(97) Wu, Jennifer D. and Gregory A. Huber. Forthcoming. "How and When Candidate Race affects Inferences about Ideology and Group Favoritism." Political Science Research and Methods.

Abstract: How does a candidate's racial background affect the inferences voters make about them? Prior work finds that Black candidates are perceived to be more liberal. Using two survey experiments, we test whether this effect persists when candidate partisanship and issue positions are specified and also consider other consequential voter perceptions. We make two contributions. First, we show that while Black candidates are perceived to be more liberal than White candidates with the same policy positions, this difference is smaller for Black candidates who adopt more conservative positions on race-related issues. Second, we find that voters, both Black and White, believe Black candidates will prioritize the interests of Black constituents over those of White constituents, regardless of candidate positions.

Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF) (Online Appendix)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "Racialized Candidate Inferences in American Politics: Perceived Ingroup Favoritism is More Difficult for Black Candidates to Overcome than Ideological Stereotypes."

(96) Barber, Michael, Brandice Canes-Wrone, Joshua Clinton, and Gregory A. Huber. Forthcoming. "Which Republican Constituencies Support Restrictive Abortion Laws? Comparisons among donors, wealthy, and mass publics." Public Opinion Quarterly.

Abstract: Roe v. Wade (1973) recognized a constitutional right to abortion under various circumstances and in doing so, facilitated a political environment in which politicians could endorse more restrictive abortion policies that Roe prohibited. Indeed, many states enacted "trigger" laws that would only carry the force of law if Roe were overturned. The Supreme Court in Dobbs v. Jackson (2022) removed the constitutional right to abortion, ending a situation in which this type of position-taking lacked policy consequences and creating an environment in Republican-led states where many policies seemingly contrast with public opinion. To investigate potential sources of support for a variety of types of restrictions, we analyze an original survey of over 7,500 verified donors, 1,500 affluent individuals and 1,000 members of the general public conducted in 2019-2020. The most extreme restrictions, such as bans with no rape exception, are not popular with Republicans in the aggregate from any of the three groups--Republican donors, affluent individuals, or voters, but they are supported by the small and potentially influential group of highly religious Republicans who report that abortion is one of their most important issues.

Links: (Download Paper: Local PDF) (Supporting Information)

(95) Meisels, Mellissa, Joshua Clinton, and Gregory A. Huber. Forthcoming. "Giving to the Extreme? Experimental Evidence on Donor Response to Candidate and District Characteristics." British Journal of Political Science

Abstract: How does candidate ideology affect donors' contribution decisions in U.S. House elections? Studies of donor motivations have struggled with the confounding of candidate, donor, and district characteristics in observational data and the difficulty of assessing trade-offs in surveys. We investigate how these factors affect contribution decisions using experimental vignettes administered to 7,000 verified midterm donors. While ideological congruence influences donors' likelihood of contributing to a candidate, district competitiveness and opponent extremity are equally important. Moreover, the response to ideology is asymmetric and heterogeneous: donors penalize more moderate candidates five times more heavily than more extreme candidates, with the most extreme donors exhibiting the greatest preference for candidates even more extreme than themselves. Republicans also exhibit a greater relative preference for extremism than Democrats, although partisan differences are smaller than differences by donor extremism. Our findings suggest that strategic considerations matter and donors incentivize candidate extremism even more than previously thought.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Online Appendix)

(94) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Patrick D. Tucker, and John J. Cho. 2024. "The Importance of Breaking Even: How Local and Aggregate Returns Make Politically Feasible Policies." British Journal of Political Science, 54(3): 730-47.

Abstract: Policies that promote the common good may be politically infeasible if legislators representing "losing" constituencies are punished for failing to promote their district's welfare. We investigate experimentally how varying the local and aggregate returns to a policy affects voter support for their incumbent. In our first study, we find that an incumbent who favors a welfare-enhancing policy enjoys a discontinuous jump in support when their own district moves from losing to at least breaking even, while the additional incremental political returns for the district doing better than breaking even are modest. This feature of voter response, which we replicate, has significant implications for legislative politics generally and, in particular, how to construct politically feasible social welfare enhancing policies. In a second study, we investigate the robustness of this finding in a competitive environment in which a challenger can call attention to a legislator's absolute and relative performance in delivering resources to their district.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Online Appendix)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "The Discontinuous Return to Simply Breaking Even: Experimental Evidence about Policy and Candidate Evaluations and Implications for Politically Feasible Welfare-Enhancing Policies"

(93) Huber, Gregory A. and Patrick D. Tucker. 2024. "What to Expect When You're Electing: Citizen Forecasts in the 2020 Election." Political Science Research and Methods, 12(3): 624-32. doi:10.1017/psrm.2022.61.

Abstract: Political divisions in the lead-up to the 2020 US presidential election were large, leading many to worry that heighted partisan conflict was so stark that partisans were living in different worlds, divided even in their understanding of basic facts. Moreover, the nationalization of American politics is thought to weaken attention to state political concerns. 2020 therefore provides an excellent, if difficult, test case for the claim that individuals understand their state political environment in a meaningful way. Were individuals able to look beyond national rhetoric and the national environment to understand state-level electoral dynamics? We present new data showing that, in the aggregate, despite partisan differences in electoral expectations, Americans are aware of their state's likely political outcome, including whether it will be close. At the same time, because forecasting the overall election outcome is more difficult, Electoral College forecasts are much noisier and display persistent partisan difference in expectations that do not differ much with state of residence.

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(92) Huber, Gregory A. and Patrick D. Tucker. 2024. "House Members on the News: Local Television News Coverage of Incumbents." British Journal of Political Science, 54(2): 503-13.

Abstract: The accountability relationship between voters and elected members of Congress (MCs) hinges on the potential for citizens to learn about legislator behavior. In an era of declining local newspapers, local television coverage of MCs potentially fulfills this important role. But few studies have comprehensively examined the determinants of contemporary MC coverage by local television news broadcasts. In this paper we leverage a vast database of local television news broadcast transcripts spanning a two-year period to identify what factors explain coverage of MCs. We find that outside of the general election campaign season, MCs receive little coverage. When coverage occurs, we find media market and campaign specific factors are associated with more exposure. Finally, we find that within competitive elections, incumbents receive only a marginal advantage in coverage. These findings provide a springboard to explore further questions regarding Congress, local media, and political accountability.

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Note: An earlier version of this paper circulated as "House Members on the News: Local Television News Coverage of Incumbents and Challengers."

(91) Bokemper, Scott E. and Gregory A. Huber. 2024. "On the Merits of Separate Spaces: Why Institutions Isolate Cooperation and Division Tasks." Political Behavior, 46: 1325-47.

Abstract: Do institutions shape the possibility of sustaining cooperation when the same individuals must first divide resources and then attempt to cooperate? It could be that simply having received an inequitable division undermines cooperative behavior, reducing aggregate welfare. Alternatively, it might be that only when interacting with the same individual or group does this spillover occur, in which case separating tasks across institutions may prevent this negative spillover. To test these arguments, we designed a two-stage incentivized experiment in which participants interact in a division task and then in a task in which cooperation improves aggregate welfare. In two experiments, individuals were randomly assigned to interact either with the same individual for both tasks or with a different individual for each task. In the second experiment, individuals could also interact with a person who was in the same arbitrary group as their partner in the division task. Holding constant both past history and past partner behavior, the results of these experiments provide support for a Partner History effect in which the mechanism that produces spillover is interacting with the same individual in both decisions. We also find evidence for a weaker Group History effect in which negative spillover occurs when the partner in the cooperative task is a member of the same group as the partner from the division task.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Online appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: behavioral spillover, cooperation, experiment

(90) Orr, Lilla V., Anthony Fowler, and Gregory A. Huber. 2023. "Is Affective Polarization Driven by Identity, Loyalty, or Substance?" American Journal of Political Science, 67: 948-962.

Abstract: Partisan Americans like members of their own party more than members of the opposing party. Scholars often interpret this as evidence that party identity or loyalty influence interpersonal affect. First, we reassess previous studies and demonstrate that prior results are also consistent with what we would predict if people cared only about policy agreement. Next, we demonstrate the difficulty of manipulating perceptions of party identity without also manipulating beliefs about policy agreement and vice versa. Finally, we show that partisans care much more about policy agreement than they do about party loyalty when the two come into conflict. Our analyses suggest that partisan Americans care about policy agreement; we have little convincing evidence that they care about partisan identity or loyalty per se, and scholars will have to find new research designs if they want to convincingly estimate the effects of identity or loyalty independent of policy substance.

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(89) Biggers, Daniel R., David J. Hendry, and Gregory A. Huber. 2023. "Messages Designed to Increase Perceived Electoral Closeness Increase Turnout." American Politics Research.

Abstract: The decision-theoretic Downsian model and other related accounts predict that increasing perceptions of election closeness will increase turnout. Does this prediction hold? Past observational and experimental tests raise generalizability and credible inference issues. Prior field experiments either (1) compare messages emphasizing election closeness to non-closeness messages, potentially conflating changes in closeness perceptions with framing effects of the voter encouragement message, or (2) deliver information about a particular race's closeness, potentially altering beliefs about the features of that election apart from its closeness. We address the limitations of prior work in a large-scale field experiment conducted in seven states and find that a telephone message describing a class of contests as decided by fewer, as opposed to more, votes increases voter turnout. Furthermore, this effect exceeds that of a standard election reminder. The results imply expected electoral closeness affects turnout and that perceptions of closeness can be altered to increase participation.

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This paper previously circulated with the title "Experimental Evidence about Whether (and Why) Electoral Closeness Affects Turnout."

(88) Chiavenna, Chiara, Laura P. Leone, Alessia Melegaro, Tiziano Rotesi, Scott E. Bokemper, Elliott E. Paintsil, Amyn A. Malik, Gregory A. Huber, Saad B. Omer, Maria Cucciniello, and Paolo Pin. 2023. "Personal risk or societal benefit? Investigating adults' support for COVID-19 childhood vaccination." Vaccine. doi.org/10.1016/j.vaccine.2023.05.017.

Abstract: Parental hesitancy poses a serious threat to the success of the COVID-19 childhood vaccination campaign. We investigate whether adults' opinions on childhood vaccination can be influenced via two survey experiments in Italy (n = 3,633 participants) and the UK (n = 3,314 participants). Respondents were randomly assigned to: a "risk treatment" that highlighted the potential risks of COVID-19 to a child, a "herd immunity treatment" that emphasized the community benefits of pediatric vaccination, or a control message. Participants' probability of supporting COVID-19 childhood vaccination was then assessed on a 0-100 scale. We find that the "risk treatment" reduced the proportion of Italian parents strongly against vaccination by up to 29.6%, while increasing the proportion of neutral parents by up to 45.0%. The "herd immunity treatment", instead, was only effective among non-parents, resulting in a lower proportion of individuals against pediatric vaccination and a higher proportion of individuals in favor (both shifted by around 20%).

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(87) Lendway, Paul and Gregory A. Huber. 2023. "The Effect of Priming Structural Fairness on Inequality Beliefs and Preferences." American Politics Research, 51(4): 443-56.

Abstract: Experimental research on pay inequality attitudes often provides information about pay inequality with the expectation that greater awareness of pay differences will increase the belief that pay inequality is unfair, thereby strengthening support for policies addressing pay inequality. Less explored is whether providing information about why pay inequality might be justified may lower support for addressing pay inequality or counteract the effect of providing information about such inequality. This paper finds that providing static information about pay differences across the income distribution generally does not affect support for policies addressing pay inequality. However, providing information about pay inequality followed by a labor economics argument in support of pay differences (priming structural fairness) generally decreases support for such policies. One mechanism through which this effect may operate is by increasing the belief that differences in pay are justified.

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(86) Bokemper, Scott E., Gregory A. Huber, and Alan S. Gerber. 2023. "Health Risks and Voting: Emphasizing Safety Measures Taken to Prevent COVID-19 Does Not Increase Willingness to Vote in Person." American Politics Research, 23: 51(5): 588-98.

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic made salient the risks posed by an infectious disease at a polling place. To what degree did such health risks, as with other changes to voting costs, affect the willingness to vote in person? Could highlighting safety measures reduce the association between COVID fears and unwillingness to vote in person? Using both a representative survey of Connecticut voters and a survey experiment, we examine whether concerns about health diminish willingness to vote in person. We find correlational evidence that those who are more worried about COVID-19 are less likely to report they will vote in person, even when considering risk mitigation efforts. We then present causal evidence that mentioning the safety measures being taken does little to offset the negative effect of priming COVID-19 risk on willingness to vote in person. These results contribute to a growing literature that assesses how health risks affect in person voting.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Online appendix) (Replication Archive)

(85) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, and Albert H. Fang. 2023. "Voting Behavior Is Unaffected by Subtle Linguistic Cues: Evidence from a Psychologically Authentic Replication." Behavioural Public Policy, 7(2): 380-394.

