In the most recent issue of AJPS, Nie and his colleagues have an article that makes those two claims. The claims seem perfectly plausible. And they present well-executed research backing them up. Their findings are consistent with a string of previous work making the same argument and coming to the same conclusion (they list several such studies along the way). The main difference: Previous studies have operationalized “small-circulation outlets” as talk radio or cable television, but Nie et al look at internet news sites. They find that more ideologically extreme folks are more likely to visit online news sites.

At the risk of sounding ungenerous, my reaction was “well, duh.” I suppose it’s important to have precise measurement, so it’s worth looking specifically at who is viewing online news sites even though we would expect to find that the same people who consume other niche media would also consume online news. And I suppose that’s a purpose of journals–to look carefully at specific questions. I’m not criticizing them for writing the article by any means. In fact, a “well duh” reaction means they thought to test something that the rest of us assumed was true without bothering to check for sure. Good for them.

So, in sum: People who visit online news and political sites are more politically extreme. Well, duh.

Thad Kousser: Ask anybody here what a “good” state legislature should look like. Can anybody actually answer that? Seth Masket: Campaigns can matter. In districts that Colorado’s wealthy Democrats targeted via 527s, Democratic candidates for state legislature did 4% better than in previous elections. Apparently, a team of four extremely wealthy Democratic donors singlehandedly swung the legislature to the Democrats. Adam Brown: Self-financed spending is not strategic. Candidates spend if they have it, regardless of their likelihood of victory. (Yes, that was a shameless self-promotion.)

David Konisky and Neal Woods: Smart state governments should encourage their biggest polluters to locate along state boundaries. That way, the state can reap the benefits of industry, but let all the pollution drift into neighboring states. Great theoretical story. Awesome maps showing locations of all polluters in each state. Trouble is, the presentation ended with Konisky saying that all the empirical tests produced null results. There’s no evidence that states are actually doing this. As far as the “gotcha” goes, what a letdown. But I suppose we should be glad about these null findings. Emily Huston: HAVA set minimal standards for voter identification, but allowed states to impose stricter standards. Why did some states impose strict standards but others did not? Emily threw a lot of spaghetti at the wall, but none of it stuck. The question remains unanswered. That’s two “null results” papers in one panel.

Chris Mooney: The coolest guy in state politics. Received several well-deserved honors, including a giant red pen to commemorate his work as founding editor of State Politics and Policy Quarterly.

Dan Smith and Michael McDonald apparently make a LOT of money as expert witnesses in lawsuits. And Bob Erikson looks surprisingly like the late Senator Ted Kennedy.

Boris Shor will release his common-space scores of legislators’ ideal points later this summer after a publication in LSQ comes out. Woot! (See an example of what you can do with his data.) Jim Battista and Megan Gall are assembling demographic data for all 7,380 legislative districts by matching census tracts to districts. Sounds painstaking. No word yet on whether they’ll release the data publicly so that we can all freeride. Battista/Gall’s data combined with Shor’s could be awesome.

Read tweets sent during the conference by searching Twitter for hashtag #sppc.

For years, political scientists have explained this seeming paradox by pointing out that members of Congress can win reelection by running against Congress. A representative can urge his voters to send him back time after time so that he can keep working to fix the broken system. As Fenno wrote in Home Style, “It is easy for each Congressman to explain to his own supporters why he cannot be blamed for the performance of the collectivity . . . because the internal diversity and decentralization of the institution provide such a wide variety of collegial villains to flay before one’s supporters at home” (1978, 167).²

In his textbook on Congressional elections, Gary Jacobson sums up the dominant view among political scientists: “Members are not held individually responsible for their collective performance in governing.” (2004, 227).

David Jones has a recent article in AJPS that challenges this long held view. Jones looks back 60 years to a report commissioned in 1950 by the American Political Science Association Toward a More Responsive Two-Party System. That report urged “greater party cohesion in Congress,” suggesting that the presence of liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats makes it more difficult for individual voters to hold their representative accountable for Congress’s collective activities.

Jones argues that the APSA report was correct: If the two parties become more distinct (i.e. polarized), then it should be easier for voters to blame members of the majority party for Congress’s collectively bad (or good) performance. And, as it happens, there’s been quite a bit of research in recent years showing that Congress has, in fact, become more polarized.

