Peter K Enns
Biographic Data
| ID | 248594 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Peter K Enns |
| GIVEN NAMES | Peter K |
| FAMILY NAME | Enns |
| SIGNATURE | ENNS P K |
| AFFILIATIONS | Cornell University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0573-1043 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 904 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 33 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2008 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 14 |
How a Seemingly Innocuous and Intuitive Methodological Choice Confused a Generation of Research on Policy Responsiveness
The finding that government policy is, “virtually unrelated to the desires of the low- and middle-income citizens” (Gilens 2005:789), is one of the most influential social science results of the last two decades. This article offers a new perspective on this finding. I show that the seemingly innocuous decision to restrict analyses to data where different income groups’ policy support differs (i.e., a preference gap exists) introduced Simpson’s p…
Issue Attention in Public Opinion Polls: Pollsters as Agenda Responders and Agenda Setters
Polling organizations, like other policy actors, must prioritize certain issues. We argue that, for normative and financial reasons, pollsters prioritize issues that are viewed as important by other institutions and the public, leading them to focus survey questions on issues that are on congressional and media agendas, and which are public priorities. We also argue that it is possible that polling issue agendas shape the issue attention of those…
Reconsidering the Relationship between Incarceration, Trust in the State, Community Engagement, and Civic Participation
Scholars have reached different conclusions about the relationship between carceral contact and community engagement and civic participation. We offer a theoretical account that aims to synthesize this work to argue that incarceration should depress trust in the state but may increase, decrease, or produce no substantial effect on community or civic engagement, leading to no overall average association. We use data from the Family History of Inca…
Understanding Biden’s Exit and the 2024 Election: The State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model
Our 2020 analysis correctly forecasted Joe Biden’s victory and the outcome of every state except Georgia. That forecast relied on economic data from 125 days prior to Election Day and presidential approval data from 104 days (or more) before the election. Since 2000, our model would have correctly forecasted the winner in 95% of all states. We updated our State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model for 2024. This article summarizes the model …
Introducing the U.S. Partisanship and Presidential Approval Dataset: Rejoinder to Berry, Fording, and Crofoot
This article concludes an exchange on developing and improving longitudinal estimates of state-level public opinion in the United States by introducing the U.S. Partisanship and Presidential Approval Dataset, which combines more than 1.1 million survey responses from 1948 to 2020 into a single harmonized “mega poll.”
A Validation and Extension of State-Level Public Policy Mood: 1956–2020
To fully understand state policy outcomes or elections in the US, we need valid over-time measures of state-level public opinion. We contribute to the research on measuring state public opinion in two ways. First, we respond to Berry, Fording, Hanson, and Crofoot’s (BFHC) critique of Enns and Koch’s measure of state policy mood. We show that when BFHC’s analysis is performed using the same states and examining annual change, it validates the Enns…
Public Responsiveness to Declining Crime Rates in the United States and England and Wales
During much of the second half of the twentieth century, public opinion in both the United States and Britain became more punitive as crime rates rose. These shifting public attitudes had a profound influence on criminal justice policies. What is less understood is how public attitudes in these countries have responded to declining crime rates since the early-1990s. To understand how the public reacts to declining crime rates, we focus on crimes …
Detecting true relationships in time series data with different orders of integration
It is fairly well-known that proper time series analysis requires that estimated equations be balanced. Numerous scholars mistake this to mean that one cannot mix orders of integration. Previous studies have clarified the distinction between equation balance and having different orders of integration, and shown that mixing orders of integration does not increase the risk of type I error when using the general error correction/autoregressive distr…
Inequality and Misperceptions of Group Concerns Threaten the Integrity and Societal Impact of Science
Racial and ethnic minority and lower-income groups are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and suffer worse health outcomes than other groups in the United States. Relative to whites and higher-income groups, racial-ethnic minority and lower-income Americans also frequently express greater concern about high-profile global environmental threats like climate change, but they are widely misperceived as being less concerned about th…
Complicating the Role of White Racial Attitudes and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the 2016 US Presidential Election
Some scholars argue that Donald Trump’s electoral college victory in 2016 was predicated on his ability to attract racially hostile white voters. Others argue that the increased relationship between whites’ racial attitudes and presidential vote choice in 2016 was because racial attitudes and partisanship had become even more aligned following the presidency of Barack Obama. Building on research that shows voters tend to update their policy posit…
