D. Sunshine Hillygus

The Persuadable Voter: Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns

List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii Chapter One: Wedge Issues in Presidential Campaigns 1 Chapter Two: The Reciprocal Campaign 18 Chapter Three: Measuring the Persuadable Partisan 49 Chapter Four: Capturing Campaign Persuasion 82 Chapter Five: The Republican Southern Strategy: A Case Study of the Reciprocal Campaign 107 Chapter Six: Candidate Strategy in the 2004 Campaign 145 Chapter Seven: Conclusions: Consequences for Democratic Governance 183 Appendix 1: Question Wording and Coding 205 Appendix 2: Content Analysis Coding 214 Appendix 3: Statistical Results 216 Bibliography 223 Index 237

THE MISSING LINK: Exploring the Relationship Between Higher Education and Political Engagement'

AbstractEmpirical political behavior research has consistently observed a robust and positive relationship between education and political engagement, but has failed to adequately explain why education is so important. Using data from the Baccalaureate and Beyond (B&B) Longitudinal Study, I test three competing hypotheses explaining the enduring link between higher education and political behavior. I find that a verbal SAT scores and a social science curriculum are related to future political engagement, suggesting that the content of higher education, especially a curriculum that develops language and civic skills, is influential in shaping participation in American democracy.

Voter Decision Making in Election 2000: Campaign Effects, Partisan Activation, and the Clinton Legacy

How do citizens respond to campaign events? We explore this question with a unique repeated measures survey design, fielded during the 2000 presidential campaign. We model transitions in support for the major party candidates following the party conventions and presidential debates. In the aggregate, Gore support increases following the conventions (but not the debates), while Bush support increases with the debates (but not the conventions). But there is considerable microlevel variation in the data: responsiveness to campaign events is greatest among Independents, undecided voters, and “mismatched partisans,” but exactly how these groups respond differs for each event. Moreover, attitudes toward then President Clinton mediate the effect of the campaign events on voter preferences. Two primary conclusions follow: (1) rich data sets are required to observe the effects of campaign events; (2) the influence of campaign events on vote choice is conditional on previous preferences, partisan dispositions, and political context.

Moral Issues and Voter Decision Making in the 2004 Presidential Election

“President Bushs victory, the approval of every anti-gay marriage amendment on statewide ballots and an emphasis on ‘moral values’ among voters showed the power of churchgoing Americans in this election and threw the nations religious divide into stark relief.” Associated Press , November 4, 2004

Campaign Effects and the Dynamics of Turnout Intention in Election 2000

Previous survey analyses examining campaign effects on turnout are somewhat unconvincing because they do not control for the fact that individuals may have decided they will vote independent of campaign activities (even before the campaign begins). Using a unique repeated measures data set of the 2000 presidential campaign, I estimate a Markov chain transition model to test the effects of campaign efforts on turnout intention conditional on precampaign turnout intention. I demonstrate that campaign efforts have a substantial influence on turnout intention, even taking initial turnout intention into account. More notably, I find that different campaign efforts are effective for intended nonvoters than for intended voters. A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls. —Dan Quayle A low voter turnout is an indication of fewer people going to the polls. —Dan Quayle

The Dynamics of Health Care Opinion, 2008–2010: Partisanship, Self-Interest, and Racial Resentment

Recent debate over the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act highlights the extent of party polarization in Washington. While the partisan divide on this issue is stark among political elites, it is less clear how the mass electorate has responded to this divisive conflict. In this article we examine individual-level dynamics in health care attitudes between 2008 and 2010. We find partisan attachments and self-interests strongly predict change in health care attitudes, with Republicans growing more opposed to universal health insurance between 2008 and 2010, and those personally worried about medical expenses less likely to abandon support. We find, however, that the effect of partisanship is moderated by self-interest, with strong Republicans significantly less likely to switch to opposition if they were personally worried about medical expenses. Finally, we find that health care policy preferences, already tinged with racial attitudes in 2008, became increasingly so by 2010.

Handling Attrition in Longitudinal Studies: The Case for Refreshment Samples

Panel studies typically suffer from attrition, which reduces sample size and can result in biased inferences. It is impossible to know whether or not the attrition causes bias from the observed panel data alone. Refreshment samples—new, randomly sampled respondents given the questionnaire at the same time as a subsequent wave of the panel—offer information that can be used to diagnose and adjust for bias due to attrition. We review and bolster the case for the use of refreshment samples in panel studies. We include examples of both a fully Bayesian approach for analyzing the concatenated panel and refreshment data, and a multiple imputation approach for analyzing only the original panel. For the latter, we document a positive bias in the usual multiple imputation variance estimator. We present models appropriate for three waves and two refreshment samples, including nonterminal attrition. We illustrate the three-wave analysis using the 2007-2008 Associated Press-Yahoo! News Election Poll.

The Dynamics of Voter Decision Making Among Minor-Party Supporters: The 2000 Presidential Election in the United States

Minor party candidates are quite common in modern democratic elections, but we know relatively little about the decision-making process of minor-party supporters. An extensive panel dataset is used to examine the individual-level dynamics of Nader support in the United States during the 2000 presidential election campaign. A multinomial logit model is estimated to analyse the factors related to a Nader supporters decision to switch support to Gore, to switch support to Bush or to remain loyal to Nader from one interview to the next. The Nader supporters most likely to switch to a major-party candidate were the most politically aware, partisans, those concerned about policy outcomes and respondents in competitive states. Nader supporters were also more likely to abandon the candidate at the ballot box rather than earlier in the campaign. These findings challenge existing expectations about campaign dynamics and appear to reflect strategic calculations on the part of Nader supporters.

Making Young Voters: The Impact of Preregistration on Youth Turnout

Recent research has cast doubt on the potential for many electoral reforms to increase voter turnout. In this paper we examine the effectiveness of preregistration laws, which allow young citizens to register before being eligible to vote. We use two empirical approaches to evaluate the impact of preregistration on youth turnout. First, we implement difference-in-difference and lag models to bracket the causal effect of preregistration implementation using the 2000-2012 Current Population Survey. Second, focusing on the state of Florida, we leverage a discontinuity based on date of birth to estimate the effect of increased preregistration exposure on the turnout of young registrants. In both approaches we find preregistration increases voter turnout, with equal effectiveness for various subgroups in the electorate. More broadly, observed patterns suggest that the campaign context and supporting institutions may help to determine when and if electoral reforms are effective.

Political Issues and the Dynamics of Vote Choice in 2008

Abstract The 2008 American presidential contest occurred amidst economic conditions unlike any seen in decades. Media assessments have often attributed Barack Obamas victory to the faltering economy, particularly the financial crisis that erupted just seven weeks before election day. In this article we assess the role of the economy and other political issues on vote choice, and find that the impact of the economic crisis is more nuanced than is often assumed. We find that while the economy did matter for the general election, so too did social issues. More interestingly, the collapse itself seemed to have only a minor impact because so many people had already made up their minds before the collapse. Finally, we show that while Obama benefited from the economy in the general election, it may have actually worked against him in the primary phase of the contest.