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Do citizens hold their representatives accountable for policy decisions, as commonly assumed in theories of legislative politics? Previous research has failed to yield clear evidence on this question for two reasons: measurement error arising from noncomparable indicators of legislators' and constituents' preferences and potential simultaneity between constituents' beliefs about and approval of their representatives. Two new national surveys address the measurement problem directly by asking respondents how they would vote and how they think their representatives voted on key roll‐call votes. Using the actual votes, we can, in turn, construct instrumental variables that correct for simultaneity. We find that the American electorate responds strongly to substantive representation. (1) Nearly all respondents have preferences over important bills before Congress. (2) Most constituents hold beliefs about their legislators' roll‐call votes that reflect both the legislators' actual behavior and the parties' policy reputations. (3) Constituents use those beliefs to hold their legislators accountable.

As with public opinion on other policy issues, attitudes toward transgender rights are partly driven by "group-centric" reasoning. Those with more positive feelings toward transgender people are more likely to support policies that protect their rights. But linking group affect with policies impacting members of that group requires some knowledge and understanding of politics, which not all citizens possess to the same extent. In this research note, we demonstrate that political awareness moderates the relationship between affect toward transgender people and support for their civil rights. ANES data from 2016 and 2020 show that more politically sophisticated respondents were more likely to connect their views of transgender people with policies that protect their rights. These results suggest that group-centric thinking is most prevalent among the most, not least, politically aware.

The role that emotions play in shaping mass political behavior is increasingly well researched. This study refocuses the debate to explore the effect that the emotions expressed by candidates (target affect) through new media have on participation, rather than the effect of emotions felt by voters (observer affect). A unique experiment embedded in a nationally representative online survey demonstrates that appeals invoking target affect can strongly increase citizens' political participation both online and offline. Contrary to fears that the use of emotions by political elites will agitate the least knowledgeable citizens, however, the results demonstrate that it is the most politically-engaged citizens who are mobilized by such appeals. These findings have significant implications for our understanding of the participatory consequences of emotional political messages on the Internet.

Public perceptions of candidates' personality traits play important roles in shaping vote choice. Previous accounts point to authenticity as one key trait, but little research has systematically investigated perceptions regarding candidate authenticity. This study uses data from a telephone survey to show that political predispositions (trust, external efficacy, interest, partisanship, and ideology), and television news use (broadcast and cable) predicted perceptions of candidate authenticity in the context of the 2012 presidential campaign. A question‐wording experiment also showed that perceptions regarding the authenticity of political messages varied across source (Obama or Romney), substance (working for "the middle class" or "job creators"), and the receiver's partisanship.

This article documents the prevalence in organized interest politics in the United States of organizations—for example, corporations, think tanks, universities, or hospitals—that have no members in the ordinary sense and analyzes the consequences of that dominance for the democratic representation of citizen interests. We use data from the Washington Representatives Study, a longitudinal data base containing more than 33,000 organizations active in national politics in 1981, 1991, 2001, 2006, and 2011. The share of membership associations active in Washington has eroded over time until, in 2011, barely a quarter of the more than 14,000 organizations active in Washington in 2011 were membership associations, and less than half of those were membership association with individuals as members. In contrast, a majority of the politically involved organizations were memberless organizations, of which nearly two-thirds were corporations. The dominance of memberless organizations in pressure politics raises important questions about democratic representation. Studies of political representation by interest groups raise several concerns about democratic inequalities: the extent to which representation of interests by groups is unequal, the extent to which groups fail to represent their members equally, and the extent to which group members are unable to control their leaders. All of the dilemmas that arise when membership associations advocate in politics become even more intractable when organizations do not have members.

AbstractVoters and political candidates increasingly use social networking sites (SNSs) such as Facebook. This study uses data from an online posttest-only experiment (N= 183) in analyzing how exposure to supportive or challenging user comments on a fictional candidate's Facebook page influenced participants' perceptions of and willingness to vote for the candidate, as well as whether candidate replies to each type of user comments affected these outcomes. Participants who viewed a page with supportive comments and "likes" reported more favorable perceptions of and greater support for the candidate, relative to participants who viewed a page with challenging comments. Thus, the appearance of interactivity between a candidate and other users on the candidate's Facebook page can shape the responses of those viewing the page. However, exposure to candidate replies to either supportive or challenging comments did not lead to significantly more favorable perceptions or a greater likelihood of voting for the candidate.