Suchergebnisse

ObjectivesTo assess predictors of sanctuary city attitudes in Texas. Specifically, to assess whether a criminal threat or immigration threat hypothesis better explains attitudes toward sanctuary cities.MethodsPooled representative sample surveys of Texas respondents conducted during the first half of 2017, combined with county‐level Census and crime data. Regression analysis and Monte Carlo simulations.ResultsCompared to the criminal threat hypothesis (as measured by county change in crime rates), the immigration threat hypothesis (as measured by Latino growth and Latino population) better explains Texans' attitudes toward sanctuary cities.ConclusionsDespite elite and media narratives linking sanctuary cities to crime, respondents' attitudes toward sanctuary cities are unrelated to physical crime threat and are structured by localized experience with immigration—specifically—Latino growth.

Donald Trump's executive order preventing the entry of refugees and those from seven Muslim-majority countries has sparked protests across the country and the world. But have those protests had an effect on public opinion? Loren Collingwood, Nazita Lajevardi, and Kassra Oskooii present preliminary findings from a survey conducted before and after President Trump's executive order. They find that after the ban, 25 percent more Democrats and an additional 15 percent of Republicans became opposed to it. In addition, one in five of all respondents stated that the protests had an impact on their views towards immigration policy.

Given the fluid context of primaries and observed swings in national polls, many Democratic voters likely switched candidate support over the course of the 2008 primary campaign. We examine how perceptions of early caucus and primary outcomes subsequently affected voter choice and candidate momentum. Although the 2008 calendar left many voters with a brief window to assess candidates, it nonetheless allowed a non–front‐runner to benefit from momentum and win the Democratic nomination. This article employs a panel study of voters surveyed at two time points during the nomination contest to assess individual‐level change in candidate support. Results from the earlier states sent signals about candidate viability to people who had not yet voted. We find that voters deciding after results were in from early states changed their perceptions of candidate viability and that this changed whom they intended to support. We conclude that momentum remains an important factor in presidential nominations.

The importance of the Latino electorate has been the subject of both academic inquiry and media discourses. The question of Latino influence is frequently limited by an approach that focuses on single variable considerations (e.g., voter turnout or ethnic-targeted campaign spending) that are often contest-specific idiosyncrasies. Relying on theoretically appropriate concepts, the authors measure Latino political influence as a function of three factors: in-group population traits, electoral volatility, and mobilization. Using the 2008 presidential election, the authors demonstrate the utility of incorporating a multifaceted measure that accounts for the contemporary complexity within the electoral environment. Because this framework is rooted in theoretical concepts, as opposed to discrete group or contest characteristics, it may be applied to any "influence group" in different electoral settings. Data are culled from several publicly available outlets, making it possible for scholars to replicate these measures and further investigate questions associated with group influence in American politics.

To what extent do national partisan cues exert influence over local voting behavior? Despite being an "immigrant welcoming city," in November, 2019, Tucson, Arizona, voters rejected Prop. 205—the Tucson Families Free and Together Initiative. We leverage theories of elite partisan cues to explain why voters in a progressive city voted against such an initiative. In contrast to Democratic support for sanctuary cities at the national level, we argue that mixed cues from local Democratic elites contributed significantly to a surprising rejection of the initiative. Using aggregate-level data and a framing experiment, we find that the local political environment split Democratic votes (50% favored, 50% opposed) while keeping Republican voters—who received consistent elite cues of opposition—uniformly against the proposition. This study illustrates how local partisan elite cues can shape ballot initiative voting outcomes, even to the point of overriding negative partisanship and national co-partisan consensus on the same issue.

