Public Opinion Final Exam Readings Study Guide

Gabriel S Lenz. Follow the leader?: how voters respond to politicians' policies and performance. University of Chicago Press, 2013 **Chapter 8**

- Among the 2000 people surveyd there was a guy named Joe. -In his furst interview Joe supported Bush to invest in social security - Joe Thought Gore supported it -Joes vote intent was out of line with his policy view -Citizens appear to be picking canddiates on some other absis, such as the canddiates party affiliation, prefeormance, or other policy views and superficaila trates -This chapter looks at whether people follow and why -There is one perspecitvie called cue taking in which people rely on cues from informative sources and then they follow. -^ people follow the information as a reliable shortcut and time and energy saver - Another view is that people follow there party not because they are using the cues to make informed guesses, but becaues they are blindly following there tribe leader. - I find that citizens who seem to be ignorant of overal ideologyu follow there parties and candidates at about the same rate that others do. -uses the three wave test to determine whether or not people just adopted Bush or Gore psitions on social security -Used comparative approval scale -As the issue became prominent between wave 2 and Wave 3 the tendency for people to follow increased. -The tendency to follow grows from large to massive among the group of those who learned bush and Gores positions. - Researches have long sinced noted the conection between partsianship and policy views , however I am analyzing candidate preference not party ID - Althoguht the tremednous campaing and media attention to the issue did not make peopel change there vote, it did lead to more peopel learnign about candidiates positions on the isssues and to adopt there candidates positon as there own - Does Learnign positions more generally lead people to follow their preffered candidate or party? - Uses the three wave test again -I measure prior canddiate or party preefeence with a question asking people about the degree of their support. -Citizens tended to follow, not only in their policy opinion, but also in their overall ideologies. - The consistency of this pattern throughout these cases is striking. - When people learned the positions of their prefered political leaders, they followed. -People follow polticians on policy, ecpsecially when they learn their preffered poltiicans stance. -READ ab SCHIP??? - People followed -- they adopted theier prefffered politicans positions when they learned them is intresting in its own right. -Cross Secitonal or studies that measure policy views and votes in the same survey at the same time inteprte correlations as evidence of polcy voting when those correlations reflect the oppusite, citizens who are following there parties or candidate on a policy -Do citizens increasinly judge politicisans on policy issues once they learn the polticians posssitionas? -To test I did the conventional test of learning effects: That is I repelacited the conventional priming test shown in chapter 3. -It measures polocu views and votes at the same time before the issue became priminent and then again afterward. Becuase the learning led people to adopt their preffered parties or candidates view, there party/candiate prefefenfe will have already infleuenced there polic view at this point so the test shoudl be rrevers causal. - the analuzses in this chapter indidciates that when people learn potlicians postions the follow them -However the knowers may behave differntly from the learner -The tendency to follow is pronounced among the knowers - those who already know the party or candidates stance. -Are peopel following blindy or are they taking cues from polticians/ - At least lookign at this study compared to others, the tendency to follow looks worrisomely blind. In particular i find peopel following polticians on predispotions in tangent wiht policy vies. -Besides following based on predispostions, 2 other things are inconsistent with taking cues 1.) Political knowledge. People who know little ab poltiics are less likley to know which pary or candiate shares there broader ideolog. Therefore they follow there candidates policy preference 2.) ? Citizesns who were ignorant of the candidates ideologies nevertheless followed at about the same or even a higher rate -The SCHIP experiment also supports this conclusion. It only finds an increased tendeny to adopt or reject Bush's position in accordance with ones view of bush among those were randomly assigned to recieve cues about Bushs and the democrats positions. -I have found little evidence that people follow on perfroamcne issues. -Although people appear to follow on policy, they lead on performance -Read conclusion - it is a good holistic recap. Sweeney's notes on The American Voter Levels of voter ideology Level A: Ideology and near ideology - People who think (at least somewhat) ideologically. Can think of candidates character and policy separately Level B: Group benefits - thinks ideologically based on a few specific stimuli issues. More narrowly conceptualizes the political world than Level A. Will favor issues more if they are supported by a candidate whom's character they like. "Ideology by Proxy" Level C: The nature of the times - Favors candidates/ policies more or less dependent on the state of the times being good or bad. does not think ideologically or consider character very much Level D: Absence of issue content - Does not consider policy. Only thinks about there character of candidates. "BBQ vote

Eric Levitz. Donald Trump Has Transformed the Way Republicans View Free Trade. New York Magazine, 2017

- One month before Donald Trump launched his campaign for the presidency, Pew Research asked Republican voters whether free-trade agreements had been a good or bad thing for the United States -51% said that they were good while 39 said bad -14 months into Donalds term and those numbers are flipped -According to a Pew Research survey released Thursday, 61 percent of Republicans think free-trade agreements have hurt their country, while just 32 percent think they've helped. -According to a Pew Research survey released Thursday, 61 percent of Republicans think free-trade agreements have hurt their country, while just 32 percent think they've helped. -On the one hand, the fact that GOPers' views of trade shifted so dramatically — over such a short time period — might betray the malleability of the average Republican voter's opinion on an issue as abstract as the rules governing global commerce. -s the GOP nominee has encouraged voters to associate "free trade" with "bad deals" negotiated by the Clintons, Red America has taken a dimmer view of the term. -On the other hand, it's possible that rank-and-file Republicans have always harbored doubts about free trade, but partisan signaling suppressed their skepticism. -Meanwhile, Democrats remain broadly supportive of free-trade agreements, both past and present. Fifty-eight percent of Team Blue told Pew that free-trade agreements have been good for the U.S., while only 34 percent said that they have been bad for the country.

Stimson, James A. Tides of consent: How public opinion shapes American politics. Cambridge University Press, 2015 **p. 68-79**

- The last cahpter saw tah the new deal welfare state issue cluster beahvies as if most indiviudal issues were interchangeable - The single measure would tell us the net liberalism and conservatism -The average captures what was seen in all the individual series in the 1960's, followed by growing conservatism ove th 1970's and then peaking with the raegan election, followed by a return to libearlism in the run of cClinton to Obama -The Question: What do americans want the government to do. -What would be desirable would be a summary measure of all the dimensions of opinion that exiist and one taht incorprates everything in the record of surveyed doemstic. -We want to uncover the latent dimesnions of attitude that lie beneath expressed preferences -We take all domestic policy preferences from 1952-2001 and solve the dimesnions of atent opinion -By taking the annual estimates and rearranging them as the beginning and end points of party spans of control of the presidency, the pattern emerges -The only period in which liberalism has gaind ground was during the Republican Aminstrations of Eisnhower, Raegan, and Bush -Our single measures of preferences make two full cycles, conservative to liberal and back again to conservative -When Americans are asked whether they want the government to do more or spend more they almost always say yes. -Americans are gernerally operationally liberal, when given a choice they almost always choose that they want the government to do more -For a long time we had a similar approach to measuring ideology: just asking. -We would ask people what they beleieved genrally speaking -We ask people what they thing in terms of symbolic idologies, ie liberal or conservative, and they do not know that that means so we need to learn there thoughts based on there answers -Most people identify as conservative over libeals -Even of those who say they are morderatees, they answer under a conservative scale -Some people do not know what they words mean -Some people use them in a fashin that changes with the times -To calculate and untangele we look to individual resonses - We assign a -1 for conservative answer, 0 for neutral, and then +1 for liberal then look on a scale from -6 to +6 -The median prefernece is +2 ocnsistent with prefecneces to increas four programs and cut tow, -A lot of people of think of themselves as conservative and think libearlly.

• Erikson, Robert S and Stoker, Laura. Caught in the draft: The e↵ects of Vietnam draft lottery status on political attitudes. American Political Science Review, 105(2):221-237, 2011

- the 1969 Vietnam draft lottery assigned numbers to birth dates in order to determine which young • We exploit this natural experiment to examine how draft vulnerability influenced political attitudes. • Data are from the Political Socialization Panel Study, which surveyed high school seniors from the class of 1965 before and after the national draft lottery was instituted. • Males holding low lottery numbers became more antiwar, more liberal, and more Democratic in their voting compared to those whose high numbers protected them from the draft. • They were also more likely than those with safe numbers to abandon the party identification that they had held as teenagers. • Trace effects are found in reinterviews from the 1990s. Draft number effects exceed those for preadult party identification and are not mediated by military service. • Draft started in December 1969 draft numbers from 1 to 366 were randomly assigned to the 366 unique birth dates of draft-eligible men. • These lot- tery numbers set the priority order for conscription under the new system, with low number holders desig- nated as the first to be called up for duty. • the draft lottery was a natural experiment, randomly assigning young men's vulnerability to mili- tary service in an unpopular war • This article focuses specifically on one uniquely vul- nerable group—the cohort of college-educated young men around 22 years of age in 1969, who had been exempt from the draft through their college years and were now ready to pursue their civilian lives and ca- reers. • Whether they had a low (vulnerable) or high (safe) draft number not only affected their degree of support for the war, • we treat lot- tery status as an for vulnerability to being drafted into the military rather than as an instrument for military service itself. • Soon after taking office, in March 1969, President Nixon sent to Congress his plan for reform of the draft, which called for a national lottery, a continuation of the college student deferment, the creation of a 1-year window of maximum draft vulnerability, and a shift to prioritizing younger over older men within the 19- to 26-year-old range—with the important proviso that those with a deferment would have their year of max- imum vulnerability begin whenever their deferment ended, if it ever did • Thus, as 1969 came to a close, nonexempted mem- bers of the class of 1965 faced a new draft regime, where their vulnerability to the draft was largely dic- tated by their draft number unless they could obtain and maintain a deferment. • litary need. • Thus, as 1969 came to a close, nonexempted mem- bers of the class of 1965 faced a new draft regime, where their vulnerability to the draft was largely dic- tated by their draft number unless they could obtain and maintain a deferment. • Although self-interest effects have been notoriously elusive in public opinion research, the con- sensus is that strong self-interest effects are most likely when what is at stake is "1. visible, 2. tangible, 3. large, and 4. certain" • However, simply facing the risk of being drafted, even if that possibility did not actually materialize, would have imposed direct and, in many cases, large costs on draft-eligible men • Evidence that draft lottery status affected attitudes toward the Vietnam War would in one sense speak to a void in the literature and in another sense chal- lenge the received wisdom. • the data for this study come from the Jennings-Niemi Political Socialization Study initiated in 1965 by M. Kent Jennings and carried out by the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center and Center for Political Studies. • To identify those who likely spent 1965 to 1969 with an educational deferment, we use information from 1965 about whether the respondent was in a college preparatory track in high school, referring to those who were as "college bound." • ur primary sample, then, is the set of 260 respon- dents who were college bound and not yet in military service as of 1969. • . Accordingly, we measure the lottery number treatment as a continuous variable, ranging from 1 to 366—that is, the number first called to the one theoretically called last. • To measure Vietnam War attitudes, we construct a Vietnam Dove-Hawk index using items from the 1973 panel wave. o The first com- ponent is the standard question of whether the war was a mistake. The measure has three possible scores: yes (Dove), in-between, and no (Hawk). o The second is also a 3-point measure, derived from open-ended responses (in 1973) regarding what should have been done. Respondents were first asked: "DO YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT HANDLED THE VIETNAM WAR AS WELL AS IT COULD HAVE?" 1 = yes, 5 = no, others missing Those who denied that the government handled the war well were then asked for up to two answers to the following question: "WHAT DO YOU THINK THE GOVERNMENT SHOULD HAVE DONE?" o The composite index had five possible responses. The scale ranges from 0 (war was a mistake, should have retreated) to 1 (war justified, no errors, or should have escalated). • Given the randomness of draft lottery assignments, we can be quite confident that the statistically significant relationship between lottery number and Vietnam atti- tudes was causal • A plausible rival hypothesis is that the response arose to the actuality rather than the expectation of military service • We might conclude from this that the lottery effect is all or almost all via the expectation rather than the actuality of military service. • To summarize, although involuntary military induc- tion conceivably could have by itself turned some young men against the war, this effect could not have been large enough to challenge the thesis that the source of the lottery number effect was the dis- ruption, uncertainty, and anxiety generated by the lottery number itself. If a large military effect had been present, then we would see a different pattern in the data. Instead, we conclude that it was how the lottery transformed one's vulnerability to military service—with the psychological, material, and oppor- tunity costs entailed—that is behind the lottery effects we observe • That is, did those with high numbers who became Hawks also become (for instance) more Re- publican and conservative, while those with low num- bers who became Doves turned more Democratic and liberal? • There are several reasons to expect that lottery num- bers also affected the liberalism-conservatism of the respondents and their voting behavior and participa- tion in partisan activities. • e of attitude change on a variety of fronts. Finally, the lottery number itself could have exerted an effect directly, as those unlucky enough to draw an adverse draft number could have simply blamed the president and his party for their plight, apart from any antiwar sentiment engendered. • Those whose lottery number made them vul- nerable to the draft show a broad pattern of attitudinal and behavioral differences as of 1973—they were more likely to have rejected Nixon in the voting booth, to express attitudes that favored McGovern over Nixon, and to have participated in acts that showed that same partisan bias. o They were also more likely to align them- selves with the liberal rather than the conservative end of the ideological continuum, and tended to express more liberal attitudes on a wide array of issues. • he exception is party identification. Although the party identification coefficient is positive (indicating those with safe numbers were more Republican), it does not achieve statistical significance.28 o With their exposure to the 1969 draft and with an early adulthood spent during the turmoil of the Vietnam War years, their lottery number was a stronger influence on their political outlook than their late-childhood party identification. • hose with safe numbers could go about their business without rethinking their politics, whereas this may not have been true for those with low numbers who were confronted with potential life disruptions (or worse). • a low draft number had the con- sequence of upending prior party identification. The higher the draft number, the more party identifica • he higher (safer) the lottery number, the more are 1973 attitudes affected by 1965 party iden- tification. • The draft lottery spurred the most draft-vulnerable men to rethink their party identification, which resulted in new affiliations weakly tied to those expressed in the past. • Those with Democratic leanings in 1965, in contrast, tended to stick with those views, although they sometimes grav- itated toward a more independent affiliation. A simi- lar pattern holds when considering the other political attitudes expressed in 1973. The young men hurt by Nixon's policy who had left childhood with Republican leanings ended up more sympathetic to Democratic and liberal causes by their mid-twenties. • ut a quarter of the range of the Dove-Hawk scale. It seems, then, that some "immediate" effects (e.g., at least 3 years in duration) faded later in life. But the central attitude of our study—attitude toward the Vietnam War—remained shaped by the luck of the draw in 1969. • aw in 1969. • The clearest case of another draft number effect per- sisting into late adulthood is the continuing interaction effect between lottery number and 1965 party ID (i.e., the upending of preadult partisanship for respondents o We saw that by 1973, the most draft-vulnerable respondents were particularly prone to abandon their partisanship from high school. In later panel waves, they could have reverted to their 1965 partisanship, as if their draft-induced partisan con- versions were temporary aberrations. • Conclusion: In 1969, a cohort of young, educated men, poised to seek their life's calling, instead faced the specter of being called to combat in Vietnam. Some got lucky, drawing high numbers that secured them from military service, whereas the unlucky faced the increased like- lihood of risking their lives in a war many opposed. • er of years and, in some cases, evidently a lifetime. Those who were arbitrarily, albeit randomly, handed an adverse draft number tended to turn against the war and against the new draft policy's champion, President Richard Nixon, both in their political activity and in the votes they cast in 1972. • igible men came to hold by their mid-twenties. • These changes in attitudes and behavior had far greater permanence than the short-term persuasion effects commonly reported from laboratory or survey experiments. • hose drawing unlucky numbers appeared to fundamentally reassess their ori- entation to the Democratic and Republican parties, with an adverse lottery draw obliterating the party attachments many held during high school, especially among erstwhile Republicans

• Doherty, Carroll. A Public Opinion Trend That Matters: Priorities for Gun Policy. Pew Research Center: FactTank, 2015

-This question presents respondents with simple, stark alternatives: When the issue of guns is raised, do you find yourself more on the side of protecting gun rights or controlling gun ownership? -Even after the Senate defeated a background checks bill in 2013, we found that 81% favored making private gun sales and sales at gun shows subject to background check -. The question about gun control and gun rights was first asked in December 1993, a time when former President Clinton's gun proposals - 57% said it was more important to control gun ownership while just 34% said it was more important to protect gun rights -On 11 occasions between 1993 and 2008 (the question was not asked 1994-1998), majorities consistently said it was more important to control gun ownership than to protect the right of Americans to own guns. -Since 2009, however, opinion has been more evenly divided. 49% prioritized controlling gun ownership - down 11 points from just a year earlier - while 45% prioritized protecting gun rights. -Opinion was unchanged for the next 3 years -But in 2012 after the Newton Connecticut shooting, a higher share said it was more important to control gun ownership than to protect gun rights (49% vs. 42%) -By May 2013, Opinion changed aginag and was divided 50% said it was more important to control gun onwership while 48% said it was more important to protect gun rights - And last month, by a six-point margin (52% to 46%) more prioritized gun rights than gun control. -This shift in the trend was evident in other surveys such as Gallup polls -And while there are few long-term trends of opinion regarding individual gun policies, surveys have found a decrease in support for some of these proposals. -An April 2013 ABC News/Washington Post survey found that 56% favored a nationwide ban on assault weapons, down from 80% two decades earlier. Gallup found that support for banning the possession of handguns fell 16 points between 1993 and 2014 - As recently as 2007, 48% of Republicans and GOP leaners said it was more important to control gun ownership, while 47% said it was more important to protect gun rights -Since 2007, Republican attitudes have undergone a dramatic change: The share of Republicans saying it is more important to protect gun rights has increased by 28 points to 75%. -By contrast, Democratic opinion has remained much more stable. In December, about twice as many Democrats and Democratic leaners said it was more important to control gun ownership (65%) than to protect gun rights (31%).