Forecasting the 2020 Electoral College Winner: The State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Polls—Trends Economic Evaluations and Political Change in Chile, 1966 to 2018
Over the past half century, Chile has fluctuated wildly in terms of economic prosperity and democratic health. Using 78 surveys archived at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, we document the evolution of Chileans’ perceptions of their personal, family, and national economic conditions during major political and economic changes. The data show that prior to the Pinochet dictatorship, despite a growing economic crisis, Chileans’ percepti…
What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated: Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS)
What percentage of Americans have ever had a family member incarcerated? To answer this question, we designed the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). The survey was administered in the summer of 2018 by NORC at the University of Chicago using their AmeriSpeak Panel. It was funded by FWD.us, which released a separate report using the data. The data show that 45 percent of Americans have ever had an immediate family member incarcerated…
Privatizing Punishment: Testing Theories of Public Support for Private Prison and Immigration Detention Facilities
The transfer of authority over the supervision of inmate populations from state and federal governments to private corporations is one of the most significant contemporary developments in the criminal justice system. Yet, the controversy surrounding the private prison industry has occurred in U.S. criminal justice policy circles without any understanding of the public's preferences toward these institutions. In this article, we test several theor…
Moving forward with time series analysis
In a recent Research and Politics article, we showed that for many types of time series data, concerns about spurious relationships can be overcome by following standard procedures associated with cointegration tests and the general error correction model (GECM). Matthew Lebo and Patrick Kraft (LK) incorrectly argue that our recommended approach will lead researchers to identify false (i.e., spurious) relationships. In this article, we show how L…
Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters
Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Differe…
Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World
The rise of mass incarceration in the United States is one of the most critical outcomes of the last half-century. Incarceration Nation offers the most compelling explanation of this outcome to date. This book combines in-depth analysis of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon's presidential campaigns with sixty years of data analysis. The result is a sophisticated and highly accessible picture of the rise of mass incarceration. In contrast to conven…
Reconsidering the Middle: A Reply to Martin Gilens
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
State Policy Mood: The Importance of Over-time Dynamics
Recently, we introduced and validated annual state-level estimates of the public's policy mood and party identification from 1956 to 2010 and self-identified political ideology from 1976 to 2010. In this issue, Berry, Ringquist, Fording, and Hanson (BRFH) compare our measure of policy mood with a measure they created, and they conclude that their measure is “the best available indicator of state policy mood for researchers doing pooled cross-sect…
Relative Policy Support and Coincidental Representation
The finding that the preferences of middle-income Americans are ignored when they diverge from the preferences of the rich is one of the most widely accepted and influential conclusions in political science research today. I offer a cautionary note regarding this conclusion. I demonstrate that even on those issues for which the preferences of the wealthy and those in the middle diverge, policy ends up about where we would expect if policymakers r…
Conditional Status Quo Bias and Top Income Shares: How U.S. Political Institutions Have Benefited the Rich
This article develops and tests a model of conditional status quo bias and American inequality. We find that institutional features that bias policy outcomes toward the status quo have played a central role in the path of inequality. Using time-series analysis of top income shares during the post-Depression period, we identify the Senate as a key actor in the politics of income inequality. Our findings suggest that the supermajoritarian nature of…
The Public's Increasing Punitiveness and Its Influence on Mass Incarceration in the United States
Following more than 30 years of rising incarceration rates, the United States now imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any country in the world. Building on theories of representation and organized interest group behavior, this article argues that an increasingly punitive public has been a primary reason for this prolific expansion. To test this hypothesis, I generate a new over‐time measure of the public's support for being tough…
Public Opinion in the U.S. States: 1956 To 2010
In this article, we create, validate, and analyze new dynamic measures of state partisanship, state policy mood, and state political ideology. The measures of partisanship and policy mood begin in 1956 and the measure of ideology begins in 1976. Our approach uses the advantages of two leading techniques for measuring state public opinion—multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) and survey aggregation. The resulting estimates are based o…
Presidential Campaigns and the Fundamentals Reconsidered
