Washington�s experience with primary elections provides an opportunity to assess issues associated with implementing the top two primary and an opportunity to examine how changing to a top two primary may affect elections and voting. Although the Washington context is different from California...

In this project, we examine the effects of electoral competition on political corruption. Specifically, we propose that electoral competition may facilitate some types of corruption, while mitigating others. We argue pressures of competitive elections may increase incentives for candidates and...

Campaigns have been shown to increase public awareness of issues and candidates. Little is known about how ballot measure campaigns affect attitudes about the subjects of those campaigns. This paper makes use of ANES panel data to assess if attitudes about gays and lesbians changed in response...

This paper tests hypothesis about why and where the Democratic state-level presidential vote changed from 2004 to 2008. Results are consistent with a racial threat hypothesis that proposes some white voters were less receptive to African American candidates if they lived in a state with a larger...

Research has found that states using initiatives and referendums have higher turnout, particularly in midterm elections. Existing research has not examined who is mobilized to vote when issues appear on statewide ballots. Building on work by Campbell (1966. “Surge and Decline: A Study of...

In this paper we examine how Spanish language marks a political divide within the Latino community. Spanish language use also provides an opportunity for political parties to send slightly different campaign messages. We illustrate this point with reference to California's Democratic party.

We test hypotheses about support for multiparty politics in the United States. We expect that individual-level attitudes and state-level partisan context determine who supports having more parties. Copyright (c) 2005 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.