• Stimson, James A. Tides of consent: How public opinion shapes American politics. Cambridge University Press, 2015 **p. 35-38**

-Unlike other democracies, the US on various occasions considered extending health benefits to its citizens as a right but backed away - Public opinion suggests that fundmental support for greater government efforts in this direction has always exististed - Why has there been such a large opinion in support of universial healthcare existited but Congress has done nothing -Becaue the public and policy analysts look at the issue differently -The public asks what are the benefits, and the analysist asks what re the cost and benefits -Universal healthcare is always supported in surveys, but what the surveys could not predict were whehter or not the public would support healthcare if it meant that hey had to give up quality and access to give the benefit to someone else -The clinton healthcare plan gave the public an education about the immense complexity of the patchwork of arrangments for provision of health coverage -The clinton plan failed becuae people finally realized the costs to them if reform occured -After the clinton plan, support for reform returned to almost previous levels - Public response to obama care was sharply partisan -Since a majority of americans affected by the ACA were little affected by the law, it is hard to forecast the future

Soroka, Stuart N and Wlezien, Christopher. Degrees of democracy: Politics, public opinion, and policy. Cambridge University Press, 2010 **p. 22-34**

-What happens when public preferences change -What are the consequencs for policy? -To what extent do changing polices change preferences -A responsive public will behave like a themostat, adjusting its preferences for more or less policy in response to what policy makers do -When policy changes, preference changes to the inverse -Most people do not have speciic preferred levels ^2 reasons 1.) Simle precise opitions do not exisist in most domains - most are range of options that make it hard to prefer one over the other 2.) Policy will often by to complex for individuals to prefer -people have preferences for the domains u would expect, weed, abortion, and other policy preferecnes Two primary explanations for positive feed back on policy change 1.) People could react favorable to outcomes of increaed or decreaed gov roles 2.) People could be adjusting their preferences based oin there behavior of the elites -Yes it is reasonable to expect public responsiveness to policy - Moreover, the themstatic model can only tell us if peole thing policy as gone to far in one direction or not far enoguh -

• Pew Research. Support for health car law reaches new high. http://www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2017/02/23/support-for-2010-health-care-law-reaches-new-high/, 2017a

-When the republicans discuss new plans to replace ACA, public suport for 2010 plan is the highest its been - Currently, 54% approve of the health care law passed seven years ago by Barack Obama and Congress, while 43% disapprove, according to a national Pew Research Center survey conducted Feb. 7-12 among 1,503 adults -Through the history of the ACA, the public support has tended to be more negative than postitive - The new survey finds that when those who disapprove of the law are asked about what should happen to it now, more want GOP congressional leaders to focus their efforts on modifying the law than on getting rid of it. -There are deep partisan divides with 85% of democrats supporint it and 53% of indepdendents, and 89% of repiblicans disapproving it -Republicans who disapprove of the health care law are divided on whether GOP congressional leaders should modify the health care law or get rid of it entirel -Among independents, nearly twice as many say Republican leaders should focus on modifying the law rather than scrapping it -Democratic support for the law, which dipped in December, has increased 12 points since then (from 73% to 85%). -Younger adults are more likley to support the law than adults -Those with higher education also tend to support the law more than the uneducated

Campbell, Andrea Louise. Policy feedbacks and the impact of policy designs on public opinion. Journal of Health Politics, Policy and Law, 36(6):961-973, 2011

Cambel -Policy Feedback says that the design of public policy shapes the attitudes of public opinion - The feedback from the public says that the design of public policy influences the attidues of the population -Policy Generated attitudes can feedback into shaping the political enviorment for future policy making -Program design can also send a message to citizen influencing there political efficacy -Social Security for Seniors ^ -There ares several program design characteristics that influence behaviors and attitudes that in turn ccle back through the policy process 1.) The size of beenfits matterrs for the creation of constitutencies and their rates of poltiical particiaption 2.) how programs are adminstirered influences the interprative messages sent to recipetnts as well as gov activity 3.) How benefits are earned (or not influence) perceptions of deservingess and stigma both among program beneficiaries and other members of the publc in turn the legitmacy of claims such groups make on government -Concern is the visibility of government effort - How much do you see the government acting on the policy that you lobby for -People do not like partial solutions that undercut current policy, they would rather push for a total recall of policy -My Medicare is the rally cry of the senior citizens, with the slogan that they own it, and when they tried to take it away the seniors flipped out cause it was there -Politial efficacy grew over time because the proposed because they -Policy feedbacks are a valuable analytic tool for evaluating how the designs -Policy design influences what citizens think of their benefits, of other citizen-beneficiaries, and of government itself, with profound effects on the political landscape. -Knowing how existing policy designs shape citizens' evaluations of their interests—and their likelihood of political mobilization—is crucial for understanding their orientation toward both the status quo and potential future paths

Ben J Newman and Todd K Hartman. Mass shootings and public support for gun control. 2015

Purpose: - this article stipulates that residing near a mass shooting should increase support for gun control by making the threat of gun violence more salient Method: (Page 8-9) -Drawing upon multiple data sources on mass public shootings paired with large-N survey data -Critically, the core result is replicated using panel data -Using data from multiple sources on mass public shootings merged with the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) -As a further demonstration of robustness, we offer placebo tests, which show that proximity to a mass shooting fails to exert any effect on 'treatment-irrelevant' policy attitudes (for example, climate change, abortion, gay marriage, etc.). To offer a stronger test of causal effects, we use the 2010-2012 CCES re-interview panel to demonstrate that respondents 'treated' with a mass public shooting occurring near their residence between survey waves were significantly more likely than 'untreated' respondents to shift their opinions towards support for stricter gun control policies. -Lastly, we replicate these results with different survey data collected in 2010 by the Pew Research Center Results: -increased proximity to a mass shooting is associated with heightened public support for stricter gun control. -Importantly, the results show that this effect does not vary by partisanship, but does vary as a function of salience-related event factors, such as 1.) repetition, 2.) magnitude and 3.)recency. -Indeed, our findings suggest that Americans - Democrats and Republicans alike - are responsive to tragic events like mass public shootings, albeit in a contextually dependent way. -we uncover evidence that citizens living near mass public shootings are more likely to prefer gun control. One unfortunate implication of our findings is that movement away from a permissive culture of gun rights towards majority support for strict gun regulations may rest upon the occurrence of more mass public shootings.

Clinton, Joshua D and Sances, Michael W. The Politics of Policy: The Initial Mass Political E↵ects of Medicaid Expansion in the States, 2016

Purpose: -To identify the impact of the highly contestied Patient Protection and ACA of 2010 Method: -Exploiting corss state variation created by the 2012 USSC case of NFIB v. Sebelius -To measure the relative change in insurance status between expansion and nonexpansion states, we use the Census Small Area Health Insurance Estimates (SAHIE). T -Because the Medicaid expansions were primarily intended for poor adults ineligible for other insurance programs, we also focus on the share of the uninsured among the population aged 18-64 and making less than 138% of the federal poverty limit -we distinguish between counties that have a high number of residents who would potentially benefit from the Medicaid expansion, and those with a low number of potential beneficiaries -we limit the comparison to counties within 100 miles of the nearest border, although other thresholds reveal qualitatively similar -Then we do a regression analysis - Compare changes in registration and turnout following the expansion of medicaid to show that counties in expansion states experience higher political particiatpion compared to nonexpansion counties Results: -Social policy programs can produce some political impacts, at least in the short term -Our investigation reveals a qualified political impact of Medicaid expansion, one that is concentrated among potential beneficiaries. T -While we typically find positive and substantively large impacts on turnout in 2014 relative to 2010, these estimates are usually less precise, and we never find evidence of turnout effects in 2016 relative to 2012. We conclude that any feedback effects have, so far at least, been primarily limited to an increase in voter registration, and that any impacts on turnout have been weaker and less consistent -While finding the existence of positive policy feedback for such a substantively consequential and politically divisive policy is important for understanding the interactions between politics and policy, we are unable to definitively identify the exact mechanism that results in greater participation - While the fact that the largest increase is in terms of voter registration—a process that is directly related to Medicaid enrollment because of the NVRA—speaks in favor of a resource-based explanation, the magnitude of the turnout effect we document in 2014 suggests that interpretive effects may also have been relevant in the short-term

Lax, Je↵rey R and Phillips, Justin H. The democratic deficit in the states. American Journal of Political Science, 56(1):148-166, 2012

Question: - We study how well states translate public opinion into policy - Using national surveys and advances in subnational opinion estimation, we estimate state-level support for 39 policies across eight issue areas, including abortion, law enforcement, health care, and education. - Method: - There are two stages to MRP. o 1.), individual survey response is modeled as a function of a nuanced demographic and geographic typology, using multilevel regression. For each demographic geographic type of voter, predicted policy support is estimated. o 2.) is poststratification: the estimates for each demographic-geographic type are weighted by the percentages of each type in actual state populations using Census data, so that we can estimate the percentage of respondents within each state who take a particular position. - - We use MRP to estimate opinion for 39 policies that are set by state governments o These policies are drawn from eight issue areas: immigration, abortion, criminal justice, health care, gay rights, electoral reform, gaming, and education. - policies were not purposefully selected on substantive grounds or because they lined up with traditional measures of ideology. Rather, the policies included here are all those for which we were able to obtain state policy data and at least one large national opinion survey - We conducted our search for survey data using iPoll from the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research (see Supporting Information [SI] for details). State policy data were obtained as of 2008 from various sources (SI Table 5), including advocacy groups, policy foundations, and research organizations - - Data: Results/Conclusion: - We show that policy is highly responsive to policy-specific opinion, even controlling for other influences. - But we also uncover a striking "democratic deficit": policy is congruent with majority will only half the time - We find the largest influences to be legislative professionalization, term limits, and issue salience. - Partisanship and interest groups affect the ideological balance of incongruence more than the aggregate degree thereof. - Finally, policy is overresponsive to ideology and party—leading policy to be polarized relative to state electorates.

One Vote Out of Step? The Effects of Salient Roll Call Votes in the 2010 Election Brendan Nyhan1 , Eric McGhee2 , John Sides3 , Seth Masket4 , and Steven Greene5

Question: • We investigate the relationship between controversial roll call votes and support for Democratic incumbents in the 2010 midterm elections • Method/Design: • Our investigation relies on the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study o The CCES was administered online by YouGov of Palo Alto, • it matched those who agreed to take the CCES to a random sample of the U.S. population on such attributes as race, religion, income, education, sex, party identification, and ideological orientation. As in other types of surveys, the CCES also includes sampling weights that adjust the sample's demographics to mirror Census data • We limit our analysis to respondents who resided in the 230 districts with a Democratic incumbent facing a Republican challenger in the 2010 general election.3 We exclude the districts of four incumbents who faced no Republican opponent and two incumbents who were elected in special elections in 2010. • Our sample is comprised of 28,367 respondents and includes respondents living in each of the 230 districts. We examined the consequences of support for three controversial pieces of legislation: • 1.) The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) • 2.) The American Clean Energy and Security Act (Cap and Trade) • 3.) The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (Stimulus) Data: • identifying a mechanism for this apparent effect: constituents perceived incumbents who supported health care reform as more ideologically distant (in this case, more liberal), which in turn was associated with lower support for those incumbents • it matched those who agreed to take the CCES to a random sample of the U.S. population on such attributes as race, religion, income, education, sex, party identification, and ideological orientation. As in other types of surveys, the CCES also includes sampling weights that adjust the sample's demographics to mirror Census data • For a roll call vote to be harmful on incumbent prefromacne, five criteria must be met • 1.) the incumbent must cast a salient vote that contradicts the preferences of the median voter in his or her distric • 2.) the dissemination of information about the vote itself • 3.)the information that reaches voters about the roll call vote must cause them to update their beliefs about the incumbent. • 4.) voters who have updated their beliefs about the distance between themselves and the incumbent as a result of the roll call vote must then cast their ballots on that basis. • 5.)if enough voters punish incumbents in competitive districts for controversial roll call votes, they can change the outcome of those elections and potentially shift party control of the relevant chamber of Congress. Conclusion/Results: • Consistent with previous analyses, we find that supporters of health care reform paid a significant price at the polls. • Our analyses show that this perceived ideological difference mediates most of the apparent impact of support for health care reform on both individual-level vote choice and aggregate-level vote share. • We conclude by simulating counterfactuals that suggest health care reform may have cost Democrats their House majority. • For a few reasons • First, we have sought to identify the apparent causal impact of roll call votes by matching Democratic opponents of health care reform to the supporters most similar to them on several key dimensions. o Particularly noteworthy is that, in 2010 at least, support for health care reform mattered above and beyond the incumbent's ideology or party unity, both of which have been identified by previous research as making incumbents appear "out of step" • Second, we have pinpointed a mechanism for the relationship between roll call votes and aggregate vote share that other studies have noted. o In 2010, Democratic supporters of health care reform were perceived as further to the ideological left, which made them seem more distant from most of their constituents, especially independents and Republicans. • Finally, our simulations suggest that the marginal effect of support for health care reform on Democratic incumbents' vote share "added up" to tangible seat losses in November 2010. o By estimating this counterfactual, the full consequences of roll call voting for representation become clear: members who are out of step, even on a single salient vote, really can end up out of office

