Abstract This article explores racial differences in politicians’ persistence in elections. Empirical data from California city council elections and a close election regression discontinuity show that losing an election leads to a large drop in the likelihood of rerunning for office. However, nonwhite candidates are 59% more likely than white candidates to rerun after a loss. Despite these differences in persistence, the likelihood of winning a subsequent election is similar across racial groups among those who choose to rerun. This persistence among losing nonwhite candidates helps narrow the racial representation gap in elected offices. Occupational heterogeneity analysis suggests that this difference is driven mainly by minority candidates with public or community service experience.
Abstract In this review essay, we discuss what State Politics and Policy Quarterly has taught us about racial and ethnic politics (REP). After discussing the challenges associated with studying REP, we provide three different approaches to illuminate what extant studies have taught us about REP in the context of state politics. The first approach uses traditional computational text analysis methods, while the second approach uses AI to help classify studies. Informed by themes identified using the second approach, the third approach provides a close read of studies in three categories: Racial Inequality and Institutional Constraint; Education, Immigration, and Latino Politics; and Race and Redistribution. Although we recognize what published works have taught us about REP, we also point to areas of improvement, providing a clarion call to the section to be as comfortable engaging with racism as it is engaging with race.
Political knowledge is a key resource for democratic participation. But, it is unevenly distributed. White, male, affluent, and older citizens consistently demonstrate higher levels of policy knowledge. Membership in an issue public - a group with personal stakes in particular policies - may help narrow these gaps by fostering engagement among those most affected. Using a new, representative state survey of nearly 26,000 respondents, we examine knowledge of 10 salient state policies to assess whether issue-based engagement reduces entrenched inequalities. We find large knowledge disparities across class, race, gender, and age, mirroring broader political disparities. Issue public membership boosts issue-specific knowledge for some disadvantaged groups, especially LGBT individuals and women, but not uniformly. Advantaged members of issue publics, such as white or upper-class respondents, remain better informed than their less advantaged counterparts. These findings indicate that issue publics can mitigate, but not eliminate, policy knowledge disparities.
In this field essay, we discuss the state of women and politics research in State Politics and Policy Quarterly from 2000 to 2025, and we consider directions for future research on women, gender, and state politics and policy. SPPQ has served as an outlet for research on intersectionality, gendered public policy, and women in state political institutions, although most foundational work on women and state politics has occurred outside of this flagship journal for state politics. We argue that work on women's mass political behavior in the states, further and more thoughtful assessments concerning the relationship between sex and gender, and expansion of our approaches to intersectionality are key areas for expansion in the journal. We hope that more scholars of women and state politics will submit manuscripts to SPPQ in order to understand further gendered politics and policy in the states from multiple perspectives.
This article examines how the design architecture of Medicaid work requirements shapes procedural attrition across the enrollment lifecycle. Using publicly available data from Arkansas and Georgia, the only two states to have operationalized work requirements prior to the federal mandate in H.R. 1 (P.L. 119-21), the analysis compares attrition patterns across two structurally distinct designs. Arkansas imposed requirements as a maintenance condition on enrolled populations, concentrating attrition at reporting checkpoints. Georgia imposed them as both an entry and maintenance condition, with attrition concentrated at the pre-application stage. The article extends Herd and Moynihan's administrative burden framework. It proposes that when administrative burden becomes the dominant determinant of program participation, burden shifts from implementation friction to a rationing mechanism that allocates coverage based on administrative capacity rather than statutory criteria. The article evaluates three observable implications of this framework. Specifically, reporting frequency shapes procedural disenrollment, point of imposition determines where attrition concentrates, and targeted burden reduction produces only partial enrollment gains when exclusion is embedded across multiple design features. Comparative evidence supports H2 and is consistent with H1. Georgia's 2025 burden-reduction reforms provide preliminary directional evidence relevant to H3, with confirmatory testing requiring post-reform data not yet available. The findings carry direct implications for the 41 expansion states required to implement work requirements by January 2027, where variation in administrative design will systematically shape coverage outcomes.
