Journal articles:
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Abstract:
The internet has made it easier than ever for citizens to voice their opinion to their elected representatives. However, officials may infer that constituents who write to them via lower-effort online mediums care less about the issues than those who communicate in person. To test how policymakers evaluate messages from constituents, we fielded a national survey of local U.S. policymakers to examine responsiveness to different types of messages. Our findings indicate that online communication presents a double-edged sword: while it lowers the effort needed for constituents to communicate, officials discount information conveyed through the internet. We examine this trade-off using an embedded conjoint experiment. Our results indicate that a social media message would have to be sent by more than 47 constituents for it to exceed the value of a single face-to-face meeting. These findings illustrate that, all else equal, in-person meetings likely remain the most effective form of grassroots communication. However, online communication can be an effective choice to the extent that it facilitates a large increase in overall levels of constituent engagement.
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A long-standing line of research attributes criminal justice outcomes in America to punitive attitudes held by the public. For these scholars, one possible mechanism driving this relationship is a punitive public electing punitive politicians. This article presents new evidence complicating that story by demonstrating that citizens’ punitive attitudes do not directly translate into their electoral choices. We use three conjoint experiments to demonstrate this disjunction. Our first two experiments demonstrate agreement about which classes of offenders are more deserving of release. This agreement holds for Democrats, Republicans, and respondents at all levels of racial resentment. However, when respondents were asked to choose between hypothetical candidates promising to release these same classes of offenders, the consensus breaks down. In an hypothetical electoral context, partisan and racial resentment-based divisions emerge. These findings suggest that the translation between public levels of punitiveness and their electoral preferences regarding candidates’ criminal justice policies are not straightforward.
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Abstract:
Most of the money spent in U.S. congressional campaigns comes from donors residing outside the race's electoral district. Scholars argue that legislators accepting out-of-district donations become “surrogate representatives'' for outside donors. Yet researchers have neglected a critical question: How do geographic constituents react when their representatives accept money from outside donors? We argue that geographic constituents feel forced to share their representatives with out-of-district donors at the expense of their own representation. In an experiment during the 2021 U.S. Senate runoff elections in Georgia, we found that Georgians who learned about out-of-district donations to particular candidates expected their senator to spend significantly less time and effort working for the interest of Georgians. A follow-up experiment during the 2022 U.S. Senate elections identified local identity as a moderating variable. Relative to those receiving no prime, respondents whose local identity was primed and who learned about out-of-district donations expected their senator to spend less time and effort working for geographic constituents. Our findings highlight the rivalrous nature of representation and the trade-offs accompanying out-of-district donations and surrogate representation.
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Abstract:
Much work has shown that, at all levels, Black citizens tend to be descriptively underrepresented in government. We take up the question of Black descriptive representation at the level of the county legislature, gathering data on the composition of North Carolina's 100 county commissions. We propose an alternative measure of descriptive representation, termed “seats above expectation,” and apply a counterfactual simulation approach to gauge the effects of at-large and ward-based elections. We find that Black citizens are underrepresented statewide: there are four fewer Black county commissioners than we would expect, based on the current county board sizes, demographics, and institutional arrangements. However, we find that a state-wide implementation of ward-based elections would increase the statewide total of Black county commissioners by 20 in expectation, a 17% increase over the baseline. Because our methodological approach does not require a natural experiment or policy change, scholars can estimate average treatment effects (ATE) of ward-based elections on minority descriptive representation across a wider array of locales.
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Abstract:
While many news outlets aim for impartiality, 67% of Americans perceive their news sources as partisan, often presenting just one side of the story. This paper tests whether exposing individuals to news stories their political adversaries focus on can mitigate political polarization. In an experiment involving a real-world political newsletter—sent to participants who had opted to receive news that uncovers media biases—exposure to a specific story about refugee policy led respondents to reassess their positions. This reevaluation changed their stances on issues and reduced the ideological distinctions they made between Democrats and Republicans. These findings underscore the need for future studies to untangle the specific circumstances where cross-partisan exposure can alter political attitudes.
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Abstract:
What policy changes do people expect from elections, and how do these expectations influence the decision to vote? This paper seeks to understand the relationship between voters' expectations and their subsequent voting behavior by examining beliefs about what candidates would actually do if given political power. I start with a survey of political scientists and compare their beliefs about what presidential candidates will accomplish to those of the general population. Respondents from the general population expected much more legislation to result from the 2020 election. This suggests an underestimation of the impediments that the separation of powers poses to policy change. The study further reveals that voters expect much more policy change than non-voters do, with high expectations serving as a strong predictor of validated voter turnout. These results support explanations for the decision to vote that center on the policy benefits people believe their preferred candidate will deliver
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Abstract:
This paper argues that a psychological bias called focalism contributes to an overestimation of the differences between political candidates, which in turn increases participation and polarization. Focalism causes people to confuse the allocation of attention to things with the importance of those things. Because attention to politics typically centers on conflict, the result is an exaggeration of differences across the partisan divide. I test this intuition using an experimental design that provides all respondents with all of the information they need to estimate how much Joe Biden and Donald Trump objectively disagreed on policy positions just before the 2020 election. I find that shifting attention – towards either those positions the candidates agreed or dis- agreed with each other on – influences beliefs about the differences between candidates. The effect exceeds that of identifying as a Democrat or as a Republican. Beyond those perceptions, focalism increases turnout intentions, perceptions of election importance, negative feelings towards the out-candidate, and affective polarization.
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Abstract:
This article describes a course designed to help political science majors formulate career goals, apply for internships and full-time positions, and eventually succeed on the job. Students benefit from exposure to guest speakers representing a range of careers and from collaborations with other campus institutions (e.g., the career center and graduate programs). Additionally, students produce job-market materials that highlight how their education has prepared them for life and work. Offering a similar professional-development course can help departments to increase enrollments and majors by increasing students’ confidence in the career prospects associated with their major.
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Abstract:
During the first half of the 19th century, Western Texas was a “trap baited with grass” that attracted migrants hoping to farm. When settlers on the wrong side of an unknown, invisible line could not build successful farms, residents in those counties voted to remain in the Union at far higher rates than residents in neighboring counties who could farm. The connection between the vote and economic interest was obvious, as those without suitable land could not make use of enslaved labor, which was too expensive given the implicit marginal product of labor. Because the location of settlement was plausibly random, these results highlight the importance of economic interest as a determinant of even fundamental moral beliefs that affect vote choice.
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Abstract:
This paper uses an experiment and a follow-up survey immediately before and after the publicly revealed results of the Department of Defense's 2021 report on UFO origins to test how public opinion changes when government leaders across the political spectrum take an issue that had been on the margins of respectability seriously. In both studies I find that when politicians acknowledge the possibility that UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors, people report more positive attitudes towards those who believe in conspiracies in general. Implications are that when government leaders publicly walk back a long-held consensus that a particular issue is not worth serious consideration, they may cause people to feel more favorable towards those perceived to hold other fringe views.
Working papers:
Stepping Up the Political Ladder: How the Burden of Fundraising Limits Candidate Entry (with Nathan Lee and William Marble) - Invited to revise and resubmit at Political Behavior