REsearch
DISSERTATION
My dissertation, “The Young American Voter in the New Millennium,” investigates the gap in presidential vote choice between young Americans (18- to 29-year-olds) and the rest of the electorate (30 and over). Young adults have preferred Democratic candidates at much higher proportions than older voters at the ballot box in recent elections. This gap, which emerged in 2004 and is expected to persist through 2016, is puzzling because the vote preferences of young people were fairly equal to those of older Americans for the two decades prior to the 2004 election. In fact, the general lack of interest and engagement that characterizes young Americans strongly suggests that their attitudes and preferences should not be terribly distinct.
I argue that the primary cause for the gap is the greater salience of the issues on the national agenda—specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic recession—at the time Millennials came of political age. This resulted in stronger negative retrospective assessments of Republican Party performance by young people, whose opinions remain malleable relative to the more crystallized opinions of older Americans. At the same time, campaign outreach efforts by the Democratic Party and its candidates to engage young people in the political process surpassed those efforts made by the Republican Party, mobilizing more young supporters to the polls and possibly influencing vote choice as well.
This is a story with many moving pieces. I employ a multi-method approach to disentangle the forces affecting vote choice including partisanship, issue preferences, and campaign factors. I first use American National Election Studies Time Series data to determine the impact of affective polarization on both younger and older Americans. The results of the large-N analysis indicate that young Americans today are less committed to the parties than older individuals. This is evident from their lack of affective party attachment when compared to older partisans (particularly among young Republicans) and their less-negative assessments of the opposing party relative to older Americans.
Second, I perform qualitative content analysis on open-ended candidate and party likes-dislikes questions in the American National Election Studies surveys from 1972 through 2012** to gain insight into the differences between the younger and older electorate in how they view candidates, parties, and issues over time. Because these questions ask specifically about the parties and candidates, any spontaneous issue-based responses are unprompted and allow me to examine the way in which citizens, both young and older alike, think about an election and helps determine the salience of issues. My results suggest that between 2004 and 2012, issue attitudes were a more powerful factor on vote choice among 18-29-year-olds compared to prior election years, and had a stronger influence on vote choice relative to older Americans for whom party and candidate factors had a greater effect.
The third empirical analysis of my dissertation looks at the effects of campaign and party contact on political attitudes and behavior. Contact is often excluded from models of vote choice but, given the renewed efforts in campaign outreach in the last decade, such activities may have a role in exacerbating the gap between young and older Americans. Using panel data from 2008, I look at the effects of party and campaign contact on political interest, partisanship, likelihood of turnout, and vote choice. I supplement this with another analysis that uses objective contact data from a unique data set created from the 2012 Republican Party’s voter files.
Electoral behavior studies have largely ignored political environment when explaining vote choice. I correct this by developing a model that unites individual-level attitudinal factors with both contextual and campaign factors. Not only do young people see a difference between the parties on prospective issues preferences, they have also been allowed to reward or punish parties at the ballot box based on their performance in office. These assessments have stamped this cohort with a pro-Democratic character. Ultimately, this study provides greater insight into the social and psychological processes that regulate political socialization and produce patterns of generational opinion divergence.
** Open-ended responses were coded by ANES staff from 1972 to 2004; 2008 and 2012 data were hand coded by me.
ONGOING AND FUTURE RESEARCH
In addition to my dissertation research, I have four current and future research agendas spanning different areas of public opinion and voting behavior. The first considers the effects of priming on public support for tax policies that aim to improve public health. In a working paper with Clare Brock, we seek to determine whether self-interest or self-proclaimed ideology dictate policy preferences when it comes to support for soda taxes. Our results show that among liberals who drink large quantities of soda, self-interest prevails and support for a soda tax drops. But among conservatives, we observe more sociotropic behavior in the form of increased support among those who view public health as poor. We currently have an embedded survey experiment in the field testing whether support for sin taxes like a soda tax can be primed by personal or public health assessments. We expect these data arrive in December 2016 and will submit this article for review shortly thereafter.
