This article focuses on two commonly used indicators of turnout, VAP turnout (the number of votes cast as a percentage of the voting-age population) and RV turnout (votes cast as a percentage of the number of registered voters), and discusses possible biases induced by migration flows. Using a global dataset on elections in more than 100 democracies between 1990 and 2012, we tested the potential bias induced by the percentage of resident noncitizens and nationals living abroad on VAP and RV turnout, respectively. Through time-series cross-sectional analysis, we found that the number of resident noncitizens negatively biases VAP turnout, to the extent that a country with 10% noncitizen residents would have turnout underreported by nearly 4 percentage points. In contrast, we found that the number of nationals living abroad does not induce a turnout bias.

By a measure of religious affiliation used by Gallup polls for nearly a century, the denomination with the largest following in the United States has always turned out to be “None,” ahead of Catholic, Methodist, Baptist, or any other faith. The existence of such a large flock without religious affiliation might be expected for a country with a Constitution guaranteeing freedom of and from religion. The secular portion of the American electorate has always been big enough to wield, potentially at least, political clout. Its partisan attachments have consistently favored the Democratic over the Republican side. What is limiting the electoral clout of the “Nones” today is that nearly half of them profess no partisan affiliation. They are Independents in matters of both church and state.

Data quality in survey research remains a paramount concern for those studying mass political behavior. Because surveys are conducted in increasingly diverse contexts around the world, ensuring that best practices are followed becomes ever more important to the field of political science. Bringing together insights from surveys conducted in more than 80 countries worldwide, this article highlights common challenges faced in survey research and outlines steps that researchers can take to improve the quality of survey data. Importantly, the article demonstrates that with the investment of the necessary time and resources, it is possible to carry out high-quality survey research even in challenging environments in which survey research is not well established.

This article examines the factors that influence whether members of Congress tweet about the #MeToo movement. Whereas social-identity theory suggests that congresswomen would be more likely to tweet about #MeToo, congressional research argues that increased polarization has resulted in congresswomen bucking gender stereotypes and embracing more partisan behavior than might otherwise be expected (Pearson and Dancey 2011). We examine how gender, partisanship, and ideology shape the Twitter activity of members of Congress surrounding the #MeToo movement using an original dataset of their tweets since October 2017 when the #MeToo movement gained prominence on Twitter. Our findings show that gender and ideology are the strongest predictors of whether Congress members tweet about the #MeToo movement. Liberals—particularly liberal women—are leading the charge in bringing prominence to the #MeToo movement on Twitter.

This research offers a post-mortem on political advertising in 2018, providing important context for 2018’s “blue wave.” In a majority of US House of Representatives races, there were more pro-Democratic than pro-Republican ads, including in the most competitive contests. The one theme that united pro-Democratic advertising was health care, which was mentioned in nearly three of every five Democratic ads in the fall campaign. Contrary to the narrative that television is declining, a record number of television ads aired in the 2018 midterms, whereas digital spending still constituted a small percentage of overall advertising spending for most candidate campaigns. Finally, there was a healthy volume of outside-group spending in 2018, with “dark-money” groups increasing their involvement—especially in support of Democratic candidates.

Accusations of conspiracy are nothing new in American politics, but examples in which the government—usually cast as a key player in conspiracy theories—goes on record to corroborate that a conspiracy occurred are rare. I leveraged an experiment that randomly exposes both college-student and general-public subject pools to information about the 1979 House Select Committee on Assassination report of a probable conspiracy in the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. I find that those exposed to government corroboration of a conspiracy (1) are more prone to anger in response to the government report; (2) engage in an increased search of available media information about the assassination; and (3) are more likely to agree with the conclusion of a conspiracy in Kennedy’s murder. Implications for additional research about government pronouncements on controversial issues and follow-on public reaction also are discussed.

Google Books Ngrams data are freely available and contain billions of words used in tens of millions of digitized books, which begin in the 1500s for some languages. We explore the benefits and pitfalls of these data by showing examples from comparative and American politics. Specifically, we show how usage of the phrase “political corruption” in Italian, French, German, and Hebrew books strongly correlates with Transparency International’s well-cited Corruption Index for France, Italy, German, and Israel. We also use Ngrams to show that the explosive growth in usage of the phrases “Asian American,” “Latino,” and “Hispanic” correlates with real-world changes in these populations after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965. These applications show that Ngram data correlate strongly with similar data from well-respected sources. This suggests that Ngrams has content validity and can be used as a proxy measure for previously difficult-to-research phenomena and questions.

