Monika L. McDermott

Voting Cues in Low-Information Elections: Candidate Gender as a Social Information Variable in Contemporary United States Elections

Theory: Theories of low-information voting are used to examine the effect of candidate demographic characteristics on voting behavior, specifically candidate gender. Hypotheses: For voters in low-information elections, candidate gender operates as a social information cue signaling that women candidates are more liberal than men candidates of the same party. As a result, the gender of a candidate affects ideological voting. Method: Logistic regression analysis is performed on data from the 1986 through 1994 American National Election Studies. Results: Women Democratic candidates fare better than men Democratic candidates among more liberal voters and worse among conservative voters, especially those with minimal knowledge of the candidates. The effect is less clear with Republican women candidates who provide conflicting informational cues (woman and Republican).

Not for Members Only: Group Endorsements as Electoral Information Cues

Endorsements by groups in American politics have typically been studied as voting cues only for members of the given organization. Using both the formal theoretical and low-information cognitive voting literatures, this article argues for a broader electoral role for group endorsements. Specifically, if groups that have clear ideological or policy preferences endorse candidates, these endorsements should provide all voters with ideological or issue information about the endorsed candidates. This inferred information should then impact voters’ behavior, especially in low-information scenarios. Using both an experimental test and a test with American National Election Studies (ANES) survey data, this study analyzes the hypothesis in terms of elections to the U.S. House of Representatives. It finds that when the AFL-CIO endorses Democratic candidates, voters behave as though a liberal message has been sent—liberals are significantly more supportive while conservatives are significantly less supportive than they are when no endorsement is given, regardless of whether or not they are union members. At the same time, however, the analysis finds no support that endorsements of Republicans have any ideological impact on voting.

Symbolism Versus Policy Learning Public Opinion of the 1996 U.S. Welfare Reforms

The logic of democracy rests on the assumption that policymakers respond to public preferences, which, in turn, respond to policy developments. We address the question of how policy might affect public opinion by analyzing public opinion before and after the 1996 U.S. Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act. We hypothesized that changes made by the legislation would have improved opinions of welfare recipients. Using U.S. surveys from 1994 and 2001, we find that public opinion was more positive postreform and that the change was because of the enactment of welfare reform itself, not any perceived program success.

The Salience of the Democratic Congress and the 2010 Elections

The results of the 2010 congressional elections were indeed historic. The loss of 63 seats by the Democrats was the biggest electoral loss by any party since 1948, making the more recent 1994 and 2006 turnovers pale by comparison. The question that political scientists naturally ask after an event of this magnitude is—why? This article addresses this question by analyzing the role played by the publics attitudes toward Congress.

Talking the Talk but Not Walking the Walk Public Reactions to Hypocrisy in Political Scandal

Aggregate, survey, and experimental research into political scandal teaches us how the public reacts to revelations of misdeeds on behalf of its elected representatives. One common scenario, however, has been largely overlooked in scandal studies: the effects of hypocrisy in scandal. Examples abound of politicians who campaign on values that they then directly betray with their actions in office. Conventional wisdom, however, holds that such hypocrisy is an unpardonable transgression. We examine whether and how hypocrisy affects public reactions to political scandal and its perpetrators. Using a Quinnipiac University survey experiment, we demonstrate that negative judgments of a hypothetical politician caught in an adulterous relationship not only vary by degree depending on the presence or absence of hypocrisy but that they also vary by type of judgment. Individuals generally react more negatively to politicians in hypocritical scandal situations than nonhypocritical ones. In addition, a hypocritical situation affects public judgments of a politician’s competence in office, above and beyond other judgments, demonstrating an added professional aspect to judgments of scandals when they involve hypocrisy.

Be All that You Can Be The Electoral Impact of Military Service as an Information Cue

Former military service has long been considered a plus for the résumé of a political candidate, presumably because voters may rely on this information as a shortcut by which to make inferences about the candidates and cast ballots accordingly. Previous research has demonstrated that such heuristics frequently affect vote decisions, but few studies have examined the impact of candidates’ military background on support at the polls; moreover, existing research is largely observational, leaving open crucial questions about causal impact. We build on this work by conducting an original survey experiment imbedded in a national survey in 2008 to test the effects of labeling a candidate an Iraq War veteran. Formulating our hypotheses from known issue and trait stereotypes of the military, we demonstrate that military experience can be helpful to some candidates under some conditions. The experimental evidence we present shows that stereotypes based on both issue position (military intervention) and issue ownership (Republican ties) matter to voters facing a military candidate, but only when that candidate is a Democrat. The results we report support the notion that voters rely on information shortcuts, but we find that there is considerable heterogeneity in the impact of heuristics.

Congressional Performance, Incumbent Behavior, and Voting in Senate Elections

Conventional wisdom suggests that individual members of Congress have no real incentive to act in ways that might improve public evaluations of their collective body. In particular, the literature provides no clear evidence that public evaluations of Congress affect individual races for Congress, and little reason to expect that voters would hold specific individuals responsible for the institutions performance. We suggest that this conventional wisdom is incorrect. Using multiple state-level exit polls of Senate voting conducted by Voter News Service in 1996 and 1998, we arrive at two key findings. First, we find that evaluations of Congress do have a significant effect on voting within individual U.S. Senate races across a wide variety of electoral contexts. Second, we find that punishments or rewards for congressional performance are not distributed equally across all members, or even across members of a particular party. Instead, we find that the degree to which citizens hold a senator accountable for congressional performance is significantly influenced by that senators actual level of support for the majority party in Congress, as demonstrated on party votes.

Barack Obama and Americans’ Racial Attitudes: Rallying and Polarization

During the 2008 presidential election, and briefly following it, researchers and pundits wondered whether the election of America’s first African-American President could create a post-racial America. But while political scientists have done much to analyze the election itself, we remain largely uninformed about the potential long-term effects of the Obama presidency on racial attitudes in America. This paper addresses the effects of the Obama presidency using multiple original surveys of the electoral battleground states conducted from 2008 through 2012. Using a measure of racial antagonism, the analysis tests the rally and presidential-popularity cycle theories of public opinion. It demonstrates that racial sentiments rallied positively behind Obama after his 2008 election but then spiked to unprecedentedly antagonistic levels during his first term. At the same time, racial antagonism polarized dramatically by party from 2008 to 2012.