Levi G Allen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4122664 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Levi G Allen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Levi G |
| FAMILY NAME | Allen |
| SIGNATURE | ALLEN L G |
| AFFILIATIONS | Indiana State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-3115-1077 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 14 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 14 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2021 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Nonpolitical Identity Signals as Information Shortcuts
A rich literature has documented how voters navigate the complex information landscape by using heuristics, or “information shortcuts,” to help them make sense of the political world. Additionally, a budding line of research argues that our current polarization crisis has extended beyond just the political and now even affects the nonpolitical realm. We submit that voters may be using these nonpolitical identity signals (e.g., a candidate driving…
Placing Your Faith
Objective What is the role of religion in America's growing geographic divide? Methods Using the data from the 2020 American National Election Study, we test the extent to which religion is associated with rural identity and rural resentment. Results We find positive empirical relationships between religion (particularly personal religious importance, religious beliefs, and identifying with mainline or evangelical Protestant Christianity) and a v…
The secular voter
As America grows more secular, secularism is increasingly relevant for American political attitudes and behavior. In this article, we contend that secularism—conceptualized as the affirmative embrace of secular belief and identity—is distinct from nonreligiosity, which is simply the absence of religion. We also argue that, at present, secularism is primarily a psychological, and not a social, orientation. Secular belonging and behavior are quite …
God’s country
It is often assumed that the rural identity is linked to the Republican Party and the urban identity to the Democratic Party, but little scholarship has investigated how voters connect thiese identities to the parties in an electoral context and how that perception may influence their electoral preferences. Furthermore, recent elections have seen various political elites employ rural and Evangelical Christian identity labels in virtually synonymo…
The Pandemic and Political Behavior
Political Behavior is the official journal of the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior organized section of the American Political Science Association. It publishes research on the political behavior of citizens, political activists, and political officeholders in the United States and around the world. From the perspective of its Journal Impact Factor, the journal’s reputation and impact have grown steadily in recent years. The first a…
A Dynamic Forecast
In this article, we build a model to predict the state-level results of the 2024 election. We do so by using both polling from similar points in past election cycles and the results of the previous election. Notably, we update our model over time, and the coefficients of the two variables change as a result: the model puts more weight on polling as the election gets closer. As of September 1, 2024, we find that Kamala Harris is a narrow favorite …
Do they practise what they preach? Public perceptions of American evangelicalism
Embattlement and Resilience Among White Evangelical Democrats
Why do individuals defect from the partisan pull of their social identities? Previous explanations of social sorting often neglect to account for these defectors whose partisanship cannot be explained by simply tallying up their social identities. I call these individuals political heretics. To better understand this phenomenon, I leverage white evangelicals, one of the most socially and politically sorted groups in the United States, who support…
The Qualitative Differences Between Self-Identification as a Born-Again and/or Evangelical Christian
How do members of the evangelical religious tradition choose to identify themselves, and how do they define terms such as “evangelical” or “born-again?” Extant scholarship traditionally utilizes quantitative data in order to isolate the pitfalls associated with this conflation. In order to validate these quantitative measures and to better understand how adherents of the evangelical religious tradition conceptualize these identities, I leverage 6…
Inhabiting the Middle Ground
Once fierce adversaries, American Catholics and Evangelical Christians have grown closer politically over the past decades, finding common ground on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. These bonds have grown so strong that a notable portion of Catholics now identify as “born-again” despite their religious tradition not being characterized as one that requires its members to have a born-again experience. This manuscript investigates how…
A tug of war
Recent literature has documented the increasing effect ethnocentrism exerts on American political behavior. In most cases, ideology and ethnocentrism point voters in the same direction, but what happens when ideology suggests one candidate and ethnocentrism a different candidate? Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), we analyze the voting behavior of white Americans in recent presidential elections (1992–2016) to better u…
Racial Attitudes and Political Preferences Among Black and White Evangelicals
