Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz
Biographic Data
| ID | 3877243 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Shanna |
| FAMILY NAME | Pearson-Merkowitz |
| SIGNATURE | PEARSON-MERKOWITZ S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Rhode Island |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6440-1098 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 455 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Representation in State Legislative Hearings: A Case Study of Oral Testimony in the Maryland State Legislature
Open meeting laws emerged as a tool intended to enhance the public’s ability to participate in the legislative process. In theory, these laws give the public more power to shape public policy and make the input process more representative than when meetings are not open to all residents. However, research on political participation, procedural equity, and the hearing process raises questions about the extent to which hearings deliver on this obje…
Examining the relationship between civic engagement and mental health in young adults: A systematic review of the literature
Voter Approval of Bond Referendums: The Role of Bond Amount and Ballot Characteristics
Municipal and state governments are often constitutionally bound to ask voters to approve new government debt through voting on bond referendums. Generally, politicians expect voters to balk at higher-cost bonds and be more willing to approve lower-cost bonds. However, there is minimal research on how the amount of a bond affects voter support. We implement a survey experiment that presents respondents with hypothetical ballots, in which the cost…
The aftermath of ballot box success and failure: Evidence from land preservation referendums
State and local governments put hundreds of referendums on the ballot each year. Often, they pass but sometimes they fail. What happens after a successful or failed attempt at the ballot box? Do advocates go back to voters with another request? And if they do, do they tend to succeed? We employ a regression discontinuity empirical framework to causally estimate referendum dynamics in the arena of land conservation. Our results suggest municipalit…
Civic engagement and well‐being among noncollege young adults: Investigating a mediation model
Young adults may benefit from civic engagement as a health promotion tool, as civic engagement is generally associated with positive well‐being. However, more information is needed to examine civic engagement among lesser‐educated young adults who are least likely to civically engage, and more likely to demonstrate mental health needs. We surveyed noncollege young adults ( N = 621) to measure their civic engagement, meaning, civic efficacy, well‐…
The worker deserves his wages”? Religion and support for organized labor in the U.S. Senate
This article examines the relationship between senators' personal religious affiliations and their roll-call voting record on organized labor's policy agenda. While an impressive body of literature now demonstrates clear connections between religion and representation in the U.S. Congress, fewer studies have linked religion to issues outside of the realm of cultural and moral policy. Based on a data set spanning 1980 through 2020, our findings sh…
The Effect of Ballot Characteristics on the Likelihood of Voting Errors
In the United States, people are asked to vote on a myriad of candidates, offices, and ballot questions. The result is lengthy ballots that are time intensive and complicated to fill out. In this paper, we utilize a new analytical technique harnessing ballot scanner data from a statewide midterm election to estimate the effects of ballot complexity on voting errors. We find that increases in ballot length, increases in the number of local ballot …
Status quo bias and public policy: Evidence in the context of carbon mitigation
This article examines whether individuals’ preferences for government policy are affected by status quo bias. We designed a contingent valuation survey that asks respondents directly about their willingness to pay (WTP) for their state to be a part of a regional carbon mitigation policy. The survey has two randomized frames, which differ in whether or not their state is already part of the policy. We distributed the survey to a representative sam…
Smart Growth at the Ballot Box: Understanding Voting on Affordable Housing and Land Management Referendums
This study investigates voter decision-making on two smart-growth components: land preservation and affordable housing. We seek to understand how voters make concurrent decisions about unpaired smart-growth components at the ballot box. Previous studies of smart growth, affordable housing, and environmental preservation have focused primarily on describing the attitudes and traits of voters on these policies, utilize aggregate voting outcomes, or…
The individual determinants of support for open space bond referendums
Ballot Initiatives and Status Quo Bias
Is there an opposition bias in ballot initiative campaigns? While some early research suggested that the “no” side was advantaged in ballot initiative campaigns, recent work has demonstrated that both opposition and support spending in ballot measure campaigns are effective. We offer a new way to conceptualize status quo orientation in ballot measure elections. Specifically, we argue that opposition arguments are more effective than support argum…
Primary Distrust: Political Distrust and Support for the Insurgent Candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Primary
Donald Trump dominated the 2016 Republican primary despite the fact that he was not, in any meaningful sense, a Republican. Bernie Sanders came just shy of winning the Democratic nomination despite the fact that he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Democrat only three months before the election. Why did two candidates with no formal ties to the political parties fare so well? One possibility is that primary voters are more ideolo…
