Proceedings of the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association, Chicago, IL, April 11–14.
ISSN/ISBN: Not available at this time. DOI: Not available at this time.
Abstract: Alesina and Rosenthal’s theory of divided government predicts voters act strategically: the presidential candidate of one party gets extra votes and so do legislative candidates of the opposite party. Empirically assessing the strategic behavior of voters supports the theory in U.S. election data from the 1980s, but by 2004 the same methods contradict the theory. Anomalous patterns seen in precinct vote counts’ second digits in 2006 and 2008 data seemingly trace to the particular patterns of Democrat-favoring mobilization that occurred in those years. Digit patterns for federal and state legislative offices in the 2010 midterm elections resemble the 2000s more than the 1980s. To be more precise, patterns in the 2010 midterm for U.S. House races resemble the patterns seen for U.S. House races in the presidential elections of 1984 and 1988. In 2006, 2008 and 2010 second-digit patterns for state legislative races are similar to the patterns for U.S. House races in those same years while in the 1980s they differed. Stronger ties between the federal and state elections are apparent in the 2000s. To be even more precise, in the 2000s the digits diagnose especial mobilizations affecting votes for winning Democratic candidates and not for winning Republicans. Such an asymmetry is apparent in the 2010 election even though the results in that election were a wave of Republican (and “TEA Party”) victories.
Bibtex:
@inProceedings {,
AUTHOR = {{Walter R. Mebane, Jr.} and {Thomas B. Kent}},
TITLE = {Second digit implications of voters’ strategies and mobilizations in the United States during the 2000s},
BOOKTITLE = {Proceedings of the 2013 Annual Meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association},
YEAR = {2013},
ADDRESS = {Chicago, IL},
MONTH = {April 11--14},
URL = {http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wmebane/mw13.pdf},
}
Reference Type: Conference Paper
Subject Area(s): Voting Fraud