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The effect of voter-identification (voter-ID) laws on turnout is a
hot-button issue in contemporary American politics. In April of
2008, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Indiana's voter-ID law, the
nation's most rigorous, which requires voters to arrive at the polls
with a state-issued photo ID containing an expiration date
(Crawford v. Marion County 2008). In a famous
incident highlighting how Hoosiers were dealing with their state's
voter-ID law, representative Julia Carson (D-IN) was initially
blocked from voting during Indiana's 2006 primary election for
failing to comply with Indiana's voter-identification standard.
Carson identified herself with her congressional ID card; since that
card did not include an expiration date and therefore did not meet
Indiana's voter-identification law, she was turned away at the polls
before later being allowed to vote (Goldstein 2006). The rising wave of public, political,
and legal debate crested two years later in the wake of the Supreme
Court ruling and during the Indiana primaries, with reports of a
dozen nuns being denied ballots at the polls due to their lack of
appropriate identification (Urbina 2008).

Abstract
Discussions about whether citizens can learn and use the information necessary to contribute to democratic governance often focus on debates about heuristics. We argue that the debate over whether heuristics should be used misframes a central issue—the consideration of what forms of decision-making are most likely to operate in different kinds of communication environments. This article examines how people make decisions in contentious political climates, which are characterized by high-information volume, relatively strong partisan commitment, and an affective divide between the opposing camps. Our contribution takes account of the possibility that in contentious environments, political communication offers neither reasoned deliberation nor cues, but rather solidarity signals that engage people's cultural worldviews. We also posit that the use of cultural worldviews for liberals and conservatives is asymmetrical—raising important questions about democracy in a society in which a variety of worldviews have different weights for various individuals and publics. To test our perspective, we analyze public opinion data collected during the time surrounding the recall election of Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin.

A certain social-political geography recurs across European and North American societies: As post-industrialization and mechanization of agriculture have disrupted economies, rural and nonmetropolitan areas are aging and declining in population, leading to widening political and cultural gaps between metropolitan and rural communities. Yet political communication research tends to focus on national or cross-national levels, often emphasizing networked digital media and an implicitly global information order. We contend that geographic place still provides a powerful grounding for individuals' lifeworld experiences, identities, and orientations to political communications and politics. Focusing on the U.S. state of Wisconsin, and presenting data gathered in 2018, this study demonstrates significant, though often small, differences between geographic locations in terms of their patterns of media consumption, political talk, and anti-elite attitudes. Importantly, television news continues to play a major role in citizens' repertoires across locations, suggesting we must continue to pay attention to this broadcast medium. Residents of more metropolitan communities consume significantly more national and international news from prestige sources such as the New York Times, and their talk networks are more cleanly sorted by partisanship. Running against common stereotypes of news media use, residents of small towns and rural areas consume no more conservative media than other citizens, even without controlling for partisanship. Our theoretical model and empirical results call for further attention to the intersections of place and politics in understanding news consumption behaviors and the meanings citizens draw from media content.

Since the 2016 election, the relationship between Trump supporters and Fox News has gained considerable attention. Drawing on interviews with more than 200 people and a representative survey conducted in the state of Wisconsin, we dive deeper into the media habits of Trump supporters using a mixed methods analytical approach. While we do not refute the importance of Fox News in the conservative media ecology, we find that characterizing Trump supporters as isolated in Fox News bubbles obscures the fact that many are news omnivores, or people who consume a wide variety of news. In fact, we find that Trump supporters may have more politically heterogeneous consumption habits than Trump non-supporters. We find that 17% of our survey respondents who support Trump in Wisconsin are regularly exposed to ideologically heterogeneous news media. We also find that like other voters, Trump supporters are disenchanted with the divisive nature of contemporary media and politics. Finally, we analyze the media use of young Trump supporters and find an especially high level of news omnivorousness among them.

Abstract
In this research note, we provide evidence about burdens people face when voting and who benefits from policies designed to mitigate those burdens. Using pre-and-post 2018 midterm elections panel surveys in Wisconsin, we show that Black voters estimate greater time getting to the polls and Hispanic voters report longer wait times once they are there. Regarding who takes advantage of policies purported to ease these burdens on voting—early voting, voting by mail, and absentee voting—our analysis reveals that that those facing temporal disadvantages are not the groups benefiting from these electoral policy affordances.

Abstract
Despite growing attention to an increasing partisan divide and populist voting, little attention has been directed at how social contexts might encourage greater or lesser political polarization. We address this gap by studying how county-level conditions—economic resilience, population change, and community health—intersect with individuals' political orientations and communication patterns to shape partisan evaluations. Our context is Wisconsin around the 2012 election, with our focus on two prominent political figures: Governor Scott Walker and President Barack Obama. Multilevel modeling reveals that partisans living in counties with more affluent, less precarious conditions during 2009–2012 exhibited more polarized partisan attitudes toward Walker and Obama. Our analysis also finds a significant role for interpersonal communication and digital media in shaping polarized attitudes.

This essential party primer includes new chapters on polarization between and within the parties in the aftermath of the 2012 election, demographic changes to America's political parties and the effects of new media and campaign finance laws, and the implications of all these things on future policymaking and electoral prospects moving forward.