The contrast between the predictability of presidential elections and the variability of early polls has come to be viewed as evidence that campaigns provide crucial information to voters. We argue that unmotivated survey respondents offering minimally acceptable answers (i.e., satisficing) offers an additional explanation for the classic conundrum of why the polls vary when the election outcome is predictable. The analysis relies on data from th…
The Swing Justice
In the Supreme Court's most closely divided cases, one pivotal justice can determine the outcome. Given this fact, judicial scholars have paid substantial attention to the swing justice. This article makes two theoretical contributions to the study of the swing justice and this justice's resulting influence on case outcomes. First, we show that in a substantial number of cases, the justice that casts the pivotal vote is not the median justice on …
Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: The Self‐Reinforcing Link Between Economic Inequality and Mass Preferences
This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to dist…
How Public Opinion Constrains the U.S. Supreme Court
Although scholars increasingly acknowledge a contemporaneous relationship between public opinion and Supreme Court decisions, debate continues as to why this relationship exists. Does public opinion directly influence decisions or do justices simply respond to the same social forces that simultaneously shape the public mood? To answer this question, we first develop a strategy to control for the justices' attitudinal change that stems from the so…
Policy Mood and Political Sophistication: Why Everybody Moves Mood
This article presents evidence that both micro (individual level) and macro (aggregate level) theories of public opinion overstate the importance of political sophistication for opinion change. It is argued that even the least politically sophisticated segment of society receives messages about the economy and uses this information to update attitudes about political issues. To test this hypothesis, the authors have used General Social Survey dat…
The Public's Increasing Punitiveness and Its Influence on Mass Incarceration in the United States
Following more than 30 years of rising incarceration rates, the United States now imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any country in the world. Building on theories of representation and organized interest group behavior, this article argues that an increasingly punitive public has been a primary reason for this prolific expansion. To test this hypothesis, I generate a new over‐time measure of the public's support for being tough…
Relative Policy Support and Coincidental Representation
The finding that the preferences of middle-income Americans are ignored when they diverge from the preferences of the rich is one of the most widely accepted and influential conclusions in political science research today. I offer a cautionary note regarding this conclusion. I demonstrate that even on those issues for which the preferences of the wealthy and those in the middle diverge, policy ends up about where we would expect if policymakers r…
Public Opinion in the U.S. States: 1956 To 2010
In this article, we create, validate, and analyze new dynamic measures of state partisanship, state policy mood, and state political ideology. The measures of partisanship and policy mood begin in 1956 and the measure of ideology begins in 1976. Our approach uses the advantages of two leading techniques for measuring state public opinion—multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) and survey aggregation. The resulting estimates are based o…
What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated: Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS)
What percentage of Americans have ever had a family member incarcerated? To answer this question, we designed the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). The survey was administered in the summer of 2018 by NORC at the University of Chicago using their AmeriSpeak Panel. It was funded by FWD.us, which released a separate report using the data. The data show that 45 percent of Americans have ever had an immediate family member incarcerated…
The Consequences of Partisanship in Economic Perceptions
Journal Article The Consequences of Partisanship in Economic Perceptions Get access Peter K. Enns, Peter K. Enns * Peter K. Enns is an Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. Paul M. Kellstedt is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. Gregory E. McAvoy is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensbor…
Conditional Status Quo Bias and Top Income Shares: How U.S. Political Institutions Have Benefited the Rich
This article develops and tests a model of conditional status quo bias and American inequality. We find that institutional features that bias policy outcomes toward the status quo have played a central role in the path of inequality. Using time-series analysis of top income shares during the post-Depression period, we identify the Senate as a key actor in the politics of income inequality. Our findings suggest that the supermajoritarian nature of…
Privatizing Punishment: Testing Theories of Public Support for Private Prison and Immigration Detention Facilities
The transfer of authority over the supervision of inmate populations from state and federal governments to private corporations is one of the most significant contemporary developments in the criminal justice system. Yet, the controversy surrounding the private prison industry has occurred in U.S. criminal justice policy circles without any understanding of the public's preferences toward these institutions. In this article, we test several theor…
Complicating the Role of White Racial Attitudes and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the 2016 US Presidential Election
