Abstract:

The social sciences face a replicability crisis. A key determinant of replication success is statistical power. We assess the power of political science research by collating over 16,000 hypothesis tests from about 2,000 articles. Using generous assumptions, we find that the median analysis has about 10% power and that only about 1 in 10 tests have at least 80% power to detect the consensus effects reported in the literature. We also find substantial heterogeneity in tests across research areas, with some being characterized by high power, but most having very low power. To contextualize our findings, we survey political methodologists to assess their expectations about power levels. Most methodologists greatly overestimate the statistical power of political science research.

Abstract:

Undocumented immigrants contribute to the US. economy by participating in the labor force, paying taxes, and starting businesses. They do so under constant fear of deportation and while being barred from government assistance programs. Nevertheless, misconceptions about how undocumented immigrants affect the job market and public finance are widespread, leading to negative attitudes and hindering policy reforms. Using three survey experiments and three national samples of Americans, I test two strategies for promoting inclusion and shifting policy preferences: correcting information and perspective-getting narratives. Both types of interventions are successful among both Democrats and especially Republicans, although narrative accounts of individual immigrants prove most effective. These findings have important implications for the study of political persuasion and prejudice reduction.

Abstract:

Public attitudes toward immigration, trade, international cooperation, and military action have been studied extensively, and political scientists have proposed various theories to explain public opinion on these issues. This paper reviews these literatures, tests their main empirical implications, and attempts to consolidate their findings. Leveraging 17 years of national surveys covering 600,000 unique respondents and more than 300 policy issue items, we demonstrate that a singular dimension of public opinion underlies preferences over most areas of global affairs. Our results offer strong evidence in favor of sociopsychological explanations of public opinion, but limited support for common claims based on self-interest and local context. Divisions over how much America should engage with the rest of the world map over not only partisanship and ideology but also sociodemographic characteristics like age, gender, and race. These divides display remarkable temporal stability, which raises major implications for the future of isolationist and internationalist movements in the United States.

Abstract:

The U.S. immigrant population is projected to grow in the coming decades, and the share of immigrants comprising the electorate is bound to increase with rising rates of naturalization. Understanding how new citizens develop their political predispositions is thus crucial. While partisan-ideological sorting among the mass public has been studied extensively, it remains unclear if naturalized immigrants are sorting politically in a manner consistent with prior findings. Using several surveys of Asian and Latinx individuals, we show that citizenship triggers the partisan-ideological sorting of immigrants. We observe consistently null or weak associations between ideology and partisanship among non-citizens, but strong associations among naturalized immigrants. We establish the robustness of these results by ruling out alternative theoretical mechanisms, conducting various sensitivity analyses, and replicating the results with general population surveys. Citizenship facilitates the political integration of immigrants, and polarization is likely to characterize the political behavior of new citizens going forward.

Abstract:

With rising income and wealth inequality, demand for redistribution might be expected to increase. However, public opinion on these issues has remained relatively stable in recent years. Concomitantly, the ethno-racial composition of the country has rapidly changed. Theories on ethnic diversity and racial threat predict such dynamics may reduce support for redistribution despite rising inequality, which would explain why support for redistribution remains stagnant in the U.S. We test these theories by  pairing local demographic data with national public opinion surveys of nearly a million Americans, including 3 panels of individuals who were interviewed multiple times between 2010 and 2022. Changes in neighborhood demographics do not significantly influence fiscal and social policy preferences. We rule out several sources of heterogeneity, conduct various sensitivity analyses, and replicate our findings using survey experiments and perceived measures of demographic change. These null results clash with established findings on diversity, intergroup conflict, and public finance.

Abstract:

In countries with well-developed welfare state systems, it is often claimed that racial or ethnic minorities impose a heavy burden on social assistance programs without contributing to public goods. In this study, we consider the attitudinal effects of anecdotal reports of tax cheating by minorities. We conduct survey experiments in France and the United States to assess if people react more harshly to tax fraud perpetrated by members of a minority rather than the majority group. We find no evidence that minority status affects judgments and perceptions about tax fraud, including among those on the right end of the political spectrum. Tax fraud is considered unacceptable regardless of the culprit's origin.

Abstract:

Governments routinely offer deals to companies accused of white-collar crimes, allowing them to escape criminal charges in exchange for fines or penalties. This lets prosecutors avoid costly litigation and protects companies’ right to bid on lucrative public contracts, which can reduce the likelihood of bankruptcies or layoffs. Striking deals with white-collar criminals can be risky for governments because it could affect the perceived legitimacy of the legal system. This article explores the conditions under which the general public supports leniency agreements. Building on theoretical intuitions from the literature, we identify three characteristics that could affect mass attitudes: home bias, economic incentives, and retribution. We conduct a survey experiment in the United States and find moderate support for leniency agreements. Whether the crime occurs on US soil or abroad does not affect public opinion, and the number of jobs that would be jeopardized by criminal prosecution only has a small effect. Instead, survey respondents become much more supportive of a deal when it includes criminal charges for the corporate managers who were personally involved in the alleged wrongdoing. In the court of public opinion, punishing a handful of individuals appears to matter more than saving thousands of jobs

Abstract:

In late 2017, the first unified Republican government in 10 years enacted the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy. Why did so many citizens support a policy that primarily benefited people richer than them? The self-interest hypothesis holds that individuals act upon the position they occupy in the income distribution: richer (poorer) taxpayers should favor (oppose) regressive policy. Associations between income and policy preferences are often inconsistent, however, suggesting that many citizens fail to connect their self-interest to taxation. Indeed, political psychologists have shown compellingly that citizens can be guided by partisan considerations not necessarily aligned with their own interests. This article assesses public support for the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017. Using data from the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study as well as contemporaneous ANES and VOTER surveys to replicate our analyses, we show that self-interest and partisanship both come into play, but that partisanship matters more. Personal financial considerations, while less influential than party identification, are relevant for two groups of individuals: Republicans and the politically unsophisticated.

Abstract:

An important body of literature shows that citizens evaluate elected officials based on their past performance. In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, the conventional wisdom in both media and academic discourse was that Donald Trump would have been a two-term president absent an unprecedented, global force majeure. In this research note, we address a simple question: did exposure to COVID-19 impact vote choice in the 2020 presidential election? Using data from the Cooperative Election Study, we find that Trump’s vote share decreased because of COVID-19. However, there is no evidence suggesting that Joe Biden loses the election when no voter reports exposure to coronavirus cases and deaths. These negligible effects are found at both the national and state levels, and are robust to an exhaustive set of confounders across model specifications.

Abstract:

The SARS-CoV-2 virus was first identified in Wuhan, China, in late December 2019, and it quickly spread to many countries. By March 2020, the virus had triggered a global pandemic (World Health Organization, 2020). In response to this crisis, governments have implemented unprecedented public health measures. The success of these policies will largely depend on the public's willingness to comply with new rules. A key factor in citizens’ willingness to comply is their understanding of the data that motivate government action. In this study, we examine how different ways of presenting these data visually can affect citizen's perceptions, attitudes and support for public policy.