Abstract: Do small wording differences in message-based behavioral interventions have outsized effects on behavior? An influential initial study, examining this question in the domain of political behavior using two small-scale field experiments, argues that subtle linguistic cues in voter mobilization messages describing someone as a voter (noun) instead of one who votes (verb) dramatically increases turnout rates by activating a person's social identity as a voter. Two subsequent large-scale replication field experiments challenged this claim, finding no effect even in electorally competitive settings. However, these experiments may not have reproduced the psychological context needed to motivate behavioral change because they did not occur in highly competitive and highly salient electoral contexts. Addressing this major criticism, we conduct a large-scale, preregistered replication field experiment in the 2016 presidential election. We find no evidence that noun wording increases turnout compared to verb wording in this highly salient electoral context, even in competitive states.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

(84) Graham, Matthew H., Gregory A. Huber, Neil Malhotra, and Cecilia Hyunjung Mo. 2023. "Irrelevant Events and Voting Behavior: Replications Using Principles from Open Science." Journal of Politics, 85(1): 296-303.

Abstract: How well do voters hold politicians accountable? Although a longstanding research tradition claims that elections are effective tools for the sanctioning and selection of leaders, a more-recent literature argues that voters often reward and punish incumbents for "irrelevant events." The empirical literature on this topic is characterized by conflicting findings. Drawing upon ideas from the open science movement, and showing how they can advance the transparency of observational research, we replicated three prominent studies on "irrelevant" events and voting behavior: (1) Achen and Bartels's (2016) study of droughts and floods; (2) Healy, Malhotra, and Mo's (2010) study of college football; and (3) Healy and Malhotra's (2010) study of tornadoes. Each study replicates well in some areas and poorly in others. Had we sought to debunk any of the three with ex post specification search, we could have done so. However, our approach required us to see the full, complicated picture.

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Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "Observational Open Science: An Application to the Literature on Irrelevant Events and Voting Behavior."

(83) Bokemper, Scott E., Gregory A. Huber, Erin K. James, Alan S. Gerber, and Saad B. Omer. 2022. "Testing Persuasive Messaging to Encourage COVID-19 Risk Reduction." PLOS One, 17(3): e0264782.

Abstract: What types of public health messages are effective at changing people's beliefs and intentions to practice social distancing to slow the spread of COVID-19? We conducted two randomized experiments in summer 2020 that assigned respondents to read a public health message and then measured their beliefs and behavioral intentions across a wide variety of outcomes. Using both a convenience sample and a pre-registered replication with a nationally representative sample of Americans, we find that a message that reframes not social distancing as recklessness rather than bravery and a message that highlights the need for everyone to take action to protect one another are the most effective at increasing beliefs and intentions related to social distancing. These results provide an evidentiary basis for building effective public health campaigns to increase social distancing during flu pandemics.

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(82) Vaughn, Paige E., Kyle Peyton, and Gregory A. Huber. 2022. "Mass support for proposals to reshape policing depends on the implications for crime and safety." Criminology & Public Policy, 21(1): 125-46.

Abstract: Research Summary: This paper presents novel survey and experimental evidence that reveals the mass public's interpretation of movements to reform, defund, and abolish the police. We find strong support for police reform, but efforts to defund or abolish generate opposition both in terms of slogan and substance. While these differences cannot be explained by differing beliefs about each movement's association with violent protests, racial makeup, or specific programmatic changes, efforts to defund and abolish the police appear unpopular because they seek reduced involvement of police in traditional roles and cuts in police numbers. Policy Implications: Our findings suggest that public support for changes to American policing is contingent on the perceived implications for crime and public safety. Proposals like defunding and abolition are therefore unlikely to succeed at the national level. Viable police reform may instead require proposals that target changing how police departments and their officers operate rather than lowering police budgets or decreasing police involvement in responding to crime and calls for service.

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(81) Huber, Gregory A., Alan S. Gerber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2022. "Can Raising the Stakes of Election Outcomes Increase Participation? Results from a Large-Scale Field Experiment in Local Elections." British Journal of Political Science 52(4), 1635-1650.

Abstract: Political campaigns frequently emphasize the material stakes at play in election outcomes to motivate participation. However, field-experimental academic work has given greater attention to other aspects of voters' decisions to participate despite theoretical models of turnout and substantial observational work signaling that a contest's perceived importance affects the propensity to vote. We identify two classes of treatments that may increase the material incentive to participate and test these messages in a large-scale placebo-controlled field experiment in which approximately 24,500 treatment letters were delivered during Connecticut's 2013 municipal elections. We find some evidence that these messages are effective in increasing participation, as well as that some of them may be more effective than typical nonpartisan get-out-the-vote appeals. While these results remain somewhat preliminary, our findings have important implications for our understanding of how voters decide whether to participate and how best to mobilize citizens who would otherwise sit out elections.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supporting Information)

(80) Dickson, Eric S., Sanford C. Gordon, and Gregory A. Huber. 2022. "Identifying Legitimacy: Experimental Evidence on Compliance with Authority." Science Advances, 8(7).

Abstract: To what extent do individuals' perceptions of legitimacy affect their intrinsic motivations to comply with an authority? Answering this question has critical implications for law enforcement, but is challenging because actions or institutions that affect intrinsic motivations typically also affect extrinsic, material ones. To disentangle these, we propose a novel experimental approach that separately identifies the effect of an authority's costly action to improve enforcement fairness on citizen behavior through both intrinsic and extrinsic channels. In Experiment 1, the authority's simple attempt to institute fairer enforcement increases pro-social behavior by 10-12 percentage points via the intrinsic channel. A follow-up experiment demonstrates that this is not motivated by citizen attempts to ``pay back'' authorities. Our findings provide causally credible evidence that an authority's actions can directly shape citizens' behavior by enhancing her legitimacy, and have important implications in policy domains where this conflicts with other incentives.

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(79) Bokemper, Scott E., Alan S. Gerber, Saad B. Omer, and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Persuading US White evangelicals to vaccinate for COVID-19: Testing message effectiveness in fall 2020 and spring 2021." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 118 (49) e2114762118; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2114762118.

Abstract: The development of COVID-19 vaccines was an important breakthrough for ending the pandemic. However, people refusing to get vaccinated diminish the level of community protection afforded to others. In the United States, White evangelicals have proven to be a particularly difficult group to convince to get vaccinated. Here we investigate whether this group can be persuaded to get vaccinated. To do this, we leverage data from two survey experiments, one fielded prior to approval of COVID-19 vaccines (study 1) and one fielded after approval (study 2). In both experiments, respondents were randomly assigned to treatment messages to promote COVID-19 vaccination. In study 1, we find that a message that emphasizes community interest and reciprocity with an invocation of embarrassment for choosing not to vaccinate is the most effective at increasing uptake intentions, while values-consistent messaging appears to be ineffective. In contrast, in study 2 we observe that this message is no longer effective and that most messages produce little change in vaccine intent. This inconsistency may be explained by the characteristics of White evangelicals who remain unvaccinated vis-a-vis those who got vaccinated. These results demonstrate the importance of retesting messages over time, the apparent limitations of values-targeted messaging, and document the need to consider heterogeneity even within well-defined populations. This work also cautions against drawing broad conclusions from studies carried out at a single point in time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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(78) James, Erin K., Scott E. Bokemper, Alan S. Gerber, Saad B. Omer, Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Persuasive Messaging to Increase COVID-19 Vaccine Uptake Intentions." Vaccine Vol 39, (49), 3 December 2021, Pages 7158-7165.

Abstract: Widespread vaccination remains the best option for controlling the spread of COVID-19 and ending the pandemic. Despite the considerable disruption the virus has caused to people's lives, many people are still hesitant to receive a vaccine. Without high rates of uptake, however, the pandemic is likely to be prolonged. Here we use two survey experiments to study how persuasive messaging affects COVID-19 vaccine uptake intentions. In the first experiment, we test a large number of treatment messages. One subgroup of messages draws on the idea that mass vaccination is a collective action problem and highlighting the prosocial benefit of vaccination or the reputational costs that one might incur if one chooses not to vaccinate. Another subgroup of messages built on contemporary concerns about the pandemic, like issues of restricting personal freedom or economic security. We find that persuasive messaging that invokes prosocial vaccination and social image concerns is effective at increasing intended uptake and also the willingness to persuade others and judgments of non-vaccinators. We replicate this result on a nationally representative sample of Americans and observe that prosocial messaging is robust across subgroups, including those who are most hesitant about vaccines generally. The experiments demonstrate how persuasive messaging can induce individuals to be more likely to vaccinate and also create spillover effects to persuade others to do so as well.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

(77) Bokemper, Scott E., Maria Cucciniello, Tiziano Rotesi, Paolo Pin, Amyn A. Malik, Kathryn Willebrand, Elliott E. Paintsil, Saad B. Omer, Gregory A. Huber, and Alessia Melegaro. 2021. "Experimental evidence that changing beliefs about mask efficacy and social norms increase mask wearing for COVID-19 risk reduction: Results from the United States and Italy" PLOSOne 16(10): e0258282.

Abstract: In the absence of widespread vaccination for COVID-19, governments and public health officials have advocated for the public to wear masks during the pandemic. The decision to wear a mask in public is likely affected by both beliefs about its efficacy and the prevalence of the behavior. Greater mask use in the community may encourage others to follow this norm, but it also creates an incentive for individuals to free ride on the protection afforded to them by others. We report the results of two vignette-based experiments conducted in the United States (n = 3,100) and Italy (n =2,659) to examine the causal relationship between beliefs, social norms, and reported intentions to engage in mask promoting behavior. In both countries, survey respondents were quota sampled to be representative of the country's population on key demographics. We find that providing information about how masks protect others increases the likelihood that someone would wear a mask or encourage others to do so in the United States, but not in Italy. There is no effect of providing information about how masks protect the wearer in either country. Additionally, greater mask use increases intentions to wear a mask and encourage someone else to wear theirs properly in both the United States and Italy. Thus, community mask use may be self-reinforcing.

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(76) Rotesi, Tiziano, Paolo Pin, Maria Cucciniello, Amyn A. Malik, Elliott E. Paintsil, Scott E. Bokemper, Kathryn Willebrand, Gregory A. Huber, Alessia Melegaro, and Saad B. Omer. 2021. "National interest may require distributing COVID-19 vaccines to other countries." Scientific Reports, Article: 18253.

Abstract: As immunization campaigns are accelerating, understanding how to distribute the scarce doses of vaccines is of paramount importance and a quantitative analysis of the trade-offs involved in domestic-only versus cooperative distribution is still missing. In this study we use a network Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) model to show circumstances under which it is in a country's self-interest to ensure other countries can obtain COVID-19 vaccines rather than focusing only on vaccination of their own residents. In particular, we focus our analysis on the United States and estimate the internal burden of COVID-19 disease under different scenarios about vaccine cooperation. We show that in scenarios in which the US has reached the threshold for domestic herd immunity, the US may find it optimal to donate doses to other countries with lower vaccination coverage, as this would allow for a sharp reduction in the inflow of infected individuals from abroad.

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(75) Wu, Jennifer D. and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "How Does Job Loss Affect Voting? Understanding Economic Voting Using Novel Data on COVID-19 Induced Individual-level Unemployment Shocks." American Politics Research: 49(6):568-576.

Abstract: Prior research on economic voting generally finds that national economic performance affects incumbent support. However, the degree to which one's personal economic situation shapes vote choice remains less clear. In this study, we use novel survey data collected during the COVID-19 pandemic to provide more credible evidence about the effect of changes in personal economic experiences on intended vote choice. Our design uses an objective measure of change in personal economic situation by asking respondents their employment status prior to the pandemic and at the time of the survey. Given the widespread and abrupt way in which the pandemic induced unemployment, we argue that this design reduces concerns about confounders that explain both vote choice and job loss. Our analysis demonstrates that individuals whose personal economic conditions worsened during the pandemic were significantly less like to intend to vote for Trump in the 2020 election.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

(74) Orr, Lilla V. and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Measuring Misperceptions: Limits of Party-Specific Stereotype Reports." Public Opinion Quarterly 85(4): pp. 1076-91.

Abstract: Prior research has reported that Americans hold biased perceptions about the composition of U.S. parties. Survey respondents vastly overestimate the frequency with which partisans belong to other social groups stereotypically associated with their party. We argue that when perceptions of Democrats, Republicans, and members of the American public are directly compared, evidence of relative misperceptions is limited. Drawing on novel survey experimental measures, we find that respondents underestimate many differences in the demographic composition of the Democratic and Republican parties. A few stereotypes thought to be associated with one party or the other may apply to partisans in general. Similar trends appear across parties, and among strong partisans. These findings suggest limits on the extent to which inaccurate estimates of who affiliates with each party can be interpreted as evidence of party-specific stereotypes.

