Ryan L Claassen
Biographic Data
| ID | 4122859 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ryan L Claassen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ryan L |
| FAMILY NAME | Claassen |
| SIGNATURE | CLAASSEN R L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Kent State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4781-3039 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 297 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2004 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
The Voting Wars: Public Opinion About Battles Over Voting Rules
The voting wars rank among the most rancorous and active partisan battles in an era defined by extreme partisan animus. The current battle lines formed decades ago, but neither party has a monopoly on protecting voting rights or preventing fraud. Instead we theorize partisan positions in voting wars reflect beliefs about assembling winning coalitions. Sometimes elections are won by turning out supporters and sometimes elections are won by prevent…
Moral Issues Meet Unmovable Objects: A Review of Churn in American Religion and Politics
In Moral Issues: How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics, Goren and Chapp investigate the role of attitudes about moral issues within the mass public in the United States shaping Americans' political and religious identities. Their work is positioned as contributing to core debates in the field of political behavior concerning issue attitudes. Namely, mainstream political science research maintains tha…
Biased polls: Investigating the pressures survey respondents feel
Democratic bias in polls reached record highs in recent elections. The Shy Trump Voter Hypothesis claims some voters feel pressure to hide plans to vote for Trump. Despite several scholarly efforts to assess whether shy Trump voters contribute significantly to Democratic bias, the jury is still out. We undertake a thorough investigation using the longstanding, and more general, social desirability framework to consider why some survey subjects mi…
Do Fans Make Poor Referees? Exploring Citizens’ Reactions to Partisan Gamesmanship
Political (as opposed to professional) election oversight is one area in which the U.S. scores extremely low in measures of election integrity. Meanwhile, rancorous political battles to determine acceptable election procedures and judge when tactics cross the line have become common events. Our work contributes to recent scholarship investigating whether voters prioritize democratic principles or strategically favor electoral procedures that prov…
Which Party Represents My Group? The Group Foundations of Partisan Choice and Polarization
Motivated Reasoning and Yard-Sign-Stealing Partisans: Mine is a Likable Rogue, Yours is a Degenerate Criminal
Social Desirability, Hidden Biases, and Support for Hillary Clinton
An emerging consensus suggests that women are underrepresented in government because of biases in the recruitment process instead of biases at the ballot box. These results, however, are largely for legislative offices, and research suggests that “male” characteristics are generally associated with executive positions like the presidency. At the same time, some research demonstrates social desirability masks gender biases against women who seek t…
Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans: Party Activists, Party Capture, and the 'God Gap'
Do Evangelical activists control the Republican Party? Do secular activists control the Democratic Party? In Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans, Ryan Claassen carefully assesses the way campaign activists represent religious and non-religious groups in American political parties dating back to the 1960s. By providing a new theoretical framework for investigating the connections between macro social and political trends, the results challenge…
Exceeding Expectations? Determinants of Satisfaction with the Voting Process in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
The 2000 U.S. presidential election resulted in states introducing new voting systems and election administration procedures. The election also raised concerns that poor experiences at the polls would produce lower levels of confidence in the electoral process or lower turnout. Drawing on theories used in organizational psychology and marketing and using an internet-administered panel survey, we assess the impact of voters' expectations on their …
Extreme Voices
Studies of issue publics suggest that widespread political ignorance does not matter because those affected by specific issues are involved and well informed, and can meaningfully shape policy in their policy area. However, research on civic participation raises important questions about whether the opinions of the active are representative of the less active. To examine whether meaningful differences in policy attitudes exist between the politic…
Voter Confidence and the Election-Day Voting Experience
Political Awareness and Partisan Realignment: Are the Unaware Unevolved
Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes in the parties’ positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating…
Political Awareness and Electoral Campaigns: Maximum Effects for Minimum Citizens
The Christian Right Thesis: Explaining Longitudinal Change in Participation among Evangelical Christians
