Across Europe, the populist far-right has seen increasing electoral success, often by criticizing political elites as disconnected, failed, and inherently corrupt. Yet for all their emphasis on "cleaning up politics," populist far-right parties are not free from scandal. However, common wisdom suggests that far-right parties do not appear to face the same electoral or reputational costs of non-populist politicians and parties. In this experimental project, we examine the relationship between party family and scandal on party image. We find evidence that, by contrast, extreme parties are not immune from the reputational effects of scandals, and that parties' images are hurt when parties misbehave.

We draw globally on a major election forecasting tool, political economy models. Vote intention polls in pre-election public surveys are a widely known approach; however, the lesser-known political economy models take a different scientific tack, relying on regression analysis and voting theory, particularly the force of "fundamentals."We begin our discussion with two advanced industrial democracies, the US and UK. We then examine two less frequently forecasted cases, Mexico and Ghana, to highlight the potential for political-economic forecasting and the challenges faced. In evaluating the performance of political economy models, we argue for their accuracy but do not neglect lead time, parsimony, and transparency. Furthermore, we suggest how the political economic approach can be adapted to the changing landscape that democratic electorates face. (c) 2025 International Institute of Forecasters. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.

Political efficacy—the belief in one’s ability to influence political outcomes—is an impactful predictor of support for democracy and political participation. However, the increasing rise of resentment politics—the belief that some groups are getting more than their fair share—may have dramatic consequences on citizens’ efficacy. Using the American National Election Study, we find resentful voters decrease their sense of external efficacy, that is, their belief that someone like them can influence the system. These effects are particularly concentrated among white respondents. However, partisanship conditions the impact of resentment for internal efficacy, that is, their belief that they understand the political system sufficiently to effectively participate. For Republicans, resentment increases their internal efficacy, while Democratic voters see a decline in their beliefs about their own comprehension of the political system. These findings have important implications for understanding the multifaceted impacts of resentment politics on political attitudes and support for democratic systems.

The competence, integrity, and experience of political candidates, i.e., their character valence, play an important role in voter decision-making. As character valence reflects the ability of a candidate to govern effectively and honestly - traits all voters generally value regardless of partisanship - candidates with higher valence should have an advantage in elections, yet 2016 saw candidates struggle to capitalize on their valence. Further, rhetoric in 2016 focused on the politics of resentment, the idea some groups were getting more than they deserve. We suspect the increased saliency of resentment in political campaigns affects valence evaluations of candidates, particularly when the candidates are a member of groups outside of power in our political system, including racial and ethnic minorities and women. Leveraging data from the American National Election Study, we find individuals with higher levels of resentment will more negatively assess the valence of candidates associated with the non-dominant groups, even among co-partisans, overriding their partisan tendency to view their candidate's traits more favorably. These results suggest if resentment renders us unable to assess quality with any objectivity, candidates with less experience, acumen, and integrity may ride a wave of resentment sweeping more competent challengers away.

Election forecasting has become the centerpiece of media coverage of elections. Yet for all the attention paid to forecasting, public understanding remains low and increasingly distrustful. We can improve citizen knowledge and comprehension and increase student engagement by giving students the opportunity to develop their own election forecast. However, the complex methodology associated with forecasting provides barriers for courses that are not methodologically oriented. In this paper I outline a strategy on how to teach forecasting and have students produce their own without the need of using complex quantitative methods. Students engage in qualitative assessment of quantitative data and develop their own forecast. This pedagogical approach gives students the hands-on learning they need to understand the intuition behind forecasting and increases their comprehension of models of elections and voting behavior.

Social scientific research is an engaging and important endeavor and one that many of us want to share with our students. Yet many students shy away from quantitative research, thinking it is beyond them. I argue that the key to teaching research design and methods is to give students the opportunity to complete research themselves. However, statistical software can make research seem more distant and unapproachable. In this chapter, I discuss how my strategy for teaching undergraduate research evolved from emphasis on methodology to an emphasis on the research process. I then discuss how I have used online analysis tools to allow students to develop and complete their own research projects and what I have learned in the process.