The second research project in progress considers the effects of microtargeting and campaign outreach on marginalized voters. In a working paper with Kyle Endres, we examine the impact that microtargeting algorithms utilized by parties and campaigns have on voter contact by the parties, as well as the effect of that contact on voter turnout. In particular, we look at the disproportionate categorization of young Americans as “unreliable” voters despite the fact that many of these individuals lack a vote history due to their relative newness to the political process. This is problematic given that microtargeting estimates are created, in part, based on previous vote history. Using a unique data set that combines Congressional Cooperative Election Studies data with microtargeting estimates and objective contact data provided by the Republican National Committee, our preliminary findings suggest that Republican microtargeting algorithms underestimate participation among young Americans, and that Republican contact strategies ignore this important and growing segments of the electorate.
After turning my dissertation into a book, I intend to perform more research on the attitudes and behavior of young Americans. I plan to conduct a long-term study of opinion and attitudinal transference within social networks to determine the effects of social relationships on the development of political predispositions of young people. This is particularly important since more high school graduates are attending college and socializing into politics in liberal environments than ever before. Integrating friends, family, and acquaintances into the research and design process while following young people into older adulthood can lead to a deeper understanding of how the cultural context in which young people learn about politics affects lifelong orientations. In addition, this research will examine whether emotional campaign rhetoric has differential impacts on the attitudes of young citizens relative to older citizens.
My final area of research looks at public opinion as it relates to campaign finance and money in politics. My publication in Election Law Journal examines the impact of perceptions of quid pro quo corruption on political participation. Contrary to Supreme Court logic, my results show that that individuals who perceive higher levels of corruption actually participate in politics more, on average, than individuals who perceive lower levels of corruption. I plan to expand on this research agenda and investigate the dynamics behind the high levels of public dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC despite low levels of public knowledge on campaign finance regulations.
The unifying theme of my research is the study of public opinion and behavior. I enjoy working with large-N survey data to gain a better understanding of how citizens think, and how those opinions and predispositions further translate to behavior. I plan to continue an active and thought-provoking research agenda in the future.
My dissertation, “The Young American Voter in the New Millennium,” investigates the gap in presidential vote choice between young Americans (18- to 29-year-olds) and the rest of the electorate (30 and over). Young adults have preferred Democratic candidates at much higher proportions than older voters at the ballot box in recent elections. This gap, which emerged in 2004 and is expected to persist through 2016, is puzzling because the vote preferences of young people were fairly equal to those of older Americans for the two decades prior to the 2004 election. In fact, the general lack of interest and engagement that characterizes young Americans strongly suggests that their attitudes and preferences should not be terribly distinct.
I argue that the primary cause for the gap is the greater salience of the issues on the national agenda—specifically the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the economic recession—at the time Millennials came of political age. This resulted in stronger negative retrospective assessments of Republican Party performance by young people, whose opinions remain malleable relative to the more crystallized opinions of older Americans. At the same time, campaign outreach efforts by the Democratic Party and its candidates to engage young people in the political process surpassed those efforts made by the Republican Party, mobilizing more young supporters to the polls and possibly influencing vote choice as well.
This is a story with many moving pieces. I employ a multi-method approach to disentangle the forces affecting vote choice including partisanship, issue preferences, and campaign factors. I first use American National Election Studies Time Series data to determine the impact of affective polarization on both younger and older Americans. The results of the large-N analysis indicate that young Americans today are less committed to the parties than older individuals. This is evident from their lack of affective party attachment when compared to older partisans (particularly among young Republicans) and their less-negative assessments of the opposing party relative to older Americans.
Second, I perform qualitative content analysis on open-ended candidate and party likes-dislikes questions in the American National Election Studies surveys from 1972 through 2012** to gain insight into the differences between the younger and older electorate in how they view candidates, parties, and issues over time. Because these questions ask specifically about the parties and candidates, any spontaneous issue-based responses are unprompted and allow me to examine the way in which citizens, both young and older alike, think about an election and helps determine the salience of issues. My results suggest that between 2004 and 2012, issue attitudes were a more powerful factor on vote choice among 18-29-year-olds compared to prior election years, and had a stronger influence on vote choice relative to older Americans for whom party and candidate factors had a greater effect.