If Jones is right, then we’re in a new era. It may have been true 20, 30, or 40 years ago that members of Congress could evade accountability for Congress’s overall activities, but rising polarization has enabled voters to punish or reward Representatives for Congress’s collective performance.

Evidence that Overall Congressional Approval Matters

To test this possibility, Jones compiled each incumbent Representative’s electoral margin going back decades, producing thousands of data points. He then regressed those vote margins on a variety of independent variables. Among others, he regressed vote margins on Congress’s overall approval ratings. More importantly, he also interacted those approval ratings with measures of polarization (party unity).

Take a look at Figure 1 from Jones’s article (below). Along the X axis, Jones shows each year back through 1976. Along the Y axis, he shows that estimated effect of overall Congressional approval on individual incumbents’ vote margins for that year.³ By the end of the series, the estimated effect of overall approval rises above 0.50 (for members of the majority party). In other words, a one percentage point drop in Congressional approval (perhaps from 40 to 39) leads us to expect a 0.50+ drop in each incumbent’s vote margin. This is a powerful effect, subject to a powerful interaction.

Figure 1, Jones 2010

It’s worth noting that there is not similar interaction for members of the minority. Back in the days of low polarization, minority members could win reelection by running against Congress, just like members of the majority. Rising polarization has not prevented minority party members from continuing to run against Congress–and why should it? Minority party members can continue to win by running against Congress, citing all the majority’s misdeeds. Nothing has changed for the minority.

Comment and Criticism

This is an interesting and worthwhile article. It leaves me wondering, though, why 90+% of incumbents continue to win reelection. I began this review by pointing out a seeming paradox from 2008–not from 1976. Even in the most recent Congressional elections, 36% of voters said that most members did not deserve reelection, yet 94% of members won reelection. More generally, we continue to observe Congress (overall) receiving markedly low approval while individual members receive very high approval from their constituents.

If Jones is correct, then we ought not to observe this pattern so strongly anymore, yet we do. I’m not sure how to respond to Jones’s analysis given this continuing disconnect between overall and individual Congressional approval. Perhaps Jones has a serious problem in his statistical analysis that I’m not seeing resulting in an inflated estimate of the interaction. Or perhaps Congressional elections are sufficiently different from Congressional approval that this paradox can persist in approval data even as it evaporates in election results. I’m at a loss to resolve this puzzle.

This creates what we might call “the declining talent pool of soccer,” or more simply, the “benchwarmer” dilemma: You want your best 11 players on the field, but in order to motivate your players, you’ve got to threaten to replace them with an inferior player from the bench. Thus, one of these situations may result: Your 11 best players might give less than a full effort (knowing that their imperfect effort is still better than a benchwarmer’s full effort), or your inferior benchwarming players might be the ones you put on the field.

The same problem arises when choosing government officials. The result is inferior governance.

The “Benchwarmer” Dilemma in the British Cabinet

In recently published research, Torun Dewan and David Myatt argue that the same dynamic limits the performance of governments. They’ve got the British cabinet in mind. With salaries and benefits defined by statute, the British Prime Minister’s only “stick” to motivate junior ministers is the threat of removal. But since ministers generally come from a small pool (the House of Commons), the PM can’t actually remove a minister unless the PM is willing to substitute in a less desirable alternate.

Thus, the longer a party controls the British cabinet, the less talented it will be at governing. Either the ministers remain in their positions for so long that the threat of removal loses its credibility, or else talented ministers are replaced with inferior ministers so often that the overall talent level crumbles. Eventually, the cabinet becomes so ineffective that that majority loses control of parliament, allowing the other party to start the same process all over again with its (initially) fresh talent pool.

Is There a “Benchwarmer” Dilemma in U.S. Elections?

I like Dewan and Myatt’s argument. It makes a lot of sense. It helps explain why there is often a “honeymoon” period after elections when the new government seems so effective.¹ In large measure, their argument works so well because it focuses on the British cabinet, where roughly 90 cabinet members (ministers and junior ministers) need to be drawn from a pool of 350 or so majority-party members of parliament. After all, the soccer analogy that I use above might not work so well if there were 1000 players on the roster and only 11 on the field.

