Randomization Inference with Rainfall Data: Using Historical Weather Patterns for Variance Estimation

2017 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 277-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alicia Dailey Cooperman
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Variance Estimation ◽  
The United States ◽  
Average Treatment Effect ◽  
Standard Errors ◽  
Weather Patterns ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Randomization Inference ◽  
Highly Correlated

Many recent papers in political science and economics use rainfall as a strategy to facilitate causal inference. Rainfall shocks are as-if randomly assigned, but the assignment of rainfall by county is highly correlated across space. Since clustered assignment does not occur within well-defined boundaries, it is challenging to estimate the variance of the effect of rainfall on political outcomes. I propose using randomization inference with historical weather patterns from 73 years as potential randomizations. I replicate the influential work on rainfall and voter turnout in presidential elections in the United States by Gomez, Hansford, and Krause (2007) and compare the estimated average treatment effect (ATE) to a sampling distribution of estimates under the sharp null hypothesis of no effect. The alternate randomizations are random draws from national rainfall patterns on election and would-be election days, which preserve the clustering in treatment assignment and eliminate the need to simulate weather patterns or make assumptions about unit boundaries for clustering. I find that the effect of rainfall on turnout is subject to greater sampling variability than previously estimated using conventional standard errors.

Estimating the Electoral Effects of Voter Turnout

2010 ◽  
Vol 104 (2) ◽  
pp. 268-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS G. HANSFORD ◽  
BRAD T. GOMEZ
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Instrumental Variable ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Empirical Test ◽  
The United States ◽  
Electoral Outcomes ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Electoral Choice ◽  
High Turnout ◽  
Specific Factors

This article examines the electoral consequences of variation in voter turnout in the United States. Existing scholarship focuses on the claim that high turnout benefits Democrats, but evidence supporting this conjecture is variable and controversial. Previous work, however, does not account for endogeneity between turnout and electoral choice, and thus, causal claims are questionable. Using election day rainfall as an instrumental variable for voter turnout, we are able to estimate the effect of variation in turnout due to across-the-board changes in the utility of voting. We re-examine the Partisan Effects and Two-Effects Hypotheses, provide an empirical test of an Anti-Incumbent Hypothesis, and propose a Volatility Hypothesis, which posits that high turnout produces less predictable electoral outcomes. Using county-level data from the 1948–2000 presidential elections, we find support for each hypothesis. Failing to address the endogeneity problem would lead researchers to incorrectly reject all but the Anti-Incumbent Hypothesis. The effect of variation in turnout on electoral outcomes appears quite meaningful. Although election-specific factors other than turnout have the greatest influence on who wins an election, variation in turnout significantly affects vote shares at the county, national, and Electoral College levels.

Introduction

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jan E. Leighley ◽  
Jonathan Nagler
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Presidential Election ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Policy Issues ◽  
Policy Choices ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Impact

This introductory chapter sets out the book's purpose, which is to examine voter turnout in every U.S. presidential election from 1972 through 2008 in order to address four questions regarding the changing political context of turnout. First, how have the demographics of turnout in presidential elections changed or remained the same since 1972? Second, what have been the consequences of the broad set of election reforms designed to make registration or voting easier that have been adopted over the past several decades? Third, what is the impact of the policy choices that candidates offer voters on who votes? And fourth, is the conclusion—of the now classic study of voter turnout in the United States by Wolfinger and Rosenstone (1980)—that voters are representative of nonvoters on policy issues accurate, and therefore, who votes does not really matter? The findings on these four questions advance our understanding of turnout and its consequences for representation in fundamental ways.

scholarly journals The Spatial Diffusion of Social Conformity and its Effect on Voter Turnout

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Coleman
Keyword(s):  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Voting Behavior ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
State Level ◽  
The United States ◽  
Behavior Patterns ◽  
Spatial Analyses ◽  
Social Conformity ◽  
Qualitative And Quantitative ◽  
Local Degree

Social conformity can spread social norms and behaviors through a society. This research examines such a process geographically for conformity with the norm that citizens should vote and consequent voter turnout. A mathematical model for this process is developed based on the Laplace equation, and predictions are tested with qualitative and quantitative spatial analyses of state-level voter turnout in American presidential elections. Results show that the diffusion of conformist behavior affects the local degree of turnout and produces highly specific and predictable voting behavior patterns across the United States, confirming the model.

Violence and Voting in the United States: How School Shootings Affect Elections

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-20
Author(s):  
LAURA GARCÍA-MONTOYA ◽  
ANA ARJONA ◽  
MATTHEW LACOMBE
Keyword(s):  
Political Behavior ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
Democratic Party ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
School Shootings ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Voting Decisions ◽  
The One

How do citizens change their voting decisions after their communities experience catastrophic violent events? The literature on the behavioral effects of violence, on the one hand, and on political behavior, on the other, suggest different answers to this question. Using a difference-in-differences approach, we investigate the influence of indiscriminate, rampage-style school shootings on both voter turnout levels and the relative electoral support for the Democratic and Republican Parties at the county level in US presidential elections (1980–2016). We find that although voter turnout does not change, the vote share of the Democratic Party increases by an average of nearly 5 percentage points in counties that experienced shootings—a remarkable shift in an age of partisan polarization and close presidential elections. These results show that school shootings do have important electoral consequences and bring to the fore the need to further examine the effects of different forms of violence on political behavior.

