Southern Political Exceptionalism? Presidential Voting in the South and Non‐South*

Objective. This study develops and tests a model of political regionalism that posits that if regions are politically exceptional, then individuals sharing the same profile but living in these different regions will have divergent presidential voting patterns ( King, 1996 ). Methods. Analyzing presidential voting behavior from 1952 to 2004, I use logistic regression techniques to test a regional model of homogeneity (southern exceptionalism) versus a unit model of homogeneity (South and Non‐South are statistically similar). Results. The findings show that the South's presidential voting patterns are exceptional in the 1950s and during the civil rights era but, starting in the Reagan era, southern exceptionalism waned. These findings also show that the South is converging with the non‐South (northernization) relative to the influences of race, family income, union membership, in‐migrants, and gender, and the non‐South is converging with the South (southernization) relative to the influences of education, blue‐collar workers, and age. Conclusions. Both economic class and race variables contribute to the demise of regional exceptionalism; however, race plays a more persistent role. Given the process of “southernization” and the instability of the predictors of presidential voting for the South over time, I conclude that the study of the South as a region should continue until the process of change subsides and a new equilibrium is found.     

Voting by Mail: Turnout and Institutional Reform in Oregon*

Objectives. I test the impact of Oregon's vote‐by‐mail system on voter turnout. Methods. To determine the impact, I create a cross‐sectional time‐series regression model of state turnout in presidential elections from 1980 to 2004 and mid‐term elections from 1982 to 2006. Results. I find that Oregon's turnout increases by around 10 percentage points of registered voters in both presidential and mid‐term elections due to the voting‐by‐mail reform. Conclusions. These results suggest that one of the reasons that the United States has comparatively lower turnout is due to its more onerous voting procedures.     

The electoral consequences of alienation: Nonvoting and protest voting in the 1992 presidential race

This article focuses on the context of the 1992 national elections in order to determine why certain alienated individuals chose to stay home on election day while others responded by voting for a third party Presidential candidate. Two dimensions of alienation, internal and external political inefficacy, are linked to lower levels of voting, as is consistent with previous research on voting behavior. In addition, we find that, among those who voted, those individuals who expressed political cynicism or external inefficacy were more likely to vote for Ross Perot. We conclude that, while many alienated individuals do not vote, the Perot candidacy in 1992 led certain alienated individuals to engage in “protest” voting by casting their vote for an unlikely winner in the presidential race.     

The contingency of Senate consent: a study of the determinants of roll call confirmation voting on executive branch appointments, 1945–1996

I develop a model to explain U.S. Senate roll call confirmation vote tallys (i.e., the level of affirmative voting) for executive branch appointments submitted by the president from 1945 to 1996. The theoretical framework assumes senators as strategic actors operating within the confirmation context where many senators are cross-pressured between a norm of deference towards the appointing president which pervades the environment and their own policy/constituency agenda. The dampening effect on negative voting by this presidential leverage on appointments is attenuated when senators assess the situation and determine it is politically safer to vote to reject. The findings show that the grounds of opposition voiced against a nomination and aspects of the appointing president’s political strength are important components in explaining negative voting in confirmation roll calls.     

One Person—No Vote; One Vote; Two Votes: Voting Methods, Ballot Types, and Undervote Frequency in the 2000 Presidential Election

Objectives . Political science long ignored the actual mechanics of voting—until the 2000 presidential contest. This research note offers a systematic empirical inquiry into the potential effects of various voting methods and electorate–specific variables on the rate at which citizens register a preference via the act of voting. Methods . Voting methods were analyzed in relation to the rate of undervotes recorded in Georgia's 159 counties during the 2000 general election using a set of multivariate models. Results . Lever machines and fill in the oval optical scan ballots are associated with lower rates of undervoting. Counties with large numbers of new registrants, lower education levels, and a higher proportion of African–American voters were found to have higher error rates. Conclusions . The results of this study provide strong evidence that voting methods and ballot types, as well as electorate–specific characteristics, are key factors in determining the error rate associated with the process of voting at the county level.     

Sociopolitical control among parents of school-age children in a post-socialist city

This study explored sociopolitical control among parents of school-age children in a suburban municipality of a large post-socialist city. The participants completed a questionnaire that asked them about their sense of sociopolitical control in terms of leadership competence and policy control, as well as about other aspects of their lives, including mental health. The findings show that the participants have a greater sense of sociopolitical control in terms of leadership competence than in terms of policy control. Moreover, the findings show that voting in the last presidential election and degree of depression influenced negatively the sense of leadership competence among parti-cipants. Within the context of empowerment, the findings have implications for practice which focuses on consumer-based activities that allow citizens more leadership opportunities and control at the local level. Future research is needed that replicates this study, taking into account its limitations. In order for citizens in post-socialist countries to create civil societies at the same time that they implement market economies, they must be empowered. Some evidence suggests that several factors, including mental health problems, may influence the sense of empowerment among citizens in post-socialist coun-tries. Within the context of empowerment, this study examines sociopolitical control among citizens in a suburb of a large post-socialist city. The findings in the study have implications for social welfare practice in this city and for future research.     