AbstractThe private prison industry is a multi-million-dollar industry that has increasingly profited from the detention of undocumented immigrants. As a government contractor, therefore, the industry has a natural interest in government decision making, including legislation that can affect its expansion into immigrant detention. In this article, we examine the relationship between campaign donations made on behalf of the private prison industry and an untested form of position taking—bill cosponsorship—in the US House of Representatives. We hypothesize the private prison industry will reward House members for taking positions that benefit the industry. We also hypothesize the private prison industry will also reward House members who incur greater political risk by taking positions out of sync with the party. To test our hypotheses, we focus on punitive immigration legislation that has the potential to increase the supply of immigrant detainees over the course of eight years. We find support for our second hypothesis, that private prison companies are more likely to reward House Democrats who cosponsor punitive immigration policies even after accounting for possible endogeneity. The findings have important implications regarding the relationship between House members and private interests.

AbstractIn the United States, Blacks overwhelmingly bear the brunt of gun violence. While Blacks are more likely to favor gun restrictions than are Whites, the influence of Black gun death on Whites' attitudes about gun control has not been investigated. We advance a theory to explain White response to Black firearm fatalities: Black gun death is explicitly and implicitly racialized in the public discourse and imagination. The roots of the gun control debate are themselves likewise racialized, and portrayals of Black gun death has the potential to tap latent racial biases among Whites. As a consequence, exposure to routinized Black gun death either fails to move White opinion, or moves Whites to greater support for gun rights. The influence of race on White public opinion is particularly concerning in an era when health officials consider gun death a public health crisis. First, we evaluate this theory with a regression discontinuity (RDD) analysis of the effects of a highly salient gun death of a young Black boy in Chicago on Whites' opinions about gun control. Relative to White people interviewed before the death, White people interviewed after the death record greater opposition to gun control. Second, we fielded a survey experiment, exposing respondents to the reported gun homicide of either Black or White thirteen-year-old boys. Relative to a control, respondents in the Black death condition are unmoved, whereas respondents in the White death condition report greater levels of support for gun control. Implications are discussed.

ObjectiveWe theorize that anxiety (fear) related to mass shootings and social violence increases support for gun control among the American public.MethodsWe support our theory with a regression discontinuity analysis based on an actual mass shooting, observational analyses from the same data set testing the relationship between fear and support for gun control, and two survey experiments that prime anxiety in the context of mass shootings and social violence.FindingsWe show that support for gun control increased on the day after an actual mass shooting. Observational analysis shows a positive correlation between fear of crime and support for gun control. One priming experiment shows that inducing anxiety about mass shootings increases support for gun control. A second priming experiment shows that exposure to a story about social violence activates anxiety and also increases support for gun control.ConclusionsOur analyses show that anxiety related to mass shootings and mass violence increases support for gun control.

In recent years scholarship has drawn attention to the role of large multi-issue interest groups in policy networks and in public policy diffusion. This paper develops this field of study by demonstrating empirically the leverage of the 'sustained organisational influence' theory of policy diffusion. Specifically, it focuses on the role of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in diffusing the Stand Your Ground policy across US state legislatures. By comparing ALEC's template policy to bills introduced and legislation subsequently enacted within state legislatures, we demonstrate that ALEC has positioned itself as a 'super interest group', exerting sustained organisational influence across an expanding number of states. In doing so, this paper moves theory beyond the typical advocacy coalition framework that implicitly assumes policymaking occurs discretely among specialists on an issue-by-issue basis. It also highlights the democratic implications of the role of super interest groups in shaping policy behind the scenes.

Despite a sizable literature on racial priming, scholars have failed to account for the shifting nature of racial appeals. First, theories of racial priming have not yet been widely applied to increasingly common anti‐immigrant and anti‐Latino political appeals. Second, theories of racial priming have not adequately accounted for both an increasingly racialized political climate and increased tolerance for explicit anti‐minority appeals. In two survey experiments fielded both before Trump's rise and after his presidential victory, we find the Implicit‐Explicit (IE) model always fails for anti‐black appeals, sometimes fails for anti‐immigrant appeals, but consistently holds for anti‐Latino appeals. While we find the null effects of implicit versus explicit anti‐black and anti‐immigrant appeals are partly driven by tolerance for the explicit appeals, we also find evidence that white Americans are adept at recognizing the racial content of appeals featuring widely used, congruent issue‐group pairs. Our findings shed light on conditions under which the IE model does and does not hold in the current political era.