Abstract Objective This study investigates the degree to which social connections and social context shape attitudes and behaviors surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. Methods In April and August 2020, we surveyed Americans about their social context and asked a range of questions related to the coronavirus and social distancing. Results Social crowding, social networks, and social context are related to support for social distancing policies and compliance with those policies. Conclusion The coronavirus pandemic created hardships;hardships made more difficult by the inability to physically interact with extended family and friends and the inability to find space away from immediate family. This research suggests that understanding compliance with public policies requires attention to interpersonal connections.

Citizens, especially in the aggregate, have historically been excellent election forecasters. This is, in part, due to discussing and hearing about the voting intentions of those around them, i.e., learning from their social networks. However, many people interact with networks that are ideological “echo chambers” made up of only likeminded voters. Does this absence of political disagreement decrease the ability of citizens to accurately predict an election result? Using a survey module from the 2015 Canadian Local Parliament Project, we examine how citizens living in partisan echo chambers fare at forecasting at the riding and parliamentary level and find that the reliability of echo chamber dwellers’ forecasts declines relative to those in more diverse environs. Our findings suggest that the role played by partisan composition of social networks is critical to understanding the accuracy and confidence of citizen electoral forecasts.

The United States has the highest number of COVID-19 cases, yet many Americans have responded indifferently toward policies designed to combat the spread of the virus. While nearly all 50 states have implemented some type of stay-at-home policy to encourage social distancing, there has been high variation in the degree of compliance. We argue that this variance is partly driven by gender resentment. Gender resentment reduces trust in female political leaders and thus decreases compliance with government policy and recommendations. Using data from SafeGraph and the 2016 American National Election Study, we demonstrate that the effect of stay-at-home policies on social distancing is reduced when gender resentment increases in states with female leaders. However, when gender resentment is low, there is no difference in the effect of policies on behavior. This research has important implications for understanding unseen barriers that can mediate the efficacy of female political leaders.

When casting a split-ticket ballot, voters in established democracies have strong political predispositions and electoral experience that influence their decision. However, voters in a new democracy, lacking long-term party attachment and experience with democracy, may instead be informed and motivated by their social networks. Using the 1990 Cross-National Election Project German Unification study, I examine which factors predict split-ticket voting for East and West Germans. I find that political disagreement within a social network is more influential for East Germans, while partisan predispositions, particularly party supporter type, play a greater role for West Germans. These findings indicate that, in absence of competition between long-term partisanship and democratic experience, network characteristics may have a profound impact on political decision-making.

Studies of citizens' satisfaction with democracy have established a connection between satisfaction and how well those citizens' preferred parties perform in elections. Yet, the question remains whether 'winners' and 'losers' respond to the same system- and party-level factors when evaluating their political satisfaction. We build on extant literature to consider citizen satisfaction with democracy from the perspective of character valence. Using the Mannheim Eurobarometer trend file and content analysis-based data on parties' character valence, we find that both winners' and losers' satisfaction with the political system is affected by parties' character valence, but in differing (and somewhat surprising) ways. We find that winners respond to improvements in the character valence of opposition parties, whereas losers demonstrate greater concern with the valence of governing parties.

In November 2018, Missouri citizens will vote on Amendment 1, also known as Clean Missouri. Clean Missouri focuses on ethics and political reform of the Missouri State Legislature, in the areas of lobbying, campaign finance, public records, and redistricting. This article briefly reviews the proposals of Amendment 1 and pays special attention to the issues of redistricting in Missouri. It places Missouri's current redistricting system into context, offers an evaluation of the current system, and estimates the potential effects of the newly proposed redistricting system on political outcomes in Missouri.

