Political Attacks in 280 Characters or Less: A New Tool for the Automated Classification of Campaign Negativity on Social Media

Negativity in election campaign matters. To what extent can the content of social media posts provide a reliable indicator of candidates' campaign negativity? We introduce and critically assess an automated classification procedure that we trained to annotate more than 16,000 tweets of candidates competing in the 2018 Senate Midterms. The algorithm is able to identify the presence of political attacks (both in general, and specifically for character and policy attacks) and incivility. Due to the novel nature of the instrument, the article discusses the external and convergent validity of these measures. Results suggest that automated classifications are able to provide reliable measurements of campaign negativity. Triangulations with independent data show that our automatic classification is strongly associated with the experts’ perceptions of the candidates’ campaign. Furthermore, variations in our measures of negativity can be explained by theoretically relevant factors at the candidate and context levels (e.g., incumbency status and candidate gender); theoretically meaningful trends are also found when replicating the analysis using tweets for the 2020 Senate election, coded using the automated classifier developed for 2018. The implications of such results for the automated coding of campaign negativity in social media are discussed.

Other Special Elections Held in the Wake of Trump’s Win

Despite the predominant focus on Georgia Sixth’s contest, other special elections had similar high stakes. That is, in 2017 in Kansas, Montana, and to a lesser extent South Carolina, special elections to fill House vacancies were viewed as tests of public support for the president, his administration, and the policies he pursued. The testing in the House continued into 2018 in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Ohio, and in the Senate in late 2017 in Alabama. Each of these contests is analyzed in Chapter 4. The latter part of the chapter looks for similarities across the seven House contests and the Alabama Senate election. From this analysis come suggestions for how the underdog party might maximize its prospects for winning when the opposition begins the special election contest with an advantage.

Early Evidence of Cross-Racial Mobilization: White Candidates and Black Voters in the U.S. South 1940–1970

Chapter 2 examines the origins of cross-racial mobilization in the U.S. South between white/Anglo candidates and black voters. The author examines the 1950 U.S. Senate election in Florida between Claude Pepper and George Smathers, identifying the Smith v. Allwright Supreme Court ruling as a critical juncture leading to rapid deployment of cross-racial mobilization across the South. In particular, Claude Pepper covertly mobilized black Floridians by funding a black-run get-out-the-vote operation. The chapter argues that Pepper’s efforts dramatically increased black political participation. Relying on a candidate-level dataset across the U.S. South from the 1940s to the 1970s, the chapter then shows how cross-racial appeals also increased after the Civil Rights reforms of the mid-1960s, that white candidates from the Black Belt were much slower to adopt cross-racial mobilization tactics, and that white candidates mobilized blacks significantly more in the Peripheral South than in the Deep South. Finally, the chapter shows that increasing black registration likely leads to increased cross-racial mobilization.

No Republican, No Vote: Undervoting and Consequences of the Top-Two Primary System

Washington and California adopted the Top-Two Primary in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Under this new system, all candidates regardless of party affiliation run against each other, narrowing the field down to the top two for the general election. In some jurisdictions, the general election features two candidates from the same party. Ten percent of California voters chose not to vote in the 2016 U.S. Senate election which featured two Democrats. Using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (2012–2016), I find that among those who vote in the national November elections, orphans, or voters without a copartisan candidate on the ballot are more likely to undervote, opting out of voting in their congressional race. Levels of undervoting are nearly 20 percentage points higher for orphaned voters compared to non-orphaned voters. Additionally, voters who abstain perceive more ideological distance between themselves and the candidates compared to voters who cast a vote. These findings support a multi-step framework for vote decisions in same-party matchups: voters are more likely to undervote if they are unable to vote for a candidate from their party (partisan model), but all voters are more likely to vote for a candidate when they perceive ideological proximity (ideological model).

Congo Senate presidency will test FCC stability

Headline CONGO-KINSHASA: Senate election will test FCC cohesion

Senate election will further erode Congo’s democracy

Subject Congo's elections and political outlook. Significance Congo’s recent senate elections have stirred widespread accusations of corruption and further divided political elites, threatening in particular the nascent alliance between newly elected President Felix Tshisekedi and former President Joseph Kabila. Impacts Kabila appears unwilling to offer Tshisekedi any real concessions; so far, this strategy has been effective, but it carries major risks. Pressures from internal constituencies will reduce room for manoeuvre on all sides. Upcoming gubernatorial elections could prove equally contentious.

Usage and performance of bellwether polls for election forecasting

A non-traditional methodology of polling in small areas, called bellwethers, improves the accuracy of forecasts drawn from a large area. Bellwether areas are small government units (such as cities or counties) which exhibit voting patterns close to actual election outcomes in the larger areas of which they are a part (such as states). The bellwether methodology of one polling organization is described in detail using data from the 2012 US Senate election in Massachusetts. An overview of the performance of the bellwether methodology is provided. In use at Suffolk University Political Research Center since 2003, bellwethers combined with state polls correctly forecast election outcomes in 97% of trials where a clear winner could be determined (i.e., no ties). The contribution of this work is to offer an open-source methodology for improving accuracy in election forecasting.