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(73) Peyton, Kyle, Gregory A. Huber, and Alexander Coppock. 2021. "The Generalizability of Online Experiments Conducted During the COVID-19 Pandemic." Journal of Experimental Political Science, 9(3): 379-94.

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic imposed new constraints on empirical research, and online data collection by social scientists increased. Generalizing from experiments conducted during this period of persistent crisis may be challenging due to changes in how participants respond to treatments or the composition of online samples. We investigate the generalizability of COVID-era survey experiments with 33 replications of 12 pre-pandemic designs, fielded across 13 quota samples of Americans between March and July of 2020. We find strong evidence that pre-pandemic experiments replicate in terms of sign and significance, but at somewhat reduced magnitudes. Indirect evidence suggests an increased share of inattentive subjects on online platforms during this period, which may have contributed to smaller estimated treatment effects. Overall, we conclude that the pandemic does not pose a fundamental threat to the generalizability of online experiments to other time periods.

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(72) Hill, Seth J., Daniel J. Hopkins, and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Not by turnout alone: Measuring the sources of electoral change, 2012 to 2016." Science Advances Vol. 7, no. 17, eabe3272. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abe3272

Abstract: Changes in partisan outcomes between consecutive elections must come from changes in the composition of the electorate or changes in the vote choices of consistent voters. How much composition versus conversion drives electoral change has critical implications for the policy mandates of election victories and campaigning and governing strategies. Here, we analyze electoral change between the 2012 and 2016 U.S. presidential elections using administrative data. We merge precinct-level election returns, the smallest geography at which vote counts are available, with individual-level turnout records from 37 million registered voters in six key states. We find that both factors were substantively meaningful drivers of electoral change, but the balance varied by state. We estimate that pro-Republican Party (GOP) conversion among two-election voters was particularly important in states including Ohio, Michigan, and Pennsylvania where the pro-GOP swings were largest. Our results suggest conversion remains a crucial component of electoral change.

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(71) Wu, Jennifer D. and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Partisan Differences in Social Distancing May Originate in Norms and Beliefs: Results from Novel Data." Social Science Quarterly 102: 2251-65.

Abstract: Objective Recent academic work on the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has established a persistent difference between Democrats and Republicans in social distancing behaviors. We uncover a potential explanation for this difference -- social norms and beliefs. Methods: We use a series of ordinary least squares regression specifications on novel survey data collected in April through June of 2020. Results: We find that Democrats are more likely to report social distancing than are Republicans, even after controlling for a range of demographic variables that might otherwise account for differences in social distancing and that these differences are found in partisans' norms and beliefs around social distancing. Our main analysis shows that the partisan difference in social distancing disappears when we control for social norms and beliefs, suggesting their salience in changing social distancing behaviors. Conclusion: Our results contribute to current research focused on mitigating the spread of COVID-19 by highlighting a mechanism, norms and beliefs, for interventions to target.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Social distancing, social norms, COVID-19, partisanship, polarization

(70) Gregory A. Huber, Marc Meredith, Michael Morse, and Katie Steele. 2021. "Voter List Maintenance Errors and Their Racial Burden: Evidence from Wisconsin's Supplemental Movers Poll Books." Science Advances 7(8).

Abstract: Administrative records are increasingly used to identify registered voters who may have moved, with potential movers then sent postcards asking them to confirm their address of registration. It is important to understand how often these registrants did not move, and how often such an error is not corrected by the postcard confirmation process, because uncorrected errors make it more difficult for a registrant to subsequently vote. While federal privacy protections generally prevent researchers from observing the data necessary to estimate these quantities, we are able to study this process in Wisconsin because special poll books, available via public records requests, listed those registrants who were identified as potential movers and did not respond to a subsequent postcard. At least 4% of these registrants cast a ballot at their address of registration, with minority registrants twice as likely as white registrants to do so.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

(69) Scott E. Bokemper, Gregory A. Huber, Alan S. Gerber, Erin K. James, and Saad B. Omer. 2021. "Timing of COVID-19 vaccine approval and endorsement by public figures." Vaccine, 39(5): 825-29.

Abstract: The global spread of COVID-19 has created an urgent need for a safe and effective vaccine. However, in the United States, the politicization of the vaccine approval process, including which public figures are endorsing it, could undermine beliefs about its safety and efficacy and willingness to receive it. Using a pair of randomized survey experiments, we show that announcing approval of a COVID-19 vaccine one week before the presidential election compared to one week after considerably reduces both beliefs about its safety and efficacy and intended uptake. However, endorsement by Dr. Anthony Fauci increases confidence and uptake among all partisan subgroups. Further, an endorsement by Dr. Fauci increased uptake and confidence in safety even if a vaccine receives pre-election approval. The results here suggest that perceptions of political influence in COVID-19 vaccine approval could significantly undermine the viability of a vaccine as a strategy to end the pandemic.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

(68) Gooch, Andrew, Alan S. Gerber, and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Evaluations of candidates' non-policy characteristics from issue positions: Evidence of valence spillover." Electoral Studies, 69: 102246.

Abstract: Why do most winning candidates adhere to partisan orthodox positions? While some prior work has examined how issue positions signal candidate ideology, this paper instead focuses on how candidate issue positions affect evaluations of valence. In light of important inferential limitations in using the correlation between observed candidate positions and electoral performance to assess voter responses, we present a large-scale candidate vignette experiment that reveals issue positions affect perceptions of non-ideological characteristics. Candidates with only one of three positions that stray from the "typical" position for their party--being too extreme, bipartisan, or ideologically unusual--are perceived as less effective legislators. This suggests party-consistency may be reinforced by the electorate through changes in perceived valence, and that the observed correlation between candidate performance and issue positions might arise for reasons apart from ideology.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

(67) Bokemper, Scott E., Albert H. Fang, and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Perceptions of Program Abuse and Support for Social Insurance." American Politics Research 49(1):59-75.

Abstract: Do perceptions of abuse in social insurance programs undercut program support? Answering this causal question is difficult because perceptions of program abuse can arise from multiple potential causes. Examining the case of disability insurance, we circumvent this challenges using laboratory experiments to study the interplay between program abuse and program support. Specifically, we test whether participants vote to reduce benefit levels when they observe program abuse, even if that abuse is not directly costly to them. We use a labor market shock to induce program abuse and show that the observation of a healthy worker receiving benefits causes workers who are unaffected by the shock to vote to lower benefits. This effect arises only when reducing benefit levels also reduces taxes. Our results demonstrate a causal link between program abuse and diminished support for social insurance, validating accounts that stress how violations of cooperative norms can undercut socially-beneficial government programs.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Political economy of social insurance, Program abuse perceptions, Support for social insurance, Labor market shocks, Free-riding, Laboratory experiment

(66) Peyton, Kyle and Gregory A. Huber. 2021. "Racial Resentment, Prejudice, and Discrimination." Journal of Politics, 83:4, 1829-1836.

Abstract: Political scientists regularly measure anti-Black prejudice in the survey context using racial resentment, an indirect measure that blends racial animus with traditional moral values. Explicit prejudice, a direct measure based in beliefs about the group-level inferiority of Blacks, is used less frequently. We investigate whether these attitudes predict anti-Black discrimination and evaluations of the fairness of intergroup inequality. Study 1 used the Ultimatum Game (UG) to obtain a behavioral measure of racial discrimination and found whites engaged in anti-Black discrimination. Explicit prejudice explained which whites discriminated whereas resentment did not. In Study 2, white third-party observers evaluated intergroup interactions in the UG and explicit prejudice explained racially biased fairness evaluations, but resentment did not. This demonstrates that resentment and prejudice are distinct constructs, and that explicit prejudice has clear behavioral implications. We also find that explicit prejudice is widespread among white Americans and significantly less partisan than resentment.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "Do Survey Measures of Racial Prejudice Predict Racial Discrimination?"

Keywords: Racial discrimination, Fairness, Prejudice, Racial resentment, Symbolic racism

(65) Yair, Omer and Gregory A. Huber. 2020. "How robust is evidence of partisan perceptual bias in survey responses? A new approach for studying expressive responding." Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 84 (2): 469-492.

Abstract: Partisans often offer divergent responses to survey items ostensibly unrelated to politics. These gaps could reveal that partisanship colors perception or, alternatively, that in answering survey questions, individuals communicate partisan proclivities by providing insincere or, "expressive" responses, to send a partisan message. This study tests two techniques for reducing expressive responding that (1) avoid criticisms about using monetary incentives for accuracy, which have reduced measured partisan differences for objective facts, and (2) can be used in contexts where incentives are infeasible, such as when objective benchmarks for correct responses are unavailable. This study experimentally tests these techniques in replicating a study that found partisanship affected attractiveness evaluations. These interventions, which allow partisans to express their partisan sentiments through other survey items, substantially reduce apparent partisan differences in beauty evaluations and show standard survey items likely confound sincere partisan differences with elements of expressive responding.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

(64) Orr, Lilla V. and Gregory A. Huber. 2020. "The Policy Basis of Measured Partisan Animosity in the United States." American Journal of Political Science Vol. 64: 569-586.

Abstract: Understanding and addressing the consequences of partisan animosity requires knowledge of its foundations. To what extent is animosity between partisan groups motivated by dislike for partisan outgroups per se, policy disagreement, or other social group conflicts? In many circumstances, including extant experimental research, these patterns are observationally equivalent. In a series of vignette evaluation experiments, we estimate effects of shared partisanship when additional information is or is not present, and we benchmark these effects against shared policy preference effects. Partisanship effects are about 71% as large as shared policy preference effects when each is presented in isolation. When an independently randomized party and policy position are presented together, partisanship effects decrease substantially, by about 52%, whereas policy effects remain large, decreasing by about 10%. These results suggest that common measures of partisan animosity may capture programmatic conflict more so than social identity-based partisan hostility.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)

(63) Gooch, Andrew and Gregory A. Huber. 2020. "How Issue Positions Affect Candidate Performance: Experiments Comparing Campaign Donors and the Mass Public." Political Behavior Vol. 42 (June): 531-556.

Abstract: In light of important limitations in using observed contribution behavior or survey responses to assess how donors respond to candidate issue positions, we present novel experimental evidence about how habitual donors (individuals who contribute above an average amount, multiple times, and in consecutive elections) respond to the issue positions held by candidates. Using a vignette design, we provide causal evidence about the support for two divergence from typical candidate issue position bundles--being too extreme or bipartisan. We show "typical" candidates outperform all others in terms of likelihood of contributing, primary voting, and general election voting. We also find that donors' responsiveness to positions vis-a-vis a non-donor sample is not solely driven by partisan intensity and key demographics (i.e., high educated, high income, older, etc.). These results provide evidence that party-consistent positioning among candidates and incumbents may be reinforced by donors' sensitivity to issue positions that diverge from the party-standard.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

(62) Fang, Albert H. and Gregory A. Huber. 2020. "Perceptions of Deservingness and the Politicization of Social Insurance: Evidence from Disability Insurance in the United States." American Politics Research 48(5):543-559.

Abstract: Perceptions of the deservingness of policy beneficiaries appear to shape attitudes toward redistributive programs, but whether this "deservingness heuristic" affects attitudes toward social insurance programs--that unlike entitlement programs pool risk among a contributing population and are relatively popular--is poorly understood. To explore this question, we examine the politics of Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI), a program whose size and beneficiaries have become increasingly politicized. Analyzing novel survey data and two experimental studies conducted on national surveys, we find that people use informational cues about beneficiaries to infer the deservingness of SSDI recipients. Moreover, argumentative appeals about the program's size, design, and effects affect attitudes toward SSDI. These results challenge prior research arguing that people broadly perceive the sick as deserving of government care and that this heuristic "crowds out" other opinion-shaping factors. We discuss implications for the study of politicized social insurance programs.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

(61) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Albert H. Fang, and Catlan E. Reardon. 2020. "When Does Increasing Mobilization Effort Increase Turnout? New Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment on Reminder Calls." American Politics Research 48(6):763-778.

