Thomas G. Hansford

The Republicans Should Pray for Rain: Weather, Turnout, and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections

The relationship between bad weather and lower levels of voter turnout is widely espoused by media, political practitioners, and, perhaps, even political scientists. Yet, there is virtually no solid empirical evidence linking weather to voter participation. This paper provides an extensive test of the claim. We examine the effect of weather on voter turnout in 14 U.S. presidential elections. Using GIS interpolations, we employ meteorological data drawn from over 22,000 U.S. weather stations to provide election day estimates of rain and snow for each U.S. county. We find that, when compared to normal conditions, rain significantly reduces voter participation by a rate of just less than 1% per inch, while an inch of snowfall decreases turnout by almost .5%. Poor weather is also shown to benefit the Republican partys vote share. Indeed, the weather may have contributed to two Electoral College outcomes, the 1960 and 2000 presidential elections.

Estimating the Electoral Effects of Voter Turnout

This article examines the electoral consequences of variation in voter turnout in the United States. Existing scholarship focuses on the claim that high turnout benefits Democrats, but evidence supporting this conjecture is variable and controversial. Previous work, however, does not account for endogeneity between turnout and electoral choice, and thus, causal claims are questionable. Using election day rainfall as an instrumental variable for voter turnout, we are able to estimate the effect of variation in turnout due to across-the-board changes in the utility of voting. We re-examine the Partisan Effects and Two-Effects Hypotheses, provide an empirical test of an Anti-Incumbent Hypothesis, and propose a Volatility Hypothesis, which posits that high turnout produces less predictable electoral outcomes. Using county-level data from the 1948–2000 presidential elections, we find support for each hypothesis. Failing to address the endogeneity problem would lead researchers to incorrectly reject all but the Anti-Incumbent Hypothesis. The effect of variation in turnout on electoral outcomes appears quite meaningful. Although election-specific factors other than turnout have the greatest influence on who wins an election, variation in turnout significantly affects vote shares at the county, national, and Electoral College levels.

Information Provision, Organizational Constraints, and the Decision to Submit an Amicus Curiae Brief in a U.S. Supreme Court Case:

How do organized interests select the Supreme Court cases in which to file amicus curiae briefs? Starting with the assumption that organized interests pursue policy influence, I argue that an organized interest will submit amicus curiae briefs in the cases that provide the greatest opportunity for the interest to influence the content of the majority opinion. Membership-based interests, however, will also have to consider the effect of their case-selection decisions on their ability to attract and retain membership support. I test my hypotheses with data on a large sample of organized interests and their amicus curiae brief filings in the 1991-1995 Supreme Court terms. The results of this analysis provide support for my hypotheses and indicate that organized interests seek out cases in which the justices are relatively information-poor. Membership-based interests also choose cases that allow for visible and apparently “successful” participation.

LOBBYING STRATEGIES, VENUE SELECTION, AND ORGANIZED INTEREST INVOLVEMENT AT THE U.S. SUPREME COURT

When and why will organized interests choose to lobby the U.S. Supreme Court by submitting amicus curiae briefs? This article argues that organized interests are most likely to lobby the Court when conditions increase their expectation of influencing the Court’s policy outputs. However, when deciding which policy venue to lobby, organized interests that rely on membership support will also have to consider the effect of their lobbying decisions on their ability to attract and retain members. Analysis of the amicus curiae brief filings of 579 organized interests suggests that an interest is more likely to submit amicus briefs at the Supreme Court when the Court is receptive to the positions advocated by the interest and the interest has participated at the Court in the past. The results also indicate that membership-based groups will take into account the extent to which relevant cases have been covered by the media when choosing whether to lobby the Court.