Or would it? I think that the “benchwarmer” problem from the soccer analogy can apply just as well to American elections. Consider a member of the U.S. House running for reelection in his district. The only punishment that his “boss” (his voters) can threaten him with is removal from office, whether in the primary or in the general election. They have observed the incumbent over the past two years–longer if he has served several terms–and they understand his strengths and weaknesses. By contrast, they may be mostly unfamiliar with the challenger, who may be a political newcomer.

Thus, voters are faced with a dilemma: Should they keep the star player (the incumbent) on the field despite imperfect performance, or should they substitute in a less experienced, less tested benchwarmer? Elections aren’t merely a referendum on the incumbent’s performance.² Instead, it’s an evaluation of the incumbent that takes account of uncertainty about the challenger’s ability to fill the incumbent’s shoes.

The effect of all this might be that incumbents know they can safely underperform without having to worry much about losing their seats. Maybe that’s why over 90% of U.S. House members get reelected every two years.³ Despite all the recent hubbub about 2010 being an anti-incumbent election year, I’ll be stunned (like Sides and Yglesias) if that pattern changes much this year. Voters find it better to stick with the devil you know than with the benchwarmer you don’t.

Broad bills ensure that general state policies remain current and fair, but legislators might avoid them for two reasons. First, they are technically complicated; if you wish to revise the state highway code, for example, you will need expert advice and probably a few studies. Second, they are politically difficult to pass; since they influence the entire state, you’ve got to work to bring a coalition of legislators on board with your proposal. By contrast, “district” bills are technically less complicated; the process of campaigning generally gives legislators all the information they need about some pressing local problem. District bills are also politically easier to pass; since they don’t have any impact outside of a small geographical area, other legislators have no reason to oppose most district bills.

By examining every bill introduced in 13 states in 1881, 1901, 1921, 1941, 1961, 1981, and 1997–that’s over 165,000 bills–Gamm and Kousser try to explain why some states produce so many more district bills than others. In Alabama, only 53% of bills had statewide impact; in Nebraska, 77% did. In general, Gamm and Kousser find that states pass more district bills when legislators have incentives to build up their reelection constituency or to make themselves stand out as an individual, but they pass more statewide bills when legislators have incentives to develop their influence and power within the state legislature. There’s more to it than that, though.

Hypotheses and Findings

Gamm and Kousser identify specific conditions under which legislators might prefer to introduce district bills or statewide bills.

Hypothesis 1 (one-party dominance): When the major parties are evenly balanced in a state, you’ll see more statewide bills; when one party dominates, you’ll see more district bills. This prediction is based on Key’s seminal 1949 book, Southern Politics in State and Nation. Key wrote that two-party competition produces “conditions favorable to government according to rule or general principle” (e.g. statewide bills); by contrast,  “in a loose, catch-as-catch-can [one-party] politics highly unstable coalitions must be held together by whatever means is available…. A loose factional system lacks the power to carry out sustained programs of action [e.g. statewide bills]” (pages 305, 308). In other words, two-party competition creates strong incentives for each party to form a statewide brand name by competing over statewide policies; in a one-party system, unstable factional coalitions within the supermajority party need to be held together with pork and other district bills. This hypothesis is confirmed in the analysis.

Hypothesis 2 (legislative salary): Legislators will introduce more district bills if they are paid more. California’s legislators earn six-figure salaries each year; Montana’s earn less than $10,000. Higher salaries create higher incentives to hold onto your job. Thus, higher salaries create incentives to deliver pork and other particularistic bills to voters in your district, even at the expense of pursuing the state’s general interest. This hypothesis is also confirmed in the analysis.

Hypothesis 3 (session length): Legislators will introduce more statewide bills if they are in session longer. California’s legislators are in session almost year round; in other states, legislators meet only one or two months per year. Because statewide bills are more complicated to write and pass than district bills, you will see fewer statewide bills in states with shorter sessions. As it happens, however, the data do not bear out this expectation; session length appears to have no relationship with the types of bills that pass.

Hypothesis 4 (turnover): Legislators can increase their statute within the legislature by building coalitions and passing statewide bills. As turnover decreases and legislators serve longer, they gain incentives to develop their stature within the legislature. As such, decreased turnover should lead to increased statewide bills. That’s the expectation, anyway. In the analysis, Gamm and Kousser find the opposite: Higher turnover leads to more focus on statewide bills. Perhaps their logic was off. Perhaps what’s really going on is this: Legislators who know they won’t stay long have less need to build up their reelection constituency (with district bills), so they can instead focus on statewide needs. I’m sure Kousser would rather not say this, but…score one for term limits?