A growing body of research investigates the factors that enhance the research productivity and creativity of political scientists. This work provides a foundation for future research, but it has not addressed some of the most promising causal hypotheses in the general scientific literature on this topic. This article explicates the latter hypotheses, a typology of scientific career paths that distinguishes how scientific careers vary over time with respect to creative ambitions and achievements, and a research agenda based on the preceding components for investigation of the publication success of political scientists.

Book workshops are widely regarded as yielding important benefits for junior scholars; therefore, these intensive feedback sessions have proliferated in recent years. However, closer consideration suggests some important notes of caution. A wealth of additional suggestions does not necessarily improve a post-dissertation manuscript; instead, comments and criticisms advanced by senior experts may induce young authors to back away from or tone down innovative ideas or to address numerous additional factors and conditions, which can make their theory unwieldy and complicated. More important than the potential pitfalls for the first book itself are the heavy opportunity costs created by book workshops, which can jeopardize a junior colleague’s career advancement. After all, the substantial revisions arising from these feedback sessions take time away from article production and the design and initial research for a second major project. In these ways, overinvestment in the first book can hurt a young scholar’s chances at tenure time.

The design of field experiments makes them inappropriate for testing many common political theories. These theories propose that certain factors—for example, income or information—affect how individuals make choices. To test these theories, researchers typically investigate the correlation between the relevant factor and individuals’ choices, holding other factors constant. Field experiments, in contrast, allow multiple factors to vary at once: they create real-world disruption and do not control how actors behave in response. Subjects’ choices will be affected by the experimental treatment as well as by other changes that occur as the larger system reacts. It will be difficult to isolate the effect of any one factor, particularly without a good preexisting model of the system and how it is likely to respond. If a field experiment will not tell us what we need to know, the benefit of the study cannot outweigh harm, and it also will be unethical.

Most political scientists self-identify as a comparativist, theorist, Americanist, or another label corresponding with the qualifying field exams (QFE) that they passed during their doctoral studies. Passing the QFE indicates that a graduate student or faculty member is broadly familiar with the full range of theories, approaches, and debates within a subfield or research theme. The value of the QFE as a form of certification, however, depends on the extent to which the subfield or theme is cohesive in and of itself as well as whether departmental lists draw on a common pool of publications. This article investigates the value of the QFE by examining the cohesiveness of 16 Canadian politics PhD QFE lists. Our findings suggest that it is problematic to assume that scholars who pass a QFE share a common knowledge base.

Numerous studies document female scholars’ underrepresentation in political science publications and citations, yet few examine graduate syllabi. In this study, we assess the impact of instructors’ individual characteristics (i.e., race, gender, and age) on which readings they assign. We use what is—to our knowledge—the largest dataset of graduate readings to date: the GRaduate Assignments DataSet (GRADS), with 75,601 readings from 840 syllabi in 94 US PhD programs. We report several findings. First, overall, instructors infrequently assign female-authored scholarship relative to the rates at which women publish. Second, instructors who are women, people of color, and those from more gender-equal countries assign significantly more female-authored readings than white male instructors and those from less gender-equal countries. Third, among women—but not men—older instructors assign more female-authored work. We suggest that women’s underrepresentation on syllabi may contribute to “the leaky pipeline,” which describes women’s attrition from academic careers.

Recent studies identified gendered citation gaps in political science journal articles, with male scholars being less likely to cite work by female scholars in comparison to their female peers. Although journal editors, editorial boards, and political scientists are becoming more aware of implicit biases and adopting strategies to remedy them, we know less about the proper baselines for citations in subfields and research areas of political science. Without information about how many women should be cited in a research field, it is difficult to know whether the distribution is biased. Using the gender distribution of membership in professional political science organizations and article authors in 38 political science journals, we provide scholars with suggested minimum baselines for gender representation in citations. We also show that women represent a larger share of organization members than the authors in sponsoring organizations’ journals.