J. Matthew Wilson

Causal Attribution and Economic Voting in American Congressional Elections

This article examines the ways in which political sophistication conditions economic voting in U.S. congressional elections. At the congressional level, evidence of economic voting has been generally mixed and sometimes contradictory. In our view, much of the inconsistency in existing studies may result from a tendency to overlook significant heterogeneity in voter decisionmaking. Specifically, we argue that an individual’s ability to attribute responsibility for economic outcomes to congressional actors is a function of political sophistication. According to our theory, less sophisticated voters tend to focus their attributions of responsibility on the President (the most obvious national political figure), ignoring the influence of Congress on the national economy. More sophisticated individuals, by contrast, are capable of more diffuse attributions. Thus, to the extent that conventional economic voting occurs in congressional elections, it should be confined to the more sophisticated portion of the electorate.

Rethinking Symbolic Racism: Evidence of Attribution Bias

This paper demonstrates that cognitive tendencies related to political sophistication produce an attribution bias in the widely accepted symbolic racism scale. When this bias is controlled statistically, the effect of symbolic racism on racial policy attitudes is greatly diminished. Our theory posits that high sophisticates tend to make global/distal attributions, allowing them to associate racial inequality with broader sociopolitical causes. Less sophisticated individuals, conversely, tend to make local/proximal attributions, thus biasing them against ascribing responsibility systemically. Consequently, less sophisticated individuals tend to be classified as intolerant by the symbolic racism scale, even when controlling for factors such as ideology and anti-black affect.

Politics and religion in the United States

1. Politics and Religion: An Overview. Part I: Religion and History. 2. The Colonial and Founding Eras. 3. Religion and Politics in American History: 1800-1960. 4. Religion and Politics in America since 1960. Part II: Religion and the First Amendment. 5. The Establishment Clause. 6. The Free Exercise Clause. Part III: Religion and Public Opinion. 7. Public Opinion about Religion and Politics. 8. Religious Orientations and Political Behavior among White Americans. 9. Religion and Politics in Racial Minority Communities. Part IV: Effects of Religious Influences in Politics. 10. Religion and Interest Group Activity. 11. Religion in Public Life: The Contemporary Debate. 12. Conclusion: Is America a Secular or a Religious Nation?

Concordance and Projection in Citizen Perceptions of Congressional Roll-Call VotIng

Research on political cognition suggests that individuals absorb and retain more information consistent with their political predispositions than they do information at odds with those predispositions. When citizens view a member of Congress favorably, they should thus be more likely to recall that members vote on a bill if it is in agreement with their own positions; additionally, if they do not recall, they will tend to assume that the member voted in accordance with their own preferences. When citizens view a representative negatively, the opposite patterns should obtain. Here, we find considerable evidence for both of these effects-concordance and projection. Attitude toward the representative and agreement on the issue substantially drive citizen perceptions of congressional roll-call voting.

Economic Voting and Political Sophistication Defending Heterogeneous Attribution

The authors reply here to Godbout and Bélangers critique of their work on political sophistication and economic voting. Principally, the authors stress the importance of using contemporaneous economic assessment and candidate preference measures in assessing their relationship. They also emphasize the empirical support for their key contentions that less sophisticated citizens tend not to credit/blame government for their own economic circumstances, and that more sophisticated citizens tend to focus on actors other than the president when attributing responsibility for the national economy. Finally, the authors stress the variety of contexts, both outside the United States and outside the domain of economic voting, in which their theory has found support.

Competing Redistricting Plans As Evidence of Political Motives: The North Carolina Case

Redistricting is a thoroughly political act, but the political strategies of the various actors often have been lost amid legal and representational arguments. This article looks at one set of actors—state legislators—and examines how they pursue personal and partisan interests during redistricting. Rather than treating legislators as uniform in their preferences, we divide them into two categories: those who are ambitious for higher office and those who are not. These two groups of legislators face dramatically different sets of incentives and constraints, and these differences are reflected by their strategies in the redistricting process. Using North Carolinas 1992 redistricting as exemplar, this article outlines the redistricting debates, describes the interests of the various actors, and presents an analysis of eight redistricting plans using JudgeIt. The findings indicate that members balance individual and partisan interests when proposing plans and that for ambitious legislators, individual ambition generally outweighs partisan loyalty.