Some scholars argue that Donald Trump’s electoral college victory in 2016 was predicated on his ability to attract racially hostile white voters. Others argue that the increased relationship between whites’ racial attitudes and presidential vote choice in 2016 was because racial attitudes and partisanship had become even more aligned following the presidency of Barack Obama. Building on research that shows voters tend to update their policy posit…
The Swing Justice
In the Supreme Court's most closely divided cases, one pivotal justice can determine the outcome. Given this fact, judicial scholars have paid substantial attention to the swing justice. This article makes two theoretical contributions to the study of the swing justice and this justice's resulting influence on case outcomes. First, we show that in a substantial number of cases, the justice that casts the pivotal vote is not the median justice on …
The Role of Partisanship in Aggregate Opinion
Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters
Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Differe…
Reconsidering the Middle: A Reply to Martin Gilens
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Presidential Campaigns and the Fundamentals Reconsidered
The contrast between the predictability of presidential elections and the variability of early polls has come to be viewed as evidence that campaigns provide crucial information to voters. We argue that unmotivated survey respondents offering minimally acceptable answers (i.e., satisficing) offers an additional explanation for the classic conundrum of why the polls vary when the election outcome is predictable. The analysis relies on data from th…
State Policy Mood: The Importance of Over-time Dynamics
Recently, we introduced and validated annual state-level estimates of the public's policy mood and party identification from 1956 to 2010 and self-identified political ideology from 1976 to 2010. In this issue, Berry, Ringquist, Fording, and Hanson (BRFH) compare our measure of policy mood with a measure they created, and they conclude that their measure is “the best available indicator of state policy mood for researchers doing pooled cross-sect…
Polls and Elections Using Approval of the President's Handling of the Economy to Understand Who Polarizes and Why
The authors utilize data from nearly 200 surveys conducted during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to evaluate whose presidential evaluations polarize and why. Specifically, assessments of the president's handling of the economy among high‐, middle‐, and low‐education Democrats, independents, and Republicans are considered. The authors find only weak evidence that education moderates partisan evaluations of the president. Throu…
A Validation and Extension of State-Level Public Policy Mood: 1956–2020
To fully understand state policy outcomes or elections in the US, we need valid over-time measures of state-level public opinion. We contribute to the research on measuring state public opinion in two ways. First, we respond to Berry, Fording, Hanson, and Crofoot’s (BFHC) critique of Enns and Koch’s measure of state policy mood. We show that when BFHC’s analysis is performed using the same states and examining annual change, it validates the Enns…
Public Responsiveness to Declining Crime Rates in the United States and England and Wales
During much of the second half of the twentieth century, public opinion in both the United States and Britain became more punitive as crime rates rose. These shifting public attitudes had a profound influence on criminal justice policies. What is less understood is how public attitudes in these countries have responded to declining crime rates since the early-1990s. To understand how the public reacts to declining crime rates, we focus on crimes …
Detecting true relationships in time series data with different orders of integration
It is fairly well-known that proper time series analysis requires that estimated equations be balanced. Numerous scholars mistake this to mean that one cannot mix orders of integration. Previous studies have clarified the distinction between equation balance and having different orders of integration, and shown that mixing orders of integration does not increase the risk of type I error when using the general error correction/autoregressive distr…
Moving forward with time series analysis
In a recent Research and Politics article, we showed that for many types of time series data, concerns about spurious relationships can be overcome by following standard procedures associated with cointegration tests and the general error correction model (GECM). Matthew Lebo and Patrick Kraft (LK) incorrectly argue that our recommended approach will lead researchers to identify false (i.e., spurious) relationships. In this article, we show how L…
Understanding Biden’s Exit and the 2024 Election: The State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model
Our 2020 analysis correctly forecasted Joe Biden’s victory and the outcome of every state except Georgia. That forecast relied on economic data from 125 days prior to Election Day and presidential approval data from 104 days (or more) before the election. Since 2000, our model would have correctly forecasted the winner in 95% of all states. We updated our State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model for 2024. This article summarizes the model …
Inequality and Misperceptions of Group Concerns Threaten the Integrity and Societal Impact of Science
Racial and ethnic minority and lower-income groups are disproportionately affected by environmental hazards and suffer worse health outcomes than other groups in the United States. Relative to whites and higher-income groups, racial-ethnic minority and lower-income Americans also frequently express greater concern about high-profile global environmental threats like climate change, but they are widely misperceived as being less concerned about th…
