A growing literature suggests that individuals' populist attitudes are key drivers of voting for both left-wing and right-wing populist parties. However, in contrast to these observational studies, results from recent conjoint experiments suggest that the effect of 'thin' populist attitudes (e.g. support for referendums, distrust of elites) is overstated and that populist forces' 'host' ideology (e.g. their anti-immigration or anti-globalisation positions) drive support. Turning to the case of Germany, featuring both electorally successful left-wing and right-wing populist parties, we thus reevaluate why voters support these parties. We use a new method that allows us to estimate individual-level, revealed preferences from people's choices in conjoint experiments, which allows us to compare the effects of expressed attitudes measured through standard survey scales to revealed preferences measured from conjoint tasks. Results show that support for the populist Alternative f & uuml;r Deutschland and Die Linke is not driven by voters' revealed thin populist preferences but rather by revealed issue preferences. Both parties primarily benefit from their distinct policy positions rather than their 'thin' populist ideology.

Affective polarization-that is, personal dislike and distrust between Democrats and Republicans-is argued to arise, at least in part, from fewer cross-cutting ties that bridge Democrats and Republicans. We argue that this phenomenon might be specifically relevant to non-Latino white Americans, but less so to Latinos who form a politically diverse group with strong social ties that unite them. Across six years of American National Election Studies data and original survey data from twelve different states across the country, we first show that cross-cutting group memberships predict warmer out-party affect. We then show, across our multiple datasets, that Latinos hold more cross-cutting ties than do non-Latino whites. Further, our data reveal that Latinos consistently hold warmer views of the out-party. Finally, we show with novel survey data that Latinos are especially warm toward out-partisans from within the Latino community. We conclude that affective polarization is less prevalent among Latino Americans who make up the fastest-growing proportion of the American electorate. More broadly, we argue that political behavior among white Americans should not be generalized across ethnic groups without considering unique characteristics of each group.

Much of the contemporary literature on populism focuses on its status as a "thin" ideology comprising three key components: people-centrism, anti-elitism, and anti-pluralism. Populist politicians pair this "thin" ideology with extreme positions on policy issues such as immigration or taxation (referred to as "host" or "thick" ideologies). A recent study using German samples leveraged conjoint experiments to disentangle the effects of these appeals on vote choice. The results not only showed that extreme host-ideological positions mattered more than so-called "thin" populist appeals, but also that effects of populist appeals were nearly identical among populist and non-populist voters. Our replication in the US context reaffirms both the importance of host-ideological positions and the lack of heterogeneous effects by voters' "thin" populist attitudes. Furthermore, by uncovering some divergence from the German case (e.g. anti-elite appeals trumping people-centric appeals), we highlight the need to experimentally examine the effects of populism's constituent components across contexts.

Recent scholarship has documented changing norms toward political tolerance and an increase in intolerant beliefs in the United States. Descriptive norm theory attributes attitudinal and behavioral changes to beliefs about how we perceive other people think and act. Applied to political tolerance, increasing the perception that society is more or less tolerant should result in corresponding changes among individuals. Neglected from this discussion, however, is the distinction between norms that are applied universally and norms that are applied to specific targets. Four studies show mixed support for descriptive norm theory with norms altering individual tolerance judgments mostly when applied universally. Norms aimed at a particularistic group fail to change tolerance judgments suggesting an important limitation to norm influence. Contrary to expectations, we uncover a reversal effect among Democrats whereby exposure to universalistic norms of intolerance leads to higher levels of tolerance.

Individuals in the United States appear increasingly willing to support and justify political violence. This paper therefore examines whether making partisan identities salient increases support for political violence. We embed priming manipulations in a sample of roughly 850 U.S. adults to investigate whether activating positive partisan identity, negative partisan identity, instrumental partisan identity, and American national identity might lead to differences in reported support for political violence. While we uncover no effects of priming various identities on support for political violence, we replicate and extend previous research on its correlates. Specifically, we demonstrate how various measures of partisan identity strength as well as negative personality traits are correlated with acceptance of political violence.

