What drives candidates to “go negative” and against which opponents? Using a unique dataset consisting of all inter-candidate tweets by the 17 Republican presidential candidates in the 2016 primaries, we assess predictors of negative affect online. Twitter is a free platform, and candidates therefore face no resource limitations when using it; this makes Twitter a wellspring of information about campaign messaging, given a level playing-field. Moreover, Twitter’s 140-character limit acts as a liberating constraint, leading candidates to issue sound bites ready for potential distribution not only online, but also through conventional media, as tweets become news. We find tweet negativity and overall rate of tweeting increases as the campaign season progresses. Unsurprisingly, the front-runner and eventual nominee, Donald Trump, sends and receives the most negative tweets and is more likely than his opponents to strike out against even those opponents who are polling poorly. However, candidates overwhelmingly “punch upwards” against those ahead of them in the polls, and this pattern goes beyond attacks against those near the top. Sixty of 136 dyads are characterized by lopsided negativity in one direction and only one of these 60 involves a clearly higher status candidate on the offensive.

We explore the implications of sequential presidential primary elections for turnout in selecting the presidential party nominees. Drawing from a micro-level theory of participation in sequential elections, we develop a set of aggregate-level hypotheses that tease out different ways that candidate mobilization efforts as well as the legal and institutional structures within a sequential contest influence turnout in presidential nomination contests. Using data from all state primary elections from 1972–2016, we find that electorates facing winnowed candidate pools, and those with contests after the effective endings to presidential contests have substantially reduced turnout that effectively disenfranchises voters in many states. Sequenced primary elections lead to lower overall turnout and less meaningful participation for many voters during presidential nominations contests.

Regret is a basic affect associated with individual choice. While much research in organizational science and consumer behavior has assessed the precedents and consequents of regret, little attention has been paid to regret in political science. The present study assesses the relationship between one of the most democratically consequential forms of political behavior—voting—and feelings of regret. We examine the extent to which citizens regret how they voted after doing so and the factors that might lead one individual to be more regretful than another. Relying on surveys in five different countries after 11 regional and national elections, we find not only that political information leads to a decrease in post-election regret, but also that having voted correctly, or having voted in accordance with one’s underlying preferences regardless of information, similarly mitigates regret. The effect of correct voting on regret is greater among the least informed.

There has been considerable debate regarding a hypothesis that the American electorate has become spatially more polarized over recent decades. Using a new method for measuring polarization, this paper evaluates that hypothesis regarding voting for the Democratic party’s presidential candidates at six elections since 1992, at three separate spatial scales. The findings are unambiguous: polarization has increased substantially across the country’s nine census divisions, across the 49 states within those divisions, and across the 3,077 counties within the states—with the most significant change at the finest of those three scales.

Identifying voters who share policy positions with the candidates has become an important component of modern political campaigns as they rely on microtargeted estimates to guide targeting decisions. Using survey data and microtargeted estimates from the 2012 election, I conduct one of the first independent examinations of the accuracy of microtargeting. The estimates are the most accurate in Florida, a state that requests information on the race of voters when they register and has party registration. The estimates are less accurate in the other battleground states that do not collect as much information. The accuracy rates range from 36% to 82% depending on the issue and state.

In this article, I present results from a conditional logit model of vice presidential selection that predicts the selection of vice presidential candidates for both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in 2016. Examining contested major party vice presidential nominations from 1960 through 2012, the model finds media exposure, political experience, military service, age, and demographic (gender/racial/ethnic) diversity to be significant factors in the selection process. In the end, the model correctly predicts 15 of the 21 (71.%) contested major party nominations during this period. For 2016 the model correctly and convincingly predicts Mike Pence as Donald Trump’s selection, but incorrectly predicts Cory Booker as Hillary Clinton’s pick. This reduces the overall percentage of correct predictions from 1960 to 2016 to 69.6% (16 of 23), but the approach taken here still represents a more appropriate way for social scientists to think about what factors drive vice presidential selection.

