Local political institutions and electoral context influence levels of campaign spending in mayoral elections

Campaign spending is a perennial concern in both national and local elections, especially since the 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court ruling. Proponents argue that more spending increases interest in elections, while detractors claim that it creates biases in representation and public policy. Using an original dataset, Aaron C. Weinschenk examines campaign spending levels in mayoral elections, finding that the electoral context and local political institutions play the most important role in shaping levels of campaign spending across city elections. From these results, he identifies several ways to reduce campaign spending in mayoral elections, but notes that these changes may have unintended consequences. If levels of campaign spending decline due to institutional changes, cities elections, which often suffer from low voter turnout rates, might experience even lower levels of turnout

A sense of civic duty is influenced by deeply rooted personality traits

Voter turnout is a perennial concern for political scientists and politicians alike. Even with extensive campaigns to “get out the vote,” turnout for most elections lingers around half of the eligible population. Aaron C. Weinschenk examines the idea that the propensity to vote is influenced by deeply rooted personality traits that cultivate a sense of civic duty. He finds that a number of the “Big Five” personality traits, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Openness, are positively correlated with a perceived duty to vote

\u27Cause You\u27ve Got Personality: Understanding the Impact of Personality on Political Participation

In this dissertation, I ask why some people participate more intensely in political life than others, a classic question in political science. Previous answers have focused on socioeconomic status, demographics, socialization, political context, attitudes, and resources. To date, very little political science research has acknowledged that individual personality traits may play a role in determining political behaviors. I argue that there is good reason to believe that individual personality traits influence individual participatory habits in the political realm. In short, what I am suggesting is that some people have natural predispositions toward participating (or not participating) in politics and civic activities. I argue that understanding the relationship between individual personality attributes and political behavior is necessary to build a more complete understanding of the antecedents of political participation. This dissertation makes several contributions to the literature and our understanding of democratic politics. First, I integrate the psychology literature on personality and the political science literature on political participation, expanding our understanding of who participates and why. Second, I develop theoretical insights as to how (and which) personality traits translate into political action. Third, I develop several measures designed to capture personality traits that lead some people to participate more than others. I use longitudinal and cross- sectional data to test my hypotheses. I find that individual personality traits have important effects on political engagement. In some cases, the effects of personality rival or exceed the effects of canonical predictors of political participation. Future research on political and civic participation should continue to examine how deeply rooted individual differences shape participatory decisions

Policies aimed at increasing electoral competition and campaign spending would help address low levels of voter turnout in city elections

In recent years commentators have become increasingly concerned with declining election turnout across the US. The trend is nowhere more pronounced than in city mayoral elections, where turnout is frequently as low as 25 per cent. Looking at 340 mayoral elections, Aaron C. Weinschenk finds that turnout could be increased through increased electoral competition, and holding votes on the same day as national elections. He also argues that encouraging greater spending on campaigns will lead to higher levels of civic engagement and turnout in local elections

Personality, Negativity, and Political Participation

Scholars have recently started to integrate personality traits into models of political participation. In this paper, we present the results of a survey experiment (N = 724) designed to test whether negative political messages differentially impact people with different personality traits. We found evidence that individuals with high scores on agreeableness were less likely, and individuals with high scores on extraversion were more likely, to report intending to participate in politics than their counterparts after being exposed to negative political messages. Agreeableness and extraversion also interacted with negative messages to influence specific intentions to make a political donation, attend a meeting, rally, or event, and volunteer for a political campaign. We also found suggestive evidence that agreeableness interacted with negativity to influence turnout intentions. The results of this study have important implications for the study of political engagement, the ways in which people interact with political information, and the practice of democratic politics

Gender and social conformity: Do men and women respond differently to social pressure to vote?

In this paper, we re-analyze data from a large-scale field experiment (N = 344,084) on voter turnout in order to determine whether men and women respond differently to social pressure aimed at voter mobilization. To date, there have been mixed results regarding the interaction between a person’s gender and receptivity to social influence. On the whole, our analyses confirm prior findings that social pressure increases voter turnout but uncover little to no evidence of gender differences in receptivity to social pressure cues in the context of political participation

New evidence on the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement.

Weinschenk AC, Dawes CT, Kandler C, Bell E, Riemann R. New evidence on the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement. Politics and the life sciences : the journal of the Association for Politics and the Life Sciences. 2019;38(1):1-13.We investigate the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement using a new data set containing information on a large sample of young German twins. The TwinLife Study enables us to examine the predominant model of personality, the Big Five framework, as well as traits that fall outside the Big Five, such as cognitive ability, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of political engagement. Our results support previous work showing genetic overlap between some psychological traits and political engagement. More specifically, we find that cognitive ability and openness to experience are correlated with political engagement and that common genes can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and political engagement. Relationships between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement exist even at a fairly young age, which is an important finding given that previous work has relied heavily on older samples to study the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement

The relationship between political attitudes and political participation : Evidence from monozygotic twins in the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark

Many studies have shown that political efficacy, interest in politics, and political knowledge are strongly related to political participation. In most analyses, these variables are described as having a causal effect on participation. In this paper, we examine the extent to which the relationship between political attitudes and participation is confounded by familial factors. By using the discordant twin design, which relates within-pair differences in political attitudes to within-pair differences in political participation, we are able to examine the relationship net of confounding factors rooted in genes and the early rearing environment. Using four samples of monozygotic twins from the United States, Sweden, Germany, and Denmark, we find that the relationship between political attitudes and political participation is confounded to a large extent. This study makes an important contribution to the literature on political attitudes and political participation given the longstanding idea that attitudes cause political participation. Our findings also have practical implications for those interested in elevating levels of political participation. In addition, they have important implications for how scholars theorize about, model, and examine political participation in the future