Assessing candidate preference through web browsing history

Predicting election outcomes is of considerable interest to candidates, political scientists, and the public at large. We propose the use of Web browsing history as a new indicator of candidate preference among the electorate, one that has potential to overcome a number of the drawbacks of election polls. However, there are a number of challenges that must be overcome to effectively use Web browsing for assessing candidate preference—including the lack of suitable ground truth data and the heterogeneity of user populations in time and space. We address these challenges, and show that the resulting methods can shed considerable light on the dynamics of voters’ candidate preferences in ways that are difficult to achieve using polls.Accepted manuscrip

CLICK HERE: THE INFLUENCE OF CANDIDATES’ WEBSITES IN THE 2016 PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION CONTEST

This project seeks to answer the question: How did the websites of Republican presidential candidates change over time in order to frame the overall message a candidate is sending potential voters? Subsequently, what information cues or shortcuts that are described by Popkin in The Reasoning Voter were being utilized to target voters in their decision making process? The hypothesis was that Republican candidate websites that employed competitive messages on hot button issues attracted low information, partisan voters, resulting in more traffic on their websites and higher standings in the polls. The data was compiled through a content analysis of the websites of five Republicans who had announced their candidacy for president by September 2016. The main section that was the focus of this research is each candidate’s home pages. The methodology followed that of Haynes et al. (2002) who evaluated candidate press releases, dividing the messages into substantive, competitive, and informative. The variables examined included issues, candidate history/background, campaign announcements, attacks, and the horse race. GOP candidate standings was determined by public opinion data reported by Real Clear Politics. Traffic to each website over the indicated time span was determined through the use of Alexa.com. Google Trends was also consulted to see how much traffic was being funneled to a particular website over the course of this research

Lessons Learned From the 2020 Election

The 2020 primaries and presidential election took place against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic, which necessitated changes to how states planned and held their elections, and how they protected voters, poll workers, and administrators.From political and institutional battles over procedural changes, to record-high turnout levels, administering elections in 2020 proved to be a series of anticipated — and unanticipated — challenges. Surges in voting by mail meant many states were breaking new ground; maintaining access to in-person voting also proved uniquely challenging during a global pandemic. Our new report looks at how well the challenges of 2020 were met, from the first primary election to the last vote counted. It also examines the technologies employed, the costs involved in running elections, and the confidence voters ultimately had in the results

Continuity or Change? Contextualizing the Role of Polarization and Racial Attitudes in the Trump Era

Donald Trump is commonly believed to deviate from traditional Republican norms and ideals, both in terms of his policy platform as well as his boorish, often explicitly racist personal conduct. These claims have come from media and from Republican Party elites, both past and present. But was his outsider status, in terms of lack of prior political experience, unorthodox policy positions, as well as personal style, reflected by marked shifts in public opinion? Were Trump voters motivated by a new set of predispositions compared to prior Republican voters? In this dissertation, I argue that Trump is better interpreted as a continuation of preexisting Republican trends than as a rogue outsider who capitalized on a wholly distinct electorate motivated by a unique profile of attitudes and preferences. Rather, I argue, Trump is best interpreted as a continuation of Obama era trends. In Chapter One, I trace the legacy of polarization and racial attitudes in modern American politics. In Chapter Two, I trace the waning of the New Deal coalitions from 1980 to 2016, examining the demographic profiles of support for Trump and contextualizing them as trends that predated his campaign. Chapter Three, I assess whether Trump benefited from a different set of predispositions among the mass public relative to his predecessors in the prior four elections—specifically, those related to racial attitudes and political polarization. In Chapter Four, I assess how two difference indices of racial attitudes, one that emphasizes outgroup animosity (racial resentment) and one that incorporates ingroup solidarity (ethnocentrism) impact presidential approval, in order to assess whether both exert equal and similar influence on white voters’ presidential approval over the last 5 cycles. In Chapter Five, I assess the extent to which, should we see shifts over time in the nature and influence of racial attitudes among white voters over this period of time, these shifts can be traced to white Republicans becoming increasingly racially conservative during the dawning of the Trump era, or whether it is white racial liberals who are driving the divergence of public opinion. Ultimately, I argue, Trump inherited a highly racialized landscape; he did not introduce racial attitudes into an otherwise racially harmonious and civil landscape and disrupt the status quo, nor did he capitalize on a wholly new set of racist predispositions among the white electorate

Asking about social circles improves election predictions

Election outcomes can be difficult to predict. A recent example is the 2016 US presidential election, in which Hillary Clinton lost five states that had been predicted to go for her, and with them the White House. Most election polls ask people about their own voting intentions: whether they will vote and, if so, for which candidate. We show that, compared with own-intention questions, social-circle questions that ask participants about the voting intentions of their social contacts improved predictions of voting in the 2016 US and 2017 French presidential elections. Responses to social-circle questions predicted election outcomes on national, state and individual levels, helped to explain last-minute changes in people’s voting intentions and provided information about the dynamics of echo chambers among supporters of different candidates

QAnon Conspiracy Theory: Examining its Evolution and Mechanisms of Radicalization

This report demonstrates the overarching need for additional exploration and intervention of conspiracy-based radicalization as the QAnon conspiracy theory continues to grow. Strong pillars of belief among the QAnon movement, coupled with the spread of disinformation online, has exacerbated the familiarity and willingness to accept the rhetoric within mainstream media and culture. This report examines the evolution, ideologies, and paradigms associated with supporters of QAnon to better understand the most influential mechanisms of modern conspiracy-based radicalization. Utilizing a France-based digital disinformation platform known as Storyzy, the authors hypothesize that disinformation campaigns, coupled with the Internet and social media, has greatly enabled the unprecedented global effect of QAnon. The authors explored the potential of several survey methods to seek insights from QAnon followers on Gab and Telegram. Additionally, the authors discerned various implications of QAnon in regard to the limitations placed upon P/CVE efforts. Editoral Note:After critique against this article has been voiced publicly, an editorial review together with the authors was conducted. No factual errors were found. However, some need for clarifications of potentially misleading sentence formulations was identified and minor post-publication revisions were conducted, which are detailed in the supporting material file