Bases Loaded

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Costas Panagopoulos
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Political Campaign ◽  
Voter Mobilization ◽  
Campaign Strategy ◽  
Partisan Polarization ◽  
The Past ◽  
Swing Voters ◽  
Fundamental Shift

Over the past few decades, a fundamental shift in political campaign strategy has been afoot in U.S. elections: Political campaigns have been gradually shifting their attention away from swing voters toward their respective, partisan bases. Independents and weak partisans have been targeted with less frequency, and the emphasis in contemporary elections has been on strong partisans. This book documents this shift—away from persuasion toward base mobilization—in the context of U.S. presidential elections and explains that this phenomenon is likely linked to several developments, including advances in campaign technology and voter-targeting capabilities as well as insights from behavioral social science focusing on voter mobilization. The analyses show the 2000 presidential election represents a watershed cycle that punctuated this shift. The book also explores the implications of the shift toward base mobilization and links these developments to growing turnout rates for strong partisans and attenuating participation among independents or swing voters over time. The book concludes these patterns have contributed to heightened partisan polarization in the United States.

A computational tool for weak signals classification – Detecting threats and opportunities on politics in the cases of the United States and Brazilian presidential elections

Futures ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 123 ◽  
pp. 102607
Author(s):  
Pedro Ivo Garcia-Nunes ◽  
Pedro Artico Rodrigues ◽  
Kaulitz Guimarães Oliveira ◽  
Ana Estela Antunes da Silva
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
The United States ◽  
Computational Tool ◽  
Weak Signals

Is Distance to Drop Box an Appropriate Proxy for Drop Box Treatment? A Case Study of Washington State

2021 ◽  
pp. 1532673X2110221
Author(s):  
Loren Collingwood ◽  
Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Voter Turnout ◽  
The United States ◽  
Washington State ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Primary 52 ◽  
The One ◽  
Vote By Mail

In the United States, drop box mail-in voting has increased, particularly in the all vote by mail (VBM) states of Washington, Colorado, Utah, and Oregon. To assess if drop boxes improve voter turnout, research proxies box treatment by voters’ residence distance to nearest drop box. However, no research has tested the assumption that voters use drop boxes nearest their residence more so than they do other drop boxes. Using individual-level voter data from a 2020 Washington State election, we show that voters are more likely to use the nearest drop box to their residence relative to other drop boxes. In Washington’s 2020 August primary, 52% of drop box voters in our data used their nearest drop box. Moreover, those who either (1) vote by mail, or (2) used a different drop box from the one closest to their residence live further away from their closest drop box. Implications are discussed.

xtgeebcv: A command for bias-corrected sandwich variance estimation for GEE analyses of cluster randomized trials

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 363-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
John A. Gallis ◽  
Fan Li ◽  
Elizabeth L. Turner
Keyword(s):  
Randomized Trials ◽  
Variance Estimation ◽  
Public Health Education ◽  
Standard Errors ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Type I ◽  
Cluster Randomized Trials ◽  
Finite Sample ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Cluster Randomized

Cluster randomized trials, where clusters (for example, schools or clinics) are randomized to comparison arms but measurements are taken on individuals, are commonly used to evaluate interventions in public health, education, and the social sciences. Analysis is often conducted on individual-level outcomes, and such analysis methods must consider that outcomes for members of the same cluster tend to be more similar than outcomes for members of other clusters. A popular individual-level analysis technique is generalized estimating equations (GEE). However, it is common to randomize a small number of clusters (for example, 30 or fewer), and in this case, the GEE standard errors obtained from the sandwich variance estimator will be biased, leading to inflated type I errors. Some bias-corrected standard errors have been proposed and studied to account for this finite-sample bias, but none has yet been implemented in Stata. In this article, we describe several popular bias corrections to the robust sandwich variance. We then introduce our newly created command, xtgeebcv, which will allow Stata users to easily apply finite-sample corrections to standard errors obtained from GEE models. We then provide examples to demonstrate the use of xtgeebcv. Finally, we discuss suggestions about which finite-sample corrections to use in which situations and consider areas of future research that may improve xtgeebcv.

Racial and Political Dynamics of an Approaching “Majority-Minority” United States

2018 ◽  
Vol 677 (1) ◽  
pp. 204-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen A. Craig ◽  
Julian M. Rucker ◽  
Jennifer A. Richeson
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Psychological Mechanisms ◽  
Political Outcomes ◽  
Essential Questions ◽  
Social Scientific ◽  
Demographic Shifts ◽  
Projected Changes

Do demographic shifts in the racial composition of the United States promote positive changes in the nation’s racial dynamics? Change in response to the nation’s growing diversity is likely, but its direction and scope are less clear. This review integrates emerging social-scientific research that examines how Americans are responding to the projected changes in the racial/ethnic demographics of the United States. Specifically, we review recent empirical research that examines how exposure to information that the United States is becoming a “majority-minority” nation affects racial attitudes and several political outcomes (e.g., ideology, policy preferences), and the psychological mechanisms that give rise to those attitudes. We focus primarily on the reactions of members of the current dominant racial group (i.e., white Americans). We then consider important implications of these findings and propose essential questions for future research.

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