Many attribute George W. Bush's strong campaign performance to Republican efforts to increase turnout among evangelical Protestants by stressing issues that focus on "moral values." However, most scholarly studies either focus on demonstrating that moral issues affected vote choice in recent elections or they focus on documenting longitudinal changes in party loyalty or political attitudes among Evangelicals. Our task is to add to this literature…
Policy Polarization among Party Elites and the Significance of Political Awareness in the Mass Public
This article analyzes opinions about abortion, racial, and social welfare policies, comparing their determinants among citizens with different levels of political information over the past several decades. Hypothesizing that growing elite partisan polarization may have exacerbated the political implications of differences in political awareness, the authors examine how increasing clarity of party—policy linkages among political elites influences …
Direction Versus Proximity: Amassing Experimental Evidence
Scale limitations, endogeneity problems, and observational equivalence in observational studies render many tests of the proximity and directional models inconclusive. Fortunately, the task of designing experimental tests has proven tractable and the small, but growing, body of experimental evidence sheds new light on directional and proximity motivated behavior. The experiment described in this article was designed to reexamine the role of ideol…
Testing the Reciprocal Effects of Campaign Participation
At Your Service: Voter Evaluations of Poll Worker Performance
The experiences in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 demonstrate that the election process can fall short of voters' expectations. In the wake of reforms, such as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, scholars have attempted to identify ways in which the objective conditions in polling places shape citizens' experiences and overall confidence in the electoral system. Early studies reveal that poll workers play a major role in the way voters fe…
Floating Voters and Floating Activists: Political Change and Information
Many studies document positive relationships between political information and campaign participation, but none investigates the relationship between information and interelection change in campaign participation. While studies of “floating voters” document negative relationships between information and floating, the author notes that activists are better informed than voters and investigates the relationship between knowledge and change in parti…
Ideology and Evaluation in an Experimental Setting: Comparing the Proximity and the Directional Models
The debate between which model, directional or proximity, better describes citizens' political behavior engages scholars because the former constitutes a serious challenge to long-standing, Downsian, spatial logic. Despite an engaging series of empirical tests, scholars comparing the two models continue to disagree about which model performs better. Noting experimental methods remain conspicuously absent from methods deployed to date, the author …
Campaign Activism and the Spatial Model: Getting Beyond Extremism to Explain Policy Motivated Participation
Does Policy Debate Reduce Information Effects in Public Opinion? Analyzing the Evolution of Public Opinion on Health Care
Because most citizens fall short of the normative ideal of being politically knowledgeable, it is important to assess the nature of information effects in public opinion. This paper identifies policy debate as a means by which information effects may be reduced. To test this notion, we analyze public opinion on health care before, during, and after the heated policy debate of the 1990s. The results show that information effects in public opinion …
Political Opinion and Distinctiveness: The Case of Hispanic Ethnicity
Political Opinion and Distinctiveness: The Case of Hispanic Ethnicity
Despite a proliferation of research treating Hispanics as a homogeneous political group, important questions regarding the nature and structure of Hispanic public opinion remain unanswered. Are Hispanic self-identifiers similar enough in their political preferences to be analyzed as a political group? As a group, are Hispanic preferences distinctive enough to be distinguished empirically from other racial and ethnic constituencies? Using National…
Voter Confidence and the Election-Day Voting Experience
Motivated Reasoning and Yard-Sign-Stealing Partisans: Mine is a Likable Rogue, Yours is a Degenerate Criminal
Policy Polarization among Party Elites and the Significance of Political Awareness in the Mass Public
This article analyzes opinions about abortion, racial, and social welfare policies, comparing their determinants among citizens with different levels of political information over the past several decades. Hypothesizing that growing elite partisan polarization may have exacerbated the political implications of differences in political awareness, the authors examine how increasing clarity of party—policy linkages among political elites influences …
Which Party Represents My Group? The Group Foundations of Partisan Choice and Polarization
At Your Service: Voter Evaluations of Poll Worker Performance
The experiences in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 demonstrate that the election process can fall short of voters' expectations. In the wake of reforms, such as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, scholars have attempted to identify ways in which the objective conditions in polling places shape citizens' experiences and overall confidence in the electoral system. Early studies reveal that poll workers play a major role in the way voters fe…
