Aleksandra Conevska (APRW)
Date and Time
Location
Zoom link below.
Today's speaker
Aleksandra Conevska, "Ideology, Partisanship, and Voting: Evidence from the 2020 General Election"
Abstract
Polarization connected to the deep partisan divide in U.S. politics has led to skepticism about the relevance of centrists and partisan independents (and/or weak partisans) in U.S. elections. In this paper we study voting as a function of ideology and partisanship at the individual level, using cast vote record (CVR) data in 2020. After cleaning, we have CVR data for over 40 million voters, covering over 1400 national, state, and local partisan races. We use voting on statewide ballot measures to estimate each voter’s ideological position, and voting for federal offices to measure partisanship. We find (i) a substantial share of U.S. voters appear to be centrists; (ii) centrist voters are much more likely to split their ticket than more ideologically extreme voters; and (iii) roughly half of the split-ticket voting – both by centrists and extremists – simply “cancels out,” with some voters switching from Democrat to Republican and others switching from Republican to Democrat. We then investigate the degree to which split-ticket voting is correlated with measures of candidate valence/quality, including incumbency, endorsements by newspapers and interest groups, scandals, and expert evaluations. It appears that voting on the basis of candidate valence/quality is more related to partisanship than to ideology. By contrast, voter ideology appears to matter more as a function of candidate ideology – i.e., voters who do not share the ideology of the incumbent vote more for moderate incumbents than extremists, especially for split-ticket voters. Overall, the results suggest that even today, centrists and partisan independents play a critical role in U.S. elections.
The American Politics Research Workshop (Gov 3004) meets all academic year, Tuesdays, 12:00–2:00 PM, in CGIS K354. This workshop presents an opportunity for graduate students and Harvard faculty to present and receive feedback on their current research. The workshop highlights key theoretical and empirical findings from Harvard affiliates on topics related to American politics.
All interested Harvard affiliates are invited to attend.