The rising influence of evangelicalism in American political behavior, 1980–2004

Connections between evangelicalism and political behavior are explored using National Election Study (NES) data from 1980 to 2004. Our findings suggest that although white evangelical support for Republican presidential candidates has increased, the independent effect of evangelicalism on voting has weakened. We argue that this reflects an increasing convergence between evangelicalism and Republican Party identification. Beginning in the 1990s, as more and more evangelicals identified as Republicans, the independent effect of their religious commitment on voting weakened. We also find strengthening correlations between evangelicalism and policy preferences, especially on non-social issues, and enhanced Republican mobilization of evangelical voters in recent campaigns. We conclude with the suggestion that changes in evangelical political behavior over a 24-year period support the notion of an electoral realignment in American politics.     

Voting for president in the U.S.-Mexico border region

Reasoning that life in the U.S.-Mexico border region is sufficiently different from life in non-border regions this paper asks whether proximity to the border has a significant impact on presidential voting. County level data from four border states, California, Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas, over five presidential elections, 1992-2008, are examined using a both cross-sectional and panel data analysis. The authors conclude that there is a border effect that favors Democratic candidates and that fades as distance from the border increases.     

Strategic voting in the 1984 democratic presidential primaries

When casting their ballots in primary elections, voters usually vote in a straight-forward manner for the candidate of their preference. But sometimes sophisticated voters vote for a second or third choice who has a better chance of winning in the general election or even cross over to the opposition party to vote for a candidate who will be easier to defeat in the general election. This article assesses the amount and importance of such strategic voting in Democratic presidential primaries in 1984 using discriminate analysis.     

Monotonicity of power in games with a priori unions

Power indices are commonly required to assign at least as much power to a player endowed with some given voting weight as to any player of the same game with smaller weight. This local monotonicity and a related global property however are frequently and for good reasons violated when indices take account of a priori unions amongst subsets of players (reflecting, e.g., ideological proximity). This paper introduces adaptations of the conventional monotonicity notions that are suitable for voting games with an exogenous coalition structure. A taxonomy of old and new monotonicity concepts is provided, and different coalitional versions of the Banzhaf and Shapley–Shubik power indices are compared accordingly.      

Postulates and paradoxes of relative voting power — A critical re-appraisal

This paper re-evaluates the problem of measuring thea priori relative voting power of a voter in an assembly. We propose several new intuitively compelling postualtes that any reasonable index of voting power ought to satisfy. At the same time we argue that most of the paradoxes of voting power discussed in the literature are paradoxical only in a weak sense, if at all. This leaves three crippling paradoxes — the well-known paradox ofweighted voting, and two new ones presented here: thebloc anddonation paradoxes. We evaluate the four main relative power indices discussed in the literature with respect to these three severe paradoxes. The Shapley-Shubik index is seen to be immune to all three paradoxes, while the Deegan-Packel index is vulnerable to all three. The Banzhaf and the Johnston indices are demonstrably immune to the paradox of weighted voting. However, they are shown to suffer from both the bloc and the donation paradoxes. We argue that this seriously undermines these indices in a hitherto unsuspected way. Several other theoretical issues relating to voting power are discussed.     

Candidates and Competition: Variability in Ideological Voting in U.S. Senate Elections*

Objectives. In choosing candidates to support in congressional elections, voters consider both policy and nonpolicy factors. However, the relative importance of incumbency or presidential approval versus candidates' ideological platforms likely varies across elections. Specifically, stiffer electoral competition should encourage ideology‐based voting because candidate information is more plentiful. In contrast, incumbents' ability to garner votes simply by virtue of already holding office should depress proximity voting in elections with incumbents. Methods. Using data from the 1988–1992 Pooled Senate Election Study, I estimate logistic regression models of individual vote choice. Results. I find that open‐seat elections do promote the use of candidate ideological proximity in the voting calculus but that the effects of election competitiveness are less clear. Conclusions. The findings have important implications for normative democratic theory, for our constitutional framework, and for elite behavior and aggregate‐level electoral outcomes.     

Power and size: A new paradox

An analysis of several different indices of voting power reveals that the voting power of a member of a weighted voting body may increase, rather than decrease, when new members are added to the original body. Real instances of this phenomenon, called the paradox of new members, are shown to have occurred when new states were added to the U.S. Electoral College and new countries to the European Community Council of Ministers. Conditions for the existence of the paradox, and probabilities of its occurrence in small and moderate-size voting bodies, are given. Efficient algorithms for the calculation of the voting power indices, based on generating functions, are also outlined.     