Abstract: When does increasing mobilization effort increase turnout? Recent experiments find second calls containing a reminder to vote increase turnout beyond an initial contact. We argue existing studies cannot explain why reminder calls are effective because they test bundled treatments including a late mobilization attempt, a late mobilization attempt given earlier contact, and potentially activating reciprocity established in earlier contact. We report results from a two-round voter mobilization field experiment that allows us to isolate these different mechanisms. We find that reminder calls increase turnout by 1.2 percentage points among subjects contacted in an earlier attempt, but that enhancing reciprocity by providing a reminder call offer during an early call does not increase turnout beyond a second call. Additionally, we fail to find heterogeneous effects of reminder calls by stated preference for a reminder or by stated vote intention, suggesting certain mechanisms do not explain the effects of reminder calls.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the subtitle "New Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment on Reminder Calls"

(60) Hill, Seth J., Daniel J. Hopkins, and Gregory A. Huber. 2019. "Local demographic changes and US presidential voting, 2012 to 2016" Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 116 (50): 25023-25028.

Abstract: In recent years, advanced industrial democracies have grown more ethnically and racially diverse. This increasing diversity has the potential to reshape voting behavior in those countries, in part because majority groups may react by shifting support toward anti-immigration candidates and parties. This paper considers whether local demographic changes in the United States were associated with pro-Republican shifts between 2012 and 2016, when the Republican presidential candidate was especially outspoken in opposition to immigration. By showing that demographic changes were not associated with shifts toward the Republican, this research indicates that local demographic changes are not on their own increasing support for anti-immigration candidates.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)

Note: Awarded the 2020 APSA Migration and Citizenship Section Best Article Prize.

(59) Doherty, David, Conor M. Dowling, Alan S. Gerber, and Gregory A. Huber. 2019. "Should I Cast an Ill-Informed Ballot? Examining the Contours of the Normative Obligation to Vote ." American Politics Research 47(5):1081-1099.

Abstract: Proparticipatory norms play a central role in driving turnout. However, a broad norm that people are supposed to vote cannot explain why some people fail to participate or why rates of participation vary sharply across elections. We argue that the norm of voting extends beyond the mere act of voting. We present empirical evidence supporting the position that the social rewards for participating are conditional. The social rewards for casting an ill-informed vote are far smaller than those associated with casting an informed ballot. Moreover, some low-information voting strategies are viewed as less desirable than simply abstaining. Our findings illustrate an important constraint on the capacity of social norms to foster turnout. The effectiveness of efforts to translate norms into higher rates of turnout may depend on ensuring that voters are informed enough to cast a meaningful ballot.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Replication Archive)

A version of this paper previously circulated with the title "Responsible Citizenship: New Theory and Evidence on the Contours of the Normative Obligation to Vote," as well as with a different subtitle "Empirical Evidence on the Conditional Nature of the Normative Obligation to Vote." It was also briefly titled "The Social Consequences of Ill-Informed Voting: Empirical Evidence on the Contours of the Normative Obligation to Vote."

Keywords: Turnout, Norms, Informed voting, Survey experiment

(58) Ashok, Vivekian L. and Gregory A. Huber. 2020. "Do Means of Program Delivery and Distributional Consequences Information Affect Policy Support? Experimental Evidence about the sources of citizens' policy opinions." Political Behavior Vol. 42: 1097-118.

Abstract: Recent scholarship argues that citizens' support for specific government programs in the United States is affected by the means through which benefits are delivered as well as the distributional consequences of these policies. In this paper, we extend this literature in two ways through a series of novel survey experiments, deployed on a nationally representative sample. First, we directly examine differences in public support for prospective government spending when manipulating the mode of delivery. Second, we examine whether information about the distributional consequences of two existing government programs affects their popularity. We find that citizens state a preference for indirect spending that is independent of the distributional consequences of a given policy. And, contrary to previous research, we find little evidence that highlighting the regressive effects of current government programs significantly diminishes their popularity. Our findings have implications for understanding the political calculus of policy design and the potential for public persuasion.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

(57) Hill, Seth J. and Gregory A. Huber. 2019. "On The Meaning of Survey Reports of Roll Call "Votes"." American Journal of Political Science Vol. 63: 611-625.

Abstract: Contemporary efforts to evaluate the quality of representation often use survey measures of how citizens say they would vote on legislation to compare citizen preferences to what elected officials do in office. These comparisons often suggest poor representation. We argue here that this common design is unlikely to effectively evaluate representation because responses to survey questions, even on roll call votes, differ in important aspects from voting in legislatures. This leads to systematic measurement error that undermines the key assumption that survey responses measure preferences in the same policy space as legislative behavior. Results from two survey experiments show that providing information readily available to legislators though not readily available to survey respondents materially changes respondents' expressed preferences on roll call votes. Expressed policy positions in this "informed" survey condition indicate survey respondents are both more extreme than commonly estimated and more closely matched to legislator behavior in their preferred party. Information increases party splits among respondents by 40 and 60 percent. We also show that respondents appear aware of their own lack of knowledge in evaluating roll call policy votes and that the size of the treatment effect of information decreases in the confidence judging policy in that area.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "On The Meaning of Survey Reports of Roll Call Votes Not Cast in a Legislature"

Keywords: Representation, Roll call votes, Survey response, Congress, Bayesian methods

(56) Dowling, Conor M., David Doherty, Seth Hill, Alan S. Gerber, and Gregory A. Huber. 2019. "The Voting Experience and Beliefs about Ballot Secrecy." PLOS One.

Abstract: New democracies go to great lengths to implement institutional protections of the electoral process. However, in this paper we present evidence that shows that even in the United States--where the secret ballot has been in place for generations--doubts about the secrecy of the voting process are surprisingly prevalent. Many say that their cast ballot can be matched to their name or that others could observe their vote choices while they were voting. We find that people who have not previously voted are particularly likely to harbor doubts about the secrecy of voters' ballots. Those who vote by mail in the privacy of their own homes also feel that others are able to discover their vote choices. Taken together, these findings suggest an important divergence between public perceptions about and the institutional status of the secret ballot in the United States, a divergence that may affect patterns of voting behavior and political participation.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

(55) Gooch, Andrew and Gregory A. Huber. 2018. "Exploiting Donald Trump: Using Candidates' Positions to Assess Ideological Voting in the 2016 and 2008 Presidential Elections." Presidential Studies Quarterly Vol 48 (2 June): 342-56.

Abstract: Testing theories of ideological voting is often complicated by the strong correlation between candidate partisanship and candidate positions. We take advantage of Donald Trump's unusual candidacy to understand how candidates who depart from standard party positions affect perceptions of ideology and voting. We show in both 2016 and 2008 that those who perceive candidates as more moderate, and therefore more ideologically proximate, voted for those candidates, an advantage enjoyed by Trump in 2016 at much higher rates. But what distinguishes Trump from previous candidates is voters were not willing to place him anywhere in an ideological space. Being unwilling to place Trump was correlated with being much less likely to vote for him, and suggests voters do not reward ambiguous issue positioning. More generally, we find evidence that in the contemporary era of strong partisan attachments, many voters decide which candidate to support, in part, on assessments of candidate ideology.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Supporting Information) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Spatial model, Elections, Issue voting, Candidate strategy, Ideological voting, Vote choice

(54) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, and Albert H. Fang. 2018. "Do Subtle Linguistic Interventions Priming a Social Identity as a Voter Have Outsized Effects on Voter Turnout? Evidence from a New Replication Experiment." Political Psychology Vol. 39: 925-938.

Abstract: An ongoing debate in political psychology is about whether small wording differences have outsized behavioral effects. A leading example is whether subtle linguistic cues embedded in voter mobilization messages dramatically increase turnout. An initial study analyzing two small-scale field experiments argued that describing someone as a voter (noun) instead of one who votes (verb) increases turnout rates 11 to 14 points because the noun activates a person's social identity as a voter. A subsequent study analyzing a large-scale field experiment challenged this claim and found no effect. But questions about the initial claim's domain of applicability persist. The subsequent study may not have reproduced the conditions necessary for the psychological phenomenon to occur, specifically the electoral contexts were not competitive or important enough for the social identity to matter. To address the first of these critiques, as well as other potential explanations for different results between the first two studies, we conduct a large-scale replication field experiment. We find no evidence that this minor wording change increases turnout levels. This research provides new evidence that the strategy of invoking the self does not appear to consistently increase turnout and calls into question whether subtle linguistic cues have outsized behavioral effects.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplemental Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Political psychology, Intervention, Field experiment, Voter turnout, Participation

(53) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Albert H. Fang, and Catlan E. Reardon. 2018. "The Comparative Effectiveness of Communicating Positive versus Negative Descriptive Norms on Turnout." American Politics Research Vol. 46(6):996-1011.

Abstract: A growing area of interest in the study of voter mobilization is whether Get-Out-the-Vote (GOTV) campaigns communicating descriptive norms about voting have different effects on turnout depending on how the norm is framed. Applying insights from social psychology, the conventional wisdom in political science is that positive descriptive norms (others vote) are more effective at increasing turnout than negative descriptive norms (others do not vote). But few published studies have experimentally assessed this question and results are mixed across existing studies. We address the need for additional replication by designing and analyzing data from two field experiments conducted across four states in the 2014 primary and general elections. We find no difference between the effectiveness of GOTV campaigns communicating positive versus negative norms on turnout. The results are not sensitive to election context, the mode of treatment delivery, or whether the norms concern individual- or group-level norms.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplemental Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Field experiment, Voter mobilization, Descriptive norms, Framing effects, Political participation

(52) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Albert H. Fang, and Catlan E. Reardon. 2017. "The effect on turnout of campaign mobilization messages addressing ballot secrecy concerns: A replication experiment." PLoS ONE 12(8): e0182199.

Abstract: Given the persistence of public doubts about the integrity of ballot secrecy, which depress turnout, two prior experiments have shown precise evidence that both official governmental and unofficial mobilization campaigns providing assurances about ballot secrecy increase turnout among recently registered nonvoters. To assess whether these findings replicate in other political settings, we describe a replication experiment where a non-governmental, non-partisan mobilization campaign sent similar treatment mailings containing assurances about ballot secrecy protections to recently registered nonvoters during the 2014 general election in Mississippi. We find that sending this mailer has no effect on turnout rates in this setting, which is characterized by an unusually low baseline turnout rate. These results are consistent with past research concluding that nonpartisan Get Out The Vote (GOTV) mail has very weak effects among very low turnout propensity registrants, and suggest that there are heterogeneous effects of ballot secrecy treatments associated with subjects' characteristics and the electoral context.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplemental Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "The Effect on Turnout of Mobilization Campaign Communications Addressing Ballot Secrecy Concerns: A Replication Experiment."

(51) Doherty, David, Conor M. Dowling, Alan S. Gerber, and Gregory A. Huber. 2017. "Are Voting Norms Conditional? How Electoral Context and Peer Behavior Shape the Social Returns to Voting." Journal of Politics, Vol. 79 (3 July): 1095-100.

Abstract: Research on turnout in presidential elections has shown that "battleground" state status has modest effects on turnout, raising the question of why individuals vote even in non-competitive states. We present experimental evidence showing that the typically small effect of battleground status on turnout may be tied to the fact that voting norms are insensitive to whether a given individual's vote is likely to affect the outcome of an election. Instead, variability in the social rewards to voting are more closely tied to the behaviors of others.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Supporting Information) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Turnout, Voting, Norms, Experiment

(50) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Albert H. Fang, and Andrew Gooch. 2017. "Non-Governmental Campaign Communication Providing Ballot Secrecy Assurances Increases Turnout: Results from Two Large Scale Experiments." Political Science Research and Methods, Vol. 6 (3 July): 613-24.

Abstract: Doubts about the integrity of ballot secrecy persist and depress political participation among the American public. Prior experiments have shown that official communications directly addressing these doubts increase turnout among recently registered voters who had not previously voted, but evaluations of similar messages sent by nongovernmental campaigns have yielded only suggestive effects. We build on past research and analyze two large-scale field experiments where a private nonpartisan nonprofit group sought to increase turnout by emphasizing ballot secrecy assurances alongside a reminder to vote in a direct mail voter mobilization campaign during the 2014 midterm election. Our main finding is that a private group's mailing increases turnout by about 1 percentage point among recently registered nonvoters. This finding is precisely estimated and robust across state political contexts, but is not statistically distinguishable from the effect of a standard voter mobilization appeal. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplemental Appendix) (Replication Archive)

(49) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Albert H. Fang, and Andrew Gooch. 2017. "The Generalizability of Social Pressure Effects on Turnout Across High-Salience Electoral Contexts: Field Experimental Evidence from 1.96 Million Citizens in 17 States." American Politics Research, Vol. 45(4): 533-59.

