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Abstract
Survey researchers testing the effectiveness of arguments for or against policies traditionally employ between-subjects designs. In doing so, they lose statistical power and the ability to precisely estimate public attitudes. We explore the efficacy of an approach often used to address these limitations: the repeated measures within-subjects (RMWS) design. This study tests the competing hypotheses that (1) the RMWS will yield smaller effects due to respondents' desire to maintain consistency (the "opinion anchor" hypothesis), and (2) the RMWS will yield larger effects because the researcher provides respondents with the opportunity to update their attitudes (the "opportunity to revise" hypothesis). Using two survey experiments, we find evidence for the opportunity to revise hypothesis, and discuss the implications for future survey research.

AbstractThe COVID-19 pandemic dramatically altered all aspects of life, including the creation of trade-offs between the right to vote and health. While many states postponed primary elections, Wisconsin forged ahead with their April 7, 2020 primaries. The result was widely criticized, with health officials raising concerns about the spread of COVID-19 through in-person voting. We argue that concerns from Wisconsin health officials about the potential to contract COVID-19 via in-person voting can shift American's comfort with using various voting methods in November. We test our hypotheses using a survey experiment on a diverse national sample. We find that information about possible coronavirus exposures decreases comfort with voting in-person yet does not increase comfort with voting by mail. We discuss the implications, including the need to tailor messages to specific features of various methods of voting in order to increase citizens' comfort with voting in upcoming elections.

Recently, many states have reversed the decades-long trend of facilitating ballot access by enacting a wave of laws requesting or requiring identification from registrants before they vote. Identification laws, however, are not an entirely new phenomenon. We offer new theoretical insights regarding how changes in political power influence the adoption of identification laws. In the most extensive analysis to date, we use event history analysis to examine why states adopted a range of identification laws over the past several decades. We consistently find that the propensity to adopt is greatest when control of the governor's office and legislature switches to Republicans (relationships not previously identified), and that this likelihood increases further as the size of Black and Latino populations in the state expands. We also find that federal legislation in the form of the Help America Vote Act seems to enhance the effects of switches in partisan control.

AbstractRecent elections have witnessed substantial debate regarding the degree to which state governments facilitate access to the polls. Despite this newfound interest, however, many of the major reforms aimed at increasing voting convenience (i.e., early voting and no-excuse absentee voting) were implemented over the past four decades. Although numerous studies examine their consequences (on turnout, the composition of the electorate, and/or electoral outcomes), we know significantly less about the factors leading to the initial adoption of these policies. We attempt to provide insights into such motivations using event history analysis to identify the impact of political and demographic considerations, as well as diffusion mechanisms, on which states opted for easier ballot access. We find that adoption responded to some factors signaling the necessity of greater voting convenience in the state, and that partisanship influenced the enactment of early voting but not no-excuse absentee voting procedures.

Models designed for limited dependent variables are increasingly common in political science. Researchers estimating such models often give little attention to the coefficient estimates and instead focus on marginal effects, predicted probabilities, predicted counts, etc. Since the models are nonlinear, the estimated effects are sensitive to how one generates the predictions. The most common approach involves estimating the effect for the "average case." But this approach creates a weaker connection between the results and the larger goals of the research enterprise and is thus less preferable than the observed-value approach. That is, rather than seeking to understand the effect for the average case, the goal is to obtain an estimate of the average effect in the population. In addition to the theoretical argument in favor of the observed-value approach, we illustrate via an empirical example and Monte Carlo simulations that the two approaches can produce substantively different results. Adapted from the source document.

Most of the studies of voter behavior have dealt with voter turnout, but few have looked at other aspects of voting behavior that could be linked to balloting method. A reasonable amount of information has now accumulated about the impact of the shift from polling place elections to voting by mail on turnout, rolloff, drop-off, differences in voting for partisan offices and referenda, and differences in straight-ticket voting. This article analyzes recent time series of voting data in Oregon to assess the impact of the shift in voting method on these issues. The analysis includes data at the state, county, precinct, and individual levels, including individual ballots. The results suggest new criteria for evaluating shifts from one voting method to another that may be applied to other electoral reforms, such as those that will result from the Help America Vote Act.