How do racial group attitudes shape the political preferences of Black and white evangelicals? Scholarship has documented the relationship between religion and race in shaping political behavior and attitudes. However, less is known about how in-group and out-group racial attitudes operate within religious populations. Using samples of Black and white evangelicals from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we explore the role of r…
Trust in the American political parties and support for public policy
While political trust is well researched by political scientists, little attention has been paid to the repercussions of citizens’ lack of trust in the major political parties. Political parties are the institutions responsible for forming governing coalitions and channelling the policy preferences of the majorities that elected them; thus, we hypothesise that distrust in the parties can have some unsavory consequences. Namely that trust can be w…
Coping with Cross‐Pressures
The Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination in the United States, yet political science lacks a comprehensive account of how the cross‐pressures created by its policy prescriptions structure Catholic political behavior. Because Catholicism's policy positions land on both sides of the contemporary partisan divide—its cultural concerns aligning with the Republican Party and its pro‐social justice stance compatible with Democratic prio…
Racial Attitudes and Political Preferences Among Black and White Evangelicals
How do racial group attitudes shape the political preferences of Black and white evangelicals? Scholarship has documented the relationship between religion and race in shaping political behavior and attitudes. However, less is known about how in-group and out-group racial attitudes operate within religious populations. Using samples of Black and white evangelicals from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we explore the role of r…
Trust in the American political parties and support for public policy
While political trust is well researched by political scientists, little attention has been paid to the repercussions of citizens’ lack of trust in the major political parties. Political parties are the institutions responsible for forming governing coalitions and channelling the policy preferences of the majorities that elected them; thus, we hypothesise that distrust in the parties can have some unsavory consequences. Namely that trust can be w…
Coping with Cross‐Pressures
The Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination in the United States, yet political science lacks a comprehensive account of how the cross‐pressures created by its policy prescriptions structure Catholic political behavior. Because Catholicism's policy positions land on both sides of the contemporary partisan divide—its cultural concerns aligning with the Republican Party and its pro‐social justice stance compatible with Democratic prio…
Embattlement and Resilience Among White Evangelical Democrats
Why do individuals defect from the partisan pull of their social identities? Previous explanations of social sorting often neglect to account for these defectors whose partisanship cannot be explained by simply tallying up their social identities. I call these individuals political heretics. To better understand this phenomenon, I leverage white evangelicals, one of the most socially and politically sorted groups in the United States, who support…
The secular voter
As America grows more secular, secularism is increasingly relevant for American political attitudes and behavior. In this article, we contend that secularism—conceptualized as the affirmative embrace of secular belief and identity—is distinct from nonreligiosity, which is simply the absence of religion. We also argue that, at present, secularism is primarily a psychological, and not a social, orientation. Secular belonging and behavior are quite …
Do they practise what they preach? Public perceptions of American evangelicalism
The Qualitative Differences Between Self-Identification as a Born-Again and/or Evangelical Christian
How do members of the evangelical religious tradition choose to identify themselves, and how do they define terms such as “evangelical” or “born-again?” Extant scholarship traditionally utilizes quantitative data in order to isolate the pitfalls associated with this conflation. In order to validate these quantitative measures and to better understand how adherents of the evangelical religious tradition conceptualize these identities, I leverage 6…
A tug of war
Recent literature has documented the increasing effect ethnocentrism exerts on American political behavior. In most cases, ideology and ethnocentrism point voters in the same direction, but what happens when ideology suggests one candidate and ethnocentrism a different candidate? Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), we analyze the voting behavior of white Americans in recent presidential elections (1992–2016) to better u…
Trust in the American political parties and support for public policy
While political trust is well researched by political scientists, little attention has been paid to the repercussions of citizens’ lack of trust in the major political parties. Political parties are the institutions responsible for forming governing coalitions and channelling the policy preferences of the majorities that elected them; thus, we hypothesise that distrust in the parties can have some unsavory consequences. Namely that trust can be w…
Coping with Cross‐Pressures
The Catholic Church is the largest religious denomination in the United States, yet political science lacks a comprehensive account of how the cross‐pressures created by its policy prescriptions structure Catholic political behavior. Because Catholicism's policy positions land on both sides of the contemporary partisan divide—its cultural concerns aligning with the Republican Party and its pro‐social justice stance compatible with Democratic prio…