Abstract: Prior experiments show that campaign communications revealing subjects' past turnout and applying social pressure to vote (the "Self" treatment) increase turnout. However, nearly all existing studies are conducted in low-salience elections, raising concerns that published findings are not generalizable and are an artifact of sample selection and publication bias. Addressing the need for further replication in high-salience elections, we analyze a field experiment involving 1.96 million subjects where a nonpartisan campaign randomly sent Self treatment mailers, containing a subject's vote history and a comparison of each subject's history with their state median registrant's turnout behavior, in high-salience elections across 17 states in 2014. Sending the Self mailer increases turnout by 0.7 points or 2.2%. This effect is largely consistent across states, with somewhat larger effects observed in states with lower ex ante election salience. Our study provides precise evidence that social pressure effects on turnout are generalizable.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplemental Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Social pressure, Voter mobilization, Voter turnout, Field experiment, Generalizability

(48) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Marc Meredith, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Does Incarceration Reduce Voting? Evidence about the Political Consequences of Spending Time in Prison." Journal of Politics, Vol. 79, (4 Oct.): 1130-46.

Abstract: The rise in mass incarceration provides a growing impetus to understand the effect that interactions with the criminal justice system have on political participation. While a substantial body of prior research studies the political consequences of criminal disenfranchisement, less work examines why eligible ex-felons vote at very low rates. We use administrative data on voting and interactions with the criminal justice system from Pennsylvania to assess whether the association between incarceration and reduced voting is causal. Using administrative records that reduce the possibility of measurement error, we employ several different research designs to investigate the possibility that the observed negative correlation between incarceration and voting might result from differences across individuals that both lead to incarceration and low participation. As this selection bias issue is addressed, we find that the estimated effect of serving time in prison on voting falls dramatically and for some research designs vanishes entirely.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supporting Information) (Replication Archive)

Note: Portions of this paper previously circulated with the title "Felony status, Participation, and Political Reintegration."

Keywords: Voter turnout, Policy feedback, Incarceration, Carceral state.

(47) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Can Political Participation Prevent Crime? Results from a Field Experiment about Citizenship, Participation, and Criminality." Political Behavior, Vol. 39 (4 Dec.), pp 909-34.

Abstract: Democratic theory and prior empirical work support the view that political participation, by promoting social integration and pro-social attitudes, reduces one's propensity for anti-social behavior, such as committing crimes. Previous investigations examine observational data, which are vulnerable to bias if omitted factors affect both propensity to participate and risk of criminality or their reports. A field experiment encouraging 552,525 subjects aged 18-20 to register and vote confirms previous observational findings of the negative association between participation and subsequent criminality. However, comparing randomly formed treatment and control groups reveals that the intervention increased participation but did not reduce subsequent criminality. Our results suggest that while participation is correlated with criminality, it exerts no causal effect on subsequent criminal behavior.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplementary Material) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Field experiment, Political participation, Criminality, Causal inference, Democratic theory, Civic education

(46) Hill, Seth J. and Gregory A. Huber. 2017. "Representativeness and Motivations of the Contemporary Donorate: Results from Merged Survey and Administrative Records." Political Behavior Vol 39: 3-29.

Abstract: Only a small portion of Americans make campaign donations, yet because ambitious politicians need these resources, this group may be particularly important for shaping political outcomes. We investigate the characteristics and motivations of the donorate using a novel dataset that combines administrative records of two types of political participation, contributing and voting, with a rich set of survey variables. These merged observations allow us to examine differences in demographics, validated voting, and ideology across subgroups of the population and to evaluate the motivations of those who donate. We find that in both parties donors are consistently and notably divergent from non-donors to a larger degree than voters are divergent from non-voters. Of great interest, in both parties donors are more ideologically extreme than other partisans, including primary voters. With respect to why individuals contribute, we show that donors appear responsive to their perception of the stakes in the election. We also present evidence that inferences about donor ideology derived from the candidates donors give to may not closely reflect the within-party policy ideology of those donors. Overall, our results suggest that donations are a way for citizens motivated by the perceived stakes of elections to increase their participation beyond solely turning out.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplementary Material) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Campaign donations, Campaign Finance, Political participation

(45) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Why don't people vote in U.S. primary elections? Assessing theoretical explanations for reduced participation." Electoral Studies, Vol 45 (Feb.): 119-29.

Abstract: Primary election participation in the United States is consistently lower than general election turnout. Despite this well-documented voting gap, our knowledge is limited as to the individual-level factors that explain why some general election voters do not show up for primary contests. We provide important insights into this question, using a novel new survey to examine three theoretical perspectives on participation never before empirically applied to primary races. Compared to general elections, we find that for U.S. House primary elections sizable segments of the electorate consider the stakes lower and the costs of voting greater, feel less social pressure to turn out and hold exclusionary beliefs about who should participate, and are more willing to defer to those who know and care more about the contests. Multivariate analysis reveals that these attitudes explain validated primary election participation. These findings point to new directions for future research.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplementary Material) (Replication Archive)

(44) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Self-Interest, Beliefs, and Policy Opinions: Understanding How Economic Beliefs Affect Immigration Policy Preferences." Political Research Quarterly, Vol 70(1): 155-71.

Abstract: Research on how economic factors affect attitudes toward immigration often focuses on labor market effects, concluding that, because workers' skill levels do not predict opposition to low- versus highly skilled immigration, economic self-interest does not shape policy attitudes. We conduct a new survey to measure beliefs about a range of economic, political, and cultural consequences of immigration. When economic self-interest is broadened to include concerns about the fiscal burdens created by immigration, beliefs about these economic effects strongly correlate with immigration attitudes and explain a significant share of the difference in support for highly versus low-skilled immigration. Although cultural factors are important, our results suggest that previous work underestimates the importance of economic self-interest as a source of immigration policy preferences and attitudes more generally.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supplementary Material) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "Self Interest, Beliefs, and Policy Opinions: Understanding the Economic Source of Immigration Policy Preferences."

Keywords: Self-interest, Immigration, Public opinion, Political economy, Cultural threat

(43) Huber, Gregory A. and Neil Malhotra. 2017. "Political Homophily in Social Relationships: Evidence from Online Dating Behavior." The Journal of Politics, Vol. 79 (1 Jan): 269-83.

Abstract: Do people form relationships based upon political similarity? Past work has shown that social relationships are more politically similar than expected by chance, but the reason for this concordance is unclear. Is it because people prefer politically similar others or is it attributable to confounding factors such as convergence, social structures, and sorting on non-political characteristics? Addressing this question is challenging because we typically do not observe partners prior to relationship formation. Consequently, we leverage the domain of online dating. We first conducted a nationwide experiment in which we randomized political characteristics in dating profiles. Second, we analyzed behavioral data from a national online dating community. We find that people evaluate potential dating partners more favorably and are more likely to reach out to them when they have similar political characteristics. The magnitude of the effect is comparable to that of educational homophily and half as large as racial homophily.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Supporting Information) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the titles "Political Sorting in Social Relationships" and "Dimensions of Political Homophily."

Keywords: Homophily, Assortative mating, Sorting, Partisanship, Ideology

(42) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2016. "A field experiment shows that subtle linguistic cues might not affect voter behavior." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Vol 113 (26): 7112-7.

Abstract: One of the most important recent developments in social psychology is the discovery of minor interventions that have large and enduring effects on behavior. A leading example of this class of results is in the work by Bryan et al. (2011), which shows that administering a set of survey items worded so that subjects think of themselves as voters (noun treatment) rather than as voting (verb treatment) substantially increases political participation (voter turnout) among subjects. We revisit these experiments by replicating and extending their research design in a large-scale field experiment. In contrast to the 11 to 14 percentage point greater turnout among those exposed to the noun rather than the verb treatment reported in the work by Bryan et al., we find no statistically significant difference in turnout between the noun and verb treatments (the point estimate of the difference is approximately zero). Furthermore, when we benchmark these treatments against a standard get out the vote message, we estimate that both are less effective at increasing turnout than a much shorter basic mobilization message. In our conclusion, we detail how our study differs from the work by Bryan et al. and discuss how our results might be interpreted.

Links: (Download Paper: Online Journal) (Supporting Information) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Psychology, Political science, Intervention, Field experiment, Voter turnout

(41) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2016. "Why People Vote: Estimating the Social Returns to Voting." British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 46 (2 April): 241-64.

Abstract: This article measures the social rewards and sanctions associated with voting. A series of survey experiments shows that information about whether a person votes directly affects how favorably that person is viewed. Importantly, the study also compares the rewards and sanctions associated with voting to other activities, including the decisions to recycle, volunteer and return one's library books on time. It presents a behavioral test of the consequences of non-voting and finds that individuals are willing to take costly action in a dictator game to reward political participation. Finally, it shows that survey measures of social norms about voting are correlated with county-level voter turnout. The study adds to the growing literature documenting the important influence of social concerns on turnout and other political choices.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the titles "Social Judgments and Political Participation: Estimating the Consequences of Social Rewards and Sanctions for Voting" and "The Social Benefits of Voting and Co-partisanship: Evidence from Survey Experiments."

(40) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Marc Meredith, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2015. "Can Incarcerated Felons Be (Re)integrated into the Political System? Results from a Field Experiment." American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 59 (4 Oct.): 912-926.

Abstract: How does America's high rate of incarceration shape political participation? Few studies have examined the direct effects of incarceration on patterns of political engagement. Answering this question is particularly relevant for the 93 percent of formerly incarcerated individuals who are eligible to vote. Drawing on new administrative data from Connecticut, we present evidence from a field experiment showing that a simple informational outreach campaign to released felons can recover a large proportion of the reduction in participation observed following incarceration. The treatment effect estimates imply that efforts to reintegrate released felons into the political process can substantially reduce the participatory consequences of incarceration.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated with the title "Felony status, Participation, and Political Reintegration: Results from a field experiment." Awarded the 2014 Best Paper on Public Policy Award by the APSA Public Policy Section.

(39) Dynes, Adam and Gregory A. Huber. 2015. "Partisanship and the allocation of federal spending: Do same-party legislators or voters benefit from shared party affiliation?" American Political Science Review, Vol 109 (1 February): 172-186.

Abstract: Previous research finds that House majority members and members in the president's party garner additional federal spending in their districts. Using federal spending data in individual districts, we implement two research designs to distinguish elected officials enacting policies that benefit like-minded voters-the party in the electorate-from those that benefit same-party elected officials-the party in government. We find robust evidence that presidential partisanship is associated with large differences in spending correlated with voter preferences, but little evidence that presidents favor areas represented by their party in the House. By contrast, control of the House is associated with differences in spending by voter preferences and with modest increases in spending in districts held by members of the majority. These findings have important implications for understanding presidential influence, as well as the role of parties in the House and in coordinating between elected branches.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Note: Replication file is for final analysis dataset only. Complete replication archive, include raw FAADS data/etc. is available upon request due to large file sizes. Dynes has also posted these data on his website.

(38) Bullock, John G., Alan S. Gerber, Seth J. Hill and Gregory A. Huber. 2015. "Partisan Bias in Factual Beliefs about Politics." Quarterly Journal of Political Science: Vol. 10 (No. 4): 519-78.

Abstract: Partisanship seems to affect factual beliefs about politics. For example, Republicans are more likely than Democrats to say that the deficit rose during the Clinton administration; Democrats are more likely to say that inflation rose under Reagan. What remains unclear is whether such patterns reflect differing beliefs among partisans or instead reflect a desire to praise one party or criticize another. To shed light on this question, we present a model of survey response in the presence of partisan cheerleading and payments for correct and "don't know" responses. We design two experiments based on the model's implications. The experiments show that small payments for correct and "don't know" answers sharply diminish the gap between Democrats and Republicans in responses to "partisan" factual questions. Our conclusion is that the apparent gulf in factual beliefs between members of different parties may be more illusory than real. The experiments also bolster and extend a major finding about political knowledge in America: we show (as others have) that Americans know little about politics, but we also show that they often recognize their own lack of knowledge.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal, Expanded NBER Version) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Elections, Electoral behavior, Voting behavior, Formal modelling, Political parties, Political psychology

(37) Dickson, Eric S., Sanford C. Gordon, and Gregory A. Huber. 2015. "Institutional Sources of Legitimate Authority: An Experimental Investigation." American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 59 (1 Jan.): 109-27.

Abstract: Unelected officials with coercive powers (e.g., police, prosecutors, bureaucrats) vary markedly in the extent to which citizens view their actions as legitimate. We explore the institutional determinants of legitimate authority in the context of a public goods laboratory experiment. In the experiment, an "authority" can target one "citizen" for punishment following citizen contribution choices. Untargeted citizens can then choose to help or hinder the authority. This latter choice may be interpreted as a behavioral measure of the authority's legitimacy. We find that legitimacy is affected by how authorities are compensated, the transparency with which their decisions are observed, and an interaction between these. When transparency is high, citizens are more willing to assist authorities who receive fixed salaries than those who personally benefit from collected penalties, even when citizens' material incentives are controlled for. Lower transparency reduces support, but only for salaried enforcers.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

(36) Anderson, Ashton, Sharad Goel, Gregory Huber, Neil Malhotra, and Duncan J. Watts. 2014. "Political Ideology and Racial Preferences in Online Dating." Sociological Science, Vol. 1 (Feb.): 28-40.

