Working Paper: Are Voters Polarized Along Party Lines About How to Run Elections During the COVID-19 Crisis?

Are voters as polarized as political leaders when it comes to their preferences about how to cast their ballots in November 2020 and their policy positions on how elections should be run in light of the COVID-19 outbreak? Prior research has shown little party divide on voting by mail, with nearly equal percentages of voters in both parties choosing to vote this way where it is an option. Has a divide opened up this year in how voters aligned with the Democratic and Republican parties prefer to cast a ballot? We address these questions by presenting the findings of an online survey of a nationally diverse sample of 5,612 eligible voters, fielded from April 8-10, with an embedded experiment providing treated respondents with scientific projections about the COVID-19 outbreak. We find an eight-percentage point difference between Democrats and Republicans in their preference for voting by mail in the control group, but this party divide doubles in the treatment group. We also find that exposure to scientific projections about the outbreak increases support for vote-by-mail legislation and confidence in vote-by-mail election integrity for both Democrats and Republicans

Working Paper: How do Americans Want Elections to be Run During the COVID-19 Crisis?

To inform the vital conversation among the nation’s political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November, this paper reports how a sample of 5,612 eligible American voters, surveyed April 8-10, want to see the election run during the COVID-19 crisis. We embed a randomized experiment presenting respondents with truthful summaries of the projections of two teams of scientists about the pandemic. Our descriptive findings show that four in ten eligible voters would prefer to cast their ballot by mail rather than in person this November and that a majority of respondents favor policies expanding mail voting. Our experimental findings show that respondents who read the scientific projections were more likely to prefer voting by mail, were more likely to trust that a mail ballot would be counted accurately, and were more likely to favor holding the election entirely by mail

Crisis, Charisma and Consequences: Evidence from the 2004 US Presidential Election

We investigate how conditions of crisis affect perceptions of charisma and how these, in turn, affect blame attribution and self-sacrificial behavior. Our data are from a 2004 experimental study that preceded the U.S. presidential election, in which we manipulated concerns of a terrorist attack. The results show that those in the Crisis condition rated Bush higher on perceptions of charisma compared to those in the Good Times condition. The Crisis condition also directly and indirectly, via perceptions of charisma, affected whether Bush was blamed for failures in Iraq and our subjects’ willingness to sacrifice their personal resources for his candidacy

Terrorist Threat and Democratic Public Opinion

Streaming video requires Flash Player, RealPlayer, or Windows Media Player to view.Increased sophistication, scope, and fatalities define modern terrorism and leave few corners of the globe free from the specter of this threat. Our research suggests that individuals are more likely to reject democratic values, processes, and institutions when terrorism is a salient concern. In this presentation, we focus on data from both experiments and surveys conducted across the Americas. We show high but varying average levels of worry about terrorism across countries in this region, and we trace these feelings to both individual and contextual factors. We then present evidence linking terrorist threat to a variety of measures of democratic public opinion. Finally, we outline several ongoing theoretical and empirical extensions to this research program.Ohio State University. Mershon Center for International Security StudiesEvent Web page, streaming video, event photo

Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors Selectively Target Homology Dependent DNA Repair Defective Cells and Elevate Non-Homologous Endjoining Activity

Background: We have previously used the ATAD5-luciferase high-throughput screening assay to identify genotoxic compounds with potential chemotherapeutic capabilities. The successful identification of known genotoxic agents, including the histone deacetylase inhibitor (HDACi) trichostatin A (TSA), confirmed the specificity of the screen since TSA has been widely studied for its ability to cause apoptosis in cancer cells. Because many cancers have acquired mutations in DNA damage checkpoints or repair pathways, we hypothesized that these cancers may be susceptible to treatments that target compensatory pathways. Here, we used a panel of isogenic chicken DT40 B lymphocyte mutant and human cell lines to investigate the ability of TSA to define selective pathways that promote HDACi toxicity. Results: HDACi induced a DNA damage response and reduced viability in all repair deficient DT40 mutants although ATM-nulls were least affected. The most dramatic sensitivity was observed in mutants lacking the homology dependent repair (HDR) factor BLM or the non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) and HDR factors, KU/RAD54, suggesting an involvement of either HDR or NHEJ in HDACi-induced cell death. To extend these findings, we measured the frequencies of HDR and NHEJ after HDACi treatment and monitored viability in human cell lines comparably deficient in HDR or NHEJ. Although no difference in HDR frequency was observed between HDACi treated and untreated cells, HDR-defective human cell lines were clearly more sensitive than wild type. Unexpectedly, cells treated with HDACis showed a significantly elevated NHEJ frequency. Conclusions: HDACi targeting drugs induced significant increases in NHEJ activity in human cell lines but did not alter HDR frequency. Moreover, HDR is required for cellular resistance to HDACi therapy; therefore, NHEJ does not appear to be a critical axis for HDACi resistance. Rather, HDACi compounds induced DNA damage, most likely double strand breaks (DSBs), and HDR proficiency is correlated with cell survivalclose4

Las percepciones de liderazgo en el contexto de las elecciones mexicanas de 2006

¿Hasta qué punto los votantes en 2006 consideraron a Felipe Calderón y a Andrés ­Manuel López Obrador como líderes fuertes y carismáticos? ¿Qué factores moldea­ ron estas percepciones sobre la imagen de los candidatos? ¿Incidieron significativamente estas percepciones en la decisión del voto? Con base en los datos de la encuesta cide-cses 2006, mostramos que Calderón y López Obrador generaron en los votantes percepcio­nes similares acerca de su fortaleza y su carisma. Argumentamos que las condiciones de ame­ naza tuvieron efectos importantes en la manera en que el electo­rado percibió a los líderes y su carisma. Este argumento se sustenta con evidencia empírica analizada con métodos de regresión múltiple. Finalmente, justificamos la importancia del carisma al demostrar que existe una relación cercana entre percepción de la imagen de estos dos candidatos y la decisión del voto