Racial Attitudes and Political Preferences Among Black and White Evangelicals
How do racial group attitudes shape the political preferences of Black and white evangelicals? Scholarship has documented the relationship between religion and race in shaping political behavior and attitudes. However, less is known about how in-group and out-group racial attitudes operate within religious populations. Using samples of Black and white evangelicals from the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies, we explore the role of r…
Inhabiting the Middle Ground
Once fierce adversaries, American Catholics and Evangelical Christians have grown closer politically over the past decades, finding common ground on issues such as abortion and same-sex marriage. These bonds have grown so strong that a notable portion of Catholics now identify as “born-again” despite their religious tradition not being characterized as one that requires its members to have a born-again experience. This manuscript investigates how…
A tug of war
Recent literature has documented the increasing effect ethnocentrism exerts on American political behavior. In most cases, ideology and ethnocentrism point voters in the same direction, but what happens when ideology suggests one candidate and ethnocentrism a different candidate? Using data from the American National Election Studies (ANES), we analyze the voting behavior of white Americans in recent presidential elections (1992–2016) to better u…
The Pandemic and Political Behavior
Political Behavior is the official journal of the Elections, Public Opinion, and Voting Behavior organized section of the American Political Science Association. It publishes research on the political behavior of citizens, political activists, and political officeholders in the United States and around the world. From the perspective of its Journal Impact Factor, the journal’s reputation and impact have grown steadily in recent years. The first a…
A Dynamic Forecast
In this article, we build a model to predict the state-level results of the 2024 election. We do so by using both polling from similar points in past election cycles and the results of the previous election. Notably, we update our model over time, and the coefficients of the two variables change as a result: the model puts more weight on polling as the election gets closer. As of September 1, 2024, we find that Kamala Harris is a narrow favorite …
Do they practise what they preach? Public perceptions of American evangelicalism
Embattlement and Resilience Among White Evangelical Democrats
Why do individuals defect from the partisan pull of their social identities? Previous explanations of social sorting often neglect to account for these defectors whose partisanship cannot be explained by simply tallying up their social identities. I call these individuals political heretics. To better understand this phenomenon, I leverage white evangelicals, one of the most socially and politically sorted groups in the United States, who support…
The Qualitative Differences Between Self-Identification as a Born-Again and/or Evangelical Christian
How do members of the evangelical religious tradition choose to identify themselves, and how do they define terms such as “evangelical” or “born-again?” Extant scholarship traditionally utilizes quantitative data in order to isolate the pitfalls associated with this conflation. In order to validate these quantitative measures and to better understand how adherents of the evangelical religious tradition conceptualize these identities, I leverage 6…
The secular voter
As America grows more secular, secularism is increasingly relevant for American political attitudes and behavior. In this article, we contend that secularism—conceptualized as the affirmative embrace of secular belief and identity—is distinct from nonreligiosity, which is simply the absence of religion. We also argue that, at present, secularism is primarily a psychological, and not a social, orientation. Secular belonging and behavior are quite …
God’s country
It is often assumed that the rural identity is linked to the Republican Party and the urban identity to the Democratic Party, but little scholarship has investigated how voters connect thiese identities to the parties in an electoral context and how that perception may influence their electoral preferences. Furthermore, recent elections have seen various political elites employ rural and Evangelical Christian identity labels in virtually synonymo…
Nonpolitical Identity Signals as Information Shortcuts
A rich literature has documented how voters navigate the complex information landscape by using heuristics, or “information shortcuts,” to help them make sense of the political world. Additionally, a budding line of research argues that our current polarization crisis has extended beyond just the political and now even affects the nonpolitical realm. We submit that voters may be using these nonpolitical identity signals (e.g., a candidate driving…
Placing Your Faith
Objective What is the role of religion in America's growing geographic divide? Methods Using the data from the 2020 American National Election Study, we test the extent to which religion is associated with rural identity and rural resentment. Results We find positive empirical relationships between religion (particularly personal religious importance, religious beliefs, and identifying with mainline or evangelical Protestant Christianity) and a v…
Political science (11 works) · Politics (11 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Law (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (8 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works) · Political economy (6 works)