Canes-Wrone, Brandice and Brady, David W and Cogan, John F. Out of Step, Out of Oce: Electoral Accountability and House Members' Voting. American Political Science Review, 96(01): 127-140, 2002

Research Question: - conduct three tests on the elections of 1956-1996 to analyze whether in fact House members should be concerned with the electoral impact of legislative voting -In each of the tests, we estimate the effect of an incumbent's increased support for the extreme of his part Hypothesis: - We hypothesize that controlling for district ideology, Democrats lose electoral support by voting more liberally and Republicans by voting more conservatively. -Thus for two Democratic (Republican) incumbents from districts with identical voter preferences, the Democrat (Republican) with the more liberal (conservative) voting record should have a lower electoral vote share, holding all else equal - We refer to this prediction as the Roll-Call Ideological Extremity Hypothesis. Method: -To test the Roll-Call Ideological Extremity Hypothesis, we employ an econometric model that is similar to those adopted in previous studies of the relationship between legislative voting and electoral margins. In particular, we regress each incumbent's vote share on a measure of roll-call ideological extremity, controlling for a range of factors. 3 tests 1.) employs a standard model from previous work to assess whether such legislative voting had a significant effect on members' vote shares in each election 2.) then pools across the elections, estimating how the average impact of legislative voting compares to that of other factors, such as challenger quality and campaign spending 3.) examine directly the relationship between members' voting and their probability of reelection. Findings: -Variables tested = controlling for district ideology, challenger quality, and campaign spending, among other factors The tests produce three key findings indicating that members are indeed accountable for their legislative voting. 1.) each election, an incumbent receives a lower vote share the more he supports his party. 2.) effect is comparable in size to that of other widely recognized electoral determinants. 3.) A member's probability of retaining office decreases as he offers increased support for his party, and this relationship holds for not only marginal, but also safe members -Other salient findings: - Voters are not knowledgabel about rerpresentaties votig choices -uninformed voters take cues from elites and other candidates -Members are more likley to enact legilsation when issue is salient -

Election Forecasting - Forecasting: The Long View Michael S. LewisBeck and Charles Tien

This article offers new way to evaluate the pros and cons of us presidential elections, the long view versus the short view o Election forecasters who take the long view stress the elector theory and lead time, examining model performance over several contests ♣ Overarching goal is knowledge of how the electoral process works o In contrast, forecasters who take the short view stress accuracy exlusivley. ♣ Forecasts are made repeadltey, ecespcially as the election gets closer • The short view forgets the lesson that most variation in national election can be predicted even explained by political behavior. • Casual readers of the polls during election season will get the impression that American voters are fickle • Election forecasting models based on polls, often updated until election day itself, also reflect this impression These "short view forecasts have received considerable attention in the media in recent years • These "longview" forecasts receive more attention from and have more credibility among academics. • The forecast for long view is White House Part Vote Sharet = f(Politcst-6, Economict-6, Cyclest-1) • Election forecasters who take the long view tend to stress electoral theory in their models and frame their predictions a good distance in time from the election. • . It is easier to forecast an election the day before it rather than 180 days in advance. But by the day before, the forecast itself has little intrinsic interest, since the real outcome will be known the next day. Accuracy comes from better theory and an optimal lead time before the election itself. o Strong theory emerges from parsimony—that is, a few carefully selected explanatory variables, which also help prevent the model looking good simply by chance. • A concrete example of the longview approach comes from our Jobs Model (LewisBeck and Tien 2012), with the dependent variable of White House party share of the twoparty vote, and the independent variables of presidential popularity, economic growth × incumbent interaction, jobs creation, and incumbency advantage, all measured in advance. • The view, or perspective, of the Jobs Model can be regarded as "long" in the sense of adequate lead time before the specific contest (a precise forecast can be issued at the end of August of the election year), but also "long" in the sense of examining model performance over several contests • To move this systematic enterprise forward, the ability to replicate each and every method is paramount • Election forecasters who take the short view tend to stress accuracy and to downplay theory and lead. • The accuracy measures here tend to rely on the most recent poll(s) and can be a poor predictor of the final outcome. Since accuracy ranks as the sine qua non, forecasts are made repeatedly, especially as the election itself draws closer. • Formula for Short -> White House Party Share = f(vote Intentions, t-x) • In the short view, an overarching goal is uptodate reporting of the horse race between the candidates. Accumulation of knowledge about how the electoral process works ceases to be relevant. • To summarize, the major differences between longview and shortview forecasting models are the following. o First are the inputs or predictor variables. In longview models the predictor variables are usually measured at the national level and selected by strong theory learned from voting behavior studies. Shortview models, in contrast, use vote intention survey questions from multiple surveys gathered at the national or state levels, and these are updated frequently. o Second are transparency and replication. Longview models are explicit about how the forecast is derived, and the data are made available to others for replication. Shortview models often do not reveal exactly how their inputs are measured, making replication difficult if not impossible. Complicating the matter is that survey houses often do not spell out how they determine "likely voters" in their polls, a filter the shortview forecasters rely on • One consequence of short views is that they use almost similar survey and forcasing stratagey. • Another consequence of the short view for the art of forecasting is increased reliance on polls. The need for a current estimate, particularly as the election nears, requires that the polls be utilized increasingly, at the expense of other approaches • Even supposing a sound combinatory strategy, including proper weighting, all comes to naught if insufficient polls are available. Such a condition—absence of enough polls—may actually occur. • In addition to negative consequences for the forecasting enterprise, adherence to the short view poses negative consequences for the understanding of voting and elections. First, its stress on continuous updating of the horse race conveys the impression to students of politics, and to citizens generally, that election outcomes are fickle. • they take the long view or the short view. The former tends to rely on substantive but parsimonious national models that have considerable lead time, with onlyoccasional updating. The latter relies mostly on vote intention, measured repeatedly in polls across the campaign, where no lead time gains privilege. The short view of forecasting has gained favor, but not without negative consequences. Because it is ahistorical, the picture of how election forecasters andforecasts compare becomes distorted, in the direction of seeing too much homogeneity. Thus,disagreements and difficulties are underestimated. Further, because it must be ever newsworthy, shortviewforecasting depends more and more on the polls until, in the end, nothing else seems to matter. But this holds danger, for polls can go wrong, and do •

Green, Donald Philip and Gerken, Ann Elizabeth. Self-interest and public opinion toward smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53(1):1-16, 1989

burgeoning literature suggests that self-interest has little influence on policy preferences o In sharp contrast are the findings discussed in this paper: we show that self-interest plays a decisive role in shaping attitudes toward smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes. Data from two random samples of California adults collected by the Field Institute in April 1987 and February 1984 indicate that nonsmokers are far more enthusiastic about tightening smoking restrictions and increasing cigarette taxes than smokers, particularly heavy smokers • The past decade has witnessed the proliferation of smoking restrictions in elevators, restaurants, work- places, and public buildings. Meanwhile, rising "sin taxes" on tobacco have made cigarette consumption increasingly expensive. • While smokers' freedom to inhale burning tobacco is threatened by public policy, nonsmokers, whose health and comfort are adversely affected by secondhand smoke, stand to benefit from measures that restrict or tax cigarette consumption. • The question is, Does this conflict of interest give rise to divergent attitudes? Do smokers and nonsmokers differ in their opinions concerning smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes? • Interestingly enough, a burgeoning literature on the relationship be- tween interests and policy preferences suggests that a difference of opinion is unlikel o Ex. One study after another has shown that "self- interest" has little apparent influence on political attitudes: the unem- ployed are generally no more favorable toward jobs programs than the employe • Yet, as we shall demonstrate below, smokers and nonsmokers- who are otherwise quite similar in their political views-take very different positions on such issues as smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes. • Based on data from two random samples of California adults collected by the Field Institute, we find that nonsmokers are far more enthusiastic about tightening smoking restrictions and increasing ciga- rette taxes than smokers, partucuarly heavy smokers. We conclude by discsussin several expamations for the apparent discrpency. • Before comparing the attitudes of smokers and nonsmokers on issues concerning tobacco consumption, let us first examine whether the two groups differ in their general political outlook. • A California Poll conducted in April 1987 by the Field Institute shows that smokers and nonsmokers have similar partisan and ideological affinities.3 If anything, the data presented in Table 1 suggest that nonsmokers are the more conserva- tive of the two groups. Nonsmokers, therefore, have no special fond- ness for taxes and government regulation o At the level of specific po- litical attitudes, no difference whatsoever is to be found between smokers and nonsmokers, as the two groups are equally likely to favor smaller government and describe their taxes as too high. o Disagreement between smokers and nonsmokers over issues such as cigarette taxes and smoking restrictions cannot be attributed to differ- ences in political orientation • What about the demographic correlates of cigarette smoking? It is conceivable that observed differences in policy preferences between smokers and nonsmokers are merely a spurious reflection of gender or social class o Whereas smoking was at one time the province of men, the California sample shows no relationship between gender and cigarette use. Class-related variables, income and education, show that nonsmokers have somewhat more affluent backgrounds, but one would hardly conclude from these data that there is a "class basis" to cigarette smoking (Berger, 1986; Savarese and Shughart, 1986). As it happens, income and education bear no relationship to preferences concerning smoking restrictions. And as we shall see below, affluence is unrelated to attitudes toward cigarette taxes among nonsmokers, who are unaffected by the tax. • For the sake of brevity we compare the backgrounds of smokers and nonsmokers using data from the more recent of the two California Polls analyzed in this paper. The data from the 1984 survey, however, yield identical results. • It seems clear, therefore, that conflicting views of smokers and non- smokers toward policies affecting cigarette use may be attributed neither to general political outlook nor demography • we compare the views of smokers and nonsmokers with the presumption that observed dif- ferences of opinion indeed reflect the operation of instrumental mo- tives. • California Poll conducted in February 1984 asked respondents whether smoking should be banned, restricted to special areas, or al- lowed without restriction in buses, restaurants, planes, workplaces, and hotels.4 These five measures were summed together in order to create an index ranging from zero to ten. The reliability of this additive index as measured by Cronbach's alpha is .731, above conventionally acceptable levels (McKennell, 1970). • Intuition suggests that the more one smokes, the more one is incon- venienced by restrictions against smoking in public places • Con- versely, the principal beneficiaries of smoking curbs are those most sensitive to cigarette smok • The first is the respondent's self-reported cigarette consumption, ranging from "heavy" to "none." This measure further differentiates between those nonsmokers who quit smoking and nonsmokers who never smoked in the past. The second measure taps the extent to which the respondent is "bothered" when in the company of someone smoking a cigarette. Not surprisingly, these two measures are highly correlated (r = .69), • as smokers seldom find cigarette smoke irksome. • articularly interesting is the fact that the attitudes of ex-smokers closely resemble the attitudes of nonsmokers. • What happens when we incorporate both smoking habits and the degree to which respondents are bothered by cigarette smoke? • The result is an increase in the polarization of policy attitudes. Heavy smokers unaffected by cigarette fumes and smoke-sensitive nonsmok- ers view restrictions quite differently: while 66% of heavy smokers have scores less than 5 ( • • A second California Poll conducted in April 1987 asked respondents whether they would support or oppose an increase in cigarette taxes in the event that "taxes had to be raised." The amount of the increase varied randomly. • The incidence of cigarette taxation depends, obviously, on the quan- tity of cigarettes consumed • Again we find smokers and nonsmokers in marked dis- agreement over policies concerning cigarettes • As the size of the tax proposal grows, smokers become noticeably less enthusiastic about footing the bill to relieve a fiscal crisis. At the same time, nonsmokers support the idea of higher cigarette taxes with little regard for the level of increase • One interpretation of the fact that nonsmokers are unresponsive to • the size of proposed cigarette tax increases is that this type of levy imposes no costs upon them • smokers and nonsmokers look upon cigarette taxes very differently. Nonsmokers express consider- able enthusiasm for cigarette taxes as a means of filling depleted state coffers. Smokers, on the other hand, are lukewarm about small tax increases and quite unreceptive to large ones. • Why does "self-interest," which ordinarily exerts little influence on policy preferences, have such a strong effect on attitudes concerning cigarette consumption? What is distinctive about the smoking issue and the interests associated with it?9 o One explanation is that issues such as smoking restrictions and ciga- rette taxes involve unusually clear and salient stakes for the respon- dent.10 Several studies have suggested that self-interest exerts a greater influence on public opinion when the costs and benefits of a given proposal are unambiguous and fixed prominently in the mind of the respondent. Question wording experiments reported by Green (1988) indicate that when the incidence of a tax increase is ambiguous or obscure, preferences concerning the tax are unrelated to costs; but when stated clearly, the price of the tax increase has a decisive influence on preferences. With regard to salience, question order- ing experiments reported by Sears and Lau (1983) show that when respondents are reminded about their "interests" immediately before considering general policy issues, their political preferences become more closely linked to self-interest • Yet even in the absence of cues that might stimulate respondents to consider their own well-being, smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes tend to elicit a "self-interested" response • Yet even in the absence of cues that might stimulate respondents to consider their own well-being, smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes tend to elicit a "self-interested" response • In the case of smoking restrictions, it is quite possible that although nonsmokers have always found cigarette fumes irritating, their claim to a smoke-free environment has gained legitimacy only in recent years • The contrast between the findings presented here and those of the self- interest literature reflects both the nature of the smoking issue and recent patterns of attitude change. Unlike proposals such as national health insurance, which appeal to the privately insured as well as the medically indigent, there is little to attract nonsmokers to a tolerant position on cigarettes. o And unlike issues such as whether government should guarantee each citizen a job and a good standard of living, smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes do not encourage the respon- dent to ponder weighty questions concerning the state's social role. Whereas partisan affiliation and liberal or conservative self-designation generally exert a strong influence on policy attitudes, neither variable bears any statistical relationship to attitudes concerning cigarettes. ♣ With self-interest unobstructed by competing considerations, the clash between smokers and nonsmokers comes to the fore. • This polarization is enhanced by the pattern of change in public policy and elite discourse. Public officials and medical experts are vocal and fairly unified in their denunciation of smoking, and where smoking restrictions in restaurants might have once been thought ab- surd, they are now commonplac • On the one hand, some smokers are persuaded to quit, leaving behind a "hard core" of incorrigibles. At the same time, nonsmokers are encouraged to oppose smoking. Thus, the evolution of the smoking issue has sustained and perhaps widened the gap between smokers and nonsmokers. • Because material interests are rarely as clear and salient as those associated with smoking restrictions and cigarette taxes, incongruent policy arguments are seldom resisted with the smoker's tenacity. As a result, the linkage between interests and • political attitudes often unravels. • Figure out how the study was done—IE have a better understanding than what I put in here.

