The Municipal Voter: Voting and Nonvoting in City Elections

1971 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1135-1140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard D. Hamilton

The few case studies of participation in local elections display distinct patterns, but the measurements lack comparability with each other or with national election voting studies. By application of the methodology, variables, and categories of the presidential election studies to a Toledo city election, the composition of the electorate is compared with that in presidential elections and some sharp contrasts which appear to have significant implications are observed. Some data calculated from Merriam and Gosnell's classic Non-Voting reveal some developments since 1923. From two prominent characteristics of municipal elections, nonpartisan form and low turnout, a few hypotheses about participation in city elections are deduced and examined. The data support the general proposition that most of the psychological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables display comparable amplitudes in city and presidential elections, but their significance is much greater in city elections, because the low voting level makes their impact proportionately greater.

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 424-445
Author(s):  
Clem Brooks ◽  
Kyle Dodson

Do attitudes toward issues such as abortion, LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer) rights, and tolerance of diversity matter to U.S. voters and elections? Scholarship on rights and tolerance support has failed to take into account the potentially confounding influence of racial resentment as a factor behind voter choice. This is a serious limitation that we seek to address with American National Election Studies data for presidential elections from 1992 through 2016. We bring together for the first time rights and tolerance support and racial resentment, alongside further consideration of anti-immigrant sentiments and white identity. Racial resentment and anti-immigrant sentiments shape the behavior of voters, but there is new evidence for the large influence of rights and tolerance attitudes, including with respect to the 2016 presidential election. The results suggest a growing dependence of Democratic candidates on high levels of rights and tolerance support. We discuss implications for theory and research on voter choice.


2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen L. Morgan ◽  
Jiwon Lee

To evaluate the claim that white working-class voters were a crucial block of support for Trump in the 2016 presidential election, this article offers two sets of results. First, self-reports of presidential votes in 2012 and 2016 from the American National Election Studies show that Obama-to-Trump voters and 2012 eligible nonvoters composed a substantial share of Trump’s 2016 voters and were disproportionately likely to be members of the white working class. Second, when county vote tallies in 2012 and 2016 are merged with the public-use microdata samples of the 2012-to-2016 American Community Surveys, areal variations across 1,142 geographic units that sensibly partition the United States show that Trump’s gains in 2016 above Romney’s performance in 2012 are strongly related to the proportion of the voting population in each area that was white and working class. Taken together, these results support the claim that Trump’s appeal to the white working class was crucial for his victory.


2002 ◽  
Vol 23 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Andrew J. LoTempio

The partisanship strength of individuals is investigated as dependent upon the cumulative effect of their electoral decisions. Using data from the 1956-1960 and 1972-1976 American National Election Studies (NES), voters who reinforce their party identification through loyal presidential vote choices over their life-cycle were found to experience gains in partisanship strength to a larger degree than those who vote for different parties or who do not vote. Additionally, short-term forces such as defecting from one’s party identification in a single election or casting a split-ticket vote hinder life-cycle gains in partisanship. The totality of the evidence shows that the dynamics of partisanship may be better understood if the absence or presence of electoral reinforcement is accounted for across several presidential elections and across the entire ballot in a single election.


The Forum ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 515-545
Author(s):  
Anne M. Cizmar ◽  
John McTague

Abstract This paper examines the role of authoritarianism in the 2018 US congressional elections. In particular, we assess whether the issues that have historically been central to the authoritarian divide in the American electorate were salient in the campaigns of several important Senate races. We demonstrate that authoritarian attitudes played a consistent, significant role on presidential vote choice, party identification, and numerous policy areas in the 2016 presidential election using data from the American National Election Studies. Using case studies of six Senate races in the 2018 midterm elections, we find that authoritarianism was more muted than in 2016, and that the role of authoritarianism varied considerably depending upon the race. States with stronger Trump support in 2016 featured authoritarianism more heavily than states with less Trump support in 2016, but authoritarianism overall was not as prominent in 2018 as in 2016. Overall, Senate candidates relied on traditional campaign messages related to candidate qualifications, personal attacks, the economy, and other messages less central to authoritarianism.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Abel Brodeur ◽  
Leonardo Baccini ◽  
Stephen Weymouth