The Timing of Presidential Nominations to the Lower Federal Courts

Presidents often move quite slowly to exercise their important power of judicial appointment. This study attempts to explain these delays by developing a strategic conception of the timing of presidential nominations to the lower federal courts. We argue that the judicial selection process may be best conceptualized by viewing presidents as strategic actors who prefer to select judges with policy preferences that are as close as possible to those of the president, given senatorial and temporal constraints. We test our argument by estimating a duration model of the length of time between vacancy and nomination for all vacancies in the U.S. District Courts and U.S. Courts of Appeals from 1977 to 1999. Our results indicate that the timing of presidential nominations is a function of both politics and institutional constraint.

The Allocation of Party Controlled Campaign Resources in the House of Representatives, 1989-1996

Despite the well-documented decline of political parties in the electorate, the evidence shows that parties remain highly salient and visible within government, particularly in Congress, and the formal party organizations continue to play an active role in campaigns. Building on this evidence, we attempt to offer further insight into the goals and activities of contemporary American political parties by investigating the allocation of partycontrolled resources in congressional elections. In particular, we examine the resource allocation strategies employed by the Democratic and Republican parties congressional (the DCCC and the NRCC) and national (DNC and RNC) campaign committees to assess if these resources are used to enhance party support within Congress or are motivated strictly by electoral concerns. Via tobit analysis, we test our specification using data for challengers and incumbents of both parties from 1989-96. Our results suggest that these resources, particularly for the Republican party, are prompted by campaign-specific factors and are not used to facilitate party support within Congress.

Politics, Careerism, and the Voluntary Departures of U.S. District Court Judges

Prior studies hypothesize that judges time their retirements to allow a like-minded president to select their replacements. We propose a modification to this argument and theorize that during the earlier part of a district court judge’s career, it is the likelihood of elevation to an appeals court and other career-oriented concerns that affect whether the judge resigns or stays on the bench. It is during the latter stage of a judge’s career when the desire to be replaced with a like-minded judge affects the retirement decision. Our analysis reveals that judges who are not yet pension eligible are influenced by being passed over for appeals court nominations as well as financial incentives to leave for private practice. Only judges who have attained pension eligibility appear to consider their ideological compatibility with the president when deciding to call it quits.

The Dynamics of Interest Representation at the U.S. Supreme Court

How do organized interests respond to their opponents’ advocacy activities in a policy venue? Utilizing data on amicus curiae filings at the U.S. Supreme Court, the author estimates vector error correction and vector autoregression models that allow him test whether interests respond, in a dynamic sense, to the efforts of the “other side.” The author capitalizes on the temporal sequencing of variation in advocacy activity to gain leverage on the causal connection between the behaviors of opposing sets of interests and provides a richer portrait of the dynamics of interest representation in a policy venue. The results reveal that organized interests respond positively to the advocacy activities of their opponents by exhibiting both short-term counteraction and long-term countermobilization, implying that over the long run, interest representation at the Court is responsive and perhaps balanced.

The Supply of Amicus Curiae Briefs in the Market for Information at the U.S. Supreme Court

We argue that the Supreme Courts expressed and latent demand for information on the availability and implications of legal policy alternatives will affect the supply of information provided to the Court by organized interests. An analysis of the annual growth in amicus filings at the Court during the 1949 through 2008 terms largely supports our specific hypotheses. The rate at which the Court cites amicus briefs and shifts in the Courts ideological location or agenda exert a positive effect on the growth of amicus filings, while the evidence for the effect of dissensus is mixed. We further show that the supply of briefs does not affect the Courts expressed or latent demand for information.

The Paradoxical Effect of Speech-Suppressing Appeals to the First Amendment

While the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment prohibits government from imposing adverse consequences for speech it dislikes, in popular discourse this part of the Constitution is often referenced in an attempt to suppress nongovernmental criticism of controversial statements. To assess whether inappropriate, speech-suppressing appeals to the First Amendment cause intolerance of criticism or, unintentionally, promote tolerance of adverse responses to controversial statements, we employ a survey experiment and find evidence of the latter effect. Appeals to the Free Speech Clause that seek to suppress speech have the unintended consequence of increasing public tolerance for speech. Invoking freedom of speech is what matters, not the specific direction of the appeal.