Most citizens correctly forecast which party will win a given election, and such forecasts usually have a higher level of accuracy than voter intention polls. How do citizens do it? We argue that social networks are a big part of the answer: much of what we know as citizens comes from our interactions with others. Previous research has considered only indirect characteristics of social networks when analyzing why citizens are good forecasters. We use a unique German survey and consider direct measures of social networks in order to explore their role in election forecasting. We find that three network characteristics - size, political composition, and frequency of political discussion - are among the most important variables when predicting the accuracy of citizens' election forecasts. (C) 2017 International Institute of Forecasters. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Interpersonal social networks play a critical role in increasing turnout through voter cooperation and coordination. However, different contexts and institutions can inhibit this type of coordination by increasing voter uncertainty. We examine one mechanism by which third party entry in plurality voting systems might decrease turnout by increasing voter confusion about the political preferences of their fellow citizens. We extend the Fowler Turnout in a Small World model [18], providing theoretical evidence that voters may be disincentivized to turn out under three party competition in single member district plurality systems. Finally, we support our theoretical work with an examination of turnout in modern British elections, which provides empirical support for our theoretical findings.

In recent studies, scholars have highlighted factors that influence citizen satisfaction with democracy, with particular emphasis on the role played by the institutional features of political systems, and ideology. This article presents the first empirical study of whether changes in important party characteristics can affect individuals' satisfaction with democracy. Using a measure of parties' character-valence derived from content analysis of news reports, evidence is presented that when governing parties' images decline with respect to important valence-related attributes such as competence, unity and integrity, then citizen satisfaction with democracy similarly declines. However, this relationship is conditional on the performance of opposition parties. These findings are relevant to studies of regime support, political representation, democratic accountability and voter behaviour.

Previous empirical research has found evidence suggesting that the character-based valence attributes of parties, such as competence and integrity, can have notable effects of levels of electoral support (Clark, 2009; Mondak, 1995). A related strand of literature analyzes the importance of parties’ policy positions. In this study, we bring together research on valence and party dispersion to examine whether the ideological dispersion of parties in a party system mediates the electoral impact of valence. We perform empirical analyses covering nine Western European countries over the period 1976 to 2003, and test the hypothesis that when parties are more ideologically proximate to the mean voter position, character-based valence attributes will be of greater significance in determining parties’ electoral fortunes. Surprisingly, we find no support for this hypothesis. Instead, our analyses suggest that the more ideologically dispersed parties are, the more likely it is that character-based valence attributes will affect parties’ vote shares.

Earlier research has concluded that European citizens do not update their Left–Right policy preferences or their party attachments in response to the content of parties’ election manifestos – i.e. partisan sorting is not observed in the mass public in response to shifts in the Left–Right tone of these manifestos. Here we extend this research to analyse whether we observe partisan sorting patterns that correspond with political experts’ perceptions of parties’ Left–Right policy shifts. Given that these experts plausibly consider all pertinent information when estimating parties’ Left–Right orientations – including party elites’ speeches, elite interviews, coalition behaviour, and legislative voting patterns – such a finding would imply that citizens do weigh the wider informational environment when updating their Left–Right orientations and their party support, even if they do not attach great weight to the parties’ policy manifestos. Our analyses provide support for this hypothesis with respect to niche parties, i.e. green, communist, and radical right parties, but not for mainstream parties.

During the 1980s and the 1990s, the elites of the two largest Dutch parties converged dramatically in debates on income redistribution, nuclear power and the overall Left–Right dimension, paving the way for the Dutch party system's polarization on immigration and cultural issues. Did the Dutch mass public depolarize along with party elites, and, if so, was this mass-level depolarization confined to affluent, educated, politically engaged citizens? Analysis of Dutch Parliamentary Election Study respondents’ policy beliefs and partisan loyalties in 1986–98 shows that the mass public depolarized during this period, and that this extended equally throughout the electorate. These conclusions mirror previous findings on Britain, but differ from those on the United States, and have important implications for political representation and for parties’ election strategies.