Forecasting the 2020 Electoral College Winner: The State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Polarized America: The Dance of Ideology and Unequal Riches by Nolan McCarty, Keith T. Poole, and Howard Rosenthal
Policy Mood and Political Sophistication: Why Everybody Moves Mood
This article presents evidence that both micro (individual level) and macro (aggregate level) theories of public opinion overstate the importance of political sophistication for opinion change. It is argued that even the least politically sophisticated segment of society receives messages about the economy and uses this information to update attitudes about political issues. To test this hypothesis, the authors have used General Social Survey dat…
Polls and Elections Using Approval of the President's Handling of the Economy to Understand Who Polarizes and Why
The authors utilize data from nearly 200 surveys conducted during the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations to evaluate whose presidential evaluations polarize and why. Specifically, assessments of the president's handling of the economy among high‐, middle‐, and low‐education Democrats, independents, and Republicans are considered. The authors find only weak evidence that education moderates partisan evaluations of the president. Throu…
How Public Opinion Constrains the U.S. Supreme Court
Although scholars increasingly acknowledge a contemporaneous relationship between public opinion and Supreme Court decisions, debate continues as to why this relationship exists. Does public opinion directly influence decisions or do justices simply respond to the same social forces that simultaneously shape the public mood? To answer this question, we first develop a strategy to control for the justices' attitudinal change that stems from the so…
Inequality and the Dynamics of Public Opinion: The Self‐Reinforcing Link Between Economic Inequality and Mass Preferences
This article assesses the influence of income inequality on the public's policy mood. Recent work has produced divergent perspectives on the relationship between inequality, public opinion, and government redistribution. One group of scholars suggests that unequal representation of different income groups reproduces inequality as politicians respond to the preferences of the rich. Another group of scholars pays relatively little attention to dist…
Justices and Journalists: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Media by Richard Davis
Journal Article Justices and Journalists: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Media by Richard Davis Get access Justices and Journalists: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Media by Richard Davis. New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011. 264 pp. $28.99. Peter K. Enns Peter K. Enns Cornell University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quarterly, Volume 127, Issue 1, Spring 2012, Pages 158–159, http…
The Consequences of Partisanship in Economic Perceptions
Journal Article The Consequences of Partisanship in Economic Perceptions Get access Peter K. Enns, Peter K. Enns * Peter K. Enns is an Assistant Professor of Government at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA. Paul M. Kellstedt is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA. Gregory E. McAvoy is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, Greensbor…
The Role of Partisanship in Aggregate Opinion
Public Opinion in the U.S. States: 1956 To 2010
In this article, we create, validate, and analyze new dynamic measures of state partisanship, state policy mood, and state political ideology. The measures of partisanship and policy mood begin in 1956 and the measure of ideology begins in 1976. Our approach uses the advantages of two leading techniques for measuring state public opinion—multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP) and survey aggregation. The resulting estimates are based o…
Presidential Campaigns and the Fundamentals Reconsidered
The contrast between the predictability of presidential elections and the variability of early polls has come to be viewed as evidence that campaigns provide crucial information to voters. We argue that unmotivated survey respondents offering minimally acceptable answers (i.e., satisficing) offers an additional explanation for the classic conundrum of why the polls vary when the election outcome is predictable. The analysis relies on data from th…
The Swing Justice
In the Supreme Court's most closely divided cases, one pivotal justice can determine the outcome. Given this fact, judicial scholars have paid substantial attention to the swing justice. This article makes two theoretical contributions to the study of the swing justice and this justice's resulting influence on case outcomes. First, we show that in a substantial number of cases, the justice that casts the pivotal vote is not the median justice on …
Conditional Status Quo Bias and Top Income Shares: How U.S. Political Institutions Have Benefited the Rich
This article develops and tests a model of conditional status quo bias and American inequality. We find that institutional features that bias policy outcomes toward the status quo have played a central role in the path of inequality. Using time-series analysis of top income shares during the post-Depression period, we identify the Senate as a key actor in the politics of income inequality. Our findings suggest that the supermajoritarian nature of…
The Public's Increasing Punitiveness and Its Influence on Mass Incarceration in the United States
Following more than 30 years of rising incarceration rates, the United States now imprisons a higher proportion of its population than any country in the world. Building on theories of representation and organized interest group behavior, this article argues that an increasingly punitive public has been a primary reason for this prolific expansion. To test this hypothesis, I generate a new over‐time measure of the public's support for being tough…