The third empirical analysis of my dissertation looks at the effects of campaign and party contact on political attitudes and behavior. Contact is often excluded from models of vote choice but, given the renewed efforts in campaign outreach in the last decade, such activities may have a role in exacerbating the gap between young and older Americans. Using panel data from 2008, I look at the effects of party and campaign contact on political interest, partisanship, likelihood of turnout, and vote choice. I supplement this with another analysis that uses objective contact data from a unique data set created from the 2012 Republican Party’s voter files.
Electoral behavior studies have largely ignored political environment when explaining vote choice. I correct this by developing a model that unites individual-level attitudinal factors with both contextual and campaign factors. Not only do young people see a difference between the parties on prospective issues preferences, they have also been allowed to reward or punish parties at the ballot box based on their performance in office. These assessments have stamped this cohort with a pro-Democratic character. Ultimately, this study provides greater insight into the social and psychological processes that regulate political socialization and produce patterns of generational opinion divergence.
** Open-ended responses were coded by ANES staff from 1972 to 2004; 2008 and 2012 data were hand coded by me.
ONGOING AND FUTURE RESEARCH
In addition to my dissertation research, I have four current and future research agendas spanning different areas of public opinion and voting behavior. The first considers the effects of priming on public support for tax policies that aim to improve public health. In a working paper with Clare Brock, we seek to determine whether self-interest or self-proclaimed ideology dictate policy preferences when it comes to support for soda taxes. Our results show that among liberals who drink large quantities of soda, self-interest prevails and support for a soda tax drops. But among conservatives, we observe more sociotropic behavior in the form of increased support among those who view public health as poor. We currently have an embedded survey experiment in the field testing whether support for sin taxes like a soda tax can be primed by personal or public health assessments. We expect these data arrive in December 2016 and will submit this article for review shortly thereafter.
The second research project in progress considers the effects of microtargeting and campaign outreach on marginalized voters. In a working paper with Kyle Endres, we examine the impact that microtargeting algorithms utilized by parties and campaigns have on voter contact by the parties, as well as the effect of that contact on voter turnout. In particular, we look at the disproportionate categorization of young Americans as “unreliable” voters despite the fact that many of these individuals lack a vote history due to their relative newness to the political process. This is problematic given that microtargeting estimates are created, in part, based on previous vote history. Using a unique data set that combines Congressional Cooperative Election Studies data with microtargeting estimates and objective contact data provided by the Republican National Committee, our preliminary findings suggest that Republican microtargeting algorithms underestimate participation among young Americans, and that Republican contact strategies ignore this important and growing segments of the electorate.
After turning my dissertation into a book, I intend to perform more research on the attitudes and behavior of young Americans. I plan to conduct a long-term study of opinion and attitudinal transference within social networks to determine the effects of social relationships on the development of political predispositions of young people. This is particularly important since more high school graduates are attending college and socializing into politics in liberal environments than ever before. Integrating friends, family, and acquaintances into the research and design process while following young people into older adulthood can lead to a deeper understanding of how the cultural context in which young people learn about politics affects lifelong orientations. In addition, this research will examine whether emotional campaign rhetoric has differential impacts on the attitudes of young citizens relative to older citizens.
My final area of research looks at public opinion as it relates to campaign finance and money in politics. My publication in Election Law Journal examines the impact of perceptions of quid pro quo corruption on political participation. Contrary to Supreme Court logic, my results show that that individuals who perceive higher levels of corruption actually participate in politics more, on average, than individuals who perceive lower levels of corruption. I plan to expand on this research agenda and investigate the dynamics behind the high levels of public dissatisfaction with the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United v. FEC despite low levels of public knowledge on campaign finance regulations.
The unifying theme of my research is the study of public opinion and behavior. I enjoy working with large-N survey data to gain a better understanding of how citizens think, and how those opinions and predispositions further translate to behavior. I plan to continue an active and thought-provoking research agenda in the future.