Suchergebnisse

Existing research on voting legislation argues that Republican lawmakers enact strict voting laws as part of a racialized, partisan electoral strategy—they believe that the laws will reduce minority turnout and benefit Republicans electorally. Yet, the empirical effects of strict voting laws on turnout are mixed, with some studies finding that restrictive legislation can actually increase minority turnout due to counter-mobilization effects. I leverage this empirical finding to study the foundations of public attitudes toward voting laws, specifically testing whether exposure to information that restrictive voting laws can boost minority turnout impacts Republicans' or Democrats' attitudes. My results show that Republican support for restrictive voting laws generally does not change in response to information about the consequences of the laws, but Democrats are significantly less opposed when they become aware of the laws' potential impact on minority turnout. These results pose challenges for building majorities that will defend the franchise in the United States.

Since the 2020 U.S. presidential election, perceptions of the validity of the outcome and broader trust in the American electoral process have reached historically low levels among Republicans. While this trend has potentially harmful consequences for democratic stability, there is little research on how beliefs that an election was fair—and trust in the electoral process more generally—can be restored. In a preregistered survey experiment ( n = 2101), we find that viewing real messages from Republican politicians defending the legitimacy of the 2020 election increased faith in the election's outcome and in the broader electoral process among Republican voters, compared to either a neutral control condition or to comparable messages from Democratic politicians. These effects are statistically mediated by shifts in voters' perceptions of elite Republican opinion about the 2020 election, highlighting a potentially useful intervention for efforts to restore faith in elections going forward. Notably, exposure to messages from Republican politicians affirming the election's legitimacy did not significantly decrease support for the Republican Party, suggesting that Republican politicians who endorse the 2020 election results might not face backlash from voters.

AbstractThe number of multiracial candidates seeking office is growing in an increasingly diverse America. This raises questions about how the media frame candidates with potentially complex racial backgrounds and how voters respond to these frames. We investigate the impact of media frames that emphasize race and gender attributes using survey experiments on Kamala Harris—the first Black woman and first Asian woman vice president. Our findings are mixed. In a survey experiment conducted after her nomination, headlines emphasizing different elements of Harris's race or gender had no impact on public attitudes. In an experiment conducted after Harris was inaugurated, however, headlines that cued her gender only or both her gender and her Black racial background boosted popular support. Taken together, these findings suggest that some types of identity-based cues may matter, but the effects are sensitive to experimental settings and contexts.

"On the evening of November 11, 2015, close to 200 students gathered at Baker Berry Library on the campus of Dartmouth College. Clad in black and holding homemade posters, they marched to the steps of the iconic Dartmouth Hall chanting, "We shall overcome" and "Black lives matter." One poster summed up the emotions of many students involved in the demonstration: "This is how we REALLY feel." The week before that march, a #BlackLivesMatter display in the campus student center had been defaced. The display featured 74 shirts representing 74 unarmed individuals killed by police officers in 2015. Twenty-eight of the shirts were black, representing black individuals who lost their lives. Soon after the display was presented, several of the black shirts were ripped down. The protesters also wanted to stand in solidarity with students of color at the University of Missouri and Yale University, where racially-charged incidents had sparked protests. At Mizzou, a swastika drawn in feces was found in a dormitory bathroom, and reports of racial slurs and an overall climate of bias on campus had inspired a hunger strike by one student and broader demonstrations calling for the university's president and chancellor to step down. At Yale, allegations about a racist fraternity party and a dispute over a faculty member's push-back against university directives on Halloween costumes led to a March of Resilience with over a thousand participants"--

AbstractPolitical scientists often use measures such as the Brief Implicit Association Test (BIAT) and the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP) to gauge hidden or subconscious racial prejudice. However, the validity of these measures has been contested. Using data from the 2008–2009 ANES panel study—the only study we are aware of in which a high-quality, nationally representative sample of respondents took both implicit tests—we show that: (1) although political scientists use the BIAT and the AMP to measure the same thing, the relationship between them is substantively indistinguishable from zero; (2) both measures classify an unlikely proportion of whites as more favorable toward Black Americans than white Americans; and (3) substantial numbers of whites that either measure classifies as free of prejudice openly endorse anti-Black stereotypes. These results have important implications for the use of implicit measures to study racial prejudice in political science.

AbstractIn recent years, concerns about misinformation in the media have skyrocketed. President Donald Trump has repeatedly claimed that various news outlets are disseminating 'fake news' for political purposes. But when the information contained in mainstream media news reports provides no clear clues about its truth value or any indication of a partisan slant, do people rely on the congeniality of the news outlet to judge whether the information is true or false? In a survey experiment, we presented partisans (Democrats and Republicans) and ideologues (liberals and conservatives) with a news article excerpt that varied by source shown (CNN, Fox News, or no source) and content (true or false information), and measured their perceived accuracy of the information contained in the article. Our results suggest that the participants do not blindly judge the content of articles based on the news source, regardless of their own partisanship and ideology. Contrary to prevailing views on the polarization and politicization of news outlets, as well as on voters' growing propensity to engage in 'partisan motivated reasoning,' source cues are not as important as the information itself for partisans on both sides of the aisle.