122
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Clark ◽  
Ray Block
Keyword(s):  
African Americans ◽  
Study Data ◽  
Representative Democracy ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Involvement ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Political Empowerment ◽  
Black Representation ◽  
The Us

A healthy representative democracy requires that citizens be politically involved, and it is especially important to consider the political involvement of groups that are marginalized, such as African Americans. Building on the political empowerment hypothesis, the chapter argues that an increased black seat share and black representation ratio should be associated with increased black political involvement. Using 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Study data, the chapter describes how in states with an increased black seat share in the legislature blacks are more likely to be highly interested in politics and are more likely to vote. In states with a higher black representation ratio, blacks are more inclined to persuade others to vote. Black representation in the US House does not increase black political involvement, despite being the focus of many scholarly works of political empowerment.

Economic Expectations and Voting Behavior in United States House and Senate Elections

1981 ◽  
Vol 75 (2) ◽  
pp. 436-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
James H. Kuklinski ◽  
Darrell M. West
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Economic Voting ◽  
United States Senate ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Senate Elections ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The Public ◽  
National Election Study ◽  
Economic Expectations

Past individual-level studies of economic voting (1) have incorrectly operationalized the model they employ by using past-oriented rather than future-oriented questions and (2) have failed to examine the level of economic voting in United States Senate elections. Using the 1978 National Election Study, we show that economic voting exists in Senate but not House elections, presumably due to the differences in electoral context. Even when economic voting occurs, however, there is no guarantee that the public will influence the direction of macroeconomic policy.

scholarly journals Fear, Institutionalized Racism, and Empathy: The Underlying Dimensions of Whites’ Racial Attitudes

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (4) ◽  
pp. 639-645 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher D. DeSante ◽  
Candis Watts Smith
Keyword(s):  
Racial Attitudes ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Institutionalized Racism ◽  
The Past ◽  
Cognitive Beliefs ◽  
The Relationship

ABSTRACTFor nearly 75 years, scholars of American public opinion have sought to measure whites’ attitudes toward blacks: social scientists have invented and revised ways to measure what we could refer to as “racial prejudice.” With each revision, scholars who believe they have captured new forms of racial animus are met with opposition from those who believe that old-fashioned anti-black affect is a thing of the past. We directly answer these claims by collecting a surfeit of attitudinal measures to simultaneously estimate the relationship between cognitive beliefs about the racial status quo and emotional reactions to racism. First, we uncover that two higher-order dimensions undergird whites’ racial attitudes. Second, we validate a four-item version of our new battery using the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study.

The Elusive Likely Voter

2019 ◽  
Vol 83 (4) ◽  
pp. 782-804
Author(s):  
Anthony Rentsch ◽  
Brian F Schaffner ◽  
Justin H Gross
Keyword(s):  
Black Box ◽  
Demographic Variables ◽  
Voter Model ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Negligible Amount ◽  
Number Of Factors ◽  
Voter Models

Abstract Political commentators have offered evidence that the “polling misses” of 2016 were caused by a number of factors. This project focuses on one explanation: that likely-voter models—tools used by preelection pollsters to predict which survey respondents are most likely to make up the electorate and, thus, whose responses should be used to calculate election predictions—were flawed. While models employed by different pollsters vary widely, it is difficult to systematically study them because they are often considered part of pollsters’ methodological black box. In this study, we use Cooperative Congressional Election Study surveys since 2008 to build a probabilistic likely-voter model that takes into account not only the stated intentions of respondents to vote, but also other demographic variables that are consistently strong predictors of both turnout and overreporting. This model, which we term the Perry-Gallup and Demographics (PGaD) approach, shows that the bias and error created by likely-voter models can be reduced to a negligible amount. This likely-voter approach uses variables that pollsters already collect for weighting purposes and thus should be relatively easy to implement in future elections.

Missing Voices

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-412 ◽  
Author(s):  
James S. Krueger ◽  
Francisco I. Pedraza
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Military Service ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Service Members ◽  
Congressional Election ◽  
Election Study ◽  
Us Military ◽  
Military Service Members ◽  
War In Iraq

Public opinion studies on war attitudes say little about civilians who are related to military service members. The authors argue that military “service-connected” individuals are missing voices in the research that examines public support for war. Using over 50,000 observations from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, the authors estimate attitudes toward the war in Iraq, the war in Afghanistan, and the use of US military troops in general. The authors find that service-connected civilians express greater support for war and the use of troops than civilians without such a connection. This study discusses the implications of these findings for theoretical advancements in the literature addressing war attitudes and the conceptualization of the “civil–military gap.”

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