We examine whether the geographic distribution of a political party's electoral support affects the divisiveness of statewide primaries. In spite of V.O. Key, Jr.'s (1956) original insight that geography might be a relevant predictor of contested statewide primaries, this hypothesis has received little attention from political scientists. We test Key's hypothesis using data on gubernatorial and U.S. Senate elections to identify the effects of electoral geography on the structure of competition in primary elections. We contend that dispersed bases of electoral support greatly increase the costs associated with maintaining party cohesion. Our findings support the theory that a geographically dispersed electorate heightens the potential for intraparty factionalism. These results are robust across several measures of the dependent variable.

The term limits movement of the 1990s was largely driven by Republican-led groups as part of a larger strategy to unseat entrenched Democratic incumbents in Congress and state legislatures. Likewise, many political scientists predicted that, as the traditional minority party, Republicans would benefit from term limits by eliminating the Democrats' incumbency advantage. However, other studies provided reasons to be skeptical of these predicted gains. No empirical study has yet examined the accuracy of these predictions. This study seeks to fill this void by utilizing multivariate data analysis to study the impact of term limits on the partisan composition of state legislatures from 1990 to 2004. The findings suggest that, holding other factors constant, Republicans have not gained representation at the state legislative level under term limits as was predicted.

Past research has shown that elected officials are generally responsive to the public's attitudes on policy, particularly in domains such as morality policy. But will this responsiveness survive an externally imposed, non-incremental policy “shock”? The U.S. Supreme Court's decision in Roe v. Wade represents such a shock regarding abortion policy. We examine the responsiveness of state lawmakers to mass abortion attitudes in the post-Roe period through a longitudinal analysis of state abortion policies. We find that the connection between mass abortion attitudes and abortion policies has grown stronger over time, and that mass preferences have become the primary determinant of such policies. Mass abortion attitudes are now a stronger predictor of abortion policies than elite abortion attitudes, and certain elite abortion attitudes that once moderated the link between mass abortion attitudes and policy no longer do so. These findings suggest that lawmakers will attempt to respond to public preferences about contentious morality policies despite the imposition of an external policy constraint.

While Lowi (1964) claims that policies can be classified as one of three types, distributive, redistributive, or regulatory, his work has been criticized as incomplete. Policies are frequently multidimensional, and his categories are neither comprehensive nor mutually exclusive. A fourth policy type, morality policy, has now been well-established as distinct from the other three types (e.g., Meier 1994; Mooney 2001). Evidence suggests that some policies can be framed as multidimensional policy types. Abortion funding is one such policy issue that has aspects of both morality policy and redistributive policy in its politics. In this study, we develop models of government abortion funding based on abortion as a morality and a redistributive policy. We estimate these models using weighted least squares to explain the voting outcomes of county-level votes in six state referenda elections for government funding of abortions. Then, we test a combined model and find clear evidence that the combined model, and variables from both perspectives, provide a stronger case than a single policy typology model alone. A practical implication is that policy advocates may purposely emphasize different values and results of the policies. Thus, testing policy theories may need to include more complex views of policies based on policy types.

In the summer 2006 edition of State Politics and Policy Quarterly, Michael Baranowski and Donald Gross examined two methods of measuring influence over state agency activities: freestanding versus paired comparison. Their analysis led them to conclude that the paired-comparison measures might be theoretically superior, but are often impractical. Using the American State Administrator Project (ASAP) surveys, we supplement Baranowski and Gross's analysis by identifying conditions that sometimes make freestanding instruments superior measures and, at other times, paired comparisons both superior and practical to use.