Reconsidering the Middle: A Reply to Martin Gilens
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
State Policy Mood: The Importance of Over-time Dynamics
Recently, we introduced and validated annual state-level estimates of the public's policy mood and party identification from 1956 to 2010 and self-identified political ideology from 1976 to 2010. In this issue, Berry, Ringquist, Fording, and Hanson (BRFH) compare our measure of policy mood with a measure they created, and they conclude that their measure is “the best available indicator of state policy mood for researchers doing pooled cross-sect…
Relative Policy Support and Coincidental Representation
The finding that the preferences of middle-income Americans are ignored when they diverge from the preferences of the rich is one of the most widely accepted and influential conclusions in political science research today. I offer a cautionary note regarding this conclusion. I demonstrate that even on those issues for which the preferences of the wealthy and those in the middle diverge, policy ends up about where we would expect if policymakers r…
Incarceration Nation: How the United States Became the Most Punitive Democracy in the World
The rise of mass incarceration in the United States is one of the most critical outcomes of the last half-century. Incarceration Nation offers the most compelling explanation of this outcome to date. This book combines in-depth analysis of Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon's presidential campaigns with sixty years of data analysis. The result is a sophisticated and highly accessible picture of the rise of mass incarceration. In contrast to conven…
Moving forward with time series analysis
In a recent Research and Politics article, we showed that for many types of time series data, concerns about spurious relationships can be overcome by following standard procedures associated with cointegration tests and the general error correction model (GECM). Matthew Lebo and Patrick Kraft (LK) incorrectly argue that our recommended approach will lead researchers to identify false (i.e., spurious) relationships. In this article, we show how L…
Understanding the 2016 US Presidential Polls: The Importance of Hidden Trump Supporters
Following Donald Trump’s unexpected victory in the 2016 US presidential election, the American Association for Public Opinion Research announced that “the polls clearly got it wrong” and noted that talk of a “crisis in polling” was already emerging. Although the national polls ended up being accurate, surveys just weeks before the election substantially over-stated Clinton’s lead and state polls showed systematic bias in favor of Clinton. Differe…
Privatizing Punishment: Testing Theories of Public Support for Private Prison and Immigration Detention Facilities
The transfer of authority over the supervision of inmate populations from state and federal governments to private corporations is one of the most significant contemporary developments in the criminal justice system. Yet, the controversy surrounding the private prison industry has occurred in U.S. criminal justice policy circles without any understanding of the public's preferences toward these institutions. In this article, we test several theor…
The Polls—Trends Economic Evaluations and Political Change in Chile, 1966 to 2018
Over the past half century, Chile has fluctuated wildly in terms of economic prosperity and democratic health. Using 78 surveys archived at the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, we document the evolution of Chileans’ perceptions of their personal, family, and national economic conditions during major political and economic changes. The data show that prior to the Pinochet dictatorship, despite a growing economic crisis, Chileans’ percepti…
What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated: Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS)
What percentage of Americans have ever had a family member incarcerated? To answer this question, we designed the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). The survey was administered in the summer of 2018 by NORC at the University of Chicago using their AmeriSpeak Panel. It was funded by FWD.us, which released a separate report using the data. The data show that 45 percent of Americans have ever had an immediate family member incarcerated…
Complicating the Role of White Racial Attitudes and Anti-Immigrant Sentiment in the 2016 US Presidential Election
Some scholars argue that Donald Trump’s electoral college victory in 2016 was predicated on his ability to attract racially hostile white voters. Others argue that the increased relationship between whites’ racial attitudes and presidential vote choice in 2016 was because racial attitudes and partisanship had become even more aligned following the presidency of Barack Obama. Building on research that shows voters tend to update their policy posit…
Forecasting the 2020 Electoral College Winner: The State Presidential Approval/State Economy Model
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Public Responsiveness to Declining Crime Rates in the United States and England and Wales
During much of the second half of the twentieth century, public opinion in both the United States and Britain became more punitive as crime rates rose. These shifting public attitudes had a profound influence on criminal justice policies. What is less understood is how public attitudes in these countries have responded to declining crime rates since the early-1990s. To understand how the public reacts to declining crime rates, we focus on crimes …
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