Bump, Phillip. Everything you Ever Wanted Know about How Washington Post Polling Works. Washington Post, 2015

¥ We decided to ask Scott Clement, one half of the Post's polling team, to explain in aggressively minute detail how a poll moves from concept to final numbers. ¥ • Important rules when asking questions o The two key things: ♣ 1.) Ask what you actually want to know about, ♣ 2.)and ask questions that are simply worded and can be understood by everybody. ¥ f you want to ask about 20 different things on a survey, you can't ask all of them first. There's always a potential that the questions you ask earlier could influence the answers you get to later questions ¥ The sample size that we typically interview is 1,000. It provides some consistency across surveys when we do them of the same size ¥ They sit down at their desk and one of two things happens. o If they're calling landline numbers, there's an automated dialer that's going to feed them calls. It will keep calling phone numbers until they get a pick-up, when it will route it to an interviewer. o For a cell phone, because of a federal regulation, they have to be handdialed. The interviewer will have a number, hand-dial it and wait for someone to pick up. If someone picks up, they ask the person if they're 18 or over [then] they'll roll them into the survey. ¥ We don't want our sample to be biased toward people who are especially available to take a survey. We want people who are also difficult to reach. ¥ Our surveys are weighted by a number of different demographic parameters to the latest available estimates from the current population survey by the Census Bureau. The types of things we're weighting for are to ensure that the final sample matches population estimates on sex, on age, on education, on race and on ethnicity. ¥ My understanding of how weighting works is: You get your data back and it has 54 percent women and 46 percent men, whereas the actual population of the country is, I don't know, 52 percent women. So you apply that percentage difference to the data so that it then matches. Is that a good description of it? o Yes. The only added layer is explaining how this is done with multiple factors. It's called "raking," a term which has never been that intuitive to me. ¥ The main element on margin of sampling error [what we usually just refer to as margin of error] is how much you would expect things to deviate if you had done the same sample 100 times or 1,000 times. ¥ But when you weight, you're also increasing random noise or variance. So there's a trade-off between weighting by too many things and increasing random noise. That's why the margin of sampling error is higher when you weigh data ¥ We should expect polls to vary both in their ideological compostion and their partisan compotion, not drastically but different from poll to poll ¥ We do two levels of analysis with our polls o 1.) Show what the general public popinion is on a certain issue o 2.) How does the question break down by different demographic groups

THE EVOLUTION OF ELECTION POLLING IN THE UNITED STATES D. SUNSHINE HILLYGUS

¥ • In this essay, I outline the evolution of polling as used for three different functions in U.S. presidential elections: o forecasting election outcomes, o understanding voter behavior, o planning campaign strategy. ¥ Public Opinion Quarterly was founded in January 1937 on the heels of the advent of modern scientific polling in U.S. presidential elections. The first issue included an essay, ''Straw Polls in 1936,'' explaining how George Gallups quota-controlled survey of a few thousand triumphed over the Literary Digests straw poll of millions in correctly predicting the election outcome ¥ a 900-percent increase in trial heat polls between 1984 and 2000 ¥ There has also been a significant evolution in the nature of election polling. o polls were typically conducted by telephone, using live interviewers, on behalf of media organizations or political candidates. ¥ Today, Internet surveys and IVR polls are increasingly common, and polls are often initiated by entrepreneurial pollsters conducting them not for a client, but for self-promotion ¥ Journalists are no ling the gate keeper to determine if a given poll is sufficient quality to interest the public, with blogs and random polling websites popping up; ¥ It also seems that we have seen a rise and fall in the credibility of polling since ¥ Today, however, nonprobability samples—typically opt-in Internet surveys—are increasingly common, and probability samples are experiencing significant methodological challenges, such as increasing nonresponse and cell-phone-only households. ¥ In this essay, I will briefly outline the evolution of polling as used for three different functions in U.S. presidential elections: forecasting election outcomes, understanding voter behavior, and planning campaign strategy ¥ Forecasting Elections ¥ Before polls, knowledgeable observers, political insiders, and bellwether states were the most commonly used election forecasts ¥ today, and each new election cycle brings a wave of horserace polling numbers feeding the insatiable appetite of media, bloggers, and political junkies trying to predict the election outcomes. ¥ Unlike most survey research topics, pre-election polls have a truth benchmark— the election results.4 ¥ The reputation of survey firms rests in no small part on these accuracy assessments. ¥ What deems a poll to be accurate? The margin of victory? The correct winner? The share of the vote they received? That is what makes it hard to tell. ¥ ''Mosteller Measure 3,'', the average absolute error on all major candidates between the prediction and the actual results, and ''Mosteller Measure 5,'' the absolute value of the difference between the margin separating the two leading candidates in the poll and the difference in their margins in the actual vote. ¥ Like any survey, the quality of predictions can be affected by sampling error and nonsampling errors, including coverage error, nonresponse error, measurement error, processing error, and adjustment erro ¥ Election forecasts can go astray simply because they must predict future behavior. ¥ In other words, it is an unknown population to whom pollsters are trying to generalize because we do not know who will show up on Election Day. ¥ Every survey firm has its own (often proprietary) method for defining likely voters, typically relying on self-reported measures of voter registration or vote history, but rarely do those models engage the most up-to-date scholarly research on political participation ¥ Thus, while it is widely recognized that undecided respondents contribute to polling error, there is still no consensus about what to do with them. ¥ Respondents are another source of error in pre-election polls. An accurate election prediction relies on respondents providing honest answers to the turnout and vote intention questions ¥ Polling predictions can also be jeopardized by individuals changing their minds about their turnout and vote intention between the time of the survey interview and Election Day ¥ Polling Aggregation ¥ In recognition that individual poll results are subject to random sampling error and any potential biases introduced by a firms particular polling methodology, it has become popular to aggregate across many different polls. ¥ Aggregating polls helps reduce volatility in polling predictions. Although there is the tendency for news organizations to focus great attention on every movement up or down in the polls, as Jackman (2005) noted, ''mediacommissioned polls employ sample sizes that are too small to reliably detect the relatively small day-to-day or week-to-week movements in voter sentiment we would expect to occur over an election campaign ¥ Some aggregations simply take the average of all available poll numbers. Yet, naı¨vely pooling across polls ignores house effects, • house effects, all of the methodological decisions made by a particular survey firm ¥ Also reflecting improvements in polling availability and accessibility, many polling predictions have recently shifted from national-level to state-level analyses. ¥ 2 Not every state is polled consistently, especially in less competitive states and earlier in the campaign, ¥ It seems clear that the future of poll-based election forecasts are aggregations of state-level polls to make Electoral College predictions, but there remains much to be learned about the be ¥ On the one hand, state-level forecasts offer a much higher bar for assessing the accuracy of individual pollsters since there are 51 predictions to be made, rather than one. Certainly, we see much greater variability in state-level polls, which do not converge toward the end of the campaign to the same extent as national polls ¥ Beyond Polling: Macro Econ Models ¥ Beginning in the 1970s, academics developed macroeconomic statistical models using non-polling aggregate data to predict election outcome ¥ Most statistical models include measures of government and economic performance, though there is debate as to the specific economic indicator to be used—whether GDP growth (Abramowitz 2004), job growth (Lewis-Beck and Tien 2004), inflation rate (Lewis-Beck 2005), or perceptions of personal finances (Holbrook 2004)—and about the inclusion of other variables, like polling numbers and war support, in the statistical model. ¥ Election forecasters argue that statistical predictions should outperform other election predictions because they are rooted in a theory about voter behavior. ¥ Problems: o One criticism of these models is that, like the national-poll-based forecasts, they typically predict the two-party popular vote rather than the Electoral College outcome o Another criticism is that once we account for the confidence intervals around the point estimate, it becomes evident that most models predict a wide range of possible outcomes, including victory by the opposing candidate (Lewis-Beck 2005). There are only a handful of presidential elections for which the necessary aggregate data are available to estimate the statistical models, so predictions are inherently imprecise ¥ Another election-forecasting alternative is prediction markets, such as the Iowa Electronic Market. With such betting markets, people buy and sell candidate futures based on who they think will win the election ¥ he key to an accurate poll-based prediction is a representative sample of likely voters and truthful responses to the vote choice question. ¥ Understanding Voter Behavior ¥ Survey research is the primary tool for answering questions about electoral behavior, including political participation, voter decision-making, public opinion, and campaign effects. ¥ 1.) Voter turnout over reporting, is itself a classic example of the dangers of measurement error. ¥ A second methodological evolution in voting behavior research is the recognition that causal relationships are exceptionally difficult to establish using surveys, especially cross-sectional surveys. ¥ Candidates and Polling ¥ ng at the role of political polling by candidates, parties, and interest groups. Whereas polling was once the primary way to gauge the preferences of the public, today campaigns are increasingly relying on consumer and political databases instead of polling alone ¥ In these targeted communications, candidates are taking positions on more issues and more divisive issues than in broadcast messages. In 2004, for instance, the presidential candidates took positions on more than 75 different policy issues in their direct mail, including wedge issues like abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell research that were not mentioned in television advertising

Sides, John and Vavreck, Lynn. The Gamble: Choice and Chance in the 2012 Presidential Election. Princeton University Press, 2014 **p. 28-29**

• A typical forecasting model (for presidential elections) relies on a few factors, maybe three or four, that predate most of the general election campaign - factors such as presidential approve ratings or the rate of economic growth early in the election year. • Ideally a forecasting model does three things: o 1.) it draws from plausible theories about how voters make decisions in elections o 2.) it is parsimonious (that is, it attempts to predict elections with a few big factors rather than a lot of small factors that explain the isocracies in one elections, o 3.) It is accurate. • Some critics are incredulous that a model would rely on so few factors, none of which may measure campaign activities such as advertising. • Others say that since the model is only drawing form 1948 there could only be around 16 elections in it. • Others point out were models were wrong. • However, if constructed and interpreted correctly, they are crucial because they are based one defensible theory about how a crucial subset of voters makes up its mind by evaluating the "performance: of the incumbent and his party. o This is why forecasting models typically include facets like president approval, and economic growth. • The models also provide a baseline for how the incumbent is doing • The forecasting models, taken together, typically correctly predict the winner, even if they do not predict the margin of victory well • They model use a "forest not the trees" approach meaning that it cares about the hype sour rind the candidate not the candidate themselves. This method will most likely correctly predict the winner, but maybe the wrong margin of error

Lewis-Beck, Michael S. The American voter revisited. University of Michigan Press, 2009 Chapter 10, p. 254-292

• Commentaries on American electoral politics routinely invoke ideologi- cal terminology in order to account for election outcomes and patterns of voting behavior. o A strong Democratic showing at the polls ma y indicate that the public has be- come more liberal in its preferences. Or it may reflect inc eased extrem- ism within the Republican Party. Or it may suggest that Democrats have moderated their own traditionally liberal stands • ideolo icalcon- tinuum provides a reasonable baseline for evaluating American elections. o 1) aware of its own posi- tion along a dimension that ranges from liberal policy alternatives on the left to conservative policy alternatives on the r ight; o ((2) reasonably cog- nizant of the parties' locations along the same continuum o (3) sensi- tivetosignificantm vementsbyanyofthemajoractors—significan groups of voters, political par ties, and candidat es—that may occur over time • Pursuing this line of thinking, we also have to consider alternative viewpoints that people may bring to bear on the political w orld, apart from ideology • it is c onceivable that some individuals evaluate parties and candidates in terms of their impact on personal life situations. o We do not think that the use of alternative judgmental standards will necessarily lead t o behaviors that differ syst ematically from those that would stem from ideological voting. Thus, an ideologue mig ht vote for Republican candidates because of a general preference for private-sector rather than go vernmental sol utions t o social pr oblems • Aggregating such individual decisions to the level of the entire elec- torate, we believe that it is nec essary to determine the evaluative stan- dards that voters employ in order to accurately interpret any "messages" or mandates that might be conveyed by a given electoral result. • he analytic objective in this chapter is to de- termine precisely what judgmental criteria citizens use when thinking about parties and candidates before their voting decisions. • Individuals develop their own information processing routines and habitual way of interpreting informating. • A mental habit of this sort is sometimes called a schema or a cognitive structure that contains a concpets attributes and links those to a persons prior knowledge. • If we find for instance, that a sizable seg- ment of the elect orate actively thinks about political stim uli in liber al- conservativeterms,thenthekindsof ideologicalprognosticationsthat occur so frequently in journalistic political discourse would be reasonable ways to present American politics and elections • In order to avoid the preceding problems, we will use survey respon- dents' own words to provide insights regarding the evaluative standards that they employ in thinking about politics. • The immediate analytic task is to develop a taxonomy that differen- tiates among the sur vey respondents according to the organizational principles underlying their political cognitive structure • : The t ranscripts of the o pen-ended re- sponses are read to determine whether o (1) particular terms and themes appear in the c omments provided by individual respondents, o ( 2) the terms and themes can themsel ves be placed into a reasonably small number of categories, based upon the general ideas the respondents are expressing. • There are different types of ways that people think about politics o 1.) Onetype of citizen thinks about poltics in broad, abstract terms that seem consistent with stand depictions of liberal conservative ideology o 2.) Another type, a larger group, organizes there thinking according to salient groups within theier personal enviorments. o 3.) Another subset associates poltical actors with good and bad conditions in society. o 4.) The fourth subset is a residual category of people who appear to think ab poltics in terms that are completely separate from any policy consideration. • Individuals within the highest level, whom we will call "ideologues" explicitly articulated a sense of an abstract, general, di- mension underlying electoral competiti • People who showed more limited use of ideolog ical t erms or ideas w ere plac ed int o a sec ond, slightly lower category within this same br oad level; we call these indi- viduals "near ideologues." • Generally speaking, we gave respondents the benefit o the doubt when placing them in the le vels of conceptualization. The result is that many of our ideologues defini ely do not possess a fully articulated per- sonal political philoso phy • We also assigned near-ideologue status to some people who didn't use ideolog ical t erms, but did e xhibit v ery limit ed r eliance on br oad substantive standards for evaluating political positions. • To summarize, the near-ideologues constitute respondents who, in one way or another, use words that could imply ideological thinking. But the cir cumstances in whic h the y oc cur lead t o d oubts about the scope of their meaning and their applicabilit y to political objects. • -The near ideologues, judge political phenomena according to the degree to which they provide rewards and benefits, as opposed to penaliteis and disadvantages, to particular groups iwthin the American Society. • many citizens find analo gous utility in thinking about the ways that parties and candidates inter- act with, or affect the fortunes of, social groups. • here is a fundamental distinction between ideological andgroup-based conceptualizations o Ideology is based upon broad abstract principles. o The great advantage they provide is in- herent in their gener ality o roup-benefits Conceptualizations shift the responsibility for the political t ranslation process over to the g roup. If group spokes- persons or opinion leaders frame an issue in a manner that highlights its implications for the group's membership, then it becomes an element in the belief syst em of those who think about politics in t erms of that group's interests. • When someone is rooted in group intrest rather than a liberal conservative stance, theya are an ideological proxy • In some cases, r respondents elaborated upon a g group interest b y makingalinktoaspecific policy • Finally, w e want t o emphasiz e that w e r egard the c onnections be- tween social g roups and the political w orld as e xisting "in the e ye of the beholder." This means that w e do not pass judg ment on statements that have questionable validit y, in v iew of contemporary American politics. Thus, an indi vidual g iving the follo wing c ombination of stat ements would be placed in the group benefits l vel of conceptualization • evel C r espondent fa- vors one party and its candidates because good times and favorable con- ditions ensue when they take offi e and control the workings of govern- ment. The other par ty is t o be a voided because of the pr oblems that seem to be associated with its attempts at governing and policy-making. • In summarizing the content of the Level C evaluations, it is probably easier to explain what is not found among the comments of its members than to describe the myriad ways that judgments about external condi- tions enter into political evaluations. • Our last and "lowest" level of conceptualization consists of those people who displa yed no issue c ontent whatsoe ver in their o pen-ended r e- marks. • • • The pr eceding r espondent c learly had some w ell-formed ideas about the two candidates. As such, this person stands out w ithin Level D. But notice that there is still some lac k of specifici y and apparent misinformation in the comments. And the specific eactions vanish al- most entirely when the interview moves on to the parties, rather than the candidates. • Our finding that pe ple within the mass public think about politics in fundamentally different ways raises an obvious question: What leads to this variability? • An individual's education has a profound influen e on the way that person organizes his or her thinking about the candidat es and par ties. The empirical relationship is summarized in table 10.2. • There are probably several reasons for the positive relationship be- tween education and conceptualization. One is the simple fact that edu- cational attainment is, itself, determined (at least in par t) by intellec- tual abilit y. • A person involve dint eh political world with simultanesoulsy be exposed to greater quantiies of polticially relavant iformation and be motivated to seek out new information to further his effectinvess as a poltical actor • So far, we have identified th ee separate correlates of the conceptual levels, education, political kno wledge, and political in volvement. Of course, we expect that these thr ee factors are themselves closely con- nected • Despite the ob vious int errelationship among them, w e still think that education, knowledge, and involvement are separately related to conceptualization. • At the same time, ideologues and near-ideologues are far more likely to turn out to vote than are the individuals that fall within the other lev- els of conceptualization. • Three major conclusions • rst, we have determined that the electorate's attentive- ness to ideological themes is relatively scant. • Second, broad and abstract conceptualizations of politics are most likely to be found among those who are educated, knowledgeable, and already integrated into the polit- ical world. • And third, ideologically based perspectives on the political world correspond to higher levels of temporal stability in electoral pref- erences. • "The Nature of Belief Systems" makes the general argument that it is inappropriate to characterize public o pinion in ideolog ical terms be- cause peo ple simply d o not e xhibit the organiz ed, br oad, and stable views of politics and societ y that are implied by the term ideology. • • The "Commentary and Controversy" for chapter 9 discusses Con- verse's use of correlations between responses to survey questions about policy issues as a measur e of attitudinal constraint. •