Exploring the Gender Gap in Support for a Woman for President

The gender gap in support for a female presidential candidate gathered much media attention with Hillary Clinton as a frontrunner for the 2008 democratic presidential nomination. Two common explanations for this gap are that women have more liberal gender role and political attitudes. We contend that another important, and distinct, factor for heightened support among women is a shared social identity. We tested these three explanations across two studies. In Study 1, hierarchical regression analyses revealed that both attitudes toward women and sex independently predict a significant proportion of the variance in willingness to elect a woman for president. In Study 2, hierarchical regression analyses showed that when entered together, attitudes toward female authority and sex independently predict support, but when political attitudes was entered, only sex and political attitudes predicted support for Clinton. Finally, as expected, when primed with their gender identity, women increased their support for Clinton and men decreased their support, and women perceived her more favorably and men less so. In sum, these studies strongly support the arguments that the gender gap in support for female presidential candidates stems in part from women's more liberal gender role and political attitudes, and also from women sharing the same gender social identity as a female candidate for commander in chief .     

Expected frequency and mean size of the paradox of new members

The paradox of new members occurs when the addition of one or more new members to a weighted voting body increases, rather than decreases, the voting power of some of the old members. Extending the computational work of Brams and Affuso (1976), the mean size of the paradox and the relative frequency of its occurrence are presented for small and moderate-size weighted voting bodies. Computational results are presented and conclusions are drawn for the two power indices of Shapley-Shubik and Banzhaf, three different decision rules, and voting bodies with or without dictator. Although the paradox cannot be dismissed as either contrived or improbable, its mean size in moderatesize voting bodies is sufficiently small to question its practical significance.     

Nader voters in the 2000 Presidential Election: what would they have done without him?

This research estimates the likely voting behavior of Nader voters if he had not been a candidate in the presidential race. Bivariate analysis of ANES data suggests that Nader voters fit the profile of likely voters and have a distinct preference for Democratic candidates. We utilize multinomial logit analysis to include the possibility of abstention as well as the option of voting for Gore, Bush, or another third-party candidate. The results suggest that Nader voters closely resembled the typical voter in educational achievement, and therefore it is likely that a majority of these individuals would have participated in the 2000 election if Nader had not been a candidate. In addition, it is likely that these individuals would have voted for Al Gore over George Bush. However, these Nader voters were younger, less partisan, and were more likely to express feelings of political alienation, so it is quite possible that the absence of the Nader candidacy would have kept a sizeable minority of them at home on election day.     

Moral Values, Moralism, and the 2004 Presidential Election

The "moral values vote" in the 2004 American presidential election should be interpreted more broadly than as a reflection of concerns about same-sex marriage and abortion. Instead of specific hot-button social policy issues, a general personality trait of moralism—the tendency to perceive a moral dimension in everyday decisions—may have contributed to the election outcome. Specifically, we hypothesize that some Bush supporters shared Bush's high level of moralism (as reflected in his rhetoric) and that this moralism motivated their votes. Consistent with our hypothesis, a preliminary empirical investigation suggests that Bush voters were, indeed, higher in moralism than were Kerry voters. Plans for further research and political strategy implications are discussed.     

Russia and Europe: An Analysis of Ideas and Identity: (Notes of a Conservative)

The Russian presidential election campaign that ended with the voting on 16 June and 3 July 1996, which brought victory to Boris Yeltsin, initiated a new stage in the electoral cycle that began in March 1991 with the referendum on preserving the Soviet Union and is associated with the "Yeltsin" period of Russian history. Its distinguishing feature was and is an electorate distributed between two poles, those who are and those who arc not loyal to thc proposed model for reforming society. This bipolarity was seen for the first time on a Russia-wide scale in the results of the March 1991 referendum and was reproduced in various forms until July 1996, since the tendencies that would lead to a more complex structure of the electorate were still very weak. A political geography approach reveals regional trends in the evolution of voters' behavior, and an examination of these trends provides a picture of the overall Russian electoral process.     

The Bicameral Postulates and Indices of a Priori Voting Power

If K is an index of relative voting power for simple voting games, the bicameral postulate requires that the distribution of K -power within a voting assembly, as measured by the ratios of the powers of the voters, be independent of whether the assembly is viewed as a separate legislature or as one chamber of a bicameral system, provided that there are no voters common to both chambers. We argue that a reasonable index – if it is to be used as a tool for analysing abstract, uninhabited decision rules – should satisfy this postulate. We show that, among known indices, only the Banzhaf measure does so. Moreover, the Shapley–Shubik, Deegan–Packel and Johnston indices sometimes witness a reversal under these circumstances, with voter x less powerful than y when measured in the simple voting game G₁ , but more powerful than y when G₁ is bicamerally joined with a second chamber G₂ . Thus these three indices violate a weaker, and correspondingly more compelling, form of the bicameral postulate. It is also shown that these indices are not always co-monotonic with the Banzhaf index and that as a result they infringe another intuitively plausible condition – the price monotonicity condition. We discuss implications of these findings, in light of recent work showing that only the Shapley–Shubik index, among known measures, satisfies another compelling principle known as the bloc postulate. We also propose a distinction between two separate aspects of voting power: power as share in a fixed purse (P-power) and power as influence (I-power).