Crime and Partisanship: How Party ID Muddles Reality, Perception, and Policy Attitudes on Crime and Guns
Objective In this article we theorize that partisanship is such a strong filter of information that it can affect how individuals make sense of their lived environment and how the geographic experience informs policy attitudes. As a result, although “independents” tend to be less politically knowledgeable and have less developed policy opinions, their policy attitudes on gun control are more informed by their lived experience than partisans. Meth…
Going positive: The effects of negative and positive advertising on candidate success and voter turnout
Given the depth of research on negative advertising in campaigns, scholars have wondered why candidates continue to attack their opponents. We build on this research by considering real-world campaign contexts in which candidates are working in competition with each other and have to react to the decisions of the opposing campaign. Our results suggest that it is never efficacious for candidates to run attack ads, but running positive ads can incr…
State‐Sponsored Health Insurance and State Economic and Employment Growth
While there is a clear relationship between better health and better economic outcomes, the effects of increasing health insurance on the economy remain understudied. We employ two datasets, one on health insurance coverage in the contiguous 48 U.S. states and one for countries in the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, to model the effect of expanding health insurance on state and country economic and employment growth over t…
When Partisans and Minorities Interact: Interpersonal Contact, Partisanship, and Public Opinion Preferences on Immigration Policy
Objective Many studies investigating contact theory have suggested that contact effects are not universal but rather conditional. In this article, we test one form of conditional contact effects. Our approach posits that contact with out‐groups produces support for pro‐minority public policies only when in‐group members are not subject to contrary messages from co‐partisans. Methods We use data from an original survey to test this theory in the i…
Diversity of a Different Kind: Gentrification and Its Impact on Social Capital and Political Participation in Black Communities
The literature examining the effect of residential integration on political behavior primarily focuses on how whites react to the entrance of non-whites into their communities. Over the past few decades however, the process of "white return" to urban centers throughout the nation has created the opportunity to invert the standard approach to studying racial context by exploring how minorities react to the entrance of whites into their communities…
Thou Shalt Not Flip Flop: Senators’ Religious Affiliations and Issue Position Consistency
Is there a relationship between legislators’ religious affiliations and the consistency of their voting records? Building on the theory of “the personal roots of representation,” we argue that a legislator's likelihood of switching positions depends on whether the issue is central to their personal values. We evaluate this claim using a data set including senators’ religious affiliations and “culture war” votes from 1976 to 2004 and find that dif…
Partisan sorting in the United States, 1972-2012: New evidence from a dynamic analysis
Authoritarianism and American Political Behavior from 1952 to 2008
Using American National Election Studies (NES) data from 1952 to 2008—a longer timespan than any analysis to date—we evaluate the leading claims about growing polarization along authoritarian/nonauthoritarian lines and the reasons for that growth. We find authoritarianism’s impact has grown for partisanship and voting but has been consistent for policy attitudes—usually present for “social” and defense issues, but less so for social welfare and f…
To Know You is Not Necessarily to Love You: The Partisan Mediators of Intergroup Contact
Research Note: Stopping the Enforcement “Tide”: Descriptive Representation, L atino Institutional Empowerment, and State‐Level Immigration Policy
Studies of descriptive representation have focused on the ability of minority and female legislators to push through legislation that is beneficial to these constituencies. However, little is known concerning the role of such legislators in preventing the enactment of bills noxious to their constituencies' interests. This research note investigates the role of L atino legislators in deterring the introduction and blocking the enactment of restric…
Together in Good Times and Bad? How Economic Triggers Condition the Effects of Intergroup Threat
Objectives Research has suggested that geosocial exposure to out‐groups is associated with heightened threat perceptions on the part of the dominant white majority. However, findings are not consistent. Methods Drawing on realistic group conflict theory and research in political science that privileges the role of the economic context, we test if the effects of geosocial exposure are conditioned on individual expectations about the health of the …
Voting from the Pew: The Effect of Senators' Religious Identities on Partisan Polarization in the U.S . S enate
Partisan polarization in the S enate is in part a product of the increased sorting of evangelical Christians into the Republican caucus. The relationship between senators' religious identities, party affiliation, and ideology has changed since the 1970s. Whereas congressional party caucuses in the past were more diverse in their religious composition, evangelical Christian senators have sorted themselves into the party that most closely resembles…
The Changing Role of Race in Social Welfare Attitude Formation: Partisan Divides over Undocumented Immigrants and Social Welfare Policy
