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This study inquires as to the nature of racial regularities in residual voting that exist under post-Help America Vote Act conditions. Even with modern, optical scan voting machines, there were significant differences among black, Hispanic, and white residual vote rates in the city of Chicago during the Municipal Election of 2011 and the Illinois General Election of 2010. Moreover, these residual vote rates varied with the availability of, respectively, black, Hispanic, and white candidates for office. Hispanics often had the highest residual vote rates among the three major race groups in Chicago, and there were instances in the aforementioned 2011 and 2010 Chicago elections in which a group of voters chose not to vote for anyone rather than vote for a dominant candidate of a different race than the voters themselves. Thus, even holding constant electoral administration and voting technology, the role of race in residual voting remains prominent. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright holder.]

This study inquires as to the nature of racial regularities in residual voting that exist under post–Help America Vote Act conditions. Even with modern, optical scan voting machines, there were significant differences among black, Hispanic, and white residual vote rates in the city of Chicago during the Municipal Election of 2011 and the Illinois General Election of 2010. Moreover, these residual vote rates varied with the availability of, respectively, black, Hispanic, and white candidates for office. Hispanics often had the highest residual vote rates among the three major race groups in Chicago, and there were instances in the aforementioned 2011 and 2010 Chicago elections in which a group of voters chose not to vote for anyone rather than vote for a dominant candidate of a different race than the voters themselves. Thus, even holding constant electoral administration and voting technology, the role of race in residual voting remains prominent.

Research designs that call for the estimation of time trends in legislator ideal points must allow for changes in underlying policy spaces. Simply put, a set of legislator ideal points from one such space cannot necessarily be compared with a set of ideal points from another. Rothenberg and Sanders's (2000, American Journal of Political Science 44:316–325) analysis of shirking in Congress does not internalize this point insofar as it assumes that legislator ideal points from adjoining congressional sessions lie in a common space. While it may be the case that members of Congress shirk ideologically when approaching retirement, the regression estimates at the heart of Rothenberg and Sanders neither support this possibility nor constitute evidence against it.

This article uses spatial voting theory to analyze the properties of linear regressions that employ interest group ratings as measures of legislator policy preferences. Such regressions, in general, yield inconsistent results. In particular, least-squares estimation of a bivariate regression which contains an interest group rating as a regressor produces an inflated slope estimate. Instrumenting for the rating with a second rating, as proposed by Brunell et al. (1999), does not fix this problem, and this is because errors in both sets of ratings are correlated. Finally, estimation of a trivariate regression that contains an interest group rating and a party indicator on its right-hand side yields inconsistent slope estimates and, in particular, a party coefficient estimate of unreliable sign. Hence, regressions including both ratings and party indicators are not useful tools in the debate on whether party affiliation has an independent impact on legislator behavior.

While it is very common for Congressional researchers to use interest group ratings as measures of legislator policy preferences, this paper argues that the manner in which such ratings are calculated implies that they may poorly approximate the underlying legislator preferences on which they are based. In light of this, the paper develops a technique designed to adjust interest group ratings so that they more closely correlate with legislator preferences. It argues based on Monte Carlo simulations that the technique produces adjusted ratings that improve on unadjusted ratings, and it applies the adjustment technique to historical ratings published by the Americans for Democratic Action.

Examines how prices of publicly traded securities can be used to estimate expected economic consequences of national elections; empirical analysis.