LA ELECCIÓN POPULAR

El tweet de Joe Biden, The people had spoke, refiriéndose al voto del pueblo americano en las recientes elecciones presidenciales, recuerda el título del célebre libro de P. F. Lazarsfeld, B. Berelson y H. Gandet, The People Choice, dedicado a las elecciones de 1940. Como se sabe, la obra se centraba en la forma en que los electores del estado de Ohio decidían su voto en las elecciones del 5 de noviembre de 1940, donde el presidente saliente Franklin D. Roosevelt (demócrata), que iba por su cuarta reelección, se oponía a Wendell Willkie. Merece la pena repasar las conclusiones de esa investigación a la luz de las recientes elecciones americanas y, subsidiariamente, interrogarnos por los usos sociales de la actualidad en la construcción del directo televisivo. Abstract: Joe Biden’s tweet “The people had spoken”, referring to the vote of the American people in the recent presidential elections, recalls the title of Paul Lazarsfeld’s et alii famous book The People Choice research dedicated to the 1940 elections. As is known, the investigation focused on the way Ohio state voters decided their vote in the November 5, 1940 election that opposed outgoing President Franklin D. Roosevelt (Democrat) who was going for his fourth re-election to his challenger Wendell Willkie. It is worth reviewing the conclusions of these founding investigations in the light of the recent American elections and, alternatively, to consider the current social uses in the construction of the television direct.

When Do Voters Respond to Campaign Finance Disclosure? Evidence from Multiple Election Types

In recent American elections political candidates have actively emphasized features of their fundraising profiles when campaigning. Yet, surprisingly, we know comparatively little about how financial information affects vote choice specifically, whether effects differ across types of election, and how robust any effects are to other relevant political signals. Using a series of conjoint experiment designs, I compare the effects of campaigns’ financial profiles on vote choice across direct democratic and representative elections, randomizing subjects’ exposure to additional political cues. I find that while the financial profile of candidates can affect vote choice, these effects are drowned out by non-financial signals. In ballot initiative races, the explicit policy focus of the election appears to swamp any effect of financial information. This paper is the first to explore the comparative effects of financial disclosure across election type, contributing to our understanding of how different heuristics interact across electoral contexts.

Why Do Election Results Change after Election Day? The “Blue Shift” in California Elections

The counting of votes in contemporary American elections is usually not completed on Election Night. There has been an increasing tendency for vote shares to shift toward Democratic candidates after Election Day in general elections, in particular, in recent U.S. elections. Leveraging important snapshots of precinct-level election returns and precinct-level demographic and political composition from Orange County, California, we conduct the first full-fledged analysis of the potential drivers of vote share shifts. Using an original large-scale post-election survey and unique snapshots of individual-level administrative records, we also provide the first analysis of the characteristics of voters whose ballots were tallied later versus earlier in the process. Far from being anomalous, our results indicate that the shifts are consistent with underlying precinct voter compositions and the order of precinct and mail ballot processing at the individual level in accordance with election administration practices. We find the same driving forces in North Carolina and Colorado, and discuss the consequences of the “Blue Shift” for public concerns about election integrity as states push policy changes regarding access to voting by mail.

Pennsylvania in 2018: How Redistricting Does and Doesn’t Make a Difference

In this Field Note, we use precinct- and individual-level data on Pennsylvania to assess whether congressional redistricting influenced voter preferences in the 2018 midterm. Despite redistricting vastly altering the distribution of voters in House districts, this did little to change their preferences. Rather, redistricting contributed to Democratic House gains primarily by configuring a handful of districts to be more favorable to the Democratic Party. The evidence for minimal direct effects of redistricting on voter preferences, despite the presence of national political conditions breaking strongly in favor of Democrats, speaks to the increasing nationalization of American elections and with it, a concomitant decline in the incumbency advantage.

Democratic Disarray: Organizational Messaging Coherence and the Local Echoing Press During the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus

The Iowa caucuses are the inaugural event of the American presidential nomination process. When the state Democratic Party failed to report the 2020 caucus results in a timely manner and manage the consequences, the crisis situation threatened the legitimacy of the party and the integrity of the results. This research presents an in-depth case of the Iowa Democratic Party’s public communication response regarding an event described by the Des Moines Register as “hell” and a “results catastrophe.” Specifically, we were interested in how the Iowa Democratic Party responded to the crisis event and the extent to which the party organization was successful in disseminating favorable messaging about the caucus process to the local press. Drawing on organizational crisis management and echoing press perspectives, this analysis uses network and qualitative analytic approaches to assess message development, dissemination, and ultimately adoption. A local event with national implications presents a critical case in investigating how a political party, due to its institutional role in American elections and unique organizational structure, struggled to respond to the crisis.

Using Campaign Finance Reform to Protect U.S. Elections from “Dark Money” and Foreign Influence

Russian interference in U.S. elections has shined a light on gaping holes in the longstanding rules designed to protect against foreign political influence through spending from abroad on American elections. There are three key areas where U.S. elections are most vulnerable to political spending directed by foreign powers: the internet, “dark money” groups that do not disclose their donors, and corporations and other business entities with substantial foreign ownership. A comprehensive set of campaign finance reforms is needed to shore up the United States’ defenses against foreign election spending; the chapter describes those necessary reforms.

American Party Women Redux: Stability in Partisan Gender Gaps

ABSTRACT Recent research in American politics demonstrates that despite gender-based partisan sorting, gender gaps in policy preferences persist within political parties—particularly among Republicans. Republican women report significantly more moderate views than their male counterparts across a range of policy areas. These gaps are largely attributable to gender differences in beliefs about the appropriate scope of government and attitudes toward gender-based inequality. Arguably, gender has become a more salient feature of American elections in recent years, and this heightened salience raises questions about whether these within-party gender gaps are stable over time or vary across campaign contexts. We use survey data from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Study to evaluate whether gender gaps in policy preferences are stable across elections or if the 2016 election context affected the magnitude of gender differences in policy preferences. We find that gender gaps in policy preferences within political parties are fairly stable across the two electoral periods.