Zaller, John. The nature and origins of mass opinion. Cambridge university press, 1992 *p. 6-28*

• Every opiion is a marriage of information and predisposition to form a mental picture of the given issue, and a predisposition to motivate some conclusion about it. • The press and the government form the opinions of others because they are the gate keepers to the worlds information. • The public opinion that exists on a given issue can rarely be considered a straightforward response to the facts of a situation. Even topics that are within the direct experience of some citizens, such as poverty, homosexuality, and racial inequality are susceptible to the widely different understandings, depending on how facts about them are framed or st • Elite discourse of the wealthy and powerful information holders shapes mass opinion. • Public opinion fluctuates with media coverage. • In terms of political awareness two things are important to realize... 1) people vary greatly in their general attentiveness to politics, 2) average overall levels of information are quite low. -The key to political awareness is is the absorption of political communication • The impact of peoples value predisposition always depends on whether citizens possesses the contextual information needed to translate their value into support of r particular politicizes. -While public opinion can be shaped by simply elite discourse, information flow plays a larger role (media and elites shape this)

Key, V.O. Public opinion and American democracy. Knopf, 1961 *p. 3-18*

• Governments must concern themselves with the opinion of their citizens • The spread of ideas between citizens shape the actions of the government • Mr. Lippmann found that if he listned solely to the opinions of others, it would be a recipe for disaster • Mr. Lippman destroyed the straw man pollew - He did so buy making it clear that the average man had little time for government affairs • Some scholars note that the public is an organic entity in which comes to a decision through stages of debate and reach a recognizable collective decision on an issue. • A public opinion is not to be deemed public opinion if it does not have some sort of theortiecla backing. As in the type of tailfin on a car is not important but if it becomes whether the length of the tailfin impedes the public then it is. It needs to attach it self to PUBLIC CONCERN or NATIONAL MORALE like the opinions that candidates have on parties • Not all opinions are important to the government • Although all governments must pay attention to the views of their citizens, in democracies it plays a larger role than in dictatorial states. • Public opinion is sometimes regarded as the opinion that is communicated to the government. - In this discussion Public opinion simply means those opinions held by private persons that the governments finds prudent to heed • Opinion gains influence by being communicated to the government.

Christopher Warshaw and David Broockman. G.O.P. Senators Might Not Realize It, but Not One State Supports the Republican Health Bill. New York Times, 2017

• In recent polls only about 29% of the Public supports the American Health Care Act • To get a sense of support by state, we combined recent polls to estimate support for the A.H.C.A. in every senator's home state. Our estimates indicate that not one state favors it. • Even though very few state polls have been conducted on views of the A.H.C.A., we are able to estimate views on the bill in each state using a statistical method called M.R.P. (multilevel regression and poststratification) and eight national polls that the Kaiser Family Foundation, YouGov and Public Policy Polling shared with us on people's views on the A.H.C.A. o Our M.R.P. model combines respondents' demographic characteristics, their state and their views of the A.H.C.A. to estimate the probability that a voter of a certain age, race and gender, and in a state with certain characteristics, would support the proposal. o It then estimates support for the bill within every state based on each state's demographics • Findings: Republicans have produced a rare unity among red and blue states: opposition to the AHCA • How many senators are going to loose their seat? o A recent study found that Democrats who supported Obamacare lost about six percentage points in the vote in 2010 — a dangerous omen for the 15 sitting Republican senators who won their most recent elections by less than that number. • But evidence shows that when politicians learn that a majority of their constituents oppose a bill, many change their votes as a result. o In one study, academics randomly assigned some legislators to receive information on public opinion in their districts, and found that legislators were much more likely to vote along with constituency opinion when they were informed of it.

The Transmission of Political Values from Parent to Child Author(s): M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi Source: The American Political Science Review, Vol. 62, No. 1 (Mar., 1968), pp. 169-184

• In understanding the political development of the pre-adult one of the central questions hinges on the relative and differentiated contributions of various socializing agents. • he importance of other agents, but he was neither the first nor the last observer to stress the preeminent position of the family • A recent major report about political socialization during the elementary years seriously questions the family's overriding importance. In contrast to the previously-held views that the family was perhaps preeminent or at least co-equal to other socializing agents stands the conclusion by Robert Hess and Judith Torney that "the public school is the most important and effective instrument of political socialization in the United States,"1 • The first and primary objective of the present article will be to assay the flow of certain political values from parent to child. • Using 12th graders for exploring the parental transmission of political values carries some distinct characteristics. In the first place, most of these pre-adults are approaching the point at which they will leave the immediate family • A second feature is that the formal civic education efforts of society, as carried out in the elementary and secondary schools, are virtually completed. • A final con- sideration is that while the family and the educational system have come to some terminal point as socializing agents, the pre- adult has yet to be much affected by actual political practice. • It should be emphasized that we are not necessarily searching for pat- terns of political rebellion from parental values. • Confronted with a number of political values at hand we have struck for variety rather than any necessary hierarchy of impor- tance. We hypothesized a range of correlations dependent in part on the play of factors assumed to alter the parent-student associa- tions (noted above). • Previous research has established party identification as a value dimension of considerable importance in the study of political behavior as well as a political value readily transmitted from parents to children • rlier studies. The substantial agreement between parent and student party affiliations is indicated by a tau-b (also called tau-beta) correlation of .47, a statistic nearly unaffected by the use of three, five, or all seven categories of the party identification spectrum generated by the question sequence." • The observed similarity between parents and students suggests that transmission of party preferences from one generation to the next is carried out rather successfully in the American context. However, there are also indications that other factors (temporarily at least) have weakened the party affiliations of the younger generation. • A number of factors might account for the lesser partisanship of the students, and we have only begun to explore some of them • On the one hand, the students simply lack their parents' long experience in the active electorate, and as a consequence have failed as yet to develop a similar depth of feeling about the parties.17 On the other hand, there are no doubt specific forces pushing students toward Independence • One way in which political values are expressed is through opinions on specific issues. However, as Con- verse has shown, many opinions or idea ele- ments not only tend to be bounded by systems of low constraint but are also quite unstable over relatively short periods of time among mass publics.'8 Hence in comparing student re- sponses with parent responses the problem of measurement may be compounded by attitude instability among both samples. • would be the normal case. To what extent is the family crucial in shaping the evaluations of social groupings and thus-at a further remove-the interpretation of questions of public policy • Moreover, the aggregate differences which do occur are not immediately explicable. For ex- ample, students rate Southerners slightly lower than parents, as we expected, but the difference in ratings of Negroes is negligible, which was unanticipated. Students rate Whites and Protestants somewhat lower than parents. This is not matched, however, by higher evalu- ations of the minority groups-Jews, for example. • ese relationships. As with opinions on specific issues, intra- pair correlations on group evaluations are at best moderately positive, and they vary appre- ciably as a result of socio-political visibility and, to a small degree, group membership characteristics • Previous research with young children sug- gests that sweeping judgments, such as the essential goodness of human nature, are formed early in life, often before cognitive develop- ment and information acquisition make the 22 Robert E. Agger, Marshall N. Goldstein, and Stanley A. Pearl, "Political Cynicism: Measure- ment and Meaning," Journal of Politics, 23 (August, 1961), p. 490; and Edgar Litt, "Political Cynicism and Political Futility," Journal of Politics, 25 (May, 1963), 312-323. evaluated objects intelligible. • Students on the whole are less cynical than parents; relative to other students, though, those with distrustful, hostile parents should themselves be more suspicious of the govern- ment, while those with trusting parents should find less ground for cynicism • These findings do not mean that parents fail to express negative evaluations in family inter- action nor that children fail to adopt some of the less favorable attitudes of their parents. What is apparently not transmitted is a gen- eralized cynicism about politics • preference congruity. We found that when we skipped from party identification to other sorts of political values the parent-student correlations decreased per- ceptibly. • We have found that the transmission of political values from parent to child varies re- markably according to the nature of the value. • Turning to the power relationships between parent and child we hypothesized two types of relationships: 1) the more "democratic" and permissive these relationships were the greater congruency there would be; and 2) the more satisfied the child was with the power relation- ships the greater would be the congruency. Where patterning appears it tends to support the first hypothesi • Attitude obj ects in the concrete, salient, rein- forced terrain of party identification lend sup- port to the model. But this is a prime excep- tion. The data suggest that with respect to a range of other attitude objects the corre- spondences vary from, at most, moderate sup- port to virtually no support. We have sug- gested that life cycle effects, the role of other socializing agents, and attitude instabilities help account for the very noticeable departures from the model positing high transmission.

Asher, Herb. Polling and the Public: What every citizen should know. Cq Press, 2016 Chapter 8

• Interpreting a poll is more of a art than a science, even though the data is central to the enterprise. o An investigator interpreting the poll has extreme leeway • The analysis and judgment of poll data have extremely high levels of subjectivity and judgment. o This means professional judgment, not direct bias • Sometimes bias can be on purpose, but sometimes they can come unintentional • A lot of polls can concern highly complex and multifaceted issues that confuse the public. • Some surveys go into great depths on a topic, in order to analyze and construct views on many various issues. o The problems come when deciding which results to report, sometimes the media only reports an abbreviated version of the poll so the consumer of the poll result is at the mercy of media portrayal. • In contrast to in depth surveys, omnibus surveys cover many subjects superficially in a single survey. • Investigators are sometimes misleading with the way they report their poll results, in order to favor themselves o An example would be the voluntary prayer survey in which they ask about individual voluntary prayer, not organized and then "report" the results • You can phrase a question differently to receive different results o Iraq war survey is a prime example • Sometimes it is tempting to speculate of people's opinions based on past beliefs, however this would be mostly in correct • Framing in surveys matters and plays a large role o An example is the sex survey where the NYT framed it as marriage hold strong and then the Russian paper said gay relations take off on the same survey • Polling data is often used to investigate trends. To study trends researchers must ensure that items related to a topic under investigation are included in multiple surveys at different times. • The biggest obstacles to creating a trend to analyze, is seeing a comparability between studies. o This arise because of social or political change from times between surveys, the product might revoke a different stimulus • Identical items might produce different stimulus because of different political enviorment,s but changing of wording might also produce a skewed result • Trends in political popularity aare the most analyzed • After all is said and done, sometimes poll results and reactions are subject to ones own personal value and beleifs • There is no correct meaning to the sampled data. o Poll data can be selectively interpreted. • There are many reasons for why two very similar poll would lead to divergent results. The most time this happens is with Presidential election polls, which produce varying results, and there fore lower citizen confidence.

Bartels, Larry M. Unenlightened self-interest: The strange appeal of estate tax repeal. The American Prospect, 15(6):A17-A19, 2004

• Read first two paragraphs about people getting rich and richer • The striking fact is that the same people who regret the growing gap between rich and poor and say that the rich should shoulder a greater tax burden have, over the past three years, broadly supported a massive upward transfer of wealth via substantial reductions in federal income taxes. • A variety of public-opinion surveys have documented substantial popular support for President Bush's tax cuts, even in the face of substantial elite criticism • Elsewhere, I have used the NES data to probe the striking disconnection between ordinary citizens' values and beliefs in the domain of equality and their views about specific public policies • Here I focus on the most egregious example of that disconnection: the remarkable level of public support for repealing the estate tax. How is it that so many ordinary Americans are troubled by escalating economic inequality, say that they want to shift the federal tax burden from the middle class and the poor to the rich, yet favor the repeal of a tax that is only paid by the heirs of the very wealthy? o Under the bush tax cuts - Bush tax cuts, the estate-tax threshold will gradually increase to $3.5 million in 2009, while the tax rate will gradually decline. The estate tax will be totally repealed in 2010, but then reinstated in its pre-2002 form in 2011 absent further action by Congress.) • The NES survey included a series of questions on the controversy about "doing away with the tax on large inheritances." These questions were asked in two forms, one referring to the "estate tax" and the other to the "death tax. o Large majorities in both cases favored repealing the tax. Altogether, 51 percent of the public "strongly" favored doing so, while another 19 percent were less strong supporters of repeal. Only 25 percent opposed repeal, and they were mostly "not strong" opponents. • The depth of public antipathy toward the estate tax is clear in the accompanying table, which shows how the proportion of people favoring repeal of the tax varied with seemingly relevant circumstances and political views. In the sample as a whole, almost 70 percent favored repeal. But even among people with family incomes of less than $50,000 (about half the sample), 66 percent favored repeal. Among those who wanted to spend more money on a variety of federal government programs, 68 percent preferred repeal. Among people who said that the difference in incomes between rich and poor has increased in the past 20 years and that it is a bad thing, 66 percent favored repeal • The persistence of strong public support for estate-tax repeal in the face of so many seemingly contrary considerations is very hard to square with any notion of public opinion as rational or well-integrated. • If opinions about repealing the estate tax are virtually unrelated to circumstances and values like these, where do they come from? o they are a product of ideology and partisan attachments. Conservatives and Republicans were more likely to favor repeal than liberals and Democrats. But an even more significant, and surprising, factor is respondents' attitudes about their own tax burden. o People who thought that they are asked to pay too much in federal income taxes were substantially more likely to support repealing the estate tax -- despite the fact that the vast majority of them never have been or would be subject to the tax. Even after allowing for the effects of ideology, partisanship, government spending preferences, and family income, those who said that they are asked to pay more than they should in federal income taxes were 23 percent more likely to favor repeal than those who thought that they pay about the right amount. • Even more perversely, this apparent effect of misplaced self-interest was most powerful among those whose own economic circumstances make them least likely to have any direct personal stake in repealing the estate tax. In separate analyses by income class, the estimated effect of respondents' own perceived tax burdens on their views about repeal was substantially larger for lower- and middle-class people than for those in the top third of the income-distribution field (with family incomes greater than $65,000). • Attitudes about estate-tax repeal are strongly related to people's views about their own tax burdens, but remarkably unrelated to their views about other peoples' tax burdens. • The impact of unenlightened self-interest on policy preferences in this domain is facilitated by a widespread public misunderstanding of how the estate tax actually works. • Thus, two-thirds of the American public fails to recognize the single most important fact about the estate tax: Only very wealthy people pay it. o Another question asked respondents who favored eliminating the estate tax about their reasons for doing so; more than six in 10 endorsed the statement, "It affects too many people," while almost seven in 10 agreed, "It might affect YOU someday." These results, too, suggest that a very substantial number of people support repealing the estate tax because they mistakenly believe that their own taxes will be lower as a result. • Would correcting this misconception produce widespread public support for the estate tax? Probably not. o Americans have always found the juxtaposition of death and taxes peculiarly unsettling, even before conservatives began to mount a vigorous attack on the supposed iniquities of the "death tax. • In the NES survey, people who were generally well-informed about politics were much more likely to recognize that economic inequality has been increasing, much more likely to say that that is a bad thing, much more likely to recognize that disparities in income have important ramifications in other realms of social life, and much less likely to favor the 2001 Bush tax cuts. • Here, as elsewhere, specific policy-relevant facts are only likely to be politically potent in conjunction with a compelling moral interpretation. Thus, it should not be surprising that well-informed people who recognized that economic inequality has increased and said that it was a bad thing were much less likely to favor estate-tax repeal. But even these people were about as likely to favor it as to oppose it -- a fact that highlights the very real limits of political education as a potential transforming force in this domain. • Political education is certainly a worthy progressive project • A political system that takes such views at face value may have a good deal of difficulty addressing the challenge of escalating inequality.