What is the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on the 2020 U.S. presidential election? Guided by a pre-analysis plan, we estimate the effect of COVID-19 cases and deaths on the change in county-level voting for Donald Trump between 2016 and 2020. To account for potential confounders, we include a large number of COVID-19-related controls as well as demographic and socioeconomic variables. Moreover, we instrument the numbers of cases and deaths with the share of workers employed in meat-processing factories to sharpen our identification strategy. We find that COVID-19 cases negatively affected Trump's vote share. The estimated effect appears strongest in urban counties, in swing states, and in states that Trump won in 2016. A simple counterfactual analysis suggests that Trump would likely have won re-election if COVID-19 cases had been 5 percent lower. Our paper contributes to the literature of retrospective voting and demonstrates that voters hold leaders accountable for their (mis-)handling of negative shocks.


2000 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 389-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Barry C. Burden

Though the overreporting of voter turnout in the National Election Study (NES) is widely known, this article shows that the problem has become increasingly severe. The gap between NES and official estimates of presidential election turnout has more than doubled in a nearly linear fashion, from 11 points in 1952 to 24 points in 1996. This occurred because official voter turnout fell steadily from 1960 onward, while NES turnout did not. In contrast, the bias in House election turnout is always smaller and has increased only marginally. Using simple bivariate statistics, I find that worsening presidential turnout estimates are the result mostly of declining response rates rather than instrumentation, question wording changes, or other factors. As more peripheral voters have eluded interviewers in recent years, the sample became more saturated with self-reported voters, thus inflating reported turnout.


2019 ◽  
Vol 94 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-82
Author(s):  
Sabine Lehner

Right wing and far right parties have recently succeeded in many elections worldwide. The Austrian Freedom Party (Freiheitliche Partei Österreichs, FPÖ), one of the most successful right-wing populist parties of Europe, has lately also enjoyed great popularity in regional and national elections. Norbert Hofer, the FPÖ-candidate, even made it to the run-offs of the presidential election in 2016. This paper draws on a discourse-analytical approach and investigates the discursive strategies implemented by the FPÖ during two election campaigns (the 2015 local elections in Vienna and the 2016 presidential elections). Based on various discursive events of both campaigns (speeches, posters, TV-discussions etc.), this contribution examines if recent right-wing populist rhetoric corresponds to well-known patterns or if there have been some shifts.


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 25
Author(s):  
Endang Puji Lestari ◽  
Muh Risnain

The issue of determining the winners of the presidential election, the tenure of president and vice president, the principle of electing the regional head and the legal regime of the regional head are issues that are still not completely regulated in the constitution and need improvement. Several articles in the constitution relating to people's sovereignty should the MPR make changes to article 6 paragraph (3), article 7, article 18 paragraph (4) and article 23 paragraph (2) by looking at the practice of state administration and the dynamic development of democratic life. MPR as an institution that has the authority to change the constitution can carry out the process of changing the constitution according to the mechanism of article 37 of the 1945 Constitution. such as the absence of the presidential treshold regime and separate elections between legislative elections, presidential elections, local elections. Therefore, the Parliament and the President are called upon to amend Law No. 7 of 2017 concerning elections in line with constitutional values


2003 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael D. Martinez

A recent article by Barry Burden inPolitical Analysisalerts us to a steadily increasing gap during presidential election years between self-reported turnout in the NES (National Election Studies) and “official turnout” figures based on the voting-age population (VAP), and points to declining response rates as a culprit. Changing the baseline from the VAP to the VEP (voting-eligible population) significantly changes these conclusions, and point to panel effects as a culprit. The rise in the gap was not linear, but it does emerge rather suddenly in 1996. Gaps between NES self-reported turnout and VEP estimates are higher in presidential election years than in off-years, and self-reported turnout is higher among long-term panel participants than among cross-section respondents in multielection panels.


1992 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 725-736 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan E. Leighley ◽  
Jonathan Nagler

We address the question of whether class bias in the American electorate has increased since 1964. We analyze the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey and the National Election Studies for seven consecutive presidential elections, 1964–88. Our results show that conclusions regarding changes in class bias are sensitive to which measure of socioeconomic class is used—income, education, or occupation. We argue that income is the appropriate measure since government policies that discriminate based on socioeconomic class are most likely to do so based on income and there are measurement problems associated with using either education or occupation over time. Our analysis shows that there has been almost no change in class bias in the electorate since 1964.


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