Hypothesis 6 (district size): If districts are larger, legislators will focus more on statewide bills. Larger districts include more cities and towns, meaning that an individual district bill will reach a smaller portion of the district. In this situation, a more effective way to show the entire district that their legislator is attentive to their needs might be to pass statewide bills rather than district bills. This hypothesis is confirmed in the analysis.

Yes, I skipped hypothesis 5. I found it unpersuasive, and it ended up being statistically insignificant in the final analysis.

Punchline: If you want your legislators to pass general policies that benefit the state as a whole, pay them less, make districts bigger, and strive for partisan balance. If you want your legislators to pass pork and other district-focused bills, pay them more, make districts smaller, and promote one-party government.

Comment and Criticism

Gamm and Kousser are right to look to state legislatures to answer this question. Too often, folks think that they have to look at Congress if they want to study legislative process. The trouble with that is that there are no cross-sectional variations in the variables that we might expect to matter. In any given year, the majority party margin is the same for every member of the U.S. House; so is the salary, session length, average turnover, and so on. Sure, these things vary over time–but ALL of them vary from year to year, making it hard to tell which over-time variation is influencing the results.

Sometimes, folks who give up on Congress try instead to compare countries to one another. This approach is useful, but it introduces a host of other complications (variations in culture, constitutions, voting rules, etc.). The state legislatures are the perfect venue for this research question. The authors are able to study all the variables they care about, but all their observations are similar by virtue of their status as members of a common political system.

Together, these two articles are a must-read. They help explain why genes and other biological factors might influence our political leanings. Biological factors (especially genetics) are the dominant cause of these Big Five personality traits, which then remain stable throughout life. In turn, these Big Five traits influence our political leanings (Gerber et al.) and our political activity (Mondak et al.).

The Big Five personality traits

Both articles adopt the “Big Five” approach that, they claim, has become widely accepted among psychologists. Quoting two psychologists, Gerber et al. sum up these big five traits as follows:

The Big Five - Gerber et al., pg 113

As Mondak et al. note, these Big Five traits are often summed up as OCEAN: Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness, Neuroticism (where neurotic is the opposite of emotionally stable).

Effects of personality on ideology

Gerber et al. argue that these Big Five personality traits influence our political leanings. Each trait may have different effects on our economic ideology (free market vs interventionist) as well as on our social ideology (pro-choice/pro-equality vs pro-life/pro-tradition). They expect four of the five traits to influence ideology. The only exception is extroversion, which they expect to influence political participation (as Mondak et al. show) but not ideology. Their predictions:

Using a very large sample drawn from the Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project (CCAP), the authors confirm most of these predictions. I’ve pasted below their Figure 1. All hypotheses are confirmed. Their only error was in predicting that emotional stability would cause folks to lean left on social issues. As it turns out, emotionally stable folks lean right on both dimensions and neurotic folks lean left on both dimensions. So we learn that Conservatives are hard-working, organized, closed-minded, and emotionally stable. Liberals are lazy, disorganized, open-minded, and neurotic. Let’s see how the punditocracy spins that one. The effects of personality rival the effects of education and income.

Figure 1 from Gerber et al. 2010

Contextual effects

Gerber et al. also argue that these effects can be contextual, although they seem less committed to this possibility than Mondak et al, for whom environmental interactions were a critical part of the story. In particular, they argue that race might matter. For example, blacks tend to view poverty as caused by systematic forces rather than by laziness; as such, conscientiousness may have a weaker pull among blacks toward economic liberalism. Likewise, blacks tend to be surrounded by liberalism; thus, “openness” might actually lead blacks to question the liberalism that surrounds them rather than pulling them toward the left. Gerber et al. find support for these contextual interactions with a series of figures like the one below. When I look at these figures, though, it doesn’t look so much like an interaction to me–rather, it looks like it’s just harder to predict ideology using personality among blacks than it is among whites.

