This U.S. election cycle has set some truly impressive benchmarks for negative campaign advertising. We had the creepy demon-wolf in sheep's clothing ad (an attack on Republican Senate primary candidate Tom Campbell in California). There was the infamous 30-second spot in Kentucky that asked this pertinent question about the state's Republican candidate for Senate: "Why did Rand Paul once tie a woman up, tell her to bow down before a false idol, and say his god was 'Aqua Buddha'?" Erika Franklin Fowler, an assistant professor of government at Wesleyan University, particularly likes the ... Read More
The Psychological Seesaw of God and Country
October 29, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The relationship between God and government is tricky terrain. Religious belief and allegiance to the state can coexist comfortably, or even overlap entirely (as in Iran). But in many instances across history, the two have been rivals, even antagonists. And why not? Newly published research suggests they serve the same psychological function. A sense of political stability provides comforting reassurance that our world is orderly and controlled. So does belief in an all-powerful deity. This puts the two in a seesaw relationship: When one goes up, the other goes down. That’s the ... Read More
How Truthy is the Twitter Torrent?
October 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Memes divide and replicate on the Internet in a way they never did through old-fashioned media or word of mouth. In a matter of mouse clicks, the government is planning death panels. The president is a Muslim. There are headless bodies in the desert, medical microchips under our skin and IRS agents are coming for our guns. None of these are true. The question is, who floated these ideas in the first place (presumably while knowing that)? And would it make you feel any better if you knew? "Right now, from your cell phone, pretty much anywhere in the world, you can just push a button and ... Read More
How Polling Places Can Affect Your Vote
August 19, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Political pundits seldom pause to ponder polling places. Unless the lines in a given location are so long they discourage voting, the question of where ballots are cast is usually ignored as irrelevant. But wonks — especially those who straddle political science and social psychology — know better. They argue the physical location of the polls not only affects how many people vote; it may also influence last-minute decisions regarding which box to mark or lever to pull. As the November election approaches, we offer some recent studies that attempt to think outside the ballot ... Read More
A Promise and a Throng Ups Voter Turnout
August 18, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Barack Obama recently e-mailed his legion of supporters — Democrats who gave up an e-mail address at some point during the 2008 campaign — to ask them to "commit" to vote in this fall's midterm elections. The president (or whoever writes the e-mails signed with his name) was, in the process, tapping into social science. Experimental research shows that when people say they intend to do something, they're more likely to actually do it. "This simple but powerful concept helped us make history in 2008, when first-time voters who made a commitment played a critical role in the election," ... Read More
New York Takes Swing at Prison Gerrymandering
August 4, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Earlier this summer, Miller-McCune highlighted a report from the NAACP Legal Defense Fund on the controversial practice of "prison-based gerrymandering." The census accounting trick — by which prisoners are tallied in the districts where they are incarcerated, not where they permanently reside — dilutes the voting power of minority communities, the Legal Defense Fund argued. The Census Bureau this year is trying for the first time to make it easier for states to adjust how they factor prison populations into redistricting. And now a third state intends to change the practice. The New ... Read More
An End Run on the Electoral College
August 3, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
The Massachusetts state Legislature last week passed a law designed to circumvent what many consider the dysfunction of the Electoral College. Under the bill, all of the state's electoral votes would go to the presidential candidate who wins the national popular vote, whether that candidate also wins the local vote in Massachusetts or not. The bill has a clever trigger mechanism — it would only go into effect if a majority of states (representing 270 electoral votes) adopt identical laws. No sane state would want to go this alone, in essence sacrificing its residents' votes to make a ... Read More
Mandatory Voting As a Cure for Extreme Partisanship?
July 7, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Political scientists will inevitably get more evidence this fall for a pattern particularly true of midterm elections: People who don't follow politics — and don't have rabid views on the most polarizing topics of the day — tend not to vote. They leave alone at the polls motivated voters with extreme views likely to elect equally extreme politicians who are, as a result, unable to work with each other. "You have a kind of reinforcement where politicians appeal to more ideologically inspired voters, who then reinforce politicians who respond to them," said William Galston, a senior ... Read More
‘Power Hungry’ Females Less Likely to Get Votes
June 9, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
Female candidates scored some high-profile victories in the latest round of primary elections, most notably in California where two former CEOs won the Republican nominations for governor and U.S. senator. Women also won the GOP nod for U.S. Senate in Nevada, held onto the Democratic U.S. Senate nomination in Arkansas, and took the Republican gubernatorial races in South Carolina and New Mexico. But as both Miller-McCune.com and National Journal recently pointed out, women are still having a tough time getting elected to office. New research suggests one reason may be the lingering ... Read More
Prison-Based Gerrymandering Dilutes Blacks’ Voting Power
June 3, 2010 • By • 3 Comments
Sixty-six percent of the inmates in the state of New York come from New York City. But 91 percent of them are incarcerated upstate, in communities where they have long been counted by the U.S. census. On paper, this means prisoners belong not to the communities from which they've come (and to which they eventually will return), but to places where they can neither vote, check out a library book or attend a local school. The counting quirk sounds like a quandary for demographers. But it also means, come gerrymandering time, that many urban black communities look smaller than they actually ... Read More
