Reporting guidelines for experimental research: A report from the experimental research section standards committee.

The standards committee of the Experimental Research section was charged with preparing a set of reporting guidelines for experimental research in political science. The committee defined its task as compiling a set of guidelines sufficient to enable the reader or reviewer to follow what the researcher had done and to assess the validity of the conclusions the researcher had drawn. Although the guidelines do request the reporting of some basic statistics, they do not attempt to weigh in on statistical controversies. Rather, they aim for something more modest but nevertheless crucial: to ensure that scholars clearly describe what it is they did at each step in their research and clearly report what their data show. In this paper, we discuss the rationale for reporting guidelines and the process used to formulate the specific guidelines we endorse. The guidelines themselves are included in Appendix 1

The "Persuadable Middle" on Same-Sex Marriage: Formative Research to Build Support among Heterosexual College Students

Same-sex marriage is a controversial policy issue that affects the welfare of gay and lesbian couples throughout the USA. Considerable research examines opinions about same-sex marriage; however, studies have not investigated the covariates of the “persuadable middle”— those individuals who are neutral or unsure about their views. This group of people is often the target of same-sex marriage campaigns, yet they have received no empirical attention.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89607/1/Woodford et al 2011 Persuadable Middle.pd

The South, the suburbs, and the Vatican too: explaining partisan change among Catholics

This paper explains changes in partisanship among Catholics in the last quarter of the 20th Century using a theory of partisan change centered on the contexts in which Catholics lived. Catholics were part of the post-New Deal Democratic coalition, but they have become a swing demographic group. We argue that these changes in partisanship are best explained by changes in elite messages that are filtered through an individual’s social network. Those Catholics who lived or moved into the increasingly Republican suburbs and South were the Catholics who were most likely to adopt a non-Democratic partisan identity. Changes in context better explain Catholic partisanship than party abortion policy post Roe v. Wade or ideological sorting. We demonstrate evidence in support of our argument using the ANES cumulative file from 1972 through 2000

Testing Models of Distributive Politics in Multiparty Systems: The Case of Spain

This paper extends empirical literature on political economy of intergovernmental transfers to multiparty systems that are typical for most European countries. It proposes and uses new methods of estimating the number of swing voters from survey data. The first method estimates densities at the cutpoints, where a voter is equidistant to competing parties. To take into account bi-dimensionality of Spanish politics for three party regions, we estimate bivariate densities at the cutpoints on the left-right and nationalist dimensions. The second method counts voters with similar predicted likelihoods of voting for parties in the regions. The likelihoods of voting are estimated with the multinomial probit technique and include additional controls for the nationalist sentiment. We find that political variables enter significantly into allocation of state subventions in Spain, and the magnitude of the effect is comparable to that of economic variables. In particular, we find strong evidence for the loyal hypothesis and no evidence for the swing hypothesis. In line with the explanation suggested by Cox and McCubbins (1986), the risk-averse incumbent prefers investing in loyal regions, where he knows better preferences and numbers of their supporters

Information effect on voter turnout: How campaign spending mobilises voters

We explore the impact of campaign effort on constituency-level turnout variation in Britain, under the premise that higher levels of campaign visibility stimulate electoral participation. We focus on the relationship between the competitiveness of the race and campaign effort as a provider of electoral information on the one hand, and voter turnout on the other hand. In doing so, we address the role of campaign effort and competitiveness in shaping turnout both independently as well as jointly. Further to this, we seek to add nuance to our understanding of how electoral campaigns mobilise voters by evaluating the comparative ability of different parties – based on whether or not they are ‘viable’ contenders in a particular constituency – to stimulate turnout. We find evidence that campaign effort mobilises voters and has a significant positive effect on voter turnout; this effect is independent from, and unconditioned by, the competitiveness of the race. However, we do find that this effect is mostly driven by the campaign effort of the ‘viable’ contenders in the constituency

Information effect on voter turnout: How campaign spending mobilises voters

We explore the impact of campaign effort on constituency-level turnout variation in Britain, under the premise that higher levels of campaign visibility stimulate electoral participation. We focus on the relationship between the competitiveness of the race and campaign effort as a provider of electoral information on the one hand, and voter turnout on the other hand. In doing so, we address the role of campaign effort and competitiveness in shaping turnout both independently as well as jointly. Further to this, we seek to add nuance to our understanding of how electoral campaigns mobilise voters by evaluating the comparative ability of different parties – based on whether or not they are ‘viable’ contenders in a particular constituency – to stimulate turnout. We find evidence that campaign effort mobilises voters and has a significant positive effect on voter turnout; this effect is independent from, and unconditioned by, the competitiveness of the race. However, we do find that this effect is mostly driven by the campaign effort of the ‘viable’ contenders in the constituency