Figure 2a from Gerber et al 2010

Comment and Criticism

This article, together with the similar one by Mondak et al., is a must-read. I’m not sure whether I’m persuaded yet that I need to demand a personality index on every poll I work with. But these two articles introduce us to a new psychological approach that I’m sure we’ll see much more of.

A few years ago,  Alford, Funk, and Hibbing challenged that environmental approach by showing that political orientations are genetically transmitted. Later work by Fowler and his colleagues has confirmed that our political leanings are genetically influenced. But although this genetic research has drawn our attention toward biological influences, it has not produced a theory that can explain why biology matters.

The goal of Mondak et al.’s recent APSR article is to develop a theory that can link these genetic studies with the more widespread environmental studies. The figure below (from the article) summarizes the theory. Note that they expect neither environmental factors nor personality traits to have much of a direct effect on political behavior. Instead, most of the effect is interactive. For example, if a person has an extroverted personality type, and if a form of political participation is social (e.g. a caucus as opposed to donating to a candidate via internet), then you will expect that person to participate. Here’s the figure:

Figure 1 from Mondak et al 2010

By “personality,” the authors refer to the “Big Five” personality index widely used within psychological circles. The Big Five traits include these:

• Openness to new experience. Folks who seek new experiences and information as opposed to folks content with their lot.
• Conscientiousness. Organized, hard-working folks as opposed to lazy or sloppy people.
• Extroversion vs introversion.
• Agreeableness. Warm, kind, sympathetic, generous people as opposed to unkind, distant, cold, miserly people.
• Emotional stability vs neuroticism. Calm, relaxed, stable as opposed to tense, nervous.

The authors stress a single main point: We cannot understand the effects of personality without accounting for the environment, and we cannot understand the effects of the environment without accounting for personality. They illustrate this argument by showing that certain types of political participation can be predicted well by interacting personality traits with environmental variables, but the empirical analysis seems peripheral here. As I understand it, the main goal of this paper is just to get political scientists thinking about the importance of personality.

They expect this personality research to supplant genetic research. The genetic research has shown an interesting relationship between biological factors and political behavior but without providing any sort of theoretical mechanism. By contrast, psychologists have shown that genes and other biological factors “account for most of the variance in personality traits” (p 89), but personality traits are the proximate cause of later behaviors.

Comments and Criticism

These are novel arguments, and I look forward to seeing how they influence future behavioral research. At the same time, I find myself wondering how much there is to gain by looking at personality. The authors have argued that personality can influence political behaviors (turnout and other political participation). But the genetic literature has shown that genetics influence political dispositions (liberal vs conservative, Republican vs Democratic). If Mondak et al. really want to show that personality is the real (proximate) cause of anything “caused” by genetics, then they need to show that personality influences political dispositions as well.

Update: See my review of a study that does just that–Gerber et al.’s “Personality and Political Attitudes.”

But what hasn’t been clear until know is whether education caused voting, or whether it was merely correlated with voting. After all, education is caused by family background (parents’ education level, family wealth) and personal characteristics (intelligence). Does education cause voting, or do the things that cause education also cause voting? A major knock against the “education as cause” theory came when Brody (1978) pointed out that education levels have risen dramatically since the 1960s, but turnout has not.

So how can we figure out whether education causes turnout? Well, shoot, what if we did an experiment that randomly caused one group of kids to get more education than a control group of their peers? Then we could just see whether those who were randomly induced to get more education also ended up voting at higher rates.

Genius. In the current issue of AJPS, Sondheimer and Green have an article that does exactly that.

Experiments and Results

Sondheimer and Green dig up three old studies from the education literature. All three studies used randomized experiments to see whether certain treatments would increase high school graduation rates.

• The Perry Preschool Experiment took a randomly selected group of disadvantaged kids and gave them an intensive preschool experience in the 1960s. The treatment group’s graduation rate was 46% higher than the control group’s. And its turnout rate in 2000/2002 was 44% higher than the control group’s.
• The “I Have a Dream” Foundation of Boulder, Colorado, identified a bunch of fifth-graders in 1992 and offered them tutoring, extracurricular activities, mentoring, and other assistance from the time of their selection through high school. Once again, a treatment group participated while a control group did not. The treatment group’s graduation rate was 28% higher than the control’s; the treatment group’s turnout rate through 2004 was 26% higher than the control’s.
• The Tennessee STAR experiment randomly assigned kids entering kindergarten in 1985 to have regular class sizes (22-25 students) or small class sizes (13-17 students) from kindergarten through third grade. Those in the treatment group graduated at a rate 6% higher than the control; they voted at rates 10-11% higher than the control.