Abstract: What explains the relative persistence of racial homogamy in romantic relationships? One possibility is structural--these patterns reflect the fact that social interactions are already stratified along racial lines--while another attributes these patterns to individual-level preferences. We present novel evidence from an online dating community involving more than 250,000 people in the United States about the frequency with which individuals both express a preference for same-race romantic partners and act to choose same-race partners. Prior work suggests that political ideology is an important correlate of conservative attitudes about race in the United States, and we find that conservatives, including both men and women and Blacks and Whites, are much more likely than liberals to state a preference for same-race partners. Further, conservatives are not simply more selective in general; they are specifically selective with regard to race. Do these stated preferences predict real behaviors? In general, we find that stated preferences are a strong predictor of a behavioral preference for same-race partners, and that this pattern persists across ideological groups. At the same time, both men and women of all political persuasions act as if they prefer same-race relationships even when they claim not to. As a result, the gap between conservatives and liberals in revealed same-race preferences, while still substantial, is not as pronounced as their stated attitudes would suggest. We conclude by discussing some implications of our findings for the broader issues of racial homogamy and segregation.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix)

Keywords: Computational Social Science, Homogamy, Homophily, Online Dating, Political Ideology, Racial Preference

(35) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2014. "Ballot Secrecy Concerns and Voter Mobilization: New Experimental Evidence About Message Source, Context, and the Duration of Mobilization Effects." American Politics Research, Vol 42(5): 896-923.

Abstract: Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group's mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address these beliefs increases long-term participation.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Secret ballot, Voter mobilization, Field experiment, Message source, Participation

(34) Hacker, Jacob S., Gregory A. Huber, Austin Nichols, Philipp Rehm, Mark Schlesinger, Rob Valletta, and Stuart Craig. 2014. "The Economic Security Index: A New Measure for Research and Policy Analysis." Review of Income and Wealth, Vol. 60 (May): S5-S32.

Abstract: This article presents the Economic Security Index (ESI), a new measure of economic insecurity. The ESI assesses the individual-level occurrence of substantial year-to-year declines in available household resources, accounting for fluctuations not only in income but also in out-of-pocket medical expenses. It also assesses whether those experiencing such declines have sufficient liquid financial wealth to buffer against these shocks. We find that insecurity--the share of individuals experiencing substantial resource declines without adequate financial buffers--has risen steadily since the mid-1980s for virtually all subgroups of Americans, albeit with cyclical fluctuation. At the same time, we find that there is substantial disparity in the degree to which different subgroups are exposed to economic risk. As the ESI derives from a data-independent conceptual foundation, it can be measured using different panel datasets. We find that the degree and disparity by which insecurity has risen is robust across the best available sources.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)

Keywords: Household income, Household risk, Medical spending, Volatility, Wealth

(33) Huber, Gregory A. and Celia Paris. 2013. "Assessing the Programmatic Equivalence Assumption In Question Wording Experiments: Understanding Why Americans like Assistance to the Poor more than Welfare." Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol 77 (1): 385-397.

Abstract: In trying to understand why Americans display relatively high levels of opposition to welfare, scholars have frequently turned to the analysis of a canonical experiment reported in this journal (Smith 1987; Rasinski 1989) in which subjects were asked about their support for either "welfare" or "assistance to the poor." This experiment consistently shows that Americans are substantially less supportive of welfare than of assistance to the poor. This difference has been interpreted as evidence that simply describing the same core programs as welfare rather than assistance to the poor depresses support. The key assumption in these analyses is one of programmatic equivalence: relative to the words "assistance to the poor," the word "welfare" describes the same programs, but differs in which considerations it brings to mind. This research note examines the validity of this key assumption. Analyses of novel experimental data show that there appear to be basic differences in which programs Americans consider to be welfare and which they consider to be assistance to the poor. We discuss the implications of our research for interpreting prior studies that rely upon this experiment to test theories of framing, and we suggest broader implications for survey experimental designs.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

(32) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Seth Hill. 2013. "Who Wants to Discuss Vote Choices with Others? Polarization in Preferences for Deliberation." Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 77 (2): 474-496.

Abstract: Should people discuss their vote choices with others? On one hand, many people argue that openly deliberating with others can lead to better decision-making. On the other hand, institutions like the secret ballot imply that keeping these choices secret has value, perhaps as a means of insulating people from unwanted social pressures. This paper examines public attitudes about whether it is best to discuss one's choices with others or to treat them as personal matters. We find that the American public is evenly divided on this issue. We also find that those who are least confident in their political capabilities-those who arguably could benefit most from deliberating about their vote choices-are most likely to say that choices should be treated as personal matters. Our findings have implications for understanding the role of political deliberation in the United States.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

(31) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2013. "Assessing the Stability of Psychological and Political Survey Measures." American Politics Research, Vol 41: 54-75.

Abstract: Recent research demonstrates growing scholarly interest in the relationship between personality characteristics and political attitudes and behaviors. In this article we present analysis using data from a national panel survey conducted in two waves-the first prior to the 2010 U.S. midterm election, the second after it. We assess the stability of a variety of personality measures and find high correlations between the pre- and postelection measures. We also leverage the fact that Republicans made substantial gains in Congress in the 2010 election to determine whether various personality measures are affected by the intersection of partisan attachments and political events and find little evidence that they are. The findings provide encouraging evidence for those interested in examining the relationship between personality and political attitudes using survey data.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Personality, Political psychology, Measurement, Stability

(30) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Seth J. Hill. 2013. "Do Perceptions of Ballot Secrecy Influence Turnout? Results from a Field Experiment." American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 57 (3 July): 537-51.

Abstract: Although the secret ballot has been secured as a legal matter in the United States, formal secrecy protections are not equivalent to convincing citizens that they may vote privately and without fear of reprisal. We present survey evidence that those who have not previously voted are particularly likely to voice doubts about the secrecy of the voting process. We then report results from a field experiment where we mailed information about protections of ballot secrecy to registered voters prior to the 2010 general election. Consistent with our survey data, we find that these letters increased turnout for registered citizens without records of previous turnout, but they did not appear to influence the behavior of citizens who had previously voted. The increase in turnout of more than three percentage points (20%) for those without previous records of voting is notably larger than the effect of a standard get-out-the-vote mailing for this group. Overall, these results suggest that although the secret ballot is a long-standing institution in the United States, beliefs about this institution may not match the legal reality.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Supporting Information) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated as NBER Working paper #17673.

Keywords: Ballots, Voter registration, Voter turnout, Placebos, Civic duty, Field experiments, Mailings, State elections, Absentee voting

(29) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Costas Panagopoulos. 2013. "Big Five Personality Traits and Responses to Persuasive Appeals: Results from Voter Turnout Experiments." Political Behavior, Vol. 35 (4 Dec.): 687-728.

Abstract: We examine whether Big Five personality traits are associated with heterogeneous responses to commonly used Get-Out-The-Vote (GOTV) appeals in both a survey and a field experiment. The results suggest that Big Five personality traits affect how people respond to the costs and benefits of voting highlighted in GOTV appeals. Our evidence also suggests that one trait--Openness--is associated with broad persuasibility, while others shape responses to particular types of messages. In some cases the conditioning effects of Big Five traits are substantial. For example, in the one-voter households (HHs) included in our field experiment, we find that a mailer that raised the specter of social sanctions increased the likelihood of voting by a statistically greater amount among those scoring high on Openness. The findings constitute an important step forward in understanding how core personality traits shape responses to various aspects of the act of voting.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Emotional stability, Group pressure, Agreeableness, Voting behavior, Field experiments, Extroversion, Civic duty

(28) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, and Seth J. Hill. 2013. "Identifying the Effect of All-Mail Elections on Turnout: Staggered Reform in the Evergreen State." Political Science Research and Methods, Vol. 1 (1 June): 91-116.

Abstract: Election officials across the United States continue to implement convenience voting reforms that increase the times when, and modes by which, citizens may cast ballots. These reforms are thought to increase participation. Some argue that convenience voting increases inequality in political participation because the reforms alleviate barriers to participation for busy higher status citizens while lowering mobilization activity. In this article, we offer an improved design and new estimates of the effects of convenience voting on turnout. Exploiting cross-sectional and temporal variation in county-level implementation of all-mail elections in Washington State, we find a modest two to four point effect of the reform on turnout and some evidence that the effect begins to decay as time passes. Using individual observations from the state voter file, we also find that the reform increases voting by lower-participating registrants and young registrants, suggesting that this convenience reform does improve participation for the less-engaged.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Note: Earlier versions of this paper circulated with the title "Identifying the Effects of Elections Held All-Mail on Turnout: Staggered Reform in the Evergreen State."

(27) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2013. "Is There a Secret Ballot? Ballot Secrecy Perceptions and Their Implications for Voting Behaviour." British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 43 (1 Jan.): 77-102.

Abstract: Do people believe the votes they cast are truly secret? Novel items added to a nationally representative survey show that 25 per cent of respondents report not believing their ballot choices are kept secret and over 70 per cent report sharing their vote choices with others. These findings suggest that standard models of candidate choice should account for the potential effects of doubts about ballot secrecy. Consistent with this view, regression analysis shows that social forces appear to have a greater effect on vote choices among people who doubt the formal secrecy of the ballot. This analysis supports the broader claim that the intended benefits of institutional rules may not be realized if people's perceptions of these rules differ from their formal characteristics.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR, On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Note: Earlier versions of this paper circulated with the word "Behaviour" in the title spelled "Behavior."

Keywords: Voting, Ballots, Political partisanship, Political candidates, Social psychology, Political psychology, Social interaction

(26) Gregory A. Huber, Seth J. Hill, and Gabriel S. Lenz. 2012. "Sources of Bias in Retrospective Decision-Making: Experimental Evidence on Voters’ Limitations in Controlling Incumbents." American Political Science Review, Vol. 106 (4 November): 720-41.

Abstract: Are citizens competent to assess the performance of incumbent politicians? Observational studies cast doubt on voter competence by documenting several biases in retrospective assessments of performance. However, these studies are open to alternative interpretations because of the complexity of the real world. In this article, we show that these biases in retrospective evaluations occur even in the simplified setting of experimental games. In three experiments, our participants ( 1) overweighted recent relative to overall incumbent performance when made aware of an election closer rather than more distant from that event, ( 2) allowed an unrelated lottery that affected their welfare to influence their choices, and ( 3) were influenced by rhetoric to give more weight to recent rather than overall incumbent performance. These biases were apparent even though we informed and incentivized respondents to weight all performance equally. Our findings point to key limitations in voters' ability to use a retrospective decision rule.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR, On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Incumbents, Payments, Voting, Arithmetic mean, Political rhetoric, Political campaigns, Statistical significance, Presidential elections

(25) Berinsky, Adam J. Gregory A. Huber, and Gabriel S. Lenz. 2012. "Evaluating Online Labor Markets for Experimental Research: Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk." Political Analysis, Vol. 20, (3 Summer): 351-368.

Abstract: We examine the trade-offs associated with using Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk (MTurk) interface for subject recruitment. We first describe MTurk and its promise as a vehicle for performing low-cost and easy-to-field experiments. We then assess the internal and external validity of experiments performed using MTurk, employing a framework that can be used to evaluate other subject pools. We first investigate the characteristics of samples drawn from the MTurk population. We show that respondents recruited in this manner are often more representative of the U.S. population than in-person convenience samples-the modal sample in published experimental political science-but less representative than subjects in Internet-based panels or national probability samples. Finally, we replicate important published experimental work using MTurk samples.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Note: Earlier versions of this paper circulated with the title "Using Mechanical Turk as a Subject Recruitment Tool for Experimental Research." Awarded 2012 Political Analysis Editors' Choice Award.

Keywords: Experimentation, Demography, Statistical significance, Labor force surveys, Data sampling, Labor markets, Internet, Political research, Wage surveys

(24) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2012. "Disagreement and the Avoidance of Political Discussion: Aggregate Relationships and Differences across Personality Traits." American Journal of Political Science, Vol. 56 (4 Oct.): 849-74.