Hetherington, Marc J. Putting polarization in perspective. British Journal of Political Science, 39 (2):413-448, 2009

• Scholarly research has demonstrated rather conclusively that American political elites have undergone a marked partisan polarization over the past thirty years • This review article evaluates the evidence, causes and consequences of polarization on both the elite and mass levels. o This review article evaluates the evidence, causes and consequences of polarization on both the elite and mass levels. o mass attitudes are now better sorted by party, but generally not polarized • While it is unclear whether this potentially troubling disconnect between centrist mass attitudes and extreme elite preferences has negative policy consequences, it appears that the super-majoritarian nature of the US Senate serves as a bulwark against policy outcomes that are more ideologically extreme than the public would prefer. Moreover, a public more centrist • ince the survey question was first asked in 1952. At the elite level, many studies show that Congress is increasingly polarized, with party members clustering towards the ideological poles and the middle a vast wasteland • Morris Fiorina, in his compelling book Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, argues that voters appear polarized because the political arena offers mainly polarized choices. that voter preferences remain moderate, have generally not moved farther apart over time even on hot button social issues, and are increasingly tolerant of difference.6 • In contrast, Gary Jacobson sees polarization in the unprecedented partisan differences in evaluations of George W. Bush, a larger partisan split on the war in Iraq than any previous war, and the mental gymnastics that mass partisans apparently engage in now to buttress their opinions even when they are demonstrably fals • Assessing the extent and pattern of polarization is an important endeavou • I begin this article by reviewing the evidence of increased elite polarization, while placing it in historical context. • I next detail the causes of partisan polarization in Congress that have occurred both outside and inside the institution. I then discuss the consequences of elite polarization. • And, finally, I explore some consequences of party sorting. Most notably, sorting has created an environment in which partisanship plays a much stronger role than in years past. It is also possible that party sorting allows elites to polarize further without much concern for their respective political futures. • he process of partisan polarization in Congress has been occurring over time • 09th Congress. These data suggest that the contemporary period is different from the 1950s through the 1970s. They do not, however, suggest that the present degree of partisan polarization in Congress is anomalous. • 09th Congress. These data suggest that the contemporary period is different from the 1950s through the 1970s. They do not, however, suggest that the present degree of partisan polarization in Congress is anomalous. • eral than those they were replacing.24 The north-east underwent a similar, albeit less dramatic change. Although among the most liberal areas in the country, it long had a tradition of electing liberal Republicans. As the national image of the Republican party grew more conservative, however, these states turned increasingly to liberal Democrats.25 • The end result of this 'Big Sort' is not just greater distance between the parties, but less difference within them • members. Even if the public is linking their ideology better to their political choices, it is still true that the median voter remains moderate. The median voter theorem would suggest that members ought to move towards the ideological centre to capture more votes. Ansolabehere, Snyder and Stewart argue, however, that House candidates do not do this now, nor have they generally tried to moderate their preferences to fit their constituencies over time.30 • Finally, the interest group system reinforces polarization. According to McCarty, Poole and Rosenthal, the pattern of contributions is increasingly tilted to the ideological extremes.39 This was particularly true of so-called 'soft money' contributions to political parties, which, before they were outlawed by the McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Act in 2001, were not subject to limits. Wi • Evidence also suggests that leaders are more effective in exerting influence on rank and-file behaviour in more traditional ways. Burden and Frisby demonstrate that, when members change their preferences between a count of the vote by party whips and the actual vote, it is most often in the direction of party leadership.4 • It is critical to note that the enhancement of leadership powers is not simply a function of leaders becoming more ambitious. Instead, a broad swath of party members has become increasingly willing to provide leadership with these powers. • Cultural changes wrought by these new devices and electoral realities are likely to con tribute to the polarization in Washington • Members of Congress and scholars alike identify the close partisan division in Congress as another cause of polarization. A team • Polarization carries a negative connotation because of all the sharp words and incivility that accompany it. But polarization might have benefits. One outgrowth of polarization has been the development of party government, which is exactly what political science reformers had in mind in the post-Second World War years. In 1950, the American Political Science Association (APSA) penned a set of recommendations designed to engender what they called more responsible parties.60 • It is hard to assess empirically whether the quality of outputs in a polarized, unified government differs from those produced by a different set of arrangements. More testable is whether outputs differ ideologicall • Elites are prone to polarization because they know and care about politics. As a con sequence, they understand the issues and are more inclined to invest themselves in one side or another. In contrast, we know from decades of survey research that most Americans care little about politics and are, instead, consumed with their work, family and other non-political pursui • is not clear that ordinary citizens are polarized today. A number of factors militate against the emergence of mass-level pola • arization. Most central, the issue agenda is often not conducive to it. Political disagreements differ in their divisiveness from era to era. Some enduring divisions were born of events and performance rather th • philosophy was less important than the fact that the Democrats were not the Republicans. The dominant cleavage centred on less visceral disagreements, such as size of the government's role in the economic market and the relationship between business and labour.6 • pular polarization, which is simply movement towards the poles of a distri bution.75 It is characterized by wide dispersion of preference between groups and, eventually, bimodality, or a clustering of preferences near the poles. In statistical terms, this rendering requires (1) a large difference of means (or proportions) between two groups and (2) large and increasing standard deviations in distributions of interest.76 • The DiMaggio, Evans and Bryson definition also suffers from the fact that there is no agreed amount of distance between groups necessary for popular polarization to exist. Do their preferences, on a scale from 0 to 100, need to cluster around 90 and 10, 70 and 30, or something else? Can groups be polarized if the • or protecting gays from job discrimination and supporting gays in the military. A second problem with the DiMaggio, Evans and Bryson definition is that standard deviations and differences of means do not capture salience. Salience helps to determine the weight that opinions carry. Ind • Excluding salience from our understanding of polarization, however, can also be used to argue that there is more polarization today than working from the DiMaggio, Evans and Bryson • Another new issue that challenges the DiMaggio, Evans and Bryson definition is terrorism. Prior to 1993, the salience of terrorism approached 0, with few Americans living in fear of a terrorist attack. Now the percentage of Americans identifying it as an important problem is consistently in the double digits and has approached 50 per cent at times. • Those who argue that polarization exists on the mass level are, for the most part, conceptualizing polarization differently from • Fiorina. They most often highlight increasing distances between the average Republican and Democrat in the electorate irrespective of whether those opinions are clustering near the ideological poles.83 In statistical terms, • '.84 By 'sorting', they mean that mass partisans are following what are now clearer elite cues to sort themselves into the 'correct' party, which decreases intra-party heterogeneity and increases the difference between party ad • It is also worth noting that there is evidence of increasingly deep sorting on several measures of values. Since 1986, the NES has asked a battery of questions about what is termed 'moral traditionalism • CAUSES OF PARTY SORTING Generations of scholarship suggest that elite-level changes usually cause mass-level changes.98 Hence it seems reasonable to believe that the very real polarization in Washington must be, in part, at the core of whatever sorting is taking place in • ore salient for voters when they are asked to evaluate themselves and the parties. The conventional journalistic wisdom is that the changing nature of the mass media has contributed to polarization. Patterson suggests that the mainstream media have become much more adversarial and interpretive in their reporting • One could add 'talk radio' and the internet 'blogosphere' to this discussion of potentially polarizing forms of mass media. If conservatives want to hear the conservative spin on the day's events, they can turn to Rush Limbaugh. Liberals might browse the liberal internet blogs. In either case, consumers will receive a one-sided flow of infor mation, which will cause their opinions to coalesce around those of the information source.10 • My review turns up little evidence of popular polarization but strong indication of significant party sorting in several, but not • ctorate. I have shown elsewhere that elite polarization has stimulated participation at the mass level even though the masses remain relatively moderate albeit better • One way to assess whether sorting matters is understanding people's motivations for sorting. • One way to assess whether sorting matters is understanding people's motivations for sorting. • But it is mostly the case that partisanship structures change in issue preferences rather than the other way around. Indeed, Goren even demonstrates that party has been influent • rty identification to increase. The increased effect of partisanship is manifest in many ways, but most obviously in shaping presidential approval and vote choice • esidency,116 the partisan differences then were much smaller than they are now. The question that remains unanswered is whether this more partisan and better sorted environment is attributable • CONCLUSION: • CONCLUSION Contemporary American politics is probably best described as polarized on the elite level and increasingly well sorted in the • aluations of specific polarizing political leaders are often very far apart. The pattern of elite and mass differences provides evidence for the nature of their dynamics. • Although it might be normatively most satisfying in a democracy if elite behaviour responded to mass opinion, that is not the norm. Instead, elite cues most often shape public opini • The story is different for attitudes. By their nature, attitudes are complicated and abstract, and they are not so easily tied to one set of partisan players or the other. Hence the elite signal about attitudes is less clear than it is for evaluations or even specific policie • If elites provided clear signals about attitudes, mass polarization might follow, at least among those who follow politics closely. Because elites do not, their cues will, at most, produce mass-level sorting on attitudes rather than polarization • titudes rather than polarization. In general, it is important to remember that elite stimulus is at the root of this change in mass behaviour. • s important to remember that elite stimulus is at the root of this change in mass behaviour. Had elites not become more ideologically polarized, party sorting on the mass level would not have occurred • uld not have occurred. At present, it appears that the process is self perpetuating. Mass-level sorting allows polarized elites the opportunity to move further towards the ideological poles without much cause for concern. If they could continue to win elections and govern further and further towards the poles when voters were not well sorted, it is even easier for them to do so now that voters are sorted • out hyper-partisanship in Washington.119 Much of the scholarly disagreement about whether or not ordinary Americans are polarized can be explained by the fact that different scholars have focused on different objects and meant different things by the term 'polarization'. • have focused on different objects and meant different things by the term 'polarization'. Jacobson, by and large, focuses on evaluations of political figures who will pass from the political stage before long, while Fiorina focuses on attitudes, which ought to be more durab • Polarization, in his view, requires both large distances between groups in their issue preferences and a clustering of those preferences towards the ideological poles - things that, by and large, have not occurred. • Fiorina's critics label as 'polarization' increasing distances between the prefer ences of ordinary Republicans and Democrats, without requiring clustering towards the poles. Different definitions produce different conclusions. • American politics no doubt feels different from how it felt twenty or thirty years ago. There is now relatively more polarization and deeper sorting than in the past, processes that may continue into the future

Iyengar, Shanto and Sood, Gaurav and Lelkes, Yphtach. A↵ect, Not Ideology: A Social Identity Perspective on Polarization. Public Opinion Quarterly, 76(3):405-431, 2012

• The current debate over the extent of polarization in the American mass public focuses on the extent to which partisans' policy preferences have moved • Whereas "maximalists" claim that partisans' views on policies have become more extreme over time (Abramowitz 2010), • "minimalists" (Fiorina and Abrams 2009) contend that the majority of Americans remain centrist, and that what little centrifugal movement has occurred reflects sorting, i.e., the increased association between partisanship and ideology. • We argue in favor of an alternative definition of polarization, based on the classic concept of social distance • we demonstrate that both Republicans and Democrats increasingly dislike, even loathe, their opponents. • We also find that partisan affect is inconsistently (and perhaps artifactually) founded in policy attitudes. o The more plausible account lies in the nature of political campaigns; exposure to messages attacking the out-group reinforces partisans' biased views of their opponents. • Scholarship on political polarization, with very few exceptions, focuses exclusively on policy preferences. o American Elites have become increasingly polarized • Some argue that elite polarization is not a response to mass polarization but is instead an (unintended) consequence of institutional changes • Policy-based division is but one way of defining partisan polarization • An alternative, and in our view, more diagnostic, indicator of mass polarization is the extent to which partisans view each other as a disliked out-group. T • We present evidence that partisan affect is inconsistently related to policy preferences and that the relationship between partisan affect and policy attitudes hasn't notably strengthened over time. • We present evidence showing that partisans' feelings for their opponents become more negative following exposure to presidential campaigns • Our principal goal is to document the extent of affective polarization. We show that Democrats and Republicans not only increasingly dislike the opposing party, but also impute negative traits to the rank-and-file of the out-party. • Overall, the evidence is unequivocal: in terms of affect, Americans are polarized along party lines. • results section showing o (1) increased polarization over time within the United States, o (2) increased divergence between the United States and the United Kingdom (a suitable "control" nation) in the extent of affective polarization, o (3) that voters' policy preferences are only weakly associated with partisan affect, o (4) that exposure to political campaigns in general and negative advertising in particular strengthens partisan affect. • American Presidential campaigns have become more antagonistic • There can be no doubt about the increased negativity of campaign rhetoric. Candidates routinely spend more time attacking their opponents than promoting themselves (Geer 2010). • The availability of news coverage of the campaign has risen steadily since the advent of cable television networks. • RESEARCH DESIGN: • We rely on data from national and cross-national surveys to assess whether partisans' dislike of each other has risen over the past fifty years in the United States, and how the current and past levels of inter-partisan conflict compare with those in the United Kingdom. • They use thermoteter ratings of the in and out group parties in the US • using multiple surveys conducted between 1960 and 2010, we describe parallel changes in two indicators of inter-party social distance—stereotypes of party supporters and feelings about marriage across party lines. • Next, we present longitudinal and contemporaneous comparisons between the United States and the United Kingdom. • We take advantage of six different survey data sets • Our general expectation is that over time partisans' ratings of the opposing party will turn increasingly negative • Thus the thermometer data indicates that is the standing of the out group that has changed, partisans liked there opponents less and less • One expectation is that increases in partisan affect will be concentrated among the "activists" • However, the over-time linear trend among non-activists is also significant. • Changes in evaluations of liberals and conservatives do not exhibit the same pattern as evaluations of the parties; rather, both in-group and out-group ratings remain more or less stable over the entire series • It is worth noting that the increased level of out-group negativity expressed toward parties appears to be unrelated to particular electoral outcomes. • we observe significantly greater increases in polarization in the American samples; by 2008, American partisans feel more apart than their British counterparts • Social distance between partisans in the United States significantly exceeds the corresponding distance in the United Kingdom. • The trait ratings data are also available for 1960 and 2008, although in very limited form for the former.10 Only two traits—intelligence and selfishness— are common to the 1960 and 2010 questionnaires, and we present results for them separately • Negative stereotypes of party supporters revealed the very same pattern— relatively lower levels of out-party stereotyping among American partisans. • Between 1960 and 2008, stereotyping of partisan supporters and opponents increased exponentially • e dramatic strengthening of party stereotypes in the United States was not matched in Britain • The changes over time and the pattern of cross-national differences in the trait ratings both indicate that party stereotypes were initially weak, but somewhat more frequent in the UK • In summary, our three indicators of affective polarization all demonstrate that partisans in America are increasingly divided. • Democrats and Republicans harbor generally negative feelings toward their opponents. Stereotypes of party supporters have become increasingly differentiated; positive traits accrue to members of the in-party, while negative traits are ascribed to opponents. • We consider two expalanations for the affective polarization o 1.) movement in policy attitudes among the masses and the elites o 2.) exposure to increasingly negative political campaigns • Is affective polarization simply a symptom of divergent movement in policy attitudes among both partisan supporters and party elites? The evidence suggests otherwise • In sum, the evidence presented above—the non-effects of sorting on the level of affective polarization, and the moderate to weak effects of policy preferences on net partisan affect—is at odds with the view that partisan affect is driven primarily by ideological affinity (read page 18-20) • The weak association between ideological and affective polarization is consistent with the vast literature demonstrating that partisan identity in the United States has only weak ideological underpinnings. • Next, we analyze the degree to which partisan affect can be attributed to increasingly loud and negative political campaigns • These strategic considerations mean that otherwise identical voters are exposed to vastly different amounts of campaigning depending on the area they live in. "Battleground states"— • Overall, our analyses suggest that greater levels of negativity in advertising campaigns and general exposure to political campaigns both contribute to higher levels of affective polarization o Campaigns reinforce voters' sense of partisan identity and confirm stereotypical beliefs about supporters and opponents (for a similar argument concerning identification with the nation state in the aftermath of national security crises • we contend that affect is a more appropriate indicator of mass polarization than ideology. • he more plausible explanation of intensified inter-party animus lies in the rhetoric of political campaigns • Exposure to loud negative campaigns is very likely not the strongest factor, much less the only factor, contributing to affective polarization. • As consumers begin to exercise their ability to select "friendly" sources, an increasing number of news providers deliver slanted news • The ability to select information sources that routinely denigrate the out party is likely to increase out party animus • A more serious concern is that those who impugn the motives and character of political opponents are less likely to treat as legitimate the decisions and policies enacted when the opponents control government, • A measure of "satisfaction with democracy" shows an increasing divide between partisans since 2000.29 • The evidence is strong that partisans are affectively polarized • he evidence we have presented suggests that political campaigns are implicated, and there are reasons to believe that the fragmentation of the media market is a further contributory factor, but future research will need to address these possible explanations more systematically.

