Susan Welch

The Effects of Charges of Corruption on Voting Behavior in Congressional Elections, 1982-1990

Fifteen years ago, Peters and Welch investigated the effects of corruption charges on the outcomes of U.S. House elections. Their evidence from 1968 to 1978 indicated that charges generally produced a decline in vote share of between 6% and 11%, depending upon the nature of the charge. Morals violations were the most consequential for candidates and conflict of interest the least. Continuing changes in American politics and the nature of campaigns have made corruption charges even more common and, indeed, central to many races. In the following research note, we explore whether the changing nature of congressional campaigns has altered the magnitude of the effects of corruption charges on congressional election outcomes.

Financial Conditions, Gender, and Voting in American National Elections

Previous attempts to locate subgroups of people who are particularly likely to engage in economic voting have examined class differences, levels of political awareness, and salience of economic issues. None of these attempts has shown much difference among groups in their economic voting. This paper explores differences between men and women in their levels and types of economic voting. As predicted, women are considerably less likely than men to cast egocentric economic votes, but are as likely, or perhaps more so, to cast sociotropic economic votes. Since these differences do not appear to be a result of socioeconomic differences between men and women, our findings illuminate an aspect of the gender gap rarely described. Not only are men and women different in many political attitudes, but they also have different ways of using these attitudes to provide a basis for political action.

The “Obama Effect” and White Racial Attitudes

To what extent did the presidential candidacy and election of Barack Obama affect whites’ more general perceptions of African Americans? Responses to survey questions in which respondents were asked to place blacks on scales running from “stupid” to “intelligent” and from “lazy” to “hardworking” revealed that whites’ views of blacks’ intelligence and work ethic have become somewhat more positive, though whites continued to be rated higher on these attributes than were blacks. The fact that negative stereotypes of blacks were least pronounced among younger whites implies that these stereotypes will continue to fade in the future. These data do not constitute proof positive of an “Obama effect” on whites’ racial attitudes, but they are largely consistent with that idea.

Comparing Predictors of Women's Congressional Election Success Candidates, Primaries, and the General Election

Examining all Congressional races from 1992 through 2000, we explore why, over time, some districts are more likely to have women candidates and to elect women than are others. We focus on the obvious, but rarely explored, fact that womens election success is a product of three key stages of the election process: women running, womens successes in the primaries, and finally, womens general election successes. We find that different factors predict success at each stage and that the predictors of womens candidacies and success in open seat races are different than in others.