R. Michael Alvarez

GOVERNMENT PARTISANSHIP, LABOR ORGANIZATION, AND MACROECONOMIC PERFORMANCE

Governments of the Left and Right have distinct partisan economic policies and objectives that they would prefer to pursue. Their propensity to do so, however, is constrained by their desire for reelection. We argue that the ability of governments to further their partisan interests and preside over reelectable macroeconomic outcomes simultaneously is dependent on the organization of the domestic economy, particularly the labor movement. We hypothesize that there are two different paths to desirable macroeconomic performance. In countries with densely and centrally organized labor movements, leftist governments can promote economic growth and reduce inflation and unemployment. Conversely, in countries with weak labor movements, rightist governments can pursue their partisan-preferred macroeconomic strategies and achieve similarly beneficial macroeconomic outcomes. Performance will be poorer in other cases. These hypotheses are supported by analysis of pooled annual time series data for 16 advanced industrial democracies between 1967 and 1984.

When Politics and Models Collide: Estimating Models of Multiparty Elections

Theory: The spatial model of elections can better be represented by using conditional logit models which consider the position of the parties in issue spaces than by multinomial logit models which only consider the position of voters in the issue space. The spatial model, and random utility models in general, suffer from a failure to adequately consider the substitutability of parties sharing similar or identical issue positions. Hypotheses: Multinomial logit is not necessarily better than successive applications of binomial logit. Conditional logit allows for considering more interesting political questions than does multinomial logit. The spatial model may not correspond to voter decision-making in multiple party settings. Multinomial probit allows for a relaxation of the IIA condition and this should improve estimates of the effect of adding or removing parties. Methods: Comparisons of binomial logit, multinomial logit, conditional logit, and multinomial probit on simulated data and survey data from multiparty elections. Results: Multinomial logit offers almost no benefits over binomial logit. Conditional logit is capable of examining movements by parties, whereas multinomial logit is not. Multinomial probit performs better than conditional logit when considering the effects of altering the set of choices available to voters. Estimation of multinomial probit with more than three choices is feasible

American Ambivalence Towards Abortion Policy: Development of a Heteroskedastic Probit Model of Competing Values

Theory: Using elaboration-likelihood models and insights from the recent core beliefs literature, we show that conflicting core beliefs lead to ambivalence about policy choices. Hypotheses: Policy choices about abortion are heterogeneous. This heterogeneity across individuals is a function of the underlying conflict in their beliefs about the role of women and the sanctity of human life. Methods: A heteroskedastic probit model is developed to test the hypotheses. Results: Heterogeneity is observed for six of seven abortion policy choices; when core values conflict, respondents are more ambivalent in their policy responses and more difficult for our standard models to predict.

A New Approach for Modelling Strategic Voting in Multiparty Elections

Whether citizens vote strategically, using their votes to defeat their least-preferred candidate, or vote sincerely, voting for their first choice among the alternatives, is a question of longstanding interest. We offer two innovations in searching for the answer to this question. First, we begin with a more consistent model of sincere voting in multiparty democratic systems than has been presented in the literature to date. Secondly, we incorporate a new operationalization of the objective potential for strategic behaviour. We offer a test of strategic voting in the 1987 British general election based on the variance in strategic setting across constituencies in Britain. We allow voters to use available information about the relative standings of parties in their constituency in deciding whether or not to cast a strategic vote. We estimate a lower level of strategic voting than many other methods have estimated. We also demonstrate that the use of self-reported vote motivation causes errors in estimating the amount of strategic voting, and that this problem is exacerbated the further from the election the self-report is obtained.

The Foundations of Latino Voter Partisanship: Evidence from the 2000 Election

Studies of partisan identification in the U.S. have concentrated on Anglo Americans. We argue that by focusing only on the descendents of naturalized, mostly white, immigrants, that previous research may have been biased toward largely sociological accounts for the development of partisan attitudes. Here we study the partisan affiliations of Latino voters and argue that by examining their partisan attitudes we should find that their partisanship is more explicitly political than Anglos. We utilize a telephone survey of Latino likely voters in the 2000 presidential election and find that Latino voter partisanship is shaped by both political and social factors.