Growth in the U.S. Latino population has prompted speculation that the “racialization” of welfare with respect to African Americans would eventually extend to Latinos. The authors assess this prediction, analyzing public attitudes toward welfare spending and national health insurance and their linkages to attitudes about Latinos and undocumented immigrants. The authors find significant relationships between affect for “illegal immigrants” and soc…
The Check Is in the Mail: Interdistrict Funding Flows in Congressional Elections
This article analyzes the financial ties between congressional candidates and individual donors residing outside those candidates' districts. Congressional campaigns today rely more heavily on nonresidents than in the past, with contests in the typical district drawing more than two‐thirds of individual donations from nonresidents. Empirical results reveal that nonresident contributions are primarily partisan and strategic in nature, rather than …
Battleground States versus Blackout States: The Behavioral Implications of Modern Presidential Campaigns
We examine the influence of "battleground" designation by presidential campaign strategists on the political activation and involvement of resource poor voters, particularly those in lower income brackets. We hypothesize that increased exposure to campaign stimuli may provide lower income voters in the contested states with an appreciable advantage over those in the "blackout" states by underwriting the costs associated with becoming engaged. Our…
Distance-decay in the political geography of friends-and-neighbors voting
Authoritarianism and American Political Behavior from 1952 to 2008
Using American National Election Studies (NES) data from 1952 to 2008—a longer timespan than any analysis to date—we evaluate the leading claims about growing polarization along authoritarian/nonauthoritarian lines and the reasons for that growth. We find authoritarianism’s impact has grown for partisanship and voting but has been consistent for policy attitudes—usually present for “social” and defense issues, but less so for social welfare and f…
To Know You is Not Necessarily to Love You: The Partisan Mediators of Intergroup Contact
Partisan sorting in the United States, 1972-2012: New evidence from a dynamic analysis
Voting from the Pew: The Effect of Senators' Religious Identities on Partisan Polarization in the U.S . S enate
Partisan polarization in the S enate is in part a product of the increased sorting of evangelical Christians into the Republican caucus. The relationship between senators' religious identities, party affiliation, and ideology has changed since the 1970s. Whereas congressional party caucuses in the past were more diverse in their religious composition, evangelical Christian senators have sorted themselves into the party that most closely resembles…
Together in Good Times and Bad? How Economic Triggers Condition the Effects of Intergroup Threat
Objectives Research has suggested that geosocial exposure to out‐groups is associated with heightened threat perceptions on the part of the dominant white majority. However, findings are not consistent. Methods Drawing on realistic group conflict theory and research in political science that privileges the role of the economic context, we test if the effects of geosocial exposure are conditioned on individual expectations about the health of the …
Crime and Partisanship: How Party ID Muddles Reality, Perception, and Policy Attitudes on Crime and Guns
Objective In this article we theorize that partisanship is such a strong filter of information that it can affect how individuals make sense of their lived environment and how the geographic experience informs policy attitudes. As a result, although “independents” tend to be less politically knowledgeable and have less developed policy opinions, their policy attitudes on gun control are more informed by their lived experience than partisans. Meth…
Diversity of a Different Kind: Gentrification and Its Impact on Social Capital and Political Participation in Black Communities
The literature examining the effect of residential integration on political behavior primarily focuses on how whites react to the entrance of non-whites into their communities. Over the past few decades however, the process of "white return" to urban centers throughout the nation has created the opportunity to invert the standard approach to studying racial context by exploring how minorities react to the entrance of whites into their communities…
The Changing Role of Race in Social Welfare Attitude Formation: Partisan Divides over Undocumented Immigrants and Social Welfare Policy
Growth in the U.S. Latino population has prompted speculation that the “racialization” of welfare with respect to African Americans would eventually extend to Latinos. The authors assess this prediction, analyzing public attitudes toward welfare spending and national health insurance and their linkages to attitudes about Latinos and undocumented immigrants. The authors find significant relationships between affect for “illegal immigrants” and soc…
When Partisans and Minorities Interact: Interpersonal Contact, Partisanship, and Public Opinion Preferences on Immigration Policy
Objective Many studies investigating contact theory have suggested that contact effects are not universal but rather conditional. In this article, we test one form of conditional contact effects. Our approach posits that contact with out‐groups produces support for pro‐minority public policies only when in‐group members are not subject to contrary messages from co‐partisans. Methods We use data from an original survey to test this theory in the i…
Primary Distrust: Political Distrust and Support for the Insurgent Candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Primary