You can look up Sondheimer and Green’s article to see the advanced statistical analysis, but the percentages above tell the whole story.¹

What we Learn

Education does, indeed, have a robust causal effect on voter turnout. This finding is all the more striking because the authors did not expect it. Both authors had previously argued that education’s correlation with turnout was probably spurious. But after conducting this analysis, they change their minds. As they put it, “The data presented here have led to a reversal of this assessment.”

So we know that education causes turnout. It’s not just correlated. We still don’t know why. Maybe education gives kids the skills they need to figure out how to vote. Maybe it promotes interest in politics. Maybe it expands kids’ social networks. Maybe it increases their confidence, or “efficacy.” Maybe it increases their later affluence, hence their political interests. We still don’t know. All we know is that education does have a genuine, strong, and robust causal effect on turnout.

Masket takes this a step further, arguing that local informal party organizations control nominations and through those nominations exert control over the legislative behavior of politicians.  He argues that “parties control the public behavior of their office holders by acting as gatekeepers to political office.”  While agreeing with Aldrich (1995), that parties help organizing the legislature, Masket argues that parties, and in conjunction party nominations, are primarily a mechanism by which concerned citizens hold legislators accountable for their actions.

Testing and Results

To test these arguments, Masket uses roll-call analysis of the California Assembly prior and subsequent to the 1953 decision to mandate party labels on primary ballots, effectively eliminating the ability of legislators to cross-file in both political primaries.  His analysis of roll call votes as well as votes for the Speaker of the Assembly shows that the imposition of these new regulations on primary elections had a marked effect of increasing a the partisan nature of the legislature, as politics became less bipartisan after the change, which Masket argues was not the desire of those within the legislature.

Inside the Smoke-Filled Rooms and Thoughts on the How

In addition to his quantitative analysis of legislator behavior, Masket also details the structure of 5 different local party organizations: Orange County Republicans, South Los Angeles Democrats, East Side LA County Democrats, West LA Democrats, and the local party organizations of Fresno County.  Through interviews, Masket details the ways in which party organizations exercise their influence using things such as donor networks, sample ballot mailings, and the mobilization of activist networks.

Unfortunately, none of these items that come out through interviews are easily testable, and while Masket presents ample evidence of local influence on the nomination process, it is difficult to determine how much influence these organizations have on the outcome of nominations.

Small Qualms

While Masket’s work shows clearly the change in the influence of parties after the change in primary election law, he doesn’t give any solid quantitative evidence as to how exactly those mechanisms work.  Is it the fundraising network?  Is it the power of mobilization?   While the interviewees claimed to have influence in all of these aspects, the heads of a campaign or a campaign organization has an incentive to make their role as significant as possible in order to increase their status as the gatekeeper.  Masket clearly demonstrates to the reader that local party organizations influence nominations, but falls a little short on convincing the reader as to the mechanism through which these organizations control nominations.

More accurately, we don’t know which “why” is the real “why.” Folks who have published evidence of these perceptual biases have also offered lots of different reasons for them, and we have yet to see research that sorts those various reasons out.

In the current issue of AJPS, Gerber and Huber write an article that claims to do exactly that: Test the possible explanations of these perceptual biases against one another. At least, that’s what you would think their article does after reading the introduction. Once you get into it, you find that they really only test two of the possible theories against each other. The remaining theories that have been suggested go untested, meaning they may or may not be true.

Briefly, these are the six theories that have been given to explain why Republicans and Democrats rate the economy differently. I use boldface to indicate Gerber and Huber’s preferred label for each theory:

• Endogenous partisanship (i.e. reverse causation). Perhaps people shift their partisan leanings over time as they observe how each party manages the economy.²
• Divergent criteria. Perhaps voters evaluate Democratic-led governments on a different basis than they evaluate Republican-led governments (e.g. giving greater weight to unemployment relative to inflation).
• Partisan cheerleading. Maybe Democrats just like to cheer on Democratic-led governments by claiming that the economy is doing better when Democrats are in power.
• Selective exposure. Maybe Democrats and Republicans experience different economic realities (e.g. work in different sectors) or read different newspapers.
• Selected perception. Maybe Democrats and Republicans mentally screen out negative information about their party while uncritically accepting positive information.³
• Partisan perceptions (i.e. beliefs about confidence). Maybe voters believe that their party’s politicians are more competent at managing the economy, so they assume the economy will perform better when their party is in power. The logic here is very different from “endogenous partisanship”; see below. (This is Gerber and Huber’s preferred theory.)

