scholarly journals Term Limits and the Increased Election of Women: Evidence From State Legislatures and the U.S. House of Representatives

2009 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 275-287
Author(s):  
Stanley M. Caress
Keyword(s):  
Growth Rate ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Initial Period ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Term Limits ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Time Period ◽  
The U.S

This study seeks to determine if term limits increase the likelihood of women being elected to legislative seats. Using a simple comparison of growth rates, we found that, during the initial period of term limit implementation (1991 to 2009), the increase of females elected to state legislatures with term limits was approximately the same as to those without term limits. Additionally, a comparison of the growth rate of females elected to the non-term-limited United States House of Representatives with those of the state legislatures during this same time period shows that the U.S. House actually had a greater increase than state legislatures both with and without term limits. Moreover, in California, which has a full-time, professional state legislature with electoral dynamics similar to the U.S. House, the proportion of women elected to the state’s non-term limited U.S. House delegation from 1990 to 2009 exceeded the proportion of women elected to its term-limited state legislature. These comparisons all suggest that term limits do not facilitate the election of female candidates to legislative seats.

The Inexact Science of Congressional Redistricting

1982 ◽  
Vol 15 (03) ◽  
pp. 431-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles S. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
Geographical Distribution ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Voting Rights ◽  
Science Research ◽  
Voting Rights Act ◽  
Justice Department ◽  
Electoral Rules ◽  
Congressional Representation ◽  
The U.S

Incumbent politicians are understandably nervous when electoral rules are altered. In the case of the U.S. House of Representatives, members are well aware that a change in decade is accompanied by the near certainty that their own district lines will be redrawn. These incumbents know that changes resulting from the reallocation of congressional seats among states and the shift of population within states could have a shattering effect on their careers: their districts could be eliminated; they could be thrown into a district with another House incumbent; their district lines could be radically redrawn, destroying their traditional bases of support.Incumbents' unease is transformed into serious worry by one additional fact:de jurecontrol of redistricting is out of their hands. State legislatures and governors, the Justice Department (for those states falling under the Voting Rights Act) and ultimately the courts determine the fate of incumbents.Of course, the ostensible purpose of congressional redistricting in accordance with the decennial census is to ensure that congressional representation reflects the changes in the geographical distribution of the nation's population and thus to ensure that the members of the House from each state represent approximately the same number of citizens. Putting that principle into practice creates opportunities for the parties to increase their strength in the House but it also causes tremendous uncertainty among incumbents.Looking at political science research on the effects of redistricting on the fortunes of incumbents, one might wonder why they worry. In 1972 I reported findings of my study on incumbents who lost their elections after redistricting.

Living Out

2019 ◽  
pp. 35-51
Author(s):  
Andrew E. Stoner
Keyword(s):  
Drug Abuse ◽  
Sexually Transmitted Diseases ◽  
Gay Men ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Social Issues ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Sexually Transmitted ◽  
The University ◽  
The U.S

Shilts comes “out” to his parents and family. Graduating from the University of Oregon, journalism jobs remained elusive for Shilts. Shilts begins work as a freelance writer for The Advocate, later hired as a full-time correspondent and relocates from Oregon to San Francisco. Shilts’s reporting covers some of the nation’s earliest gay rights efforts via state legislatures and courts, employment discrimination, parental rights, youth suicide, alcoholism/drug abuse, and social issues confronting LGBT individuals. Early stories on communicable and sexually transmitted diseases among gay men. Shilts clashes with David Goodstein, The Advocate’s publisher. Shilts meets his first lover, Daniel Yoder, while traveling the U.S. covering efforts to repeal non-discrimination laws in various cities, including Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” effort in Miami, Florida.

Presidential Coattails and Midterm Losses in State Legislative Elections

1986 ◽  
Vol 80 (1) ◽  
pp. 45-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Campbell
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
The State ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Aggregate State ◽  
Midterm Elections ◽  
State Legislative Elections ◽  
State Legislative ◽  
The U.S

The president's party consistently loses partisan control of state legislatures in midterm elections, a pattern similar to the loss of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives in midterms. This study examines presidential coattails as a possible explanation of these losses. Aggregate state legislative election outcomes between 1944 and 1984 in 41 states are examined. The analysis indicates that the president's party gains seats in presidential elections in proportion to the presidential vote in a state, and subsequently loses seats in midterm elections also in proportion to the prior presidential vote in the state. The presidential coattail and the midterm repercussion effects are evident even when gubernatorial coattail effects are introduced, but are fairly modest in states lacking competitive parties.

scholarly journals He Said, She Said: The Impact of Candidate Gender in Negative Campaigns

2016 ◽  
Vol 12 (02) ◽  
pp. 391-414 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Craig ◽  
Paulina S. Rippere
Keyword(s):  
Gender Stereotypes ◽  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Appropriate Behavior ◽  
Female Candidates ◽  
Campaign Messages ◽  
Opposite Sex ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Special Risk ◽  
The U.S

