Starting in the 1980s, U.S. voters began dividing on the abortion issue into pro-life Republicans and pro-choice Democrats. This study shows that the predominant direction of causality was that abortion opinion caused changes in partisanship rather than the reverse, which then had downstream consequences for vote choice. Working with the Youth Parent Socialization Panel Study, I show that those taking pro-choice and pro-life positions in 1982 subsequently changed their party identification to align with those views. By contrast, Democrats and Republicans, as of 1982, did not realign their abortion positions. The partisan conversions were concentrated among ideologically engaged (IE) respondents, especially IE women, who found themselves out of step with their party on abortion. By triggering changes in party identification, panelists' abortion stances as early as 1982 influenced their vote choices downstream in the 1996 presidential election. Thus, issue-based realignment is viewed here in real time with data from a panel study.

List of Figures and Tables Preface Credits for Figures and Tables CHAPTER 1 Public Opinion in Democratic Societies 1-1 Public Opinion and Government 1-2 Public Opinion Defined 1-3 The Evolution of the Public Opinion Poll 1-4 The Modern Public Opinion Poll and Its Political Consequences 1-5 Sources of Information on Public Opinion 1-6 Linkage Models Between Public Opinion and Public Policies 1-7 Plan of This Book CHAPTER 2 Polling: The Scientific Assessment of Public Opinion 2-1 Sampling 2-2 Question Wording 2-3 The Misuse of Surveys 2-4 Interpreting Scientific Surveys 2-5 Conclusion CHAPTER 3 Microlevel Opinion: The Psychology of Opinion-Holding 3-1 Political Attention and Opinion-Holding 3-2 Liberal-Conservative Ideology and the Organization of Opinions 3-3 Party Identification and the Organization of Political Opinions CHAPTER 4 Macrolevel Opinion: The Flow of Political Sentiment 4-1 Trends in Policy Opinions 4-2 General Ideological Movement 4-3 General Partisan Movement 4-4 Presidential Approval 4-5 Conclusion: What Moves Public Opinion? CHAPTER 5 Political Socialization and Political Learning 5-1 The Preadult Years: Socialization to Citizenship 5-2 The Agents of Preadult Socialization 5-3 Political Generations 5-4 The Persistence of Political Orientations 5-5 Conclusion CHAPTER 6 Public Opinion and Democratic Stability 6-1 Support for Democratic Values 6-2 Political Consensus 6-3 Political Support: Trust and Efficacy 6-4 Personality and Public Opinion 6-5 Conclusion CHAPTER 7 Group Differences in Political Opinions 7-1 Socioeconomic Class and Political Opinions 7-2 Race and Political Opinions 7-3 Age and Political Opinions 7-4 Religion and Political Opinions 7-5 Geography and Political Opinions 7-6 Gender and Political Opinions 7-7 Conclusion CHAPTER 8 The Print and Broadcast Media and Political Opinions 8-1 The Mass Media and Their Political Content 8-2 Mass Media Influence on Public Opinion 8-3 Television and Election Campaigns 8-4 Conclusion CHAPTER 9 Elections as Instruments of Popular Control 9-1 Political Campaigns and the Voter 9-2 Policy Issues and Voters 9-3 Explaining Election Outcomes 9-4 Conclusion CHAPTER 10 The Public and Its Elected Representatives 10-1 Opinion Sharing Between Policymakers and the Public 10-2 Leadership Responsiveness to Public Opinion 10-3 How Elected Officials Learn Public Opinion 10-4 Do Elected Officials Need to Follow Public Opinion? 10-5 Conclusion CHAPTER 11 Parties and Interest Groups: Mediating Institutions and Representation 11-1 Political Parties and Representation 11-2 Interest Groups and Representation CHAPTER 12 Public Opinion and the Performance of Democracy 12-1 Assessing the Impact of Public Opinion on Policy 12-2 Interpreting the Public's Role in Democracy 12-3 The Expansion of Political Participation Appendix References Index

This paper argues that estimating causal effects on US Appellate Court panels can be advanced by analyzing the data as a series of natural experiments, fully exploiting the as-if random assignment of judges to cases. As a template, this paper reanalyzes Boyd et al.'s data on sex-discrimination cases. The question is the impact on the votes by male judges from having a female judge on their panel. Leverage from as-if random assignment can be exploited only by restricting comparisons of treatments cases (in the example, female co-panelist) exclusively to control cases (all-male panels) from the same period and time period from which the treatment cases are drawn. With as-if random assignment reducing the possibility of a biased estimate, the results confirms a gender panel effect similar in size to the claim by Boyd et al. Restricting comparisons to within the same circuit and time period further advances understanding of the causal mechanism. When male or female judges side with female plaintiffs, the females are more persuasive at swaying the votes of their male co-panelists' votes.

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Donald Trump's 2016 win despite failing to carry the popular vote has raised concern that 2020 would also see a mismatch between the winner of the popular vote and the winner of the Electoral College. This paper shows how to forecast the electoral vote in 2020 taking into account the unknown popular vote and the configuration of state voting in 2016. We note that 2016 was a statistical outlier. The potential Electoral College bias was slimmer in the past and not always favoring the Republican candidate. We show that in past presidential elections, difference among states in their presidential voting is solely a function of the states' most recent presidential voting (plus new shocks); earlier history does not matter. Based on thousands of simulations, our research suggests that the bias in 2020 probably will favor Trump again but to a lesser degree than in 2016. The range of possible outcomes is sufficiently wide, however, to even include some possibility that Joseph Biden could win in the Electoral College while barely losing the popular vote.

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This chapter begins with painting a broad picture of campaigns and elections in the United States. It introduces a new element—campaign ethics—and revisits the phenomenon of the "permanent campaign". A discussion of campaigns and elections from an ethical standpoint provides standards for judging the health of the system. The permanent campaign allows us to explore the nexus between campaigning and governing and the future of both. Campaigns and elections are among the most important events in the life of a democracy. Campaigns help the citizenry come to a collective decision about who should control the levers of power in the country and elections make the use of those levers legitimate. The permanent campaign was perfected in the Bill Clinton administration and showed no signs of abating under either George W. Bush or Barack Obama. Polling is a significant aspect of the permanent campaign.