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The current unidimensional conceptualization of party identification contains many ambiguities. Most troubling, however, has been the debate over the dimensionality of this important concept. This article further examines the defects of the unidimensional conceptualization of party identification using the National Election Studies party thermometers. The results repeatedly demonstrate that the current conceptualization inadequately expresses individual affect toward the political parties and political independence. An alternative conceptualization is discussed that would eliminate the anomalies of the unidimensional concept.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 273-282) and index. ; Mode of access: Internet.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- List of Figures -- List of Tables -- Acknowledgments -- CHAPTER 1. A Fickle Public? -- CHAPTER 2. Predispositions -- CHAPTER 3. Why Does Political Information Matter? -- CHAPTER 4. Ambivalence, Uncertainty, and Equivocation -- CHAPTER 5. Ambivalent Attitudes: Abortion and Euthanasia -- CHAPTER 6. Uncertainty and Racial Attitudes -- CHAPTER 7. Equivocation -- CHAPTER 8. Mass Opinion and Representation -- CHAPTER 9. Do Elites Experience Ambivalence Where Masses Do Not? -- CHAPTER 10. Politics, Psychology, and the Survey Response -- Notes -- Index

Some of the nation's leading experts look at various aspects of election administration, including issues of ballot format, changes in registration procedures, the growth in the availability of absentee ballot rules and other forms of 'convenience voting', and changes in the technology used to record our votes. They also look at how the Bush v. Gore decision has been used by courts that monitor the election process and at the consequences of changes in practice for levels of invalid ballots, magnitude of racial disparities in voting, voter turnout, and access to the ballot by those living outside the United States. The editors, in their introduction, also consider the normative question of exactly what we want a voting system to do. An epilogue by two leading election law specialists looks at how election administration and election contest issues played out in the 2012 presidential election

Making up 14.2 percent of the American population, Hispanics are now the largest minority group in the United States. Clearly, securing the Hispanic vote is more important to political parties than ever before. Yet, despite the current size of the Hispanic population, is there a clear Hispanic politics? Who are Hispanic voters? What are their political preferences and attitudes, and why? The first comprehensive study of Hispanic voters in the United States, New Faces, New Voices paints a complex portrait of this diverse and growing population. Examining race, politics, and comparative political behavior, Marisa Abrajano and R. Michael Alvarez counter the preconceived notion of Hispanic voters as one homogenous group. The authors discuss the concept of Hispanic political identity, taking into account the ethnic, generational, and linguistic distinctions within the Hispanic population. The compare Hispanic registration, turnout, and participation to those of non-Hispanics, consider the socioeconomic factors contributing to Hispanics' levels of political knowledge, determine what segment of the Hispanic population votes in federal elections, and explore the prospects for political relationships among Hispanics and non-Hispanics. Finally, the authors look at Hispanic opinions on social and economic issues, factoring in whether these attitudes are affected by generational status and ethnicity.

This paper explores how politicians respond to the public salience of policy issues when determining which topics to publicly address. Using new data and state-of-the-art methodology, our study provides a fresh perspective on this fundamental question. We focus on a multi-party parliamentary system, specifically the Canadian House of Commons, with a specific emphasis on the issue of climate change. To assess the attention given by political parties to various policy issues, we analyze transcripts from the Question Period spanning from April 2006 to June 2021. To gauge the public's level of concern for these issues, we incorporate data obtained from Google Trends. Employing an instrumental variable estimation strategy, our study causally estimates the extent to which the public salience of climate change influences elite attention. Our findings reveal that the public salience of climate change significantly influences the attention given to this issue by parties, albeit with noticeable partisan variations. Moreover, our research highlights the effectiveness of the Question Period in compelling the government to address challenging or potentially embarrassing issues. Lastly, we uncover evidence suggesting that the Liberal Party of Canada successfully increased the public salience of climate change during its tenure in government.

AbstractSurvey research methodology is evolving rapidly, as new technologies provide new opportunities. One of the areas of innovation regards the development of online interview best practices and the advancement of methods that allow researchers to measure the attention that respondents are devoting to the survey task. Reliable measurement of respondent attention can yield important information about the quality of the survey response. In this article, we take advantage of an innovative survey we conducted in 2018, in which we directly connect survey responses to administrative data, allowing us to assess the association between survey attention and response quality. We show that attentive survey respondents are more likely to provide accurate survey responses regarding a number of behaviors and attributes that we can validate with our administrative data. We discuss the best strategy to deal with inattentive respondents in surveys in light of our results.

ABSTRACTIn recent years, scholars, journals, and professional organizations in political science have been working to improve research transparency. Although better transparency is a laudable goal, the implementation of standards for reproducibility still leaves much to be desired. This article identifies two practices that political science should adopt to improve research transparency: (1) journals must provide detailed replication guidance and run provided material; and (2) authors must begin their work with replication in mind. We focus on problems that occur when scholars provide research materials to journals for replication, and we outline best practices regarding documentation and code structure for researchers to use.