Alixandra B. Yanus

Full-Court Press: An Examination of Media Coverage of State Supreme Courts

This analysis explores how case facts and the characteristics of media and the judiciary affect news coverage of the courts. It examines newspaper coverage of the decisions of twenty state supreme courts during calendar year 1998 and matches relevant stories to the cases contained in the Brace and Hall State Supreme Court Data Project (2002). The results are consistent with the hypotheses that case facts, media characteristics, and judicial characteristics all affect the probability that a case will receive news coverage.

The Impact of Religion on Voting For Female Congressional Candidates

Research shows that areas with high levels of aggregate religiosity are less likely to elect female candidates to national, state, and local offices. These studies, however, do not determine the causal mechanisms underlying this relationship. In the present analysis, we seek to examine what role, if any, religious exposure and tradition play in determining individuals’ general election vote choices in mixed-gender contests. To explore this relationship, we use data from the 2010 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies. We find some evidence of a relationship between religious beliefs and voting for female congressional candidates; when compared to secular voters, evangelical Protestants and Catholics are more likely to vote for Republican women and less likely to support Democratic women. Our results, however, also underscore partisan identities’ central role in shaping individual vote choice, regardless of a candidates gender.

Turning Civic Education into Engagement: Evaluating the Efficacy of the Democracy USA Project

The Democracy USA (DUSA) Project was an interdisciplinary experiential-learning project designed to engage students and faculty in the 2012 elections. It was launched in response to the U.S. Department of Education’s national call to action (A Crucible Moment) on civic engagement and democratic education. The project had five key components: affiliated coursework, a colloquium series, extracurricular activities, The American Dream Project, and collecting public opinion data. This article presents an analysis of pre- and posttest data collected from over 500 students at a midsize southern liberal arts college during the Fall 2012 semester. The findings underscore the importance of varied approaches and interdisciplinary collaborations to engage students in the democratic process. We find that students enrolled in DUSA classes demonstrated little change in their civic engagement. However, those who participated in cocurricular programming, extracurricular activities, or learned about the program during the semester exhibited changes in both their political skills and willingness to participate in politics.

The Connection Between the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and the Prohibition Party:

Scholars have long been interested in the complementary relationships forged by membership groups and political parties. The post-bellum period presents an opportunity to consider these connections using a case study of two groups concerned with the ills of alcohol, the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and the Prohibition Party. Our analysis of presidential elections from 1876 to 1900 reveals that—although women were disenfranchised at the time—the WCTU’s organization and infrastructure was essential to early Prohibition Party success. In 1884, the first election after the two created a formal alliance in 1882, the strength of the WCTU helped the party grow its voter base. However, the two slowly diverged over how to achieve prohibition, and this relationship dissipated; there is little evidence of any significant connection between the groups after 1884. This supports the proposition that a shared means of accomplishing goals is an essential element of an effective group–party partnership.

Sending mixed signals: the role of gender and partisanship in evaluations of political leaders

ABSTRACT Partisanship and gender are powerful heuristic cues used by citizens to understand their elected officials’ ideology. When these cues send complementary signals – a Democratic woman or a Republican man – we expect they will aid citizens in evaluating their leaders’ political ideology. However, when partisanship and gender send conflicting signals, we expect citizens will be more likely to misperceive their leaders’ beliefs. We test this proposition using ideological evaluations of incumbent US senators collected in the 2010 and 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies. The findings support our hypotheses, illustrating voters’ reliance on both partisan and gender cues. Our results suggest potential consequences for not only Republican women, but also Democratic men.

Increasing Women’s Political Participation: The Role of Women-Friendly Districts

Women have historically participated in political activities such as speaking at public meetings and contributing to candidates at lower rates than men. One explanation for this phenomenon is women’s underrepresentation in political institutions, which compromises their sense of political efficacy. In support of this explanation, as the number of women in government has increased, gender gaps in participation have narrowed in most industrialised democracies. However, the United States lags behind much of the western world in terms of both women’s representation and political participation. We, thus, examine whether contextual factors, in this case so-called ‘women-friendly districts’, improve American women’s political participation [Palmer, Barbara and Dennis Simon. 2008. Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Women and Congressional Elections. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge]. We find that in women-friendly districts, American women’s political participation is statistically indistinguishable from men’s participation. However, outside of these districts, women generally demonstrate lower levels of political activity than men. Counterintuitively, however, these gains are not the result of increasing female participation, but rather decreasing male engagement.

Do religious voters discriminate against women gubernatorial candidates

ABSTRACT Scholars report that areas with higher concentrations of religious voters elect relatively few women to executive office. These studies, however, cannot explain whether the observed patterns are a direct result of religious individuals’ vote choices. Our study explores this question using Cooperative Congressional Election Studies data from all mixed-gender gubernatorial elections in the 2008 through 2016 general election cycles. We conclude that religious voters, regardless of religious tradition or gender, are not significant barriers to electing women to state executive office. More specifically, religious individuals are disproportionately supportive of Republican women and opposed to Democratic women, even when controlling for the ideological distance between the individual’s partisanship and that of the candidate.

Policy Content on the U.S. Supreme Court: A View from the States

ABSTRACT McGuire et al. (2009) set out to develop a better measure of the policy content of the U.S. Supreme Courts decisions. They justify their measure using a formal model, which they test empirically. This empirical test, however, omits all cases that arrived at the Court on appeal from the state supreme courts. We argue that there are plausible reasons to believe that the decision calculus modeled by these authors may vary when considering cases that are appealed from the states and, thus, that McGuire et al.s empirical results may not hold in the state context. This article tests that proposition. Our results diverge from those found in national courts and have significant implications for scholars of state and national political institutions, public policy, and judicial politics.

To Comply or Not to Comply: Evaluating Compliance with Title IX of the Educational Amendments of 1972

ABSTRACT This article examines the extent to which colleges and universities comply with the proportional opportunity test prescribed during the implementation of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972. Using data from the US Department of Education, we consider proportionality in terms of both roster spots and finances for male and female athletes at Division I colleges and universities. We find that the proportionality gap is particularly large for historically Black colleges and institutions in the South; inequalities exist in terms of both number of athletes and expenditures. These results suggest a need for continued monitoring and enforcement of policy guidelines to ensure equal opportunity for men and women on college campuses.

Gendered Perceptions and Reelection Incentives in the U.S. House of Representatives

ABSTRACT Previous research has shown that the public systematically misperceives the ideology of female politicians. We posit that these misperceptions affect the ideal roll call ideology of female incumbents. Specifically, we contend that women receive greater benefits from more ideologically extreme roll call voting than comparable men. We test this theory by using data on the House of Representatives from 1972 to 2008. We find that even after accounting for district characteristics, female members are never penalized—at least in terms of facing a quality challenger—by ideological extremity. But extremity may increase male incumbents’ likelihood of facing such challengers.