Donald Trump dominated the 2016 Republican primary despite the fact that he was not, in any meaningful sense, a Republican. Bernie Sanders came just shy of winning the Democratic nomination despite the fact that he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Democrat only three months before the election. Why did two candidates with no formal ties to the political parties fare so well? One possibility is that primary voters are more ideolo…
Thou Shalt Not Flip Flop: Senators’ Religious Affiliations and Issue Position Consistency
Is there a relationship between legislators’ religious affiliations and the consistency of their voting records? Building on the theory of “the personal roots of representation,” we argue that a legislator's likelihood of switching positions depends on whether the issue is central to their personal values. We evaluate this claim using a data set including senators’ religious affiliations and “culture war” votes from 1976 to 2004 and find that dif…
Research Note: Stopping the Enforcement “Tide”: Descriptive Representation, L atino Institutional Empowerment, and State‐Level Immigration Policy
Studies of descriptive representation have focused on the ability of minority and female legislators to push through legislation that is beneficial to these constituencies. However, little is known concerning the role of such legislators in preventing the enactment of bills noxious to their constituencies' interests. This research note investigates the role of L atino legislators in deterring the introduction and blocking the enactment of restric…
The Conspiracy of Silence: Context and Voting on Gay Marriage Ballot Measures
Gay marriage bans have received widespread support in the past decade in states across America. The authors evaluate the extent to which context mitigates or exacerbates support for gay rights. Their question is grounded in the debate over whether exposure to out-groups creates acceptance through contact or whether exposure induces hostility through threat. Using data from twelve marriage ban elections, the authors find conditional support for th…
Going positive: The effects of negative and positive advertising on candidate success and voter turnout
Given the depth of research on negative advertising in campaigns, scholars have wondered why candidates continue to attack their opponents. We build on this research by considering real-world campaign contexts in which candidates are working in competition with each other and have to react to the decisions of the opposing campaign. Our results suggest that it is never efficacious for candidates to run attack ads, but running positive ads can incr…
Smart Growth at the Ballot Box: Understanding Voting on Affordable Housing and Land Management Referendums
This study investigates voter decision-making on two smart-growth components: land preservation and affordable housing. We seek to understand how voters make concurrent decisions about unpaired smart-growth components at the ballot box. Previous studies of smart growth, affordable housing, and environmental preservation have focused primarily on describing the attitudes and traits of voters on these policies, utilize aggregate voting outcomes, or…
Ballot Initiatives and Status Quo Bias
Is there an opposition bias in ballot initiative campaigns? While some early research suggested that the “no” side was advantaged in ballot initiative campaigns, recent work has demonstrated that both opposition and support spending in ballot measure campaigns are effective. We offer a new way to conceptualize status quo orientation in ballot measure elections. Specifically, we argue that opposition arguments are more effective than support argum…
Al Qaeda Versus Big Brother: Anxiety About Government Monitoring and Support for Domestic Counterterrorism Policies
The Limits of the Homogeneity Model: Segregation and Civic Engagement in Latino Communities
Until recently, Latinos generally were well integrated geographically and did not live in concentrated Latino neighborhoods. That is changing. Latinos now are more likely than ever before to live in isolated Latino areas. If this trend continues, Latinos soon will surpass African Americans as the most segregated minority group in the United States. For decades, political scientists, sociologists, and historians have tracked the perils of resident…
The individual determinants of support for open space bond referendums
Mighty Fortresses: Explaining the Spatial Distribution of American Megachurches
One of the most significant phenomena in organized religion over the past two decades is the development and growth of the 'megachurch.' While these dramatically large campuses and congregations represent a relatively new aspect of religious life in the United States, they are already having a profound effect on the way in which Americans worship through their size and often their wealth. Given their size and increasing numbers, where they are lo…
Perpetuating the Myth of the Culture War Court? Issue Attention in Newspaper Coverage of U.S. Supreme Court Nominations
Using digital text analysis methods, we analyze over 3800 newspaper articles covering U.S. Supreme Court judicial appointments between 1981 and 2009 to measure the level of (in)congruence between the Court’s agenda and the issues emphasized by the media. We find that newspapers highlight “culture war” issues at the expense of other important issues addressed much more frequently by the Court. Moreover, abortion in particular receives attention in…
Partisan Mountains and Molehills: The Geography of U.S. State Intraparty Factionalism
We examine whether the geographic distribution of a political party's electoral support affects the divisiveness of statewide primaries. In spite of V.O. Key, Jr.'s (1956) original insight that geography might be a relevant predictor of contested statewide primaries, this hypothesis has received little attention from political scientists. We test Key's hypothesis using data on gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections to identify the effects of ele…