Political Awareness and Electoral Campaigns: Maximum Effects for Minimum Citizens
Does Policy Debate Reduce Information Effects in Public Opinion? Analyzing the Evolution of Public Opinion on Health Care
Because most citizens fall short of the normative ideal of being politically knowledgeable, it is important to assess the nature of information effects in public opinion. This paper identifies policy debate as a means by which information effects may be reduced. To test this notion, we analyze public opinion on health care before, during, and after the heated policy debate of the 1990s. The results show that information effects in public opinion …
Political Opinion and Distinctiveness: The Case of Hispanic Ethnicity
Despite a proliferation of research treating Hispanics as a homogeneous political group, important questions regarding the nature and structure of Hispanic public opinion remain unanswered. Are Hispanic self-identifiers similar enough in their political preferences to be analyzed as a political group? As a group, are Hispanic preferences distinctive enough to be distinguished empirically from other racial and ethnic constituencies? Using National…
Ideology and Evaluation in an Experimental Setting: Comparing the Proximity and the Directional Models
The debate between which model, directional or proximity, better describes citizens' political behavior engages scholars because the former constitutes a serious challenge to long-standing, Downsian, spatial logic. Despite an engaging series of empirical tests, scholars comparing the two models continue to disagree about which model performs better. Noting experimental methods remain conspicuously absent from methods deployed to date, the author …
The Christian Right Thesis: Explaining Longitudinal Change in Participation among Evangelical Christians
Many attribute George W. Bush's strong campaign performance to Republican efforts to increase turnout among evangelical Protestants by stressing issues that focus on "moral values." However, most scholarly studies either focus on demonstrating that moral issues affected vote choice in recent elections or they focus on documenting longitudinal changes in party loyalty or political attitudes among Evangelicals. Our task is to add to this literature…
Social Desirability, Hidden Biases, and Support for Hillary Clinton
An emerging consensus suggests that women are underrepresented in government because of biases in the recruitment process instead of biases at the ballot box. These results, however, are largely for legislative offices, and research suggests that “male” characteristics are generally associated with executive positions like the presidency. At the same time, some research demonstrates social desirability masks gender biases against women who seek t…
Extreme Voices
Studies of issue publics suggest that widespread political ignorance does not matter because those affected by specific issues are involved and well informed, and can meaningfully shape policy in their policy area. However, research on civic participation raises important questions about whether the opinions of the active are representative of the less active. To examine whether meaningful differences in policy attitudes exist between the politic…
Direction Versus Proximity: Amassing Experimental Evidence
Scale limitations, endogeneity problems, and observational equivalence in observational studies render many tests of the proximity and directional models inconclusive. Fortunately, the task of designing experimental tests has proven tractable and the small, but growing, body of experimental evidence sheds new light on directional and proximity motivated behavior. The experiment described in this article was designed to reexamine the role of ideol…
Testing the Reciprocal Effects of Campaign Participation
Campaign Activism and the Spatial Model: Getting Beyond Extremism to Explain Policy Motivated Participation
Political Awareness and Partisan Realignment: Are the Unaware Unevolved
Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes in the parties’ positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating…
Exceeding Expectations? Determinants of Satisfaction with the Voting Process in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
The 2000 U.S. presidential election resulted in states introducing new voting systems and election administration procedures. The election also raised concerns that poor experiences at the polls would produce lower levels of confidence in the electoral process or lower turnout. Drawing on theories used in organizational psychology and marketing and using an internet-administered panel survey, we assess the impact of voters' expectations on their …
Floating Voters and Floating Activists: Political Change and Information
Many studies document positive relationships between political information and campaign participation, but none investigates the relationship between information and interelection change in campaign participation. While studies of “floating voters” document negative relationships between information and floating, the author notes that activists are better informed than voters and investigates the relationship between knowledge and change in parti…