Clawson, Rosalee A and Oxley, Zoe M. Public opinion: Democratic ideals, democratic practice. Sage, 2012 **p. 173-179**

• The way the study was done consisted of being given personality traits and then ranking on a scale how you agree or disagree with the personality trait. o The scale ranged from 1 being Disagree strongly and 7 being Agree strongly • Gerber also considers whether the relationship between personality traits and pltical attitudes differes for whites and blacks o Whites and blacks operate in substantitally different polticial enviorments and the effects of personality on policy attidues are content specifici ♣ That is political context influences how indidivudlas interpret gov specific polocies, and which then affects personality traits leading to more or less support for policies. • conscientiousness does not lead to strong support for conservative economic policeis among blakcs as it does for whites. • Blacks tend to support liberal economic policies regardless of there level of conscientiousness . • Despite the intitutive - even compelling—nature fo the claim that citizens follow their self interest, there is acutally quite limited evidence to support the proposition. o On policy opinions ranging from gov spending to gov health insurance, there is a weak or non exisistent self intrest • Other research indiciates that citizens evaluations of the nations economy are more important than there own personal economic circumstances when assessing the political party in power. o In other words, genera concerns about society - what political scienticest call sociotropic concerts - trump pocketbook issues when citizens evaluate their government. • However there are some times when self intrest does influence citizen policy attutedes o Ex. Homeonwers are more likely to favor property tax cuts than nonhomeonwers, IE smokers are more opposed to cigareete taxes and bans than non smokers ♣ These examples sugest that self intrests plays a meaningful role whn the effects of a policy are visisble, tangible, large and certain. • In the Dennis Chong, Jack Citrrin and Patricai Conley study, the question was under which conditions does self intrest mstatter. • They define self intrest as "tangible, realtivley immediate, personal or family beenfits of a policy" • They conduct an experimrent to see when self intrest has a strong affect on citizens attitude. • Respondents were assigned one of three conditions, No prime, Self Intreto consider policy change that is better for furtuer gneerations and then asked the same question. • st Prime, or Sociotropic Prime. o No Prime - Subjects were asked to indicate their prefecnces regarding two possible reforms of social security: reducing benefits to wealtjy retired people or increasing taxes on working people o Self intrest prime - Subjects were primpted or prime to consider how the policy would affect htem and then asked the reform question o Sociotropic prime - subjects were first asked • Compared the answers of people over sixty and peole under sixty o In the No Prime and Self intrest: a storng majority of the older group supported raising taxes, wheile a small majority of under sixty preferred to ruedce retiared benefits o But for the socitiproic, the younger group group supported rasiing social security taxes and the older group became more open to reducing benefits • Overall, the reusluts suggest tat self intrest influences how citizens think about social security, yet the extent to which matter depends heavily on how the intrests Is presented. • Erikson and Stoker demonstrate that self intrest can influence political attutudes when the stakes are visible, tangible, large , and certain. o They asked men poltical attitudes about facing the draft o They assigned low numbers for being called up to duties, and then high numbers if u were not going to be drafted, o Those with low draft numbers faced ongoing panel study to disc poltical atttudues • They found striking eveidence that being assigned a lower draf number influenced attitudes in several ways. Men with lower numbers were more likely to think the war was a mistake compared to those with higher numbers. • The men more vulenerable to the draft were less likely to vote for Nixon. • The vulnerable men reconsidered there partisianhsup, which led them to beomce more demcoractica and alargely stay that way into later adulthood. • Self intrest can have powerful and long lasting effects when citizens are faced with circumstances in which there lives might be severly disrupped and even put in jeopardy • Values are general and ednuruing standards. They are abstract beleifs about how the world should work.They constitute core principles of citizens,a dn guie theire understanding of right and worngl. • Citizens values infleucne policy positions: 2 most prevelant are Egalitantriansim and Indivudulaism o Egalitarianism is the belief that citizens should be equal regardless s of there personal characteristiscs ♣ It empshazies equiality of opourutntiy, not necessarily equality of results. All citizens should have the chance to achieve rather than be granted equal outcomes o Individualism is the belief that citizens should get ahead by virtue of their own hard work, people should pull themselves up by their own ootstrpas and rely on there own ingenuity. • Stanley Feldman analyzed citizens levels of agreement with several statements that were included on a pilot study for the 1984 ANES to come up with the best way to measure egalitarianism and indidivudalism. • He identified three statements that provide a valud measure of egaltitaisnism. ( • He also dneitified five statements that provide a valid measure of individualism (they empshaize personal effort that is needed for someone to get ahead in life) • Fedlamn analyzed the impact of egalnsitairnians and individualsism on citizens policy atttudes and demnstorates that egalitarianism is comsly related to citizens opinion on a wide range of polciies. • Thus on a wide range of polcieies eglatiarianism leads to progressive views, while in contrast individualism has effect in only a few policy areas, they are more likely to oppose welfare spending and prefere a more limited role for the federal govenremtn.

Tesler, Michael. The spillover of racialization into health care: How President Obama polarized public opinion by racial attitudes and race. American Journal of Political Science, 56(3):690-704, 2012

• This study argues that President Obama's strong association with an issue like health care should polarize public opinion by racial attitudes and race. • racial attitudes had a significantly larger impact on health care opinions in fall 2009 than they had in cross-sectional surveys from the past two decades and in panel data collected before Obama became the face of the policy. • zTens of media polls from 1993 to 1994 and from 2009 to 2010 are also pooled together to show that with African Americans overwhelmingly supportive of Obama's legislative proposals, the racial divide in health care opinions was 20 percentage points greater in 2009-10 than it was over President Clinton's plan back in 1993-94. • he epigraph indicates, the role of racial prej- udice in mass opposition to President Obama's health care reform proposals was regularly de- bated during the summer and fall of 2009. • The president, along with many other political figures, reached a much different conclusion, though. Obama repeatedly rebutted claims that hostility toward his health care plan was rooted in racial animus. He suggested instead that the media was merely pursuing this prejudiced opposition narrative because race continues to evoke such powerful emo- tions in American society. • This study helps fill that empirical void by docu- menting the impact of race and racial attitudes on health care opinions before and after Barack Obama became the face of the policy. • The findings presented show that racial attitudes were both an important determinant of white Americans' health care opinions in the fall of 2009 and that their influence increased significantly after President Obama became the face of the policy. • racial attitudes had a significantly greater impact on health care opinions when framed as part of President Obama's plan than they had when the exact same poli- cies were attributed to President Clinton's 1993 health care initiative. • he evidence suggests that Obama's legislative proposals have the potential to polarize issue opinions by racial attitudes and race. • his process of racialization, whereby racial attitudes are brought to bear on political prefer- ences, is rather straightforward for race-targeted poli- cies like affirmative action and federal aid to minorities • Several experiments provide even stronger evidence that political messages can link racial groups with pub- lic policies. • That embodiment of race, combined with the profound racial symbolism surrounding Obama's posi- tion as the first black president, is often cited as the reason why racial attitudes had a significantly stronger impact on mass assessments of him in both the 2008 campaign and in the first year of his presidency than they had on evalu- ations of previous presidents and presidential candidates • Given the impor- tance of elites' background characteristics in the studies referenced above, the salience of Obama's race in public perceptions of him should also spill over into public opin- ion about his visible policy positions. More specifically, source cues that connect racialized public figures to spe- cific issues are expected to activate racial considerations in mass opinion much the way that code words and other subtle race cues have linked African Americans with pub- lic policies in prior research. This hypothesis, which I call the spillover of racialization, therefore situates Obama's race—and the public's race-based reactions to him—as the primary reason why public opinion about health care opinions racialized in the fall of 2009. • The president's racial background, however, is cer- tainly not the only explanation for health care racial- ization. One plausible alternative is that Obama's party affiliation was responsible for polarizing public opinion by racial considerations • METHOD: his study utilizes observational data from repeated cross-sectional surveys and panel reinterviews to test that hypothesis. • The cross sectional data comes formt eh American National Election Study of ANES from 1988 • hat stan- dard ANES health care question asks respondents to place themselves on a 7-point government-to-private insurance scale (see supporting information for question wording • Fortunately, we can augment those less precise cross- sectional analyses with two different panel studies that recorded the same respondents' health care opinions be- fore and after the reform debate heated up in the summer of 2009. Panel reinterviews offer a number of advantages over repeated cross-sectional surveys in determining the changing impact of considerations like racial attitudes. • The first panel data are from the 2008-2009-10 ANES. The March 2009 and September 2009 waves of that study each included the above-referenced health care item and an additional 7-point scale, which asked how much more or less the federal government should spend on health insurance for adults. The two items form a reliable 14-category government insurance scale • I also commissioned a nationally representative panel study in November 2009 to test whether Obama's health care reform proposals racialized Americans' issue opinions • The observational data, however, cannot tell us whether the racialization of health care opinions was caused by Obama's association with the policy or by another factor like his partisanship. o with that in mind, we randomly assigned our November 2009 CCAP respondents to re- ceive three different cues about who proposed specific health care reform policies.8 The three survey groups are described as (1) the neutral condition, (2) the Clinton- framed condition, and (3) the Obama-framed condition. o Respondents in all three conditions were asked whether they favored or opposed the federal government guaran- teeing health care for all Americans (i.e., universal cover- age) and if they supported or opposed a government- administered health insurance plan to compete with private insurance companies (aka "the public option"). Individuals in the neutral condition, however, were only told that "some people" had proposed these policies. The Clinton-framed condition, on the other hand, explained that these policies were a part of President Clinton's 1993 reform efforts; and the Obama-framed condition de- scribed the initiatives as President Obama's current health care proposals (see the supplemental appendix for exact wording of all three versions) o A final question asked the subjects if passing these proposals would make them feel happy, hopeful, angry, and/or afraid. Taken together, the seven health care questions form a highly reliable (Cronbach's = .90) 26-category support scale. o This approach of randomly assigning different con- textual information about policy endorsements has been effectively utilized in previous studies to establish the causal influence of elite cues on public opinio • Our first test of that hypothesis compares the re- lationship between racial resentment and health care opinions in the September 2009 wave of the ANES Panel Study to their association in prior ANES surveys. • In sum, whether using ANES panel data from March and September 2009 or CCAP reinterviews from December 2007 and November 2009, the debate over President Obama's health care proposals appears to have altered the ingredients of mass opinion about this issue: racial attitudes became more important in white Ameri- cans' beliefs about health care relative to nonracial con- siderations like partisanship and ideology. • The Clinton and Obama experimental conditions help disentangle those two potential influence (Ie Presidents race v. other factors like his party affiliation).s, though, • he spillover of racialization's second major hypothesis, then, is that racial attitudes should be brought more heavily to bear on health care opinions among respondents who were told that policies like uni- versal coverage and the public option were a part of Pres- ident Obama's reform efforts. • Finally, and consistent with the results from the ob- servational data, the effects of such nonracial factors as partisanship and ideology were not larger in the Obama condition than they were in the other two experimental groups. • Respondents, therefore, used different consider- ations in expressing their health care opinions depending on whether specific policy proposals were attributed to President Clinton, President Obama, or no one in par- ticular: the Obama frame caused racial attitudes to be a more important determinant of health care opinions relative to nonracial considerations. • Aside from polarizing the electorate by racial attitudes, our first African American president may also drive the political opinions of blacks and whites farther apart. • My final hypothesis, then, is that health care opinions should be more divided by race in 2009 than they were before Obama became the Democratic nominee for president, with African Ameri- cans particularly supportive of the president's health care proposals. • Indeed, with African Americans being the party's most consistently loyal constituency, any Democratic president's reform ef- forts might be expected to galvanize black support. For- tunately, this alternative explanation is testable because several polling firms repeatedly asked about President Clinton's health care plan in 1993-94 and used simi- larly worded questions to gauge support for President Obama's proposals in 2009-10.11 o If the racial divide in 2009-10 is simply a party-specific phenomenon, then we should see a similar gap between blacks and whites in their approval of both Democratic presidents' health care plans. • The evidence presented in Figure 4, however, sug- gests that President Obama possesses a unique potential to polarize public opinion by race. • Because of the small number of African Americans in the typical media poll, the surveys are aggregated to create a pooled sample for each of the four firms. From these four pooled samples, the results in Figure 4 show that the differences between black and white Americans in support for Pres- ident Clinton's health care plan ranged from a low of 20 percentage points in the LA Times sample to a high of 30 percentage points in the Gallup surveys. • President Obama's proposals ranged from a low of 40 percentage points in the pooled Economist sample to a high of 52 percentage points in the Ras- mussen surveys. Averaging across the four pooled 1993-94 and 2009-10 samples in the display, 69% of African Americans favored Bill Clinton's health care plan com- pared to 43% of whites. That 26-point racial division in 1993-94 expanded into a 45-point gulf in 2009-10, with 83% of blacks supporting President Obama's health care proposals and only 38% of whites doing the same • inder and Winter 2001; Schuman et al. 1997; Tate 1994). With African Americans so supportive of Obama and his policies, however, that profound divide is likely to grow even wider during his presidency. • The spillover of racialization into health care could have significant implications for American politics in the Obama era. • First and foremost, it is hard to imagine that there will be another issue during Obama's tenure in office that he is as closely associated with as health care. • Second, Americans did not have particularly stable health care opinions prior to the 2009 debate. • Third, racial attitudes were not significantly implicated in health care opinions prior to 2009, at least not in the ANES data. The spillover of racialization into Obama administration policies that al- ready evoke strong racial predisposition (e.g., immigra- tion: Kinder and Sanders 1996, 122-23) may therefore be limited by ceiling effects. • Finally, and as alluded to ear- lier, the spillover of racialization works because the public viewed Obama through a racial prism. If Obama becomes a less racialized figure during his time in office, which re- search on black mayors suggests he might (Hajnal 2007), then the spillover of racialization from the president to his policies should dissipate in kind.

