Craig M. Burnett

When Does Ballot Language Influence Voter Choices? Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Under what conditions can political elites influence elections to favor their preferred policy outcomes by strategically crafting the language printed on the ballot? Drawing on psychological and political theories of voter cognition, we design a survey experiment to assess the degree to which ballot text can influence voter behavior in direct democracy elections and identify factors that may moderate such effects. We show that the language used to describe a ballot measure does indeed have the potential to affect election outcomes, including measures dealing with contentious social issues affecting individual rights. We also find, however, that exposing individuals to basic campaign information—in our case, endorsements from prominent interest groups—greatly attenuates the framing effects of ballot text. Our results suggest that the extent to which ballot text matters depends on the vibrancy of the campaign environment and other information available to voters.

Gubernatorial Endorsements and Ballot Measure Approval

Voters often make decisions on ballot measures with limited information. Research shows, however, that elite endorsements can help voters overcome their information deficiencies. Using survey experiments, we examine the effect of a gubernatorial endorsement on three recent ballot measures. We find that identifying the governor as a proponent of a particular measure had a significant effect on respondents’ professed support for only one of our three ballot measures: a highly-publicized health initiative in 2000 that saw elites publicly debate its merits. When voters considered lower-profile referendums on bonds supporting higher education (in 2006) and roads (in 2011), a gubernatorial endorsement proved ineffective in our experiments. Such divergent results suggest that elite endorsements, while valuable to some voters, are even more conditional than previously thought.

The Politics of Potholes: Service Quality and Retrospective Voting in Local Elections

By conditioning their support for political incumbents on observed performance outcomes, voters can motivate elected officials to represent their interests faithfully while in office. Whether elections serve this function in sub-national U.S. government remains unclear, however, because much of the existing research on retrospective voting in these contexts focuses on outcomes that are not obviously salient to voters or over which the relevant government officials have limited influence. In this study, we examine one outcome -- the quality of local roads -- that is both salient and unquestionably under the control of city government. Our analysis leverages within-city variation in the number of pothole complaints in one of Americas largest cities and shows that such variation can explain neighborhood-level differences in support for incumbents in two political offices -- mayor and city council -- across several electoral cycles.

Parties as an organizational force on nonpartisan city councils

Canonical models of urban politics have often treated political parties as clientelistic patrons rather than ideological entities. I argue that parties play an important role in organizing local legislatures at the microlevel. I examine the influence of political parties in local legislatures by systematically analyzing elected officials’ behavior. By examining roll call votes cast by city council members in San Diego, I conclude that partisan coalitions play an important role in structuring local politics. My results suggest that elite party membership predicts legislative behavior—even in nonpartisan legislatures—which may help explain why partisan versus nonpartisan elections do not produce divergent policy outcomes at the macrolevel.

Voter Knowledge of Candidates’ Judicial Philosophies

Judicial elections are typical “down ballot” contests, rarely capturing the interest of most voters. To help distinguish themselves at the polls, judicial candidates have begun to publish their decision-making philosophies with the apparent hope of informing voters. Using survey data collected during the 2012 elections, we explore how well individuals understand such philosophies. In general, we find that voters have very little understanding of various types of judicial philosophies and thus we question whether the enormous time and expenditure invested in broadcasting such philosophies is advantageous to voters.

Party Labels and Vote Choice in Judicial Elections

The vast majority of states use elections to select at least some of their judges. The chief institutional variation in these contests is whether the candidates’ partisanship appears on the ballot. This article expands on the extant literature with new data to examine how providing a party label influences voters’ decisions. Using a survey experiment involving a low-visibility state appellate court, we find that affixing party labels to judicial candidates often helps our subjects select the candidate who is most aligned with their own party attachment and with their policy interests—an outcome that is especially notable for self-identified independents. We also show that the presence of party labels reduces the effect of another cue, gender. The results add context to the debate over the merits and drawbacks of partisan versus nonpartisan elections.

Local Logrolling? Assessing the Impact of Legislative Districting in Los Angeles

Over the past three decades, a number of U.S. cities have shifted from at-large to district-based elections. Some observers argue that this institutional change encourages elected officials to focus on district priorities while ignoring—and perhaps even sacrificing—broader municipal needs. Must district elections bring parochialism and logrolling to city councils? Using seven years’ worth of roll call data from the Los Angeles City Council, we examine the hypothesis that district elections result in vote-trading among its members. Overall, voting behavior on the council appears inconsistent with conventional logrolling accounts and instead points to a strategy of conditional deference on the part of elected officials. The results suggest that district-based elections do not always push elected officials to ignore the general interests of their city.

Exploring the difference in participants’ factual knowledge between online and in-person survey modes

Over the past decade, an increasing number of scholars and professionals have turned to the Internet to gather samples of subjects for research ranging from public opinion surveys to experiments in the social sciences. While there has been a focus on whether online samples are representative and accurate, fewer studies examine the behavioral differences between individuals who participate in surveys and experiments on a computer versus in-person. Here, I use an experiment to gauge whether respondents who self-complete surveys online are more likely to register higher knowledge scores compared with respondents who self-complete surveys with pen and paper in a laboratory. The results show that subjects in the online group are significantly more likely to answer knowledge questions correctly across a range of topics. Patterns in the data imply respondents are researching some answers.

Reconsidering the Construct Validity of “Political Knowledge”

ABSTRACT Current measures of political knowledge have limited construct validity, severely restricting our ability to draw from them either empirical or normative conclusions about the public’s level of political knowledge. Using a unique survey, I show that respondents’ level of political knowledge relative to their knowledge of other subjects is very sensitive to question choice. Indeed, an individual researcher’s selection of questions will change the normative implications of the results. The lack of construct validity for measures of political knowledge—one of the foundational pillars of research on political behavior—suggests a desperate need for new, reliable measures of knowledge that fairly assess voter knowledge and, by extension, competence.

Gaming Direct Democracy: How Voters’ Views of Job Performance Interact with Elite Endorsements of Ballot Measures

Voters are thought to rely on elite endorsements in helping them make decisions. Their ability to use these endorsements is especially important in direct democracy, since ballot measures are complex policy proposals that lack partisan cues printed on the ballot. Using an exit survey, we examine California Governor Arnold Schwarzeneggers endorsement of four Indian gaming measures on the ballot during the presidential primary election of 2008. We find that voters who had knowledge of the elite endorsement differed little from those who did not. We show, however, that Schwarzeneggers endorsement was conditionally related to support for the measures, depending on whether or not voters approved of Schwarzeneggers job performance as governor, with voters who approved of Schwarzeneggers job performance being more likely to vote in favor of the meas- ures compared with voters who disapproved of his job performance. Our results confirm that it is not just the knowledge of a cue that matters, but also the voters assessment of the endorser that influences the cues effectiveness.