Public opinion tends to be stable. Once formed, attitudes are persistent and endure over time at both the individual and the aggregate levels. Attitudes toward marriage equality, however, have changed rapidly in recent years. This article posits that this is partly due to people learning that other members of their in-groups are supporters; they then alter their own opinions to be consistent with those of other in-group members. The authors tested this theory using a set of randomized survey experiments that shared identities as fans of professional football. When fans learn—sometimes unexpectedly—that other fans or athletes are supporters of marriage equality, they are motivated to agree in order to further normalize their membership in those sports-fan groups.

Every four years the state of Iowa leads off the presidential primary season by voting in its famed First in the Nation caucuses. And every four years academics, journalists, and citizens question whether Iowa is a suitable candidate to start the primary season. As a lifelong New Jerseyan, I joined this opposition view, and favored a different system—whether regional primaries, a rotating first state, or, well, anything else. Then, just three years ago I moved from New Jersey to Iowa, providing me an inside view of the state’s role in the nominating process and forcing me to see the caucuses in a new light. What I have seen, and will discuss here, are my reasons for changing my mind.

The National Popular Vote Interstate Compact (joined so far by ten states and DC) would replace the current presidential-election system, based on the electoral college and the winner-take-all rule, with nationwide plurality rule, and it would do so by changes in state law, not a Constitutional amendment. The mischief that would create (especially procedural instability, noncompliant electors, nation-wide recounts, vote manipulation, and narrowed support), the compact’s questionable Constitutionality, the weakness of its defense, and the availability of less calamitous alternatives are reasons enough to reject it.

This paper answers 24 criticisms of the National Popular Vote interstate compact in Darin DeWitt and Thomas Schwartz’s paper entitled “A Calamitous Compact” (found elsewhere in this issue).

Three of our arguments drew no objection from Dr. Koza. One is that plurality rule—the heart of his proposed reform—can be anti-majoritarian. In our three-candidate example, Libby was the plurality favorite but Maude beat each of her rivals, Libby included, by a majority. A plurality can be a majority, of course, but the Electoral College has never reversed a popular majority.

The presence of women candidates in both major parties’ presidential primaries, including a likely woman Democratic nominee, has increased the attention paid to gender dynamics in the 2016 US presidential election. However, the presumption that previous presidential elections—without female prominent contenders—were gender neutral is false: gender dynamics have been at play in all US presidential elections to date. The nation’s top executive office is arguably the most masculine in American politics. Duerst-Lahti (1997) describes the presidency as a gendered space in which masculine norms and images are reified as the ideal, adding, “the masculinist assumption-made-normal is strong and is made even stronger when it goes unnoticed for its gendered aspects” (22). Presidents and presidential contenders, whether male or female, are expected to meet the masculine expectations of the office through words and actions, and those around them—family, spouses, and advisors—often play a role in shaping the degree to which they are successful. In navigating American politics, candidates also face gendered treatment by opponents, voters, and media, reminding us that presidential politics is far from gender neutral. These gender dynamics have been detailed by scholars, particularly in analyses of the presidential candidacies of women (Beail and Longworth 2013; Carlin and Winfrey 2009; Carroll and Dittmar 2009; Dittmar and Carroll 2013; Duerst-Lahti 2013; Falk 2010; Han and Heldman 2007; Heldman, Carroll, and Olson 2005; Lawrence and Rose 2009; McClain, Carter, and Brady 2005). However, the depth and nuance in scholarly analyses are rarely evident in popular dialogue about the ways in which gender shapes presidential elections.

The publication of The American Voter in 1960 revolutionized the study of American voting behavior. Its University of Michigan authors, Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, were to share thousands of citations, but they were four different people, with different backgrounds, different personalities, and different career trajectories afterwards. This paper presents a chronological biography of The American Voter, from assembling the research team, through writing the book, to its aftermath, and ending with brief perspectives on each author.

Organizations conducting survey research have remained of vital importance to the social sciences. However, these organizations increasingly face new challenges and opportunities. Survey operations housed in universities and colleges may face special challenges. We present a poll of pollsters, an original survey of leaders of academic survey organizations in the United States. Results explore the various methods used by academic survey organizations and perceptions of challenges in today’s academic and research environments. Responses provide an overview of the career path of academic survey leaders and how those leaders understand the primary missions of their organizations. We conclude with a discussion relevant to social scientists interested in the dynamics of operating these important academic research centers.