Although there is evidence that negative advertising “works” at least some of the time, it has been suggested that going negative poses a special risk for female candidates because it violates expectations about appropriate behavior that are rooted in the traditional gender stereotypes still held by many voters. In this paper, we employ data from a survey experiment to examine gender differences in the effectiveness of one particular attack made by a challenger against an incumbent of the opposite sex in a hypothetical race for the U.S. House of Representatives. Our interest is not limited to the attack itself, however, but extends to the question of how candidates should respond when they are attacked and whether certain types of responses/rebuttals (including counterattacks) work better for men than they do for women, and vice versa, in terms of mitigating the damage inflicted by an initially successful negative ad. Overall, we find little support for the idea that the effectiveness of either attack or response (denial, counterattack, counterimaging, justification, accusing one's opponent of mudslinging) varies significantly according to candidate gender. Further, shared partisanship matters more than shared gender in shaping how voters react to the campaign messages of male and female candidates.

scholarly journals Calculated Discrimination: Exposing Racial Gerrymandering Using Computational Methods

2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 346-382
Author(s):  
Aviel Menter
Keyword(s):  
Computational Methods ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Computer Programs ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Natural Distribution ◽  
Partisan Bias ◽  
Common Cause ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
Political Question ◽  
The U.S

In Rucho v. Common Cause, the Supreme Court held that challenges to partisan gerrymanders presented a nonjusticiable political question. This decision threatened to discard decades of work by political scientists and other experts, who had developed a myriad of techniques designed to help the courts objectively and unambiguously identify excessively partisan district maps. Simulated redistricting promised to be one of the most effective of these techniques. Simulated redistricting algorithms are computer programs capable of generating thousands of election-district maps, each of which conforms to a set of permissible criteria determined by the relevant state legislature. By measuring the partisan lean of both the automatically generated maps and the map put forth by the state legislature, a court could determine how much of this partisan bias was attributable to the deliberate actions of the legislature, rather than the natural distribution of the state’s population.Rucho ended partisan gerrymandering challenges brought under the U.S. Constitution—but it need not close the book on simulated redistricting. Although originally developed to combat partisan gerrymanders, simulated redistricting algorithms can be repurposed to help courts identify intentional racial gerrymanders. Instead of measuring the partisan bias of automatically generated maps, these programs can gauge improper racial considerations evident in the legislature’s plan and demonstrate the discriminatory intent that produced such an outcome. As long as the redistricting process remains in the hands of state legislatures, there is a threat that constitutionally impermissible considerations will be employed when drawing district plans. Simulated redistricting provides a powerful tool with which courts can detect a hidden unconstitutional motive in the redistricting process.

scholarly journals Divided Government: Parallel Trends in Legislative Elections

1994 ◽  
Vol 15 ◽  
pp. 375-382
Author(s):  
Anita Pritchard ◽  
Wayne Howard
Keyword(s):  
Democratic Party ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
State Level ◽  
State Legislature ◽  
Congressional Elections ◽  
Research Note ◽  
Divided Government ◽  
Legislative Elections ◽  
Consistent Trend ◽  
The U.S

This research note identified a consistent trend in legislative elections at both the national and state levels. All but nine states can be classified by two criteria—one of the parties was a majority in both the U.S. House delegation and state legislature in the 1980s, and the same party gained seats in both legislative bodies following the 1950s. The Democratic Party gained or maintained a majority of seats in both U.S. House delegations and state legislatures in 32 states during the 30 years characterized by increases in divided government at both the national and state level. Explanations for Democratic dominance of legislatures that focus upon congressional elections only are too level specific.

Religious Adherence, Women-Friendliness, and Representation in American State Legislatures

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas L. Pyeatt ◽  
Alixandra B. Yanus
Keyword(s):  
House Of Representatives ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
State Legislatures ◽  
Women Candidates ◽  
National Studies ◽  
State Legislative ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Cross National ◽  
Evangelical Protestant

AbstractNational and cross-national studies demonstrate that the probability of women candidates' emergence and success is lower in more religious areas. One recent study of the U.S. House of Representatives even suggests that the effect of religiosity may be so powerful as to render insignificant other contextual factors, including a district's baseline women-friendliness. We argue that this finding is an institutional artifact; in less competitive contests with more internally similar constituencies, both religion and other contextual factors should affect women candidates' emergence and victory. We test this proposition using state legislative data and find that while women are less likely to run and win in more religious areas, district women-friendliness has an independent, positive effect on women's candidacies. These effects are particularly noteworthy in districts with large evangelical Protestant populations and affect Republican and Democratic women similarly.

Stability and Change in Emotional Intelligence: Exploring the Transition to Young Adulthood

2005 ◽  
Vol 26 (2) ◽  
pp. 100-106 ◽  
Author(s):  
James D.A. Parker ◽  
Donald H. Saklofske ◽  
Laura M. Wood ◽  
Jennifer M. Eastabrook ◽  
Robyn N. Taylor
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Emotional Intelligence ◽  
Postsecondary Education ◽  
Life Transition ◽  
Full Time ◽  
Major Life ◽  
Long Term Stability ◽  
Time Period ◽  
Transition From High School

Abstract. The concept of emotional intelligence (EI) has attracted growing interest from researchers working in various fields. The present study examined the long-term stability (32 months) of EI-related abilities over the course of a major life transition (the transition from high school to university). During the first week of full-time study, a large group of undergraduates completed the EQ-i:Short; 32 months later a random subset of these students (N = 238), who had started their postsecondary education within 24 months of graduating from high school, completed the measures for a second time. The study found EI scores to be relatively stable over the 32-month time period. EI scores were also found to be significantly higher at Time 2; the overall pattern of change in EI-levels was more than can be attributed to the increased age of the participants.

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