• Jonathan Ladd and Gabriel S Lenz. Exploiting a rare communication shift to document the persuasive power of the news media. American Journal of Political Science, 53(2):394-410, 2009

• Using panel data and matching techniques, we exploit a rare change in communication flows—the endorsement switch to the Labor Party by several prominent British newspapers before the 1997 United Kingdom general election—to study the persuasive power of the news media • These unusual endorsement switches provide an opportunity to test for news media persuasion while avoiding methodological pitfalls that have plagued previous studies o By comparing readers of newspapers that switched endorsements to similar individuals who did not read these newspapers, we estimate that these papers persuaded a considerable share of their readers to vote for Labor. o Depending on the statistical approach, the point estimates vary from about 10% to as high as 25% of readers. These findings provide rare evidence that the news media exert a powerful influence on mass political behavior. • Public support for party's changes from year to year, but usually does so slowly. New movements and parties tend to emerge gradually • For many years, social scientists concluded that citizens resist change, arguing that media messages cannot easily sway public opinion or voting behavior. • In this view, citizens are the source of democratic stability. More recently, however, researchers have argued that frequent failures to detect media persuasion result not from its absence, but from formidable methodological obstacles • To date, few researchers have used modern identification strategies to examine the persuasive effect of news content and endorsements on electoral preferences. • This article addresses this question by exploiting a rare shift in the editorial stance and tone of coverage in four newspapers between the 1992 and 1997 United Kingdom (UK) general elections. • METHOD: By combining newspaper endorsement changes with panel survey data, American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 53, No. 2, April 2009, Pp. 394-410 C 2009, Midwest Political Science Association ISSN 0092-5853 394 EXPLOITING A RARE COMMUNICATION SHIFT 395 we estimate these papers' effect on voting while overcoming many of the methodological obstacles that have plagued previous studies • CONCLUSION: Our results indicate that persuasion effects are large, supporting the view that the stability of democratic politics depends largely on elites. • Two obstacles that prevent the detection of Media Persuasion: o The first is lack of variation in message. For instance, based on the relative short-term stability of aggregate public opinion (Converse 1990; Page and Shapiro 1992), even in the face of fierce political campaigns (Finke 1993), some researchers infer that campaigns (and news coverage of them) leave little imprint on public opinion. o . The second obstacle preventing the detection of campaign and news media effects is that measures of exposure tend to be poor. To measure exposure, researchers often must use error-prone variables such as whether a respondent life in a county in which a newspaper has high circulation (e.g., Erikson 1976), general political knowledge (e.g., Price and Caller 1993; Caller 1992), or self-reported campaign attention or media usage (e.g., Barker 2002; but see Bartels 1993; Hetherington 1996). These error-prone variables introduce biases of potentially substantial magnitude and unpredictable direction • When they do find such evidence, however, researchers face two additional obstacles to demonstrating these effects convincingly. These obstacles take the form of alternative explanations that are difficult to rule out. First, individuals may choose media outlets that share their politics (self-selection), creating the appearance of persuasion. Second, media outlets may follow, not lead, their audiences' politics, which also could be mistaken for persuasion. T • In this article, we examine the effect of newspaper endorsements and slant in the 1997 UK general election. • In particular, the Sun, which had the largest circulation in Great Britain,1 broke with its strident support for the Conservatives and swung its support to Labor • While most British newspapers became critical of the Conservative government during its 1992-97 term and positive toward Blair personally, these papers' endorsements of Labor were surprising. These "switching" papers had no recent histories of supporting Labor and did not leak their endorsements in advance. • . Of all traditional Conservative Party papers, the Times had had the earliest and often most serious criticisms of John Major's government (McNair 2003), yet did not endorse Labor in 1997. • In exploiting changes by these papers, we capture both the effects of the editorial endorsement and changed slant in news coverage. • To examine the effect of these editorial and slant shifts, we use the British Election Panel Study 1992-97 5This contrasts with the United States, where Kahn and Kenney (2002) are able to distinguish between the effects of news content and editorial endorsements. (BEPS), which interviewed the same national sample four times before the endorsement shifts (in 1992, 1994, 1995, and 1996) and once afterwards • This panel survey provides a least four elements that aid causal inference. o First, it allows us to rule out self-selection because we can measure which papers respondents read before the endorsement shifts. o Second, the BEPS enables us to address concerns about measurement error by constructing an additional, more demanding, measure of the treatment: habitual readership o Third, the multiple panel waves enable us to measure many other characteristics that might differ between the treatment and control individuals, and to do so before the papers switched (pretreatment). o Finally, the multiple pretreatment interviews also permit us to conduct placebo tests (or falsification tests), which help to further rule out omitted variable bias and reverse causation • Did the change in partisan endorsements and news slant by the Sun, Daily Star, Independent, and Financial Times persuade readers to vote differently than they would have otherwise? o The evidence suggests that it did. straightforwardly compares the increase in the percentage of voters choosing Labor between 1992 and 1997 among those who did and did not read these papers.9 Among those who did not, the percent voting for Labor rises by only 10.8 percentage points, from 32.2 to 43.0% o Consequently, switching paper readers were 6.6% more likely to vote for Labor in 1992 and 15.2% more likely to do so in 1997. • Based on our analysis, the best predictor of shifting to Labor is, not surprisingly, respondents' prior evaluations of the Labor Party (see Appendix Table 1). Respondents who did not vote for Labor in 1992, but who rated Labor favorably, are much more likely than are others to shift their votes to Labor in 1997 • Another alternative explanation for our finding is that switching papers may have shifted to Labor between 1992 and 1997 because they observed their readers shifting to Labor and then followed them • To address this concern, we conduct a third placebo test by checking that readers of these papers do not begin shifting to Labor before the 1997 campaign. We do so by verifying that the persuasion effect only emerges between the 1996 and 1997 waves of the panel. • In summary, the treated group's shift to Labor did not occur before the endorsement shifts, but afterwards. • Of course, treated readers could have shifted after the 1996 interviews but before the 1997 endorsement announcements. Although we cannot rule this out, treated and untreated groups are so similar on covariates that it seems unlikely the treated shifted suddenly to Labor in this short interval, long after the Conservative government had become deeply unpopular. • Another remaining concern is that Conservative readers may have self-selected away from reading switching papers before the 1996 panel wave • Although plausible, we find little evidence consistent with this account. • To address this concern further, we examine newspaper readership across the panel, but find little evidence of self-selection by readers between the 1992 and the 1996 waves • CONCLUSION STARTS HERE • Using panel data and matching techniques, we exploit a rare change in news slant and find strong evidence of news media persuasion. • By comparing readers of news- papers that switched to similar individuals who did not read these newspapers, we estimate that these papers persuaded a considerable share of their readers to vote for Labor • We avoid the methodological problems that come up while estimating the persuasive effect o 1.) First, we have an anchoretic change in the partisan slant of newspapers o 2.) We can measure individuals expose to these news outlets before the shift occurred o 3.) The large sample size of the BEPS allows us to address omitted variable bias by matching similar exposed and unexposed respondents in addition to the standard parametric techniques o 4.) The many pretreatment panel waves in the BEPS allows us to address various other potential sources of bas and conduct several placebo tests First, we have an uncharacteristic change in the partisan slant of newspapers. Second, we can measure individuals' exposure to these news outlets before the shift occurs. Third, the large sample size of the BEPS allows us to address omitted variable bias by matching similar exposed and unexposed respondents in addition to the standard parametric techniques. Finally, the many pretreatment panel waves in the BEPS allow us to address various other potential sources of bias and conduct several placebo tests. To our knowledge, no other observational media persuasion study combines these attributes. • our point estimates of the persuasive effect of news endorsements and slant vary from about 10% to as high as 25% of readers. If, in the 1997 UK election, the Sun's endorsement was in exchange for a friendly regulatory environment for Murdoch, the concession may have bought Blair between 8 and 20% of his 3.9 million-vote margin over the Conservatives. T • At the outset, we posed Caller's (1996) question of whether democratic stability is the product of citizen or elite behavior. Our results offer no solace for those who worry that the public is too easily swayed by the power of mass communication. They indicate that stable elite communication flows, rather than any inherent durability of public preferences, are the likely source of the consistency and relative moderation found in many democracies. • Based on these findings, news media messages can be one of the most powerful influences on voting documented by political scientists. •

Brader, Ted and Valentino, Nicholas A and Suhay, Elizabeth. What triggers public opposition to immigration? Anxiety, group cues, and immigration threat. American Journal of Political Science, 52(4):959-978, 2008

• We examine whether and how elite discourse shapes mass opinion and action on immigration policy. • news about the costs of immigration boosts white opposition far more when Latino immigrants, rather than European immigrants, are featured o We find these group cues influence opinion and political action by triggering emotions—in particular, anxiety—not simply by changing beliefs about the severity of the immigration problem • Immigration surged onto the national agenda following the 2004 election, as politicians wrangled over reforms on what is perceived to be a growing problem for the United States • . It is not surprising, therefore, that opponents of immigration always outnumber supporters. Nonetheless, public opinion on the issue can be volatile, with opposition spiking to nearly two-thirds in some years and dropping to as little as one-third in other • As with many issues, Americans tend to be poorly informed and uncertain about immigration (Scheve and Slaughter 2001) and much of what they learn comes through the mass media. • Can ethnic or racial group cues act as situational triggers that change how the American public responds to immigration? Many observers regard as commonplace the notion that support for immigration depends on who the immigrants are • In particular, we suspect that news about the potential threat of immigration will have a larger impact on whites' attitudes when the immigrants being discussed are nonwhite • Thus when the news media highlight Latinos in discussions about immigration, white citizens may come to believe that immigrants pose an even greater problem than if white Europeans were featured • Racial or ethnic cues may trigger emotional reactions, such as anxiety,whichmay cause changes in opinion and behavior independently of changes in beliefs about the severity of the immigration problem • In order to understand how public discourse affects popular opposition to immigration, we examine three characteristics of that discourse: emphasis on costs and benefits, ethnic identity cues, and portrayal of immigrants as low- or high-skilled workers. P • Our second major goal in this article is to examine the psychological mechanism underlying the effects of group cues in immigration discourse. o Why does the salience of particular ethnic or racial groups in elite debate affect public opinion? • Belief change does not require exposure to direct arguments. Ethnic or racial group cues may carry implications for how citizens perceive the nature or severity of any harm (or benefit) from immigration. • Of course, belief change and emotional responses are not mutually exclusive. Both may mediate the effects of group cues on immigration opinion. After all, beliefs about the severity of immigration problems and emotions about that same topic are often strongly correlated, and each may affect opinion formation ( • Our main theoretical goals then are (1) to examine the impact of group cues in immigration discourse on perceptions of threat and emotions and (2) to test whether changes in those perceptions, emotions, or both mediate the impact of discourse on opinion and behavior • To test the hypotheses, we conducted two experiments in the summer and fall of 2003. • Experiment 1 We embedded an experiment in a nationally representative survey of 354 white, non-Latino adults. The sur • vey was conducted via WebTV by Knowledge Networks, which maintains a large, randomly contacted respondent pool by offering free Internet access in exchange for occasional participation in surveys • The web-based platform allows us to deliver stimuli matching those in actual news coverage. The study employed a 2 × 2 design with a control group • We manipulated the ethnic cue by altering the picture and name of an immigrant (white European versus Latino) featured in a mock New York Times report about a governors' conference on immigration.3 We also manipulated the tone of the story, focusing either on the positive consequences of immigration for the nation (e.g., strengthening the economy, increasing tax revenues, enriching American culture) or the negative consequences (e.g., driving down wages, consuming public resources, undermining American values). T • Ourfirst hypothesis is that news emphasizing costs should boost opposition to immigration more powerfully when it is accompanied by images of stigmatized groups than when it is accompanied by racial ingroup members. • Respondents in the negative (i.e., immigration is costly) Latino condition expressed the most opposition to immigration, while those in the positive Latino condition expressed the most support. Although emphasis on costs versus benefits works similarly for the European and Latino versions, the negative effect is much larger for stories with Latino cues, consistent with our first hypothesis. The impact of the threatening story is over two times stronger when Latino cues are present.8 • the negative Latino condition send an anti-immigration message, 19 percentage points higher than the positive Latino condition and 14 points higher than the control group. In contrast, the tone of the story has no effect on contacting when the European immigrant is pictured. • The next important theoretical question is why this happens. Do people believe Latino immigration is worse than immigration from other groups? Or is the effect grounded in more visceral (automatic), emotional reactions? • These results suggest that white Americans don't necessarily become anxious when reminded about immigration and its harmful potential, nor when reminded that some immigrants are nonwhite. They experience substantially greater anxiety when negative consequences of immigration are paired with a stigmatized outgroup.13 Furthermore, enthusiastic reactions do not depend at all on the ethnic cues paired with news about the issue. • An alternative explanation for our results begins with the claim that European and Latino cues trigger distinct beliefs about the impact of immigration. Specifically, responses may be tied to beliefs about the sheer size of each group in the current pool of immigrants and/or about the relative skill level of each group • Another explanation suggests the interaction effect is driven by assumptions about the skill level of Latino versus (white) European immigrants • We recruited 267 subjects from the local area, including during a festival that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors from across the country • They were offered $20 for taking a "public opinion survey" about current events and completed a self-administered questionnaire at one of a dozen computer stations. • Subjects first answered questions regarding predispositions and political knowledge. They then read the following message: "For this study, we have collected a large number of articles that have appeared recently in • The computer is going to select one of these newspaper articles at random for you to read. When you are finished with the article, we will ask you some questions about it. Please read carefully." After reading the article, they answered more questions and then were fully debriefed before leaving. • Each artle had a the same thing but a different ethnicitiy int eh photo • The second factor involved the implication that immigrant workers are either highor low-skilled. The first condition noted concerns about high-skilled job competitors and quoted high-skilled native workers who had witnessed colleagues losing jobs to immigrants. The second condition included similar content, except that the relevant natives and immigrants were low-skilled. The subtitle also made a reference to "high-skilled" or "low-skilled" immigrants. • The second experiment also supports our principal hypotheses: immigration opinion depends on the immigrant group made salient, and the effects of these group cues on political behavior are mediated by anxiety • We find substantial support for two key propositions: (1) group cues in immigration discourse can elicit anxiety and (2) changes in anxiety, not perceived threat, mediate the impact of these cues on opinion and political behavior • We find substantial support for two key propositions: (1) group cues in immigration discourse can elicit anxiety and (2) changes in anxiety, not perceived threat, mediate the impact of these cues on opinion and political behavior • Two explanations are possible: (1) group cues change beliefs about the severity of the immigration problem; or (2) group cues trigger emotions, and these emotions (not beliefs about severity) drive opposition • Citizens felt more threatened by Latino immigration, not European immigration, and this feeling triggered opposition to immigration and multilingual laws, prompted requestsfor information, and led people to send anti-immigration messages to Congress