Biased polls: Investigating the pressures survey respondents feel
Democratic bias in polls reached record highs in recent elections. The Shy Trump Voter Hypothesis claims some voters feel pressure to hide plans to vote for Trump. Despite several scholarly efforts to assess whether shy Trump voters contribute significantly to Democratic bias, the jury is still out. We undertake a thorough investigation using the longstanding, and more general, social desirability framework to consider why some survey subjects mi…
Do Fans Make Poor Referees? Exploring Citizens’ Reactions to Partisan Gamesmanship
Political (as opposed to professional) election oversight is one area in which the U.S. scores extremely low in measures of election integrity. Meanwhile, rancorous political battles to determine acceptable election procedures and judge when tactics cross the line have become common events. Our work contributes to recent scholarship investigating whether voters prioritize democratic principles or strategically favor electoral procedures that prov…
Political Opinion and Distinctiveness: The Case of Hispanic Ethnicity
Political Opinion and Distinctiveness: The Case of Hispanic Ethnicity
Despite a proliferation of research treating Hispanics as a homogeneous political group, important questions regarding the nature and structure of Hispanic public opinion remain unanswered. Are Hispanic self-identifiers similar enough in their political preferences to be analyzed as a political group? As a group, are Hispanic preferences distinctive enough to be distinguished empirically from other racial and ethnic constituencies? Using National…
Does Policy Debate Reduce Information Effects in Public Opinion? Analyzing the Evolution of Public Opinion on Health Care
Because most citizens fall short of the normative ideal of being politically knowledgeable, it is important to assess the nature of information effects in public opinion. This paper identifies policy debate as a means by which information effects may be reduced. To test this notion, we analyze public opinion on health care before, during, and after the heated policy debate of the 1990s. The results show that information effects in public opinion …
Floating Voters and Floating Activists: Political Change and Information
Many studies document positive relationships between political information and campaign participation, but none investigates the relationship between information and interelection change in campaign participation. While studies of “floating voters” document negative relationships between information and floating, the author notes that activists are better informed than voters and investigates the relationship between knowledge and change in parti…
Ideology and Evaluation in an Experimental Setting: Comparing the Proximity and the Directional Models
The debate between which model, directional or proximity, better describes citizens' political behavior engages scholars because the former constitutes a serious challenge to long-standing, Downsian, spatial logic. Despite an engaging series of empirical tests, scholars comparing the two models continue to disagree about which model performs better. Noting experimental methods remain conspicuously absent from methods deployed to date, the author …
Campaign Activism and the Spatial Model: Getting Beyond Extremism to Explain Policy Motivated Participation
Testing the Reciprocal Effects of Campaign Participation
At Your Service: Voter Evaluations of Poll Worker Performance
The experiences in Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004 demonstrate that the election process can fall short of voters' expectations. In the wake of reforms, such as the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002, scholars have attempted to identify ways in which the objective conditions in polling places shape citizens' experiences and overall confidence in the electoral system. Early studies reveal that poll workers play a major role in the way voters fe…
Policy Polarization among Party Elites and the Significance of Political Awareness in the Mass Public
This article analyzes opinions about abortion, racial, and social welfare policies, comparing their determinants among citizens with different levels of political information over the past several decades. Hypothesizing that growing elite partisan polarization may have exacerbated the political implications of differences in political awareness, the authors examine how increasing clarity of party—policy linkages among political elites influences …
Direction Versus Proximity: Amassing Experimental Evidence
Scale limitations, endogeneity problems, and observational equivalence in observational studies render many tests of the proximity and directional models inconclusive. Fortunately, the task of designing experimental tests has proven tractable and the small, but growing, body of experimental evidence sheds new light on directional and proximity motivated behavior. The experiment described in this article was designed to reexamine the role of ideol…
The Christian Right Thesis: Explaining Longitudinal Change in Participation among Evangelical Christians
Many attribute George W. Bush's strong campaign performance to Republican efforts to increase turnout among evangelical Protestants by stressing issues that focus on "moral values." However, most scholarly studies either focus on demonstrating that moral issues affected vote choice in recent elections or they focus on documenting longitudinal changes in party loyalty or political attitudes among Evangelicals. Our task is to add to this literature…
