Michael W. Wagner

The Empirical Effects of Voter-ID Laws: Present or Absent?

The effect of voter-identification (voter-ID) laws on turnout is a hot-button issue in contemporary American politics. In April of 2008, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed Indianas voter-ID law, the nations most rigorous, which requires voters to arrive at the polls with a state-issued photo ID containing an expiration date ( Crawford v. Marion County 2008). In a famous incident highlighting how Hoosiers were dealing with their states voter-ID law, representative Julia Carson (D-IN) was initially blocked from voting during Indianas 2006 primary election for failing to comply with Indianas voter-identification standard. Carson identified herself with her congressional ID card; since that card did not include an expiration date and therefore did not meet Indianas voter-identification law, she was turned away at the polls before later being allowed to vote (Goldstein 2006 ). The rising wave of public, political, and legal debate crested two years later in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling and during the Indiana primaries, with reports of a dozen nuns being denied ballots at the polls due to their lack of appropriate identification (Urbina 2008 ).

Who Fits the Left-Right Divide? Partisan Polarization in the American Electorate

How has the American public responded to elite partisan polarization? Using panel data from both the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project and the American National Election Studies, we explore the partisan consequences of the discrepancy between the one-dimensional structure of elite policy preferences and the two-dimensional structure of citizens’ policy preferences. We find that those citizens with preferences that are consistently liberal or consistently conservative across both economic and social issues have responded to elite polarization with mass polarization. However, we also find that the sizable number of citizens who hold preferences on economic and social issues that do not perfectly match the menu of options provided by elite Republicans and Democrats have not responded to elite polarization; indeed, these citizens are more likely to shift their partisan allegiance in the short-term and less likely to strengthen their party identification in the long term.

Political Ideology in American Politics: One, Two, or None?

Abstract Are Americans ideological, and if so, what are the foundations of their ideology? According to Converse’s seminal view, whatever the case in other western democracies and despite its centrality to traditional versions of textbook democracy, the American public is distinctly non-ideological. Our objective is to compare the standard and by far most widely used measure of political ideology—a measure that presumes ideology is one-dimensional—to a more recent measure that allows for a multi-dimensional conception and measurement. This measure demonstrates that while American political elites compete across a single dimension of conflict, the American people organize their policy attitudes around two distinct dimensions, one economic and one social. After explaining how we derived the measure and how it can be used to develop five separate ideological groups, we show how these groups differ politically and why it is not possible to map their preferences onto a one-dimensional measure of ideology.

Beyond the Three “Bs” How American Christians Approach Faith and Politics

While it is well-known that religiosity measures inform modern political alignments and voting behavior, less is known about how people of various religious orthodoxies think about the role of religion in society. To learn more about this veritable “black box” with respect to whether and why people connect their spiritual life to the political world, we conducted several focus groups in randomly selected Christian congregations in a mid-sized Midwestern city. Our analysis offers confirmatory, amplifying, and challenging evidence with respect to the “Three Bs” (believing, behaving, and belonging) perspective on how religion affects politics. Specifically, we show that while contemporary measures of religious traditionalism accurately reflect individuals’ partisan, ideological, and issue preferences, attitudes regarding the broad intersection of faith and politics are perhaps best understood via the presence (or absence) of denominational guidance on questions of the role of religion in society. We conclude by offering suggestions for future survey research seeking to explain the relationship between religion and politics.

Political Trust in Polarized Times.

As political trust levels continue to decline while levels of partisan polarization increase, we contend that more research is needed to explore the interaction between these two central features of contemporary American politics. Political scientists have debated whether explanations of political trust levels are best informed by the public’s assessment of the political system or of evaluations of individual politicians. In times when partisan polarization is a salient feature of the political arena, we contend that both are important. During highly polarized times, party and trust heuristics become heavily intertwined in the sense that people may continue to rely on their default trust evaluations of the political system but party as the source of government action becomes the major determinant of trust. We discuss how these dynamics influence two specific consequence of political trust—policy outcomes and support for democratic processes. We outline a theoretical framework informed by prior research concerning the dynamics of political trust and partisan polarization and their influence on policy outcomes. Finally, we offer empirical evidence obtained from an experiment that supports our contention that when partisan polarization is primed by the information environment, there are important consequences for support for democratic processes.

Information Flow in the 21st Century: The Dynamics of Agenda-Uptake

Although the theory of agenda-setting is a pillar of political communication research, understanding the dynamics of public attention remains an important challenge as the communication system becomes increasingly fragmented. The development of ideologically oriented niche media and the ability of the mainstream media to carefully track the interests of their audience suggest that both public interest and niche media attention to an issue could affect the mainstream media’s agenda itself. We develop and test the theory of agenda-uptake to isolate when mainstream media influences both public and niche media attention to issues and when public interest and niche media attention influence the mainstream media to cover an issue. Analyzing mainstream and niche media coverage along with Google Trends individual search data for 4 issues in 2008, we provide evidence that the dynamics of agenda-uptake are crucial to understanding the character and content of the information environment in the 21st century.

When Framing Matters: How Partisan and Journalistic Frames Affect Individual Opinions and Party Identification

This monograph examines how the consistency and content of issue frames used by politicians and journalists from 1975–2008 affect preferences and partisanship. Combining our content analysis of Newsweek’s coverage of abortion and taxes with public opinion data, we show that consistent, partisan-sourced frames affect preferences and partisanship. In general, specific frames affect attitudes but not partisanship when sourced by partisan politicians, and both attitudes and partisanship when sourced by journalists. Policy-oriented liberal frames were associated with more liberal preferences and Democratic partisanship while symbolic conservative frames were associated with more conservative preferences and Republican partisanship.

Ideological Heterogeneity and the Rise of Donald Trump

Abstract In the days after the 2016 election, a variety of explanations has been offered to explain Donald Trump’s unique ascendancy in American politics. Scholars have discussed Trump’s appeal to rural voters, his hybrid media campaign strategy, shifts in voter turnout, Hillary Clinton’s campaign advertising strategy, economic anxiety, differences in sexist and racist attitudes among Trump voters and so forth. Here, we add another key factor to the conversation: Trump’s appeal to a smaller, often ignored, segment of the electorate: populist voters. Building upon our previous work – demonstrating that while American political elites compete across a single dimension of conflict, the American people organize their attitudes around two distinct dimensions, one economic and one social – we use 2008 American National Elections Study (ANES) data and 2016 ANES primary election data to show that populist support for Trump, and nationalist policies themselves, help us to understand how Trump captured the Republican nomination and the White House.

Who Gets Covered? Ideological Extremity and News Coverage of Members of the U.S. Congress, 1993 to 2013

Does the news media cover ideological extremists more than moderates? We combine a measure of members of Congress’ ideological extremity with a content analysis of how often lawmakers appear in the New York Times from the 103rd to the 112th Congresses and on CBS and NBC’s evening newscasts in the 112th Congress. We show that ideological extremity is positively related to political news coverage for members of the House of Representatives. Generally, ideological extremity is not related to the likelihood of coverage for senators. Finally, we show that extreme Republicans are more likely to earn media attention than extreme Democrats.

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Political communication scholars are engaging the news media, citizens, and one another across multiple platforms, sharing and applying their specialized knowledge to important questions facing the...