Janine Parry

Pursuing the Early Voter: Does the Early Bird Get the Worm?

ABSTRACT In the 2004 election, 30 states offered the option to vote before Election Day with no excuse (National Conference of State Legislators, 2004), up from 26 in 2002. For parties, interest groups, and campaigns that have begun early voting campaign efforts, have the efforts changed the composition of the electorate—or are early voters largely similar to Election Day voters? By examining two battleground states from the 2002 midterm election in which the partisan, interest group, and campaign efforts were highly competitive, we are able to analyze this question. Drawing upon a unique panel survey including early, absentee, and Election Day voters in the 2002 Arkansas and Missouri midterm elections, we are able to analyze demographic and attitudinal information about voters, as well as issue preference and vote certainty over time. We show that early voters and Election Day voters are largely similar. We also show that while there is weak evidence that issue preference of early voters may change over time, vote choice is firm. Thus, we conclude that early voting campaigns may have limited effectiveness in mobilizing new voters or persuading voters to change their minds.

The State of State Polls: Old Challenges, New Opportunities

The prospect of a full complement of regularly-conducted, publicly-released statelevel polls has both excited and eluded scholars of state politics and public opinion for decades. Here, we examine the current status of state-level polling in the U.S. Specifically, we rely on interviews with 51 state poll directors to investigate the location, frequency, scope, budget, purpose, content, and perceived policy impact of such projects. We also explore the still challenging prospect of greater state-to-state collaboration. We conclude that while current state polling is a robust industry, calls for greater collaboration remain unheeded largely because of limited resources and the incompatible reward structures of project directors. Still, improved data-archiving together with regional polling projects on hot-button topics would serve to diminish such challenges.

Sex, Age, and the Implementation of the Motor Voter Act: The 1996 Presidential Election

Objective. Among the existing studies of political participation, few discuss differences between men and women. Of those published, most have focused upon substantive policy preferences, perhaps noting womens newly dominant electoral presence but not probing its characteristics or limits. In this analysis we build on the work of Schlozman, Burns, and Verba (1994) by examining the compound effects of closing dates, state National Voter Registration Act implementation delay, and age upon women and men. Methods. Using the 1996 Current Population Survey Voter Supplement we compare the impact of legal obstacles among different age groups of men and women in the 1996 presidential election. Results. We find that legal restrictions do have a different impact on men and women, especially the youngest and oldest members of the latter group. Conclusions. The most significant implication of our work is that policy efforts aimed at further reducing legal barriers to political participation may facilitate womens growing electoral dominance.

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.

Leave the Rascals In? Explaining the Poor Prospects of Term Limit Extensions

Voters in nearly half the states adopted term limits between 1990 and 2000, and recent efforts to repeal or extend these caps generally have suffered sound defeats. Past research demonstrates that while robust majorities approved of limiting the terms of elected officials, support was strongest among government cynics and minority-party identifiers. Here, we investigate the impact of trust and partisanship on attitudes toward a 2004 Arkansas proposal to extend term limits; we further test our findings using survey data on a related 2002 measure in California. Relying on statewide samples of likely voters, we find that Democrats and those with more trust in government demonstrate greater support for such measures than Republicans and cynics, controlling for other factors. Trust exerts the strongest substantive effect.

“The Great Negro State of the Country?” Black Legislators in Arkansas: 1973-2000

Scholarship on African American political participation—like research on political participation generally—has focused largely on the national-level preferences of citizens and policy makers. Considerably less attention has been paid to such dynamics in the American states. This article provides an introduction to Black legislative activity in the State of Arkansas with an eye on descriptive and substantive representation issues. Specifically, the article investigates the presence and role of Black Arkansans in the states General Assembly in the post-1960s era of civil rights reforms, assessing their acquisition of legislative seats, their ascendancy to committee and chamber leadership positions, and—especially—their attempt to present an influential voting bloc. The article concludes that though African American legislators in Arkansas are disadvantaged by their small numbers, they have found other ways to exercise power in the state legislature.