The COVID States Project #72: School Board Elections

The COVID-19 pandemic and the backlash against Critical Race Theory have led to increased attention to school board elections. To better understand who votes in these elections and who attends school board meetings, this report examines the demographic characteristics of individuals who say they attended a school board meeting in the past 6 months and those who say they voted for school board at some point in the past year.Turnout in school board elections has historically been very low. Although comprehensive sources of turnout in school board elections are lacking, prior research has estimated turnout in select races to be between 3% and 12%, with even highly salient special elections unable to top 30% turnout. Between high rates of uncontested seats and a lack of salience for these hyper-local positions, school board elections have rarely garnered much attention in the history of American politics. This has changed in recent years, with controversial issues of virtual schooling, mask and vaccine mandates, rules for transgender students, and concerns about how history is taught propelling school board elections to the forefront of numerous news cycles in recent months. The increased attention and salience in school board elections are demonstrated by the spike in the number of school board members facing recall efforts in the 2021 election cycle: According to Ballotpedia, there were 90 recall efforts in 2021, the highest number observed in the 12 years they analyzed. Local news have reported spikes in school board turnout in the 2021 election cycle, with Southlake Texas, Centerville Ohio, Virginia’s Shenandoah valley, and numerous other locales, reporting higher than usual participation.In the run up to the November 2021 elections, rancorous school board meetings garnered national attention and

Examining spread of emotional political content among Democratic and Republican candidates during the 2018 US mid-term elections

Previous research investigating the transmission of political messaging has primarily taken a valence-based approach leaving it unclear how specific emotions influence the spread of candidates’ messages, particularly in a social media context. Moreover, such work does not examine if any differences exist across major political parties (i.e., Democrats vs. Republicans) in their responses to each type of emotional content. Leveraging more than 7000 original messages published by Senate candidates on Twitter leading up to the 2018 US mid-term elections, the present study utilizes an advanced natural language tool (i.e., IBM Tone Analyzer) to examine how candidates’ multidimensional discrete emotions (i.e., joy, anger, fear, sadness, and confidence) displayed in a given tweet—might be more likely to garner the public’s attention online. While the results indicate that positive joy-signaling tweets are less likely to be retweeted or favorited on both sides of the political spectrum, the presence of anger- and fear-signaling tweets were significantly associated with increased diffusion among Republican and Democrat networks, respectively. Neither expressions of confidence nor sadness had an impact on retweet or favorite counts. Given the ubiquity of social media in contemporary politics, here we provide a starting point from which to disentangle the role of specific emotions in the proliferation of political messages, shedding light on the ways in which political candidates gain potential exposure throughout the election cycle.

Young people’s anxieties may affect Turkish politics

Significance Some 13 million voters will be in the 18-27 age group when the next presidential and parliamentary elections take place, unless they are called early. About half will be voting in national elections for the first time. Young people in Turkey have become more pessimistic about their own futures and the future of the country. Impacts Erdogan and the AKP may increase their focus on youth in the run-up to the election: fielding young candidates may be a useful tactic. The opposition could try to offer credible new ideas in the area of employment and the economy. Focusing on corruption and inequality, women’s rights and protection, and freedom of expression could also attract young people’s interest. Young people’s disengagement could continue after the 2023-24 election cycle, particularly if nothing changes and no new leaders emerge.

The COVID-19 - An Agent for Bioterrorism?

Bioterrorism is a form of terrorism where there is intentional release of biological agent (bacteria, virus, fungi or other germs) to cause harm, illness or death of people, livestock and crops. It is an unlawful use of microorganisms to inflict various forms of harm/harmful incidence or injuries in humans, whole population and environment. There are reasons why this COVID-19 global pandemic appears to represent a deliberate act of Bioterrorism. This is occurring at a critical time in the worldwide especially in times of US presidential election cycle. It appears to be worse in males which have implications for military which might be seen as a biological weapon. This has created a market whiplash the large pullback in markets. COVID-19 represents a tremendous opportunity for investment and wealth redistribution like Swine flu pandemic in 2008-2009 when fortunes were made during that recovery.

Assessing the Russian Troll Efforts to Sow Discord on Twitter during the 2016 U.S. Election

Although experts agree that the Russian Internet Research Agency deployed trolls on Twitter to disrupt the 2016 U.S. presidential election, questions remain about the nuances of their efforts. We examined almost 350,000 original tweets made during the two-year electoral cycle to investigate the emphasis, timing, content, and partisanship of the trolls’ efforts targeting leading candidates. Despite only dedicating a fraction of their tweets to candidates, troll behavior generally tracked the relevance of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders, and Ted Cruz during the election cycle. Trolls were significantly more likely to engage in name-calling in tweets about Trump, Clinton, and Cruz than in tweets about other topics. Name-calling peaked in tweets addressing Clinton during the general election. Right trolls were more likely to focus their attention on Trump, Clinton, and Cruz than were other partisan trolls.

School education reform in the party discourse (based on the materials of the election to the State Duma of the 7th convocation)

In recent years, the reforms of the educational system have become a pressing public concern. The subject of this research is the proposals of the political parties pertaining to school education. The article considers the election programs of political parties with the federal lists of candidates officially registered for the 2016 State Duma Elections. The author explores reference to the problems of public education in the election campaign, attitude of the parties to such topical aspects as the implementation of the Unified State Exam, social status and salary of the pedagogues, and future trends in the education reforms. With the exception of the “United Russia”, which noted a number of positive trends, the parties criticized the current situation in education. Most criticism was expressed towards drawbacks of the Unified State Exam procedure; therefore, the parties demonstrated different approaches – from its cancellation to modification. Instead of submitting new comprehensive proposals, the political actors suggested focusing on the Soviet system of education or the Russian system of education formed after 1991. The problem of school education will remain relevant in the next election cycle; however, the priority topic of discussion may change to distant education.

Mobilizing the Religious Left: Linking the Movement to Individual Political Activity

The contemporary Religious Left (RL) in the United States has proven to be somewhat of an enigma, both for academics and for the activists and voters who desire such a movement to thrive. In this paper, I look at one piece of the puzzle: is the RL able to mobilize supporters to political activity? Combining data from both the individual and movement level, this paper tests whether activity at the movement level of the RL can translate into individual supporters' political activity. Using existing data for 2008 and newly collected data on the RL in the 2016 election cycle, I find that the movement was successful in mobilizing constituents in 2008, but not in 2016. This can be linked to the Democrats' effort to engage religious voters in 2008, and its inability to do so in 2016.