A growing body of work adopts a “thin” ideology conception of populism, which attributes populist parties’ electoral success to anti-elite and people-centric appeals that resonate with voters holding populist attitudes. A second tradition, however, has attributed the success of populist parties to particular “thick” or “host” ideologies, such as anti-immigration, anti-globalization, or pro-redistribution positions. This creates a need to unpack which exact components of thin and/or thick populist ideology attract voters to these parties. We address this question by leveraging conjoint survey experiments that allow us to causally identify the effects of several thin and thick populist attributes on vote choice. Examining the case of Germany, results from experiments embedded in two high-quality panel surveys demonstrate that populist anti-immigration and pro-redistribution positions as well as people-centric political priorities are the most vote-maximizing components of populist ideology. In contrast, anti-elite priorities as well as Eurosceptic and anti-globalization positions do not boost support, not even among voters with strong populist attitudes. Our findings also call into question conventional wisdom about the interplay between supply and demand in the electoral marketplace. Surprisingly, populist voters, in general, are not significantly more attracted to candidates who advocate populist priorities than non-populist voters.

What actions do citizens believe are appropriate to contest electoral outcomes? We test a theory of “winner and loser effects,” where election outcomes affect support for behaviors asso- ciated with contesting an election, including criticizing the election, protests, symbolic speech, ballot recounts, and litigation. Using data from the 2020 Western States Survey, we explore differences in citizen support for different modes of electoral contestation before and after the 2020 election. We find that support for electoral contestation behaviors changes, depending upon whether one’s preferred candidate wins or loses the election. In the days following the 2020 election, Trump voters became more supportive of electoral contestation; Biden voters, on the other hand, became less supportive. Our findings shed light on the aftermath of the 2020 election and expand the scope of “winner effects” to a new outcome—electoral contestation. Ultimately, our findings point to the fragility of the public’s commitment to democratic ideals.

This study explores the antecedents of public support for government surveillance of the private electronic communications and internet browsing of American citizens. The National Security Agency whistleblower, Edward Snowden, famously hoped that uncovering surveillance by the state would create awareness of those practices that would be sufficient to induce public opposition. Other theories suggest that support for these policies might be driven by perceptions of terrorist threat or personal risk of surveillance. We suspect, however, that most citizens do not imagine their own privacy rights to be at risk due to government surveillance, but instead believe members of other groups will be targeted. Therefore, we hypothesize that empathy toward vulnerable outgroups should strongly dampen enthusiasm for surveillance, above and beyond awareness and personal concerns and interests. A nationally representative survey finds knowledge about government surveillance to be higher than many presume, but variation in knowledge or personal interests are largely uncorrelated with support. As hypothesized, empathy for outgroups strongly predicts opposition to these policies, above and beyond a host of other factors. Two experiments further corroborate the result: Outgroup empathy, not exposure to information about actual surveillance practices, boosts public opposition.

Cities face numerous environmental challenges. Local governments need the public's support to tackle these problems, and scholars and practitioners have suggested that framing initiatives around resilience, as opposed to sustainability, reducing vulnerability, or adaptation, may increase public support for local action. Resilience, they argue, has a better social connotation, is more positive, and less polarizing than related concepts. Empirical evidence supporting these claims is lacking. In three online survey experiments, we test whether the public is more likely to support policies when they are framed in terms of "resilience." We also examine public conceptualizations of these different terms and whether resilience has a more positive connotation. We find significant differences in policy support, perceived importance, and interpretations of the concepts. The study confirms that framing affects policy support, but complicates claims that resilience is inherently more appealing. These findings have implications for urban research and policymaking.