Abstract: Social networks play a prominent role in the explanation of many political phenomena. Using data from a nationally representative survey of registered voters conducted around the 2008 U.S. presidential election, we document three findings. First, we show that during this period, people discussed politics as frequently as (or more frequently than) other topics such as family, work, sports, and entertainment with frequent discussion partners. Second, the frequency with which a topic is discussed is strongly and positively associated with reported agreement on that topic among these same discussion partners. Supplementary experimental evidence suggests this correlation arises because people avoid discussing politics when they anticipate disagreement. Third, we show that Big Five personality traits affect how frequently people discuss a variety of topics, including politics. Some of these traits also alter the relationship between agreement and frequency of discussion in theoretically expected ways. This suggests that certain personality types are more likely to be exposed to divergent political information, and that not everyone is equally likely to experience cross-cutting discourse, even in heterogeneous networks.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR, On-line Journal) (Supporting Information) (Replication Archive)

Note: Earlier versions of this paper circulated with the title "Personality Traits, Disagreement, and the Avoidance of Political Discussion: Putting Political Discussion Networks in Context"

Keywords: Social networks, Public opinion, Participation, Communication, Attitudes, Behavior, Deliberation, Political networks, Emotional stability, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Political attitudes, Political campaigns

(23) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2012. "Personality and the Strength and Direction of Partisan Identification." Political Behavior, 34 (4 November): 653-688.

Abstract: We examine the associations between personality traits and the strength and direction of partisan identification using a large national sample. We theorize that the relationships between Big Five personality traits and which party a person affiliates with should mirror those between the Big Five and ideology, which we find to be the case. This suggests that the associations between the Big Five and the direction of partisan identification are largely mediated by ideology. Our more novel finding is that personality traits substantially affect whether individuals affiliate with any party as well as the strength of those affiliations, effects that we theorize stem from affective and cognitive benefits of affiliation. In particular, we find that three personality traits (Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness) predict strength of partisan identification (p < 0.05). This result holds even after controlling for ideology and a variety of issue positions. These findings contribute to our understanding of the psychological antecedents of partisan identification.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR, On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Personality, Party identification, Partisan strength, Big Five, Political partisanship, Emotional stability, Conscientiousness, Conservatism, Extroversion, Agreeableness

(22) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "The Big Five Personality Traits in the Political Arena." Annual Review of Political Science, Vol. 14: 265-287.

Abstract: Recent political science research on the effects of core personality traits--the Big Five--contributes to our understanding of how people interact with their political environments. This research examines how individual-level variations in broad, stable psychological characteristics affect individual-level political outcomes. In this article, we review recent work that uses the Big Five to predict political attitudes and behavior. We also replicate some of these analyses using new data to examine the possibility that prior findings stem from sampling error or unique political contexts. Finally, we discuss several of the challenges faced by scholars who are currently pursuing or are interested in pursuing this line of inquiry. These challenges include refining theoretical explanations of how the Big Five shape political outcomes, addressing important measurement concerns, and resolving inconsistencies across studies.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Dispositional traits, Big 5, Political behavior, Participation, Public opinion, Political psychology

(21) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Citizens' Policy Confidence and Electoral Punishment: A Neglected Dimension of Electoral Accountability." The Journal of Politics, 73 (4 Oct.): 1206-1224.

Abstract: If voters punish elected officials who adopt incongruent policy positions, then representatives should take popular positions to avoid electoral sanction. Yet, scholars have noted gaps between citizen preferences and the behavior of elected officials. We argue that one important source of this gap is that individual citizens believe they are sometimes not well qualified to evaluate policy. Our analysis of a series of experiments shows that citizens' stated confidence in their own ability to evaluate a policy proposal substantially affects their willingness to reward or punish a representative for their votes on that policy. Our results hold both across individuals (within policy areas) and within individuals (across policy areas) and suggest that, rather than a failure of representation, gaps between citizen preferences and policy may reflect citizen deference to "expert" legislators. We also show that understanding differences in policy confidence has important implications for understanding the contours of public opinion.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Supplementary Material) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Internal political efficacy, Attitude strength, Candidate evaluations, Voting behavior, Uncertainty, Ambivalence, Electoral punishment

(20) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, Connor Raso, and Shang E. Ha. 2011. "Personality Traits and Participation in Political Processes." The Journal of Politics, 74 (3 July): 692-706.

Abstract: Using data from two recent surveys, we analyze the relationship between Big Five personality traits and political participation. We examine forms of participation that differ in domain (local politics vs. national campaigns) as well as in the amount of conflict involved, whether they are likely to yield instrumental benefits, and whether they are likely to be viewed as a duty--characteristics that may affect the relationships between dispositional personality traits and political activity. We find relationships between personality traits and: (1) both self-reported and actual turnout (measured using administrative records), (2) overreporting of turnout, and (3) a variety of other modes of participation. The effect of personality on political participation is often comparable to the effects of factors that are central in earlier models of turnout, such as education and income. Consistent with our theoretical expectations, these relationships vary depending on personality-relevant characteristics of each participatory act.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Voter turnout, Voter registration, Agreeableness, Emotional stability, Political campaigns, Statistical significance, Extroversion, Conscientiousness, Political candidates

(19) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, and Conor M. Dowling. 2011. "Personality Traits and the Consumption of Political Information." American Politics Research, 39 (1 January): 32-84.

Abstract: In this article, we examine the relationship between dispositional personality traits (the Big Five) and the consumption of political information. We present detailed hypotheses about the characteristics of the political environment that are likely to affect the appeal of politics and political information in general for individuals with different personalities as well as hypotheses about how personality affects the attractiveness of particular sources of political information. We find that the Big Five traits are significant predictors of political interest and knowledge as well as consumption of different types of political media. Openness (the degree to which a person needs intellectual stimulation and variety) and Emotional Stability (characterized by low levels of anxiety) are associated with a broad range of engagement with political information and political knowledge. The other three Big Five traits, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, and Extraversion, are associated only with consumption of specific types of political information.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Personality traits, Big Five, Political interest, Political knowledge, News consumption, Social psychology

(18) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Ebonya Washington. 2010. "Party Affiliation, Partisanship, and Political Beliefs: A Field Experiment." American Political Science Review, 104 (4 November): 720-744.

Abstract: Partisanship is strongly correlated with attitudes and behavior, but it is unclear from this pattern whether partisan identity has a causal effect on political behavior and attitudes. We report the results of a field experiment that investigates the causal effect of party identification. Prior to the February 2008 Connecticut presidential primary, researchers sent a mailing to a random sample of unaffiliated registered voters who, in a pretreatment survey, leaned toward a political party. The mailing informed the subjects that only voters registered with a party were able to participate in the upcoming presidential primary. Subjects were surveyed again in June 2008. Comparing posttreatment survey responses to subjects' baseline survey responses, we find that those reminded of the need to register with a party were more likely to identify with a party and showed stronger partisanship. Further, we find that the treatment group also demonstrated greater concordance than the control group between their pretreatment latent partisanship and their posttreatment reported voting behavior and intentions and evaluations of partisan figures. Thus, our treatment, which appears to have caused a strengthening of partisan identity, also appears to have caused a shift in subjects' candidate preferences and evaluations of salient political figures. This finding is consistent with the claim that partisanship is an active force changing how citizens behave in and perceive the political world.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR, On-line Journal) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated as NBER Working paper #15365.

Keywords: Political partisanship, Voter registration, Political attitudes, Party identification, Primary elections, Political identity, Voter turnout, Political campaigns

(17) Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, David Doherty, Conor M. Dowling, and Shang E. Ha. 2010. "Personality and Political Attitudes: Relationships Across Issue Domains and Political Contexts." American Political Science Review, 104 (1 February): 111-133.

Abstract: Previous research on personality traits and political attitudes has largely focused on the direct relationships between traits and ideological self-placement. There are theoretical reasons, however, to suspect that the relationships between personality traits and political attitudes (1) vary across issue domains and (2) depend on contextual factors that affect the meaning of political stimuli. In this study, we provide an explicit theoretical framework for formulating hypotheses about these differential effects. We then leverage the power of an unusually large national survey of registered voters to examine how the relationships between Big Five personality traits and political attitudes differ across issue domains and social contexts (as defined by racial groups). We confirm some important previous findings regarding personality and political ideology, find clear evidence that Big Five traits affect economic and social attitudes differently, show that the effect of Big Five traits is often as large as that of education or income in predicting ideology, and demonstrate that the relationships between Big Five traits and ideology vary substantially between white and black respondents.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR, On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper includes results that were originally presented in two separate papers: Personality Traits and the Dimensions of Political Ideology and Reassessing the Effects of Personality on Political Attitudes and Behaviors: Aggregate Relationships and Subgroup Differences.

Keywords: Political attitudes, Liberalism, Conservatism, Social policy, Economic policy, Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Extroversion

(16) Gerber, Alan S. and Gregory A. Huber. 2010. "Partisanship, Political Control, and Economic Assessments." American Journal of Political Science, 54 (1 January): 153-73.

Abstract: Previous research shows that partisans rate the economy more favorably when their party holds power. There are several explanations for this association, including use of different evaluative criteria, selective perception, selective exposure to information, correlations between economic experiences and partisanship, and partisan bias in survey responses. We use a panel survey around the November 2006 election to measure changes in economic expectations and behavioral intentions after an unanticipated shift in political power. Using this design, we can observe whether the association between partisanship and economic assessments holds when some leading mechanisms thought to bring it about are excluded. We find that there are large and statistically significant partisan differences in how economic assessments and behavioral intentions are revised immediately following the Democratic takeover of Congress. We conclude that this pattern of partisan response suggests partisan differences in perceptions of the economic competence of the parties, rather than alternative mechanisms.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Replication Archive)

Note: Earlier versions of this paper circulated with the subtitle "Results from a natural experiment."

Keywords: Political partisanship, State elections, Governors, Economic surveys, Economic forecasting, Spending, Election forecasting, Perception tests

(15) Dickson, Eric S., Sanford C. Gordon, and Gregory A. Huber. 2009. "Enforcement and Compliance in an Uncertain World: An Experimental Investigation." The Journal of Politics, 71 (4 October): 1357-1378.

Abstract: Governments are charged with monitoring citizens' compliance with prescribed behavioral standards and punishing noncompliance. Flaws in information available to enforcing agents, however, may lead to subsequent enforcement errors, eroding government authority and undermining incentives for compliance. We explore these concepts in a laboratory experiment. A "monitor" player makes punishment decisions after receiving noisy signals about other players' choices to contribute to a public good. We find that the possibility of wrongly accusatory signals has a more deleterious effect on contribution levels than the possibility of wrongly exculpatory signals. We trace this across-treatment difference to a "false positives trap": when members of a largely compliant population are sometimes incorrectly accused, some will be unjustly punished if enforcement power is employed, but non-compliant individuals will escape punishment if that power is abdicated. Either kind of error discourages compliance. An additional treatment demonstrates that the functioning of a given enforcement institution may vary, depending on its origins. We consider implications of our findings for theories of deterrence, fairness, and institutional legitimacy.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: False positive errors, False negative errors, Contribution rates, Public goods, Statistical significance, Error rates, Treatment compliance, Endowments, Pulmonary compliance

(14) Gerber, Alan S. and Gregory A. Huber. 2009. "Partisanship and Economic Behavior: Do Partisan Differences in Economic Forecasts Predict Real Economic Behavior?" American Political Science Review, 103 (3 August): 407-26.

Abstract: Survey data regularly show that assessments of current and expected future economic performance are more positive when a respondent's partisanship matches that of the president. To determine if this is a survey artifact or something deeper, we investigate whether partisanship is associated with behavioral differences in economic decisions. We construct a new data set of county-level quarterly taxable sales to examine the effect of partisanship on consumption. Consumption change following a presidential election is correlated with a county's partisan complexion, a result consistent with partisans acting outside the domain of politics in accordance with the opinions they express in surveys. These results support an expansive view of the role of partisanship in mass politics and help validate surveys as a method for studying political behavior.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Political partisanship, Voting, Economic surveys, Presidential elections, Sales taxes, Local elections, Consumption, Consumer behavior

(13) Gordon, Sanford C. and Gregory A. Huber. 2009. "The Political Economy of Prosecution." Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 5: 135-156.

Abstract: Contemporary advances in the field of political economy, particularly those concerning the subject of delegated authority, can provide a unifying framework for analyzing the behavior and political context of criminal prosecutors in the United States. This perspective, which focuses on the extent of conflict between an official's motives and those of other actors, and the degree to which information is unevenly distributed among those actors, is well suited for studying prosecutors--the vast majority of whom are elected but whose accountability is frequently called into question. We apply this perspective to three areas in the existing literature on prosecutors: plea bargaining, courtroom communities, and public corruption prosecution.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal)

Keywords: Criminal justice, Accountability, Asymmetric information, Delegation

(12) Gordon, Sanford Clark, Gregory Alain Huber, and Dimitri Landa. 2009. "Voter responses to Challenger Opportunity Costs." Electoral Studies, 28 (1 March): 79-93.

