Illinois Government Research no. 43 1976: As Goes Illinois... The State as a Political Microcosm of the Nation

The old saying has it that in presidential elections "as goes Maine, so goes the nation." While this statement may have once been valid, over the last forty years the bellwether nature of the state of Maine has been open to serious challenge. In fact, in the last ten presidential elections Maine has cast its electoral vote for the losing candidate six times. The question of which state most closely follows national patterns in presidential elections is an interesting one, however, especially in this presidential year. If one could find a state in which national presidential returns were closely mirrored over a period of years ??? and if one had some idea why this state-national parallelism existed ??? that state's returns would provide not only a clue to the national outcome, but also some reasons for it.published or submitted for publicatio

Adams County Votes for President, 1804-2008

Adult male Europeans who were living in what is now Adams County, Pennsylvania, when York County was formed in 1749 could not vote to choose either their king or their governor. Thanks to the royal grant of 1682, their governor in 1749 took the form of two Penn proprietors, named Thomas and Richard. Thanks to the political principles of the first proprietor, William Penn, adult male Adams countians could participate in electing some of the officers responsible for the orderly operation of government in the province. They could vote for two representatives in the provincial legislative assembly, three York County commissioners, six county assessors, a sheriff, and a coroner. In the cases of the two latter officers, the voters nominated two candidates, of whom the governor commissioned the one of his choice. Potential voters had to meet certain qualifications in the form of ownership of real estate or personal property. Strictly speaking, they had to be British citizens, but probably on some occasions Germans who had not been naturalized were permitted to cast ballots. Giving the vote to adult females was something far in the future. [excerpt

Politics, Relief, and Reform: The Transformation of America's Social Welfare System during the New Deal

The American social welfare system was transformed during the 1930s. Prior to the New Deal public relief was administered almost exclusively by local governments. The administration of local public relief was widely thought to be corrupt. Beginning in 1933, federal, state, and local governments cooperatively built a larger social welfare system. While the majority of the funds for relief spending came from the federal government, the majority of administrative decisions were made at state and local levels. While New Dealers were often accused of playing politics with relief, social welfare system created by the New Deal (still largely in place today) is more often maligned for being bureaucratic than for being corrupt. We do not believe that New Dealers were motivated by altruistic motives when they shaped New Deal relief policies. Evidence suggests that politics was always the key issue. But we show how the interaction of political interests at the federal, state, and local levels of government created political incentives for the national relief administration to curb corruption by actors at the state and local level. This led to different patterns of relief spending when programs were controlled by national, rather than state and local officials. In the permanent social welfare system created by the Social Security Act, the national government pressed for the substitution of rules rather than discretion in the administration of relief. This, ultimately, significantly reduced the level of corruption in the administration of welfare programs.

Partisan Impacts on the Economy: Evidence from Prediction Markets and Close Elections

Analyses of the effects of election outcomes on the economy have been hampered by the problem that economic outcomes also influence elections. We sidestep these problems by analyzing movements in economic indicators caused by clearly exogenous changes in expectations about the likely winner during Election Day. Analyzing high frequency financial fluctuations following the release of flawed exit poll data on Election Day 2004, and then during the vote count, we find that markets anticipated higher equity prices, interest rates and oil prices and a stronger dollar under a Bush presidency than under Kerry. A similar Republican-Democrat differential was also observed for the 2000 Bush-Gore contest. Prediction market based analyses of all Presidential elections since 1880 also reveal a similar pattern of partisan impacts, suggesting that electing a Republican President raises equity valuations by 2 3 percent, and that since Reagan, Republican Presidents have tended to raise bond yields.

Critical Elections in Historical Perspective

For a generation, the theory of critical elections has been a guiding research program for the study of American political history. As fashioned by such distinguished scholars as V. O. Key, Jr., Angus Campbell, Walter Dean Burnham, and Paul Allen Beck, critical election theory posits that American democracy follows an episodic pattern of change and stability. According to the prevailing wisdom, one or more critical elections periodically reorganize coalitions of voters, create new balances of party power, and introduce policy initiatives that respond to unmet needs. Realignments, in this view, are not historical accidents, but processes built into the dynamics of party identification and governmental structure in the United States. Through a quantitative analysis of presidential election returns and party registration statistics (both measured for counties), this paper will challenge the application of critical election theory to the realignments of the 1890s and the 1930s. The results of analysis show that in neither case did shifts in the electorate follow the pattern predicted by realignment theory. It also reveals significant differences in each of the two periods that question the application of a single theory to historical distinct episodes of political change. The paper also presents a situational logic to account for the capacity of incumbent parties to sustain their power over extended periods of time

Births, Deaths, and New Deal Relief during the Great Depression

This paper examines the impact of New Deal relief programs on infant mortality, noninfant mortality and general fertility rates in major U.S. cities between 1929 and 1940. We estimate the effects using a variety of specifications and techniques for a panel of 114 cities for which data on relief spending during the 1930s were available. The significant rise in relief spending during the New Deal contributed to reductions in infant mortality, suicide rates, and some other causes of death, while contributing to increases in the general fertility rate. Estimates of the relationship between economic activity and death rates suggest that many types of death rates were pro-cyclical, similar to Ruhm's (2000) findings for the modern U.S.. Estimates of the relief costs associated with saving a life (adjusted for inflation) are similar to estimates found in studies of modern social insurance programs.

Can the New Deal's Three R's Be Rehabilitated? A Program-by-Program, County-by-County Analysis

We examine the importance of Roosevelt's 'relief, recovery, and reform' motives to the distribution of New Deal funds across over 3,000 U.S. counties, program by program. The major relief programs most closely followed Roosevelt's three R's. Other programs were tilted more in favor of areas with higher incomes. For all programs spending for political advantage in upcoming elections was a significant factor. Roosevelt's successful reelections were based on developing specific programs for a broad range of constituents, delivering on his stated goals, but also spending more at the margin for political purposes.