Suchergebnisse

The 2018 House midterm elections saw Democrats regain a majority in the chamber for the first time in almost a decade. Contributing to this partisan change was the difficult situation Republican House incumbents were subject to. This article will examine the different factors contributing to the Republicans' loss including the role of ideology in candidate success in both the primary and general election stage, the effects of retirements and open seats, and the value of presidential endorsements and legislative position taking.

AbstractDuring the most recent round of redistricting, many states have enacted a number of reforms to their mapmaking practices. One reform that has received increased attention in recent years is a ban on prison gerrymandering—the practice of counting incarcerated individuals in prisons instead of their home addresses. Eleven states drew districts while counting incarcerated persons in their homes after the 2020 Census. Though substantial research has investigated redistricting practices, far less attention has been paid to empirically examining the effect of prison gerrymandering on elections. We seek to fill this void by evaluating the effect of New York's ban on prison gerrymandering on state legislative elections between 2002 and 2020. We find that altering how the prison population is counted, indeed, altered the electoral dynamics across the state.

ABSTRACTDespite winning the presidency in 2016, Donald Trump alleged "millions of illegal votes" and other election fraud. He continued using this rhetoric throughout his tenure as president and ultimately suggested that if he did not win reelection in 2020, it would be because it somehow was stolen from him. Through an original survey experiment, this article explores how such allegations of fraud influence the public's attitudes toward the conduct of elections, election outcomes, representation, and democracy as a whole. In doing so, we found that respondents expressed significantly and substantively more negative attitudes toward elections and democracy after being exposed to claims of fraud (even without evidence). Additionally, Republican identifiers were more likely than Democrats or Independents to doubt that their vote was counted fairly. These results bear important implications for our current understanding of politics in the United States.

Previous research on presidential powers has demonstrated predictable variation in the level of support for presidential usage of those powers. However, much of this work has focused solely on unilateral powers. Here, we seek to further explore public attitudes towards constitutionally prescribed powers—namely that of the executive veto. Using original survey data, we find that public support of the president's use of the veto is dependent on respondent partisanship as well as approval of both the president and Congress. Overall, our findings provide some support for previous research on the topic, but also offer new insights. First, we find a higher baseline level of support for presidential powers. Second, our results indicate that the president's copartisans are more supportive of the veto even after controlling for presidential and congressional approval.

While the U.S. House and Senate differ in many significant ways, perhaps the most important is the ability of House leaders to control the legislative process through the usage of special rules, which establish the terms of debate on a bill and can limit the number and content of amendments allowed. House members of both the majority and minority party have complained about their recent increased usage. In contrast, the Senate lacks a comparable tool and scholars have reported sharp increases in the number of floor amendments being proposed. In this paper, we examine the increase in proposed floor amendments in the Senate; arguing that, in addition to an increased value from electoral position-taking, the procedures employed in the House influence the floor behavior of senators. Specifically, we find that senators are more likely to offer amendments to bills that were passed under a restrictive rule in the House.

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented many challenges to governments around the world. The federal structure within the United States has further complicated effective responses to mitigate the personal and economic effects of COVID. Here, we argue that the Trump administration's approach to federalism—highlighted by the pandemic—is incapable of efficiently and effectively addressing state needs and those needs are only going to grow as a result, further exacerbating the problem. This form of federalism, which we dub "transactional federalism," is likely to have deleterious effects on state infrastructure, much of which is already in need. The long-term effects of transactional federalism are likely to weaken state efforts to address critical infrastructure needs.

"Politics and elections in the United States have become increasingly nationalized. Voters now seem more concerned with which of the two national parties will be in power across all levels of government rather than which candidate will represent them individually. The phenomenon has reached levels unseen since the nineteenth century when the strong linkage between presidential and subnational voting was a result of electoral institutions in use, like the party ballot. With the adoption of Progressive Era reforms such as the Australian ballot and the direct primary, elections became far less nationalized throughout the first half of the 1900s, which allowed for an increased role for incumbency and more candidate-centered congressional elections. The recent resurgence of nationalization, however, is typically viewed as a function of decisions made by voters. Although we are beginning to see the effects of increased nationalization in several respects, we still do not have a firm grasp of the factors that may be contributing to nationalization in the modern era, nor do we fully understand its consequences. In seeking to shed light on this important topic, our work investigates how nationalization has influenced elections across different political eras. Specifically, we leverage historical variation in nationalization by analyzing congressional elections from 1840 to 2020. By examining nearly two centuries of elections, our study exploits considerable differences in nationalization, polarization, competition, rules, candidate behavior, voter preferences, and partisan advantage via the incumbency advantage. This book is the first to study such a wide swath of elections history in such a comprehensive fashion"--

As calls for renewed efforts to address the state of the nation's infrastructure grow across both partisan and ideological lines, they raise pointed questions regarding the nature of such efforts. For example, how do we pay for needed infrastructure? How do we set priorities among the many and varied needs across the nation? Most critically, should the national government play the central role in such an effort or is this task more appropriately left to the states? With Netzer's article in mind, we examine the core factors that a national infrastructure policy in the 21st century should consider. We illustrate these factors through the use of two exemplar cases: traditional wastewater infrastructure, and the infrastructure required to conduct free, safe, and fair elections. Contrary to Netzer, we contend that there are many advantages to employing a national policy in these areas.