Method and results

Gerber and Huber do not test all of these theories. Rather, they design a test that holds all of these possible mechanisms constant except two: Partisan cheerleading and partisan perceptions. They use CCES interviews from immediately before and immediately after the 2006 Congressional elections, which produce a surprise turnover of both the House and the Senate from the Republicans to the Democrats.

These pre- and post-election interviews were only a few weeks apart. During that time, not much changed in the real economy (as measured by stock prices, oil prices, inflation, unemployment, and so on) or in the reported economy (based on a comparison of NY Times and Wall Street Journal economic coverage). As such, Gerber and Huber argue (persuasively) that divergent criteria, selective exposure, and selective perception cannot explain any differences in the pre- and post-election interviews. To control for the “endogenous partisanship” theory, they use a panel of the same respondents for both interviews, enabling them to hold partisanship constant across the two waves.

These methods leave only two theories capable of explaining any shift in respondent evaluations of the national economy that occurred between the pre- and post-interviews: Cheerleading and partisan perceptions. Let’s be clear here: Of the 6 possible causal mechanisms that Gerber and Huber identify, they test only 2 of them.

They argue that they can differentiate between these last two theories by looking at two sets of dependent variables. Either theory would predict that respondents would adjust their perceptions of the national economy in a partisan manner following the election: Democrats would become more optimistic, Republicans would become less optimistic. But for reasons that aren’t entirely clear to me, Gerber and Huber argue that only the “partisan perceptions” theory would also predict that respondents would adjust their nonpolitical perceptions (e.g. general level of happiness, expected level of Christmas/vacation spending).

Sure enough, Gerber and Huber find that Democrats became much more optimistic about the national economy in the post-election survey; Republicans did the opposite. But they also found that Democrats became more optimistic about their personal lives. Because of that latter finding, they conclude that “partisan cheerleading” does not explain the results, but “partisan perceptions” does.

What it means

Here’s what they say it means:

… partisanship leads to a general attribution of desirable traits to those who share one’s partisanship (Conover and Feldman 1982). A similar phenomenon emerges in psychology research, in which individuals are prone to falsely attribute unobserved positive qualities to individuals whom share characteristics with them while falsely attributing unobserved negative qualities to individuals whom they do not feel warmly toward. While there is no doubt that some citizens have sophisticated and deeply held views about economic policy…, for many Americans, there is no rational basis to suppose that one party is better than the other at managing the economy. If such positive or negative traits are attributed to the parties nonetheless, it could generate the patterns of economic assessments and behaviors observed here.

Take that, Anthony Downs.

Parting shots

I have trouble with this claim: “For many Americans, there is no rational basis to suppose that one party is better than the other at managing the economy.” If that’s true, is our entire democratic process a farce? We can probably all agree that Democrats prefer more government services while Republicans are torn between wanting low taxes and wanting a ridiculously large defense budget. If nothing else, don’t those decisions about tax rates and government spending influence the economy in some way?

At the same time, I don’t question their broader point at all. It seems downright likely that a voter would tend to think more highly of a politician’s capabilities for the simple reason that the voter and politician are on the same “team.” (Case in point: The Robber’s Cave experiment.)

So I’m left wondering: Can’t we have both? Isn’t it possible that parties do manage the economy differently, and also that voters have biased beliefs about each party’s capabilities?

I’m also a bit disappointed by the bait and switch in this article. The authors had me expecting a test of all 6 theories listed above. Instead, they tested only two, confirming one and weakly rejecting the other. But although the scope of this article isn’t as broad as the authors pitch it as, the article is nevertheless excellent. The methods are precise and enable an accurate test of two theories. Let’s hope that future research can do just as good a job of testing the other possible theories.