Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the impact of newspaper endorsements of state ballot questions. It compares endorsements from a state's two major newspapers on ballot referenda over several decades and assesses their effects on voting behavior.

Publication Type: Paper/Poster Proposal
Abstract: In Ohio, the so-called ‘Epicenter’ of the 2004 national elections, did the order in which presidential candidate names were read matter in the levels of support they received in telephone surveys?
Researchers conducting pre-election surveys by telephone often administer multiple forms of trial heat questions that rotate the order in which candidate names are presented. In Ohio, the University of Cincinnati’s Ohio Poll uses this practice because
1) codified directives mandate rotation of candidate order on Election Day ballots and 2) research has shown that formulating research designs sensitive to the potential for response order effects improves pre-election measures of voter preferences (see, e.g. Rademacher and Smith, 2001; Visser et al. 2000; Miller and Krosnick 1998).
In this research, we examine whether ballot order impacted voter preference distributions in telephone surveys conducted in a state widely portrayed as one of the key battlegrounds in the race for the presidency. During the 2004 election campaign the University of Cincinnati’s Institute for Policy Research conducted telephone surveys designed to measure voter preferences in statewide races for president and U. S. Senate. These surveys included numerous ballot order experiments.
While the 2004 race for the presidency in Ohio was highly competitive, and received a great deal of campaign and media attention, the race for U.S. Senate was not competitive, and was relegated to the equivalent of a “down-ticket” race as a result. Analyses will examine the impact ballot order had on reported vote preferences in these two contests for president and U.S. Senate. In addition, we will also report the results of ballot order experiments in various types of races, including for president and U.S. Senate, conducted using the Ohio Poll in 2000 and 2002.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the conditions under which and reasons why citizens vote for violent rather than moderate ethno-nationalist political parties in divided.democracies. I draw upon an in-depth analysis of electoral support for the Sinn Fein party in Northern Ireland during the course of the Troubles (1969-2005). Using two new datasets for the 101 DEA and 26 LGD electoral districts, I find that a community's experience of violence in the period preceding the election is significantly and positively associated with Sinn Fein performance within the Nationalist party bloc.I Moreover, this relationship holds when controlling for economic grievances (e.g. Catholic unemployment rate) across districts and when looking within districts over time.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Scholars have long been interested in the secondary effects associated with direct democracy, most notably a possible positive effect on turnout. Over the past few elections, politicians and media pundits have come to share this interest, especially with regards to social issue ballot measures, such as those relating to same-sex marriage or abortion. Empirical evidence for whether such a relationship exists is mixed, which can be attributed to a theoretical ambiguity about the best way to measure the direct democracy process. Previous measures of the process have both largely neglected the importance of awareness and focused exclusively on initiatives, capturing only a portion of the legislating process available to voters at the polls. This paper addresses these theoretical deficiencies. Employing the Current Population Survey November Voting and Registration Supplement from the past five elections, a unique data set which identifies the issue content of ballot measures, and hierarchical generalized linear modeling to account for the multilevel nature of the data, I find that the number of social issue measures present on the ballot had a positive impact on turnout during the past three midterm elections and one of the past two presidential elections. In contrast, I find that the total number of propositions on the ballot is only rarely associated with an increase in turnout. I discuss the implications of these findings in the conclusion.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Few attempts to mobilize the political participation of minority groups are as innovative—or controversial—as the enfranchisement of resident aliens. Recently, several American cities have sought to empower noncitizens to participate in municipal elections. This practice of enfranchising resident aliens lies at the heart of a theoretical debate among political scientists who study the institutions of sovereignty and citizenship. A number of such scholars cite this practice as evidence of the erosion of both the historical link between the nation and state. They argue that global norms of democracy and human rights, international governmental and nongovernmental organizations, and even international diplomacy cause states to offer the franchise to resident aliens. This is the "transnational" thesis. By contrast, “nationalist” scholars argue that because these voting rights often are limited, they only reinforce the link between the nation and state. They cite the importance of interest group politics, cultural understandings of citizenship, institutional venue, and partisan variables. Paradoxically, these local, national and global pressures arguably have transformed how noncitizens articulate their interests at the urban level. This paper argues the debate between nationalist and transnationalist scholars speaks to the larger literature on global cities. The paper illustrates this by exploring the experiences of two American and two European cities. I conclude that the different experiences of these cities reflect the inherent tensions between local pressures to maintain quality institutions and political legitimacy on the one hand, and shared national historical conceptions of the meaning and content of citizenship on the other.

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