Following racially charged events, individuals often diverge in perceptions of what happened and how justice should be served. Examining data gathered shortly after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri alongside reactions to a novel officer-involved shooting, we unpack the processes by which racial divisions emerge. Even in a controlled information environment, white Americans preferred information that supported claims of a justified shooting. Conversely, Black Americans preferred information that implied that the officer behaved inappropriately. These differences stemmed from two distinct processes: we find some evidence for a form of race-based motivated reasoning and strong evidence for belief updating based on racially distinct priors. Differences in summary judgments were larger when individuals identified strongly with their racial group or when expectations about the typical behaviors of Black Americans and police diverged. The findings elucidate processes whereby individuals in different social groups come to accept differing narratives about contentious events.

ABSTRACT In 2017, the American Political Science Association (APSA) Committee on the Status of Graduate Students in the Profession launched an initiative to lower the cost of Division (i.e., organized section) membership for students to promote graduate students’ professional development and to advance Division interests. This article assesses the effect of this intervention on Division membership. Using APSA membership data, we find that almost two thirds of Divisions that charged fees in 2017 reduced or eliminated student fees between 2017 and 2019, nearly halving the average student dues (i.e., from $11.57 in 2017 to $5.84 in 2019). As a result, average student membership increased by more than 300% in Divisions that reduced fees (i.e., from 79.5 in 2017 to 248.7 in 2019), compared to a marginal 30% increase in those that did not reduce fees. These outcomes of the initiative support additional efforts to reduce the costs of APSA participation for graduate students.

There is a popular perception that politics is increasingly permeating the everyday lives of Americans. Ostensibly non-political objects and activities are becoming "partisan," and there is accordingly talk of a cultural divide between Latte-drinking, Volvo-driving Liberals and NASCAR-watching, truck-driving Conservatives. This study examines the extent to which this perception is accurate. We first find that survey respondents have no trouble assigning partisan leaning to non-political activities and objects. We then explore whether voters use such non-political objects as heuristics in candidate evaluations. We show that exposure to images of candidates featuring such objects can affect perceptions of candidates' partisanship, but that these cues only very rarely shift perceptions in the face of clear policy information. These findings have important implications for understanding the way that citizens evaluate politics in changing political and media environments.

The rise of global private environmental governance has inspired substantial research assessing whether organizations like the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) are legitimate. These organizations address global challenges and help overcome collective action problems, but public opposition can severely curb their effectiveness. Yet, we do not know whether the public supports such organizations and perceives them as legitimate. This article draws on diverse political science literatures to outline why a focus on public opinion is important. The article tests two competing arguments explaining potential opposition toward organizations like the ISO and the FSC: accounts centered on the role of sincere preferences over the legitimate locus of authority and on the influence of domestic elite rhetoric. Results suggest that public opinion is generally positive and that elite rhetoric about a potential democratic deficit rather than simple information about the bodies’ governance structures decreases favorability.

A large body of research shows exposure to racialized media and racist campaign communication can increase the likelihood that racial attitudes influence Americans’ subsequent political evaluations. Recent political trends, however, suggest existing models may no longer adequately explain the effects of racial and racist messages among whites and non-whites alike. Of particular importance for this question is whether implicitly racial messages still prime white Americans’ racial attitudes. Additional questions considered in this chapter include the following. Do classic theories of racial priming apply to political messages about other racial, ethnic, and religious minority groups? Who is most susceptible to racial priming? When should researchers measure racial attitudes in survey experiments? How can we design racial messages that are implicit? And do identity-based appeals and attacks commonly used today still prime ethno-racial identity attachments? We synthesize debates in the extant research on racial priming, explain why experiments are the best approach for measuring racial priming effects, discuss how to overcome several design and methodological challenges facing racial priming scholars, and then propose an agenda for future research to help address a variety of outstanding questions in this increasingly important area of scholarship. JANUARY 10, 2020 FINAL DRAFT PREPARED FOR: Advances in Experimental Political Science, Cambridge University Press, James Druckman and Donald Green, editors 1 We thank Maneesh Arora, Fabian Neuner, Diana Mutz, James Druckman, Donald Green, Yanna Krupnikov, Amber Spry, Amanda Jadidi D'Urso, and participants at the Northwestern Experimental Conference for helpful feedback on previous drafts of this chapter. All remaining errors are ours alone.