Battleground States versus Blackout States: The Behavioral Implications of Modern Presidential Campaigns
We examine the influence of "battleground" designation by presidential campaign strategists on the political activation and involvement of resource poor voters, particularly those in lower income brackets. We hypothesize that increased exposure to campaign stimuli may provide lower income voters in the contested states with an appreciable advantage over those in the "blackout" states by underwriting the costs associated with becoming engaged. Our…
Mighty Fortresses: Explaining the Spatial Distribution of American Megachurches
One of the most significant phenomena in organized religion over the past two decades is the development and growth of the 'megachurch.' While these dramatically large campuses and congregations represent a relatively new aspect of religious life in the United States, they are already having a profound effect on the way in which Americans worship through their size and often their wealth. Given their size and increasing numbers, where they are lo…
Partisan Mountains and Molehills: The Geography of U.S. State Intraparty Factionalism
We examine whether the geographic distribution of a political party's electoral support affects the divisiveness of statewide primaries. In spite of V.O. Key, Jr.'s (1956) original insight that geography might be a relevant predictor of contested statewide primaries, this hypothesis has received little attention from political scientists. We test Key's hypothesis using data on gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections to identify the effects of ele…
The Check Is in the Mail: Interdistrict Funding Flows in Congressional Elections
This article analyzes the financial ties between congressional candidates and individual donors residing outside those candidates' districts. Congressional campaigns today rely more heavily on nonresidents than in the past, with contests in the typical district drawing more than two‐thirds of individual donations from nonresidents. Empirical results reveal that nonresident contributions are primarily partisan and strategic in nature, rather than …
Distance-decay in the political geography of friends-and-neighbors voting
Aqui No Hay Oportunidades: Latino Segregation and the Keys to Political Participation
For decades, political scientists, sociologists, and historians have tracked the perils of residential segregation in the African American community. The consensus is clear: segregation has hampered African American socioeconomic mobility and social integration. Given the strong relationship between socioeconomic status and political participation, segregation, therefore, is at least partially responsible for low levels of political participation…
Perpetuating the Myth of the Culture War Court? Issue Attention in Newspaper Coverage of U.S. Supreme Court Nominations
Using digital text analysis methods, we analyze over 3800 newspaper articles covering U.S. Supreme Court judicial appointments between 1981 and 2009 to measure the level of (in)congruence between the Court’s agenda and the issues emphasized by the media. We find that newspapers highlight “culture war” issues at the expense of other important issues addressed much more frequently by the Court. Moreover, abortion in particular receives attention in…
The Conspiracy of Silence: Context and Voting on Gay Marriage Ballot Measures
Gay marriage bans have received widespread support in the past decade in states across America. The authors evaluate the extent to which context mitigates or exacerbates support for gay rights. Their question is grounded in the debate over whether exposure to out-groups creates acceptance through contact or whether exposure induces hostility through threat. Using data from twelve marriage ban elections, the authors find conditional support for th…
Al Qaeda Versus Big Brother: Anxiety About Government Monitoring and Support for Domestic Counterterrorism Policies
The Limits of the Homogeneity Model: Segregation and Civic Engagement in Latino Communities
Until recently, Latinos generally were well integrated geographically and did not live in concentrated Latino neighborhoods. That is changing. Latinos now are more likely than ever before to live in isolated Latino areas. If this trend continues, Latinos soon will surpass African Americans as the most segregated minority group in the United States. For decades, political scientists, sociologists, and historians have tracked the perils of resident…
Research Note: Stopping the Enforcement “Tide”: Descriptive Representation, L atino Institutional Empowerment, and State‐Level Immigration Policy
Studies of descriptive representation have focused on the ability of minority and female legislators to push through legislation that is beneficial to these constituencies. However, little is known concerning the role of such legislators in preventing the enactment of bills noxious to their constituencies' interests. This research note investigates the role of L atino legislators in deterring the introduction and blocking the enactment of restric…
Together in Good Times and Bad? How Economic Triggers Condition the Effects of Intergroup Threat
Objectives Research has suggested that geosocial exposure to out‐groups is associated with heightened threat perceptions on the part of the dominant white majority. However, findings are not consistent. Methods Drawing on realistic group conflict theory and research in political science that privileges the role of the economic context, we test if the effects of geosocial exposure are conditioned on individual expectations about the health of the …
Voting from the Pew: The Effect of Senators' Religious Identities on Partisan Polarization in the U.S . S enate