Uncertainty and Political Perceptions

While the world of politics is uncertain, previous work, both theoretical and empirical, has largely failed to incorporate this uncertainty into the analysis of public opinion and electoral behavior. In this article we discuss measures designed to elicit the uncertainty survey respondents feel about their political perceptions. These measures exhibit response patterns which are interpretable, substantively interesting, and consistent with a model relating uncertainty to citizen information costs. We also find that variation in respondent uncertainty leads to different models of perception of political figures and speaks to models of the survey response. As a practical matter, our measures can easily be incorporated into existing surveys with no disruption of continuity.

Explaining the Gender Gap in U. S. Presidential Elections, 1980-1992

This article compares the voting behavior of women and men in presi dential elections since 1980. We test whether the different levels of salience which men and women attribute to different issues or the different pref erences men and women have on issues best accounts for the gender gap. Utilizing theories of different issue emphasis between men and women, we use a multivariate model to demonstrate that a combination of re spondent views on the economy, social programs, military action, abor tion, and ideology can consistently explain at least three-fourths of the gender gap in the 1984, 1988, and 1992 elections. We show that, consis tent with prior research on individual elections, women placed more emphasis on the national economy than men, and men placed more em phasis on pocketbook voting than women. We add evidence showing that women have consistently more negative assessments of the economy than do men, suggesting that a part of what has been considered a Re publican-Democratic gender gap is really an anti-incumbent bias on the part of women. We also clarify the interpretation of partisan identifica tion in explaining the gender gap.

Are Americans Confident Their Ballots Are Counted

Building on the literature that investigates citizen and voter trust in government, we analyze the topic of voter confidence in the American electoral process. Our data comes from two national telephone surveys where voters were asked the confidence they have that their vote for president in the 2004 election was recorded as intended. We present preliminary evidence that suggests confidence in the electoral process affects voter turnout. We then examine voter responses to determine the overall level of voter confidence and analyze the characteristics that influence the likelihood a voter is confident that their ballot was recorded accurately. Our analyses indicate significant differences in the level of voter confidence along both racial and partisan lines. Finally, we find voter familiarity with the electoral process, opinions about the electoral process in other voting precincts, and both general opinions about voting technology and the specific technology the voter uses significantly affect the level of voter confidence.

Measuring The Relative Impact of Issues and the Economy in Democratic Elections

It is generally accepted that issues and economic outcomes influence elections. In this paper we analyze the relative importance of issues and the economy in Canadian elections. We estimate a model of the 1988 and 1993 Canadian elections in which we include voter evaluations of the parties on a variety of issues, and voter evaluations of the national economy and their personal finances. We demonstrate that it is possible to compare the effects of issues and the economy on election outcomes. And we put this in the context of the impact of issues and elections in several other democracies. We show that even in elections where other factors are dominant, we can still see the impact of economic voting. And we argue that given the tenuous connection between the actions of elected officials and macroeconomic outcomes, this suggests that voters may be giving elected officials undue leeway in their non-economic policy-making functions.

Deficits, Democrats, and Distributive Benefits: Congressional Elections and the Pork Barrel in the 1980s:

In this study, we examine the extent to which legislators receive elec toral benefits from altering the geographic distribution of federal outlays. Although there are both theoretical and anecdotal reasons to believe in the existence of such benefits, previous empirical work has largely failed to verify the connection between pork barreling and reelection. We ex amine House incumbents during the 1980s, when budget deficits were allegedly forcing legislators to end the acquisition of distributive benefits, and we discover that legislators did in fact reap electoral benefits from pork barreling in the 1980s. We further discover that there is a sharp partisan difference in the marginal effects of federal outlays: additional federal monies strongly affect Democratic reelection margins but barely impact the electoral fortunes of Republicans. This conclusion has impor tant implications for current debates about Congress, divided govern ment, and the recent Republican takeover of Congress.