Literatures across the social sciences highlight the tendency for humans to be more attentive to negative information than to positive information. We focus here on negativity biases in news selection (NBNS) and suggest that this bias varies across individuals and contexts. We introduce a survey-based measure of NBNS which is used to explore the correlates of negative news bias in surveys in the U.S., Canada, and Sweden. We find that some respondents are more prone to NBNS than others. There is evidence of contextual effects, but panel data suggests that some of the individual-level differences persist over time. NBNS likely reflects some combination of long-term personality differences and short-term situational factors, and is systematically related to a number of economic and political attitudes.

A sizable literature finds evidence of public responsiveness to policy change, across a range of salient policy domains and countries. We have a very limited sense for what drives this aggregate-level responsiveness, however. One possibility is that individuals learn at least part of what they need to know from mass media. Work tends to emphasize failures in both media coverage and citizens, but little research explores the prevalence of relevant, accurate information in media content, or citizens’ abilities to identify and respond to that information. Using the case of defense spending in the United States, we examine both, through an automated content analysis of thirty-five years of reporting, validated by a coding exercise fielded to survey respondents. Results prompt analyses of the American National Election Study (ANES), tracing both individual-level perceptions of and preferences for defense spending change over time. These results, supplemented by aggregate analyses of the General Social Survey (GSS), illustrate how media might facilitate—but also confuse—public responsiveness.

We explore the conjecture that norms of racial rhetoric in US campaigns have shifted over the last several years. Prior work suggests that the way politicians talk about race affects the power of racial attitudes in political judgments. Racial priming theory suggests that explicit racial rhetoric—messages overtly hostile toward minorities—would be rejected. When race is cued subtly, however, the power of racial attitudes on issues is significantly enhanced. Replication attempts have recently failed. We identify two historically related shifts that lead us to expect that the effective distinction between explicit and implicit racial rhetoric has declined in recent years. Four nationally representative survey experiments strongly support our predictions: regardless of whether political messages are racially explicit or implicit, the power of racial attitudes is large and stable. Finally, many citizens recognize racially hostile content in political communications but are no longer angered or disturbed by it.

Since 2002, 26 U.S. states have passed laws that enhance restrictions on voters who intend to register and vote. Most have been sponsored by Republican legislators and passed by states with large Republican majorities. Proponents of such identification requirements argue that they are necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral system by reducing voter fraud. Many Democrats have cried foul, arguing these laws are motivated by crass partisanship at best, and racial bias at worst, because they disproportionately disenfranchise minorities. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for significant demobilization, either in the aggregate or among Democrats specifically, has thus far failed to materialize. We suspect strong emotional reactions to the public debate about these laws may mobilize Democrats, counterbalancing the disenfranchising effect. We find support for this conjecture in a nationally representative survey and an experiment where news frames about voter identification (ID) laws are carefully manipulated.

JCMS: Journal of Common Market StudiesVolume 52, Issue S1 p. 219-224 Original Article Chronology: The European Union in 2013 Fabian Guy Neuner, Fabian Guy Neuner University of MichiganSearch for more papers by this author Fabian Guy Neuner, Fabian Guy Neuner University of MichiganSearch for more papers by this author First published: 03 July 2014 https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12166Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat Volume52, IssueS1Special Issue: The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2013September 2014Pages 219-224 RelatedInformation

JCMS: Journal of Common Market StudiesVolume 51, Issue S1 p. 219-224 Original Article Chronology: The European Union in 2012 Fabian Guy Neuner, Fabian Guy Neuner University of MichiganSearch for more papers by this author Fabian Guy Neuner, Fabian Guy Neuner University of MichiganSearch for more papers by this author First published: 09 July 2013 https://doi.org/10.1111/jcms.12045Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume51, IssueS1Special Issue: The JCMS Annual Review of the European Union in 2012September 2013Pages 219-224 RelatedInformation