Publications

The Segmented Electorate: Presidential Campaigns and Their Consequences in an Information Age

Scott D. McClurg et al. — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 12:56:22 PDT

It is common to think of presidential elections as long campaigns waged by two warring powers, each competing for the hearts-and-minds of American voters. Yet this metaphor masks considerable variation in how voters experience the campaign in the run-up-to Election Day. We focus on how the rise of candidate-centered campaigns in has created a situation in which some voters experience an avalanche of information from the campaigns and others hear next to nothing. We argue that when we carefully consider which voters should be most responsive to campaign information, that the pattern of segmentation that exists does not advance a nation-wide campaign about the health of American politics.

Socia Networks and Political Participation: The Role of Social Interaction in Explaining Political Participation

Scott D. McClurg — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:01:57 PST

The argument advanced in this paper is that interaction in social networks has a strong, though often overlooked, influence on the individual propensity to participate in politics. Specifically, I argue that social interaction creates opportunities for individuals to gather information about politics that allow them to live beyond personal resource constraints, thereby supporting the political activity of many people. Using relational data from the South Bend election survey, this paper provides evidence that the effect of social interaction on participation is contingent on the amount of political discussion that occurs in social networks. Additional analysis shows the substantive and theoretical importance of such interaction by explaining how it is distinct from the effect of social group memberships and how it enhances the effect of individual education on the probability of participation. This key contribution of this paper is to show that models of political participation that do not account for informal social interaction will be theoretically underspecified. It also shows that such interactions play a crucial role in explicating the role of other factors that predict participation, such as group membership and individual resources.

Living in a Battleground: Presidential Campaigns and Fundamental Predictors of Vote Choice

Scott D. McClurg et al. — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:01:56 PST

Little evidence links the strategic decisions of campaigns to individual-level voting behavior. Yet for campaigns to matter in the way that experts argue, exposure to campaigns must also matter so there should be observable differences in the structure of vote choice between battleground and non-battleground states. Combining presidential campaign data with the Senate Election Study, we show that intense campaigning can activate factors like race, ideology, partisanship, and presidential approval. We find that the campaigns affected different variables in 1988 than in 1992, which we hypothesize is the consequence of campaign messages.

What Do They Know and When Do They Know It? An Examination of Citizen Awareness of Context

Brady Baybeck — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 07:01:39 PST

The connection between the individual and her aggregate geographic environment, usually defined as the neighborhood, is a key component of the contextual model of social influence. However, there is substantial anecdotal evidence that people have very little knowledge or connection to their neighborhood. In this paper we explore the connection by using data from the South Bend Study (Huckfeldt and Sprague 1985) to answer two questions. What do people know about objective conditions of their neighborhoods? Second, do these conditions influence perceptions people have of their neighborhoods? We find that (a) people have a good deal of knowledge about the objective conditions, and (b) even after controlling for individual factors, these conditions positively influence how people perceive their status within the neighborhood. In short, there is a connection, albeit an imperfect one, between the individual and the geographic context.

A Neo-Institutional Explanation of State Supreme Court Responses in Search and Seizure Cases*

Scott A. Comparato et al. — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:43:11 PST

To better understand the relationship between the U.S. Supreme Court and state supreme courts, we examine how Supreme Court precedent affects state supreme court decision making. Examining state supreme court decisions in search and seizure cases decided by the Supreme Court between 1983 and 1993, we specifically test hypotheses about how state judicial context and Supreme Court behavior influences when the lower court is likely to be affected by Supreme Court precedent. We find that there is substantial variation in the responses to precedent by state supreme courts. We find that precedent has a substantial influence on the behavior of state supreme court justices, but judicial ideology and the level of historical conflict between the Supreme Court and the state supreme court also influence the dissemination of precedent to the states. Most interesting, the effect of judicial

Indirect Mobilization: The Social Consequences of Party Contacts in an Election Campaign

Scott D. McClurg — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:35:03 PST

Although direct contacts between campaigns and individuals are a central part of the process that encourages political participation, it is often argued that their effects extend beyond the initial contact via a secondary process of indirect mobilization. This paper puts that argument to the test by investigating possible connections between direct party contacts and political mobilization in social networks. The results show that the primary social consequence of party contacts is to alter the substance, but not the volume, of politically oriented conversations that occur in social networks. These conversations in turn increase the salience of the campaign in the electorate but have only a mild effect on levels of campaign involvement. Although political mobilization does influence social communication, its effect on political involvement is restricted to socially based forms of involvement under limited conditions.

Methodological Challenges in the Study of Social Communication

Scott D. McClurg — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 09:00:09 PST

This chapter examines how the questions and concepts used in social communications research affect data collection. It begins by offering conceptual definitions of two types of social environments – networks and contexts – that are used to define the boundaries of the field and to highlight its diversity. From this starting point, the implications of these definitions for three methodological issues are discussed: 1) choosing an environmental unit of analysis, 2) selecting cases of social environments for inclusion in a study, and 3) establishing causality. The organizing theme of this chapter is that social communications research is best served by focusing on deep measurement of social environments. Although this advice has the consequence of slowing the development of a unified research program, it prioritizes better measurement and conceptual development that will place the subfield on solid footing.