Political Awareness and Partisan Realignment: Are the Unaware Unevolved
Many attribute the demise of the solid South, and changes in party attachments outside the South, to elite-level changes in the parties’ positions on racial issues and an issue evolution of the party system. Support is also growing for the notion that, as the Republican Party became an acceptable alternative to the Democratic Party for racial issues in the South, a resurgence of class-based partisanship further fueled the exodus. By investigating…
Political Awareness and Electoral Campaigns: Maximum Effects for Minimum Citizens
Exceeding Expectations? Determinants of Satisfaction with the Voting Process in the 2008 U.S. Presidential Election
The 2000 U.S. presidential election resulted in states introducing new voting systems and election administration procedures. The election also raised concerns that poor experiences at the polls would produce lower levels of confidence in the electoral process or lower turnout. Drawing on theories used in organizational psychology and marketing and using an internet-administered panel survey, we assess the impact of voters' expectations on their …
Extreme Voices
Studies of issue publics suggest that widespread political ignorance does not matter because those affected by specific issues are involved and well informed, and can meaningfully shape policy in their policy area. However, research on civic participation raises important questions about whether the opinions of the active are representative of the less active. To examine whether meaningful differences in policy attitudes exist between the politic…
Voter Confidence and the Election-Day Voting Experience
Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans: Party Activists, Party Capture, and the 'God Gap'
Do Evangelical activists control the Republican Party? Do secular activists control the Democratic Party? In Godless Democrats and Pious Republicans, Ryan Claassen carefully assesses the way campaign activists represent religious and non-religious groups in American political parties dating back to the 1960s. By providing a new theoretical framework for investigating the connections between macro social and political trends, the results challenge…
Motivated Reasoning and Yard-Sign-Stealing Partisans: Mine is a Likable Rogue, Yours is a Degenerate Criminal
Social Desirability, Hidden Biases, and Support for Hillary Clinton
An emerging consensus suggests that women are underrepresented in government because of biases in the recruitment process instead of biases at the ballot box. These results, however, are largely for legislative offices, and research suggests that “male” characteristics are generally associated with executive positions like the presidency. At the same time, some research demonstrates social desirability masks gender biases against women who seek t…
Which Party Represents My Group? The Group Foundations of Partisan Choice and Polarization
The Voting Wars: Public Opinion About Battles Over Voting Rules
The voting wars rank among the most rancorous and active partisan battles in an era defined by extreme partisan animus. The current battle lines formed decades ago, but neither party has a monopoly on protecting voting rights or preventing fraud. Instead we theorize partisan positions in voting wars reflect beliefs about assembling winning coalitions. Sometimes elections are won by turning out supporters and sometimes elections are won by prevent…
Moral Issues Meet Unmovable Objects: A Review of Churn in American Religion and Politics
In Moral Issues: How Public Opinion on Abortion and Gay Rights Affects American Religion and Politics, Goren and Chapp investigate the role of attitudes about moral issues within the mass public in the United States shaping Americans' political and religious identities. Their work is positioned as contributing to core debates in the field of political behavior concerning issue attitudes. Namely, mainstream political science research maintains tha…
Biased polls: Investigating the pressures survey respondents feel
Democratic bias in polls reached record highs in recent elections. The Shy Trump Voter Hypothesis claims some voters feel pressure to hide plans to vote for Trump. Despite several scholarly efforts to assess whether shy Trump voters contribute significantly to Democratic bias, the jury is still out. We undertake a thorough investigation using the longstanding, and more general, social desirability framework to consider why some survey subjects mi…
Do Fans Make Poor Referees? Exploring Citizens’ Reactions to Partisan Gamesmanship
Political (as opposed to professional) election oversight is one area in which the U.S. scores extremely low in measures of election integrity. Meanwhile, rancorous political battles to determine acceptable election procedures and judge when tactics cross the line have become common events. Our work contributes to recent scholarship investigating whether voters prioritize democratic principles or strategically favor electoral procedures that prov…
Political science (22 works) · Law (21 works) · Politics (21 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (20 works) · Law (17 works) · Psychology (12 works) · Sociology (11 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Social Media and Politics (9 works) · Public opinion (8 works)