Partisan polarization in the S enate is in part a product of the increased sorting of evangelical Christians into the Republican caucus. The relationship between senators' religious identities, party affiliation, and ideology has changed since the 1970s. Whereas congressional party caucuses in the past were more diverse in their religious composition, evangelical Christian senators have sorted themselves into the party that most closely resembles…
The Changing Role of Race in Social Welfare Attitude Formation: Partisan Divides over Undocumented Immigrants and Social Welfare Policy
Growth in the U.S. Latino population has prompted speculation that the “racialization” of welfare with respect to African Americans would eventually extend to Latinos. The authors assess this prediction, analyzing public attitudes toward welfare spending and national health insurance and their linkages to attitudes about Latinos and undocumented immigrants. The authors find significant relationships between affect for “illegal immigrants” and soc…
Authoritarianism and American Political Behavior from 1952 to 2008
Using American National Election Studies (NES) data from 1952 to 2008—a longer timespan than any analysis to date—we evaluate the leading claims about growing polarization along authoritarian/nonauthoritarian lines and the reasons for that growth. We find authoritarianism’s impact has grown for partisanship and voting but has been consistent for policy attitudes—usually present for “social” and defense issues, but less so for social welfare and f…
To Know You is Not Necessarily to Love You: The Partisan Mediators of Intergroup Contact
Thou Shalt Not Flip Flop: Senators’ Religious Affiliations and Issue Position Consistency
Is there a relationship between legislators’ religious affiliations and the consistency of their voting records? Building on the theory of “the personal roots of representation,” we argue that a legislator's likelihood of switching positions depends on whether the issue is central to their personal values. We evaluate this claim using a data set including senators’ religious affiliations and “culture war” votes from 1976 to 2004 and find that dif…
Partisan sorting in the United States, 1972-2012: New evidence from a dynamic analysis
Going positive: The effects of negative and positive advertising on candidate success and voter turnout
Given the depth of research on negative advertising in campaigns, scholars have wondered why candidates continue to attack their opponents. We build on this research by considering real-world campaign contexts in which candidates are working in competition with each other and have to react to the decisions of the opposing campaign. Our results suggest that it is never efficacious for candidates to run attack ads, but running positive ads can incr…
State‐Sponsored Health Insurance and State Economic and Employment Growth
While there is a clear relationship between better health and better economic outcomes, the effects of increasing health insurance on the economy remain understudied. We employ two datasets, one on health insurance coverage in the contiguous 48 U.S. states and one for countries in the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, to model the effect of expanding health insurance on state and country economic and employment growth over t…
When Partisans and Minorities Interact: Interpersonal Contact, Partisanship, and Public Opinion Preferences on Immigration Policy
Objective Many studies investigating contact theory have suggested that contact effects are not universal but rather conditional. In this article, we test one form of conditional contact effects. Our approach posits that contact with out‐groups produces support for pro‐minority public policies only when in‐group members are not subject to contrary messages from co‐partisans. Methods We use data from an original survey to test this theory in the i…
Diversity of a Different Kind: Gentrification and Its Impact on Social Capital and Political Participation in Black Communities
The literature examining the effect of residential integration on political behavior primarily focuses on how whites react to the entrance of non-whites into their communities. Over the past few decades however, the process of "white return" to urban centers throughout the nation has created the opportunity to invert the standard approach to studying racial context by exploring how minorities react to the entrance of whites into their communities…
Crime and Partisanship: How Party ID Muddles Reality, Perception, and Policy Attitudes on Crime and Guns
Objective In this article we theorize that partisanship is such a strong filter of information that it can affect how individuals make sense of their lived environment and how the geographic experience informs policy attitudes. As a result, although “independents” tend to be less politically knowledgeable and have less developed policy opinions, their policy attitudes on gun control are more informed by their lived experience than partisans. Meth…
Primary Distrust: Political Distrust and Support for the Insurgent Candidacies of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 Primary
Donald Trump dominated the 2016 Republican primary despite the fact that he was not, in any meaningful sense, a Republican. Bernie Sanders came just shy of winning the Democratic nomination despite the fact that he switched his party affiliation from Independent to Democrat only three months before the election. Why did two candidates with no formal ties to the political parties fare so well? One possibility is that primary voters are more ideolo…
The individual determinants of support for open space bond referendums
Political science (33 works) · Law (28 works) · Politics (24 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (22 works) · Law (20 works) · Economics (18 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Voting (15 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Political economy (11 works)