In West Virginia, Democrat Joe Manchin is tacking to the right to keep his Senate seat in an increasingly red state

Incumbent Democratic Senator Joe Manchin is favored to beat out his Republican challenger, Patrick Morrisey in West Virginia Senate race on November 6th. But, writes Matthew Jacobsmeier, in a state which has swung towards the Republican Party in recent years, victory for the Democrat – even one as conservative as Manchin – is far from certain

Black candidates are perceived as more liberal than similar white candidates, and this may be hurting them at the ballot box

For many, the election of Barack Obama to the presidency in 2008 was a signal that the US had become a post racial society. Despite these beliefs, African-Americans are still disadvantaged when it comes to politics. In new research, Matthew L. Jacobsmeier finds that black candidates tend to be perceived to be more liberal than ideologically similar white candidates, and this may disadvantage them at the voting booth to a greater extent than simpler forms of racial prejudice

While dog owners were less likely to vote for Obama, dog ownership doesn’t affect voting decisions

Matthew L. Jacobsmeier responds to the claim that during the 2008 Presidential campaign, the fact that Barack Obama did not own a dog turned some voters away from him. He argues that Americans in southern states, where dog ownership is particularly common, are more likely to hold distinctively conservative attitudes, including racial attitudes, that are not captured by typically-used measures of ideology, and were more likely to vote for John McCain because of these attitudes. Once this fact is accounted for, dog ownership appears to have little effect on voting preferences

Estimating the Impact of State Policies and Institutions with Mixed-Level Data

Researchers often seek to understand the effects of state policies or institutions on individual behavior or other outcomes in sub-state-level observational units (e.g., election results in state legislative districts). However, standard estimation methods applied to such models do not properly account for the clustering of observations within states and may lead researchers to overstate the statistical significance of state-level factors. We discuss the theory behind two approaches to dealing with clusteringclustered standard errors and multilevel modeling. We then demonstrate the relevance of this topic by replicating a recent study of the effects of state post-registration laws on voter turnout (Wolfinger, Highton, and Mullin 2005). While we view clustered standard errors as a more straightforward, feasible approach, especially when working with large datasets or many cross-level interactions, our purpose in this Practical Researcher piece is to draw attention to the issue of clustering in state and local politics research.mixed-level data, voter turnout

Estimating the Impact of State Policies and Institutions with Mixed-Level Data

Researchers often seek to understand the effects of state policies or institutions on individual behavior or other outcomes in sub-state-level observational units (e.g., election results in state legislative districts). However, standard estimation methods applied to such models do not properly account for the clustering of observations within states and may lead researchers to overstate the statistical significance of state-level factors. We discuss the theory behind two approaches to dealing with clustering—clustered standard errors and multilevel modeling. We then demonstrate the relevance of this topic by replicating a recent study of the effects of state post-registration laws on voter turnout (Wolfinger, Highton, and Mullin 2005). While we view clustered standard errors as a more straightforward, feasible approach, especially when working with large datasets or many cross-level interactions, our purpose in this Practical Researcher piece is to draw attention to the issue of clustering in state and local politics research

Social group identification and perceptions of candidates' ideologies in United States House elections

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Rochester. Dept. of Political Science, 2009.This dissertation is composed of three related essays that examine various relationships between social group identification, perceptions of candidates' ideologies, and, in the case of the third essay, voting behavior. In these essays I show that the race and religious background of citizens and candidates are important factors that influence citizens' perceptions of candidates' ideological positioning in United States House elections. In the first essay, I demonstrate that racial stereotyping has a significant effect on citizens' perceptions of candidates' ideologies. While experimental evidence suggests that white citizens perceive African American candidates to be more liberal than otherwise identical white candidates, experiments differ from actual elections in important ways. In overcoming some of the difficulties that have hampered non-experimental research on the perceptual effects of race, I am able to estimate the importance of race relative to other factors such as partisan identification. I find that white voters perceive black candidates to be more liberal than ideologically identical white candidates in U.S. House elections. In the second essay, I show that religious stereotypes also affect perceptions of candidates' ideologies. In particular, evangelical candidates are seen to be more conservative than ideologically similar mainline Protestant candidates. I also show that the perceptual effects of religious identification on perceptions of candidates' ideologies' are stronger among citizens that attend religious services more frequently. In the third essay, I revisit the importance of racial identification, and show that race influences voting behavior indirectly through its effects on perceptions of candidates' ideologies. Prior studies have produced mixed results regarding the effects of the race of candidates on electoral outcomes. I suggest that in searching mainly for evidence that racial prejudice directly affects voting decisions, these studies have failed to adequately account for the indirect effects of race. I model the perceptual effects of race with a system of equations, and estimate the importance of race in determining electoral outcomes