Abstract: How do voters evaluate candidates in competitive elections? Gordon et al. [Gordon, S.C., Huber, G.A., Landa, D., 2007. Challenger entry and voter learning. American Political Science Review 101 (May), pp. 303-320.] present a model in which the fact of a serious electoral challenge conveys information about the relative competence of the candidates, over and above that conveyed by observable measures of candidate quality. The model predicts differences in voters' responses to candidates depending on challenger opportunity costs. Taken together, these predictions diverge from those associated with an alternative theoretical account. We take advantage of the variation in challenger opportunity costs afforded by state legislative term limits to evaluate the model's predictions. State legislators frequently challenge sitting members of the U.S. House. Those who are term-limited have less to lose from running, whereas those who are not must often risk their current position in pursuit of higher office. Using data on voter attitudes and knowledge about House elections involving state legislators, we find compelling evidence that voters respond to variation in challenger opportunity costs in a manner consistent with the model's predictions.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated as "Do Costly Challenges Make Voters Believe?"

Keywords: Strategic Challenger Entry, Term Limits, Candidate Quality, Candidate Opportunity Costs, Voter Information Acquisition, Formal Theory, Empirical Tests of Formal Models, Candidate Entry

(11) Huber, Gregory A. and John S. Lapinski. 2008. "Testing the Implicit-Explicit Model of Racialized Political Communication." Perspectives on Politics, 6 (1 March): 125-134.

Abstract: The Implicit-Explicit (IE) model of racial priming posits that implicitly racial messages will be more effective than explicitly racial ones in priming racial predispositions in opinion formation. Is the Implicit-Explicit model supported by existing data? In "Racial Priming Revived," Mendelberg responds to our analysis of a pair of experiments in which we found that "that implicit appeals are no more effective than explicit ones in priming racial resentment in opinion formation." In this note we demonstrate that the concerns raised about our experiments are unfounded. Further, we show that the existing work supporting the IE model suffers from serious limitations of experimental design and implementation. Cumulatively, we find that the evidence questioning the IE model is far stronger than the evidence that supports it.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Political campaigns, Control groups, Opinion advertising, Modeling, Political candidates, Political communication, African Americans, Democracy, Images

(10) Huber, Gregory A. and Kevin Arceneaux. 2007. "Identifying the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising." American Journal of Political Science, 51 (4 October): 957-977.

Abstract: Do presidential campaign advertisements mobilize, inform, or persuade citizens? To answer this question we exploit a natural experiment, the accidental treatment of some individuals living in nonbattleground states during the 2000 presidential election to either high levels or one-sided barrages of campaign advertisements simply because they resided in a media market adjoining a competitive state. We isolate the effects of advertising by matching records of locally broadcast presidential advertising with the opinions of National Annenberg Election Survey respondents living in these uncontested states. This approach remedies the observed correlation between advertising and both other campaign activities and previous election outcomes. In contrast to previous research, we find little evidence that citizens are mobilized by or learn from presidential advertisements, but strong evidence that they are persuaded by them. We also consider the causal mechanisms that facilitate persuasion and investigate whether some individuals are more susceptible to persuasion than others.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Note: This paper previously circulated as "Uncovering the Persuasive Effects of Presidential Advertising."

Keywords: Political campaigns, Advertising campaigns, Political advertising, Political candidates, Advertising to sales ratios, Voting, Area of dominant influence, Political partisanship, Persuasion

(9) Huber, Gregory A. and Sanford C. Gordon. 2007. "Directing Retribution: On the Political Control of Lower Court Judges." Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, 23 (2 June): 386-420.

Abstract: The sentencing decisions of trial judges are constrained by statutory limits imposed by legislatures. At the same time, judges in many states face periodic review, often by the electorate. We develop a model in which the effects of these features of a judge's political landscape on judicial behavior interact. The model yields several intriguing results: First, if legislators care about the proportionality of punishment, judicial discretion increases with their punitiveness. Second, voters are limited by two factors in their ability to make inferences about judicial preferences based on observed sentences: the extent to which judges are willing to pander to retain office and the range of judicial discretion mandated by the legislature. Finally, legislators can sometimes manipulate judicial discretion to aid sufficiently like-minded voters in their efforts to replace ideologically dissimilar judges.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)

Keywords: Legislators, Political pandering, Judges, Criminal culpability, Incumbents, Judicial discretion, Defendants, Conservatism, Mandatory minimum sentences

(8) Gordon, Sanford C., Gregory A. Huber, and Dimitri Landa. 2007. "Challenger Entry and Voter Learning." American Political Science Review, 101 (2 May): 303-320.

Abstract: We develop a model of strategic interaction between voters and potential electoral challengers to sitting incumbents, in which the very fact of a costly challenge conveys relevant information to voters. Given incumbent failure in office, challenger entry is more likely, but the threat of entry by inferior challengers creates an incentive for citizens to become more politically informed. At the same time, challenges to incumbents who perform well can neutralize a voter's positive assessment of incumbent qualifications. How a voter becomes politically informed can in turn deter challengers of different levels of competence from running, depending on the electoral environment. The model permits us to sharpen our understanding of retrospective voting, the incumbency advantage, and the relationship between electoral competition and voter welfare, while pointing to new interpretations of, and future avenues for, empirical research on elections.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)

Note: This paper previously circulated as "The Informational Value of Challengers."

Keywords: Incumbents, Political candidates, Opportunity costs, Voting behavior, Political campaigns, Ambivalence, Cost of entry, Economic competition, Modeling

(7) Gordon, Sanford C. and Gregory A. Huber. 2007. "The Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Incumbent Behavior." Quarterly Journal of Political Science, 2 (2 May): 107-138.

Abstract: What is the marginal effect of competitiveness on the power of electoral incentives? Addressing this question empirically is difficult because challenges to incumbents are endogenous to their behavior in office. To overcome this obstacle, we exploit a unique feature of Kansas courts: 14 districts employ partisan elections to select judges, while 17 employ noncompetitive retention elections. In the latter, therefore, challengers are ruled out. We find judges in partisan systems sentence more severely than those in retention systems. Additional tests attribute this to the incentive effects of potential competition, rather than the selection of more punitive judges in partisan districts.

Links: (Download Paper: On-line Journal) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Representation, Elections, Judiciary

(6) Arceneaux, Kevin and Gregory A. Huber. 2007. "What to Do (and Not Do) with Multicollinearity in State Politics Research." State Politics and Policy Quarterly, 7 (1 Spring): 81-101.

Abstract: State politics scholars often confront data situations where the explanatory variables in a model are highly related to each other. Such multicollinearity ("MC") makes it difficult to identify the independent effect that each of these variables has on the outcome of interest. In an effort to circumvent MC, researchers sometimes drop collinear variables from the regression model. Using simulated data, we demonstrate the implications that MC has for statistical estimation and the potential for introducing bias that the omitting-variables approach generates. We also discuss MC in the context of multiplicative interaction models, using research on the influence of the initiative on policy responsiveness as an applied example. We conclude with advice for researchers faced with MC in their datasets.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Correlations, Statistical significance, State politics, Simulations, Coefficients, Political research, Probabilities, Regression analysis, Estimation bias

(5) Huber, Gregory A. and John S. Lapinski. 2006. "The 'Race Card' Revisited: Assessing Racial Priming in Policy Contests." American Journal of Political Science, 50 (2 April): 421-440.

Abstract: In The Race Card (2001), Mendelberg finds support for her theory that implicit racial appeals, but not explicit ones, prime racial resentment in opinion formation. She argues that citizens reject explicit appeals, rendering them ineffective, because they violate widespread egalitarian norms. Mendelberg's innovative research, however, suffers from several limitations. We remedy these deficiencies using two randomized experiments with over 6,300 respondents. We confirm that individuals do tend to reject explicit appeals outright, but find that implicit appeals are no more effective than explicit ones in priming racial resentment in opinion formation. In accounting for the differences between previous research and our own, we show that education moderates both the accessibility of racial predispositions and message acceptance. This suggests that the necessary assumptions of Mendelberg's theory hold only for different and exclusive subsets of the general population.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR) (Online Appendix) (Replication Archive)

Keywords: Modeling, Education, Control groups, Opinion advertising, Democracy, Affirmative action, Political campaigns, Public assistance programs, Statistical significance

(4) Huber, Gregory A. and Sanford C. Gordon. 2004. "Accountability and Coercion: Is Justice Blind when It Runs for Office?" American Journal of Political Science, 48 (2 April): 247-263.

Abstract: Through their power to sentence, trial judges exercise enormous authority in the criminal justice system. In 39 American states, these judges stand periodically for reelection. Do elections degrade their impartiality? We develop a dynamic theory of sentencing and electoral control. Judges discount the future value of retaining office relative to implementing preferred sentences. Voters are largely uninformed about judicial behavior, so even the outcome of a single publicized case can be decisive in their evaluations. Further, voters are more likely to perceive instances of underpunishment than overpunishment. Our theory predicts that elected judges will consequently become more punitive as standing for reelection approaches. Using sentencing data from 22,095 Pennsylvania criminal cases in the 1990s, we find strong evidence for this effect. Additional tests confirm the validity of our theory over alternatives. For the cases we examine, we attribute at least 1,818 to 2,705 years of incarceration to the electoral dynamic.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)

Reprinted in The Economics of Judicial Behavior. 2013. Ed. Lee Epstein. Edward Elgar: Northampton, MA.

Keywords: Criminal sentencing, Judges, Trials, Defendants, Criminal justice, Liberalism, Conservatism, Judicial elections, Voting, Prosecuting attorneys

(3) Gordon, Sanford C. and Gregory A. Huber. 2002. "Citizen Oversight and the Electoral Incentives of Criminal Prosecutors." American Journal of Political Science, 46 (2 April): 334-351.

Abstract: Popular wisdom suggests that only by securing convictions can elected prosecutors cultivate the perception that they are tough on crime. This article considers why voters might use conviction rates to evaluate prosecutors and whether justice is subverted as a consequence. Citizens lack information about individual cases and prosecutor behavior. We model voter oversight of prosecutors in light of these difficulties. Voters use the promise of reelection given observed outputs to induce prosecutors to reduce uncertainty through investigation and subsequently to punish the guilty and free the innocent. The model demonstrates that an optimal voter strategy is always to reelect prosecutors who obtain convictions. Most importantly, even voters who most fear wrongful convictions should reward success at trial. Voter attitudes and beliefs instead influence rewards for cases concluded out of court, including plea bargains. Finally, we derive sanctions necessary to prevent prosecutors from suppressing evidence when doing so is politically tempting.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)

Keywords: Prosecuting attorneys, Defendants, Trials, Guilty verdicts, Plea bargains, Criminal justice, Voting, Criminal prosecution, Criminals, Guilt

(2) Huber, Gregory A. and Thomas J. Espenshade. 1997. "Neo-Isolationism, Balanced-Budget Conservatism, and the Fiscal Impacts of Immigrants." International Migration Review, 31 (4 Winter): 1031-1054.

Abstract: A rise in neo-isolationism in the United States has given encouragement to a new fiscal politics of immigration. Growing anti-immigrant sentiment has coalesced with forces of fiscal conservatism to make immigrants an easy target of budget cuts. Limits on legal alien access to social welfare programs that are contained in the 1996 welfare and immigration reform acts seem motivated not so much by a guiding philosophy of what it means to be a member of American society as by a desire to shrink the size of the federal government and to produce a balanced budget. Even more than in the past, the consequence of a shrinking welfare state is to metamorphose legal immigrants from public charges to windfall gains for the federal treasury.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)

Keywords: Immigration policy, Citizenship, Public assistance programs, Welfare reform, International migration, Refugees, Illegal immigration, Social services

(1) Espenshade, Thomas J., Jessica L. Baraka, and Gregory A. Huber. 1997. "Implications of the 1996 Welfare and Immigration Reform Acts for US Immigration." Population and Development Review, Vol. 23 (4 Dec.): 769-801.

Abstract: Major changes in noncitizen eligibility for welfare and in US immigration policy are contained in two pieces of federal legislation signed into law in 1996. The first, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, reforms the entitlement policy for poor families and imposes new limits on alien access to welfare benefits and other social services. The second, the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, strengthens efforts to combat illegal immigration and creates higher standards of financial self-sufficiency for the admission of sponsored legal immigrants. The authors suggest that these reforms will produce unintended, and possibly undesirable, consequences. They argue in particular that the 1996 reform measures, instead of preserving legal immigration and discouraging illegal immigration, are more likely to reduce the former and expand incentives for the latter. In addition the Personal Responsibility Act creates added pressures for eligible legal immigrants to apply for US citizenship. To the extent that higher rates of naturalization were unanticipated by reformers of welfare policy, the actual cost savings attributable to reduced benefits for noncitizens will be smaller than expected.

Links: (Download Paper: JSTOR)

Keywords: Public assistance programs, Immigration policy, Illegal immigration, Welfare reform, Refugees, Entitlement programs, Naturalization, Border protection