Washington and California adopted the Top-Two Primary in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Under this new system, all candidates regardless of party affiliation run against each other, narrowing the field down to the top two for the general election. In some jurisdictions, the general election features two candidates from the same party. Ten percent of California voters chose not to vote in the 2016 U.S. Senate election which featured two Democrats. Using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (2012-2016), I find that among those who vote in the national November elections, orphans, or voters without a copartisan candidate on the ballot are more likely to undervote, opting out of voting in their congressional race. Levels of undervoting are nearly 20 percentage points higher for orphaned voters compared to non-orphaned voters. Additionally, voters who abstain perceive more ideological distance between themselves and the candidates compared to voters who cast a vote. These findings support a multi-step framework for vote decisions in same-party matchups: voters are more likely to undervote if they are unable to vote for a candidate from their party (partisan model), but all voters are more likely to vote for a candidate when they perceive ideological proximity (ideological model).

We analyze the effect of redrawn constituents on incumbent vote shares in Georgia U.S. House elections from 1992 to 2006. The Georgia General Assembly redrew the congressional boundaries for the 2006 midterm and the new lines redistributed approximately 31% of residents into districts with a different incumbent than the one representing them in 2004. With the use of Voting Tabulation District (VTD) data, we use a hierarchical model to evaluate the effect these redrawn constituents had on their new incumbent's vote share. We find a consistent pattern: both Democratic and Republican incumbents experienced significant reductions in their vote shares as a consequence of the redrawn VTDs placed in their districts. The short-term political climate featuring a national Democratic tide and a simultaneous statewide trend favoring the Grand Old Party (GOP) helps to explain this finding. With offsetting partisan conditions, the incumbency advantage came to the fore as Georgia U.S. House members, irrespective of party affiliation, performed better among the constituents they retained prior to redistricting. Our findings for the 2006 election run counter to the significant Republican redistricting advantage prevailing in Georgia congressional contests from 1992 to 2004.

In 2000, Virginia became the last state in the nation to add party labels to its ballots for state-level races. This article assesses the impact of this reform on citizen participation and the partisan behavior of down-ballot voters using precinct-level election returns. It finds that after the application of labels, roll-off in contested, down-ballot races dropped by about a percentage point, a reduction of approximately 15%. Roll-off dropped more in precincts with a larger share of African Americans. Also, the association between Republican vote shares in the Lt. Governor and state legislative races and presidential vote share in the 2000 general election became stronger in the presence of party labels. This result suggests that the labels made voters behave more as national partisans in state-level contests.

Thousands of studies have examined party competition in the American states, finding significant consequences for voter turnout, policy adoptions, and more. Long-term patterns of party control have received less attention. Here, we reexamine the operationalization of party competition. We then update Klarner’s state partisan balance data to include state house and senate composition and gubernatorial vote share since the 1930s, adding—in light of the nationalization of American politics—presidential vote share and the proportion of Democrats in each state’s congressional delegation. After establishing a threshold for one-party dominance, we examine the frequency and duration of subnational party monopolies, highlighting regional variations in the relationship between the state and national measures and applying the index to voter turnout. Our analysis reveals that extended periods of one-party dominance – currently on the uptick – are the rule, not the exception, in the American states and are a phenomenon ripe for further exploration.

Local option sales taxes have become an important source of local revenue across the United States. Thirty-three of the 50 states have granted authorization to their counties or cities (or both) to levy local option sales taxes, and said taxes generated nearly $50 billion in 2005, which accounted for 11% of all local tax revenue nationwide. Even though local option sales taxes have significant impacts on a county's ability to fund programs and services, little has been written about the decisions of counties to place such taxes on the ballot. Using demographic, fiscal, and political variables, a model is developed that explains the decision to place a county transportation sales tax on the ballot. Modeling and analysis reveal that counties behave strategically as the impact of demographic, fiscal, and political factors on the decision to place a local option sales tax on the ballot is shaped by whether the county is making an initial attempt to adopt, a subsequent attempt to adopt after voter rejection, or a renewal attempt when an existing local option sales tax is nearing its sunset date.

American state legislators commonly remain connected to the market, giving them the potential for unique expertise on how policy affects the industries they are connected to and the opportunity to help enact laws favoring those industries. This paper describes the extent to which state legislative committees are populated by legislators with economic connections to their jurisdiction, and analyzes appointment patterns to help distinguish stacking to tap expertise from stacking to serve an industry. I find that a substantial minority of committees are stacked with connected legislators. Appointment patterns show limited evidence for expertise in education and health care, for industry service in banking, and for both in agriculture.

Most state supreme court justices have time-bound terms that require them to be reappointed or reelected after a certain amount of time. In three American states, South Carolina, Vermont, and Virginia, the legislature has the sole power to retain justices. Legislatures, and their specialized judiciary committees, are well positioned to monitor judicial behavior and can reject retention for justices who are unacceptable. This turns the legislature's oversight authority into influence over policy making by justices who still need to be reappointed to additional terms. But some justices (co-partisans) are insulated from this influence by their connections to the majority party, which substantially increases the likelihood of their retention. I show that, between 1995 and 2014, justices appointed by the minority party who were eligible for a new term voted more in line with the preferences of their legislature than those who were no longer eligible for a new term due to mandatory or voluntary retirement. No similar effect is found among appointees of the majority party. To support my argument that it is the legislature's reappointment authority that gives them this power, I conduct a placebo test to show that governors in these states enjoy no comparable influence on reappointment-seeking justices. This legislative influence represents a substantial limitation on judicial independence.

What effect do political leaders have on policy adoption in response to a crisis? The vote-counting crisis in the presidential election in Florida in 2000 forced policymakers in all 50 states to re-examine their own election laws and procedures. Some state leaders acted as entrepreneurs, seizing the opportunity to advance major reform, while others sought only modest or no substantive change. We test the impact of political leadership on policy adoption in a crisis situation by constructing a leadership variable from content analysis of news coverage in the states. We find that the activities of elected or appointed policymakers, particularly the states' chief elections officials (CEOs), had a decisive effect on the extent of election reforms adopted by the states. Five other factors also affected the adoption of election reforms: political culture, the ideology of a state's electorate, recommendations by statewide commissions, legislative term limits, and the interaction between the winner's margin of victory in the 2000 presidential election and the state's residual vote rate.

In this article, we present and test a market-based model of news content about state courts of last resort. We test our theory by examining newspaper coverage of decisions in death penalty cases. Our empirical results indicate that news elements of drama, novelty, and sensationalism influence coverage of state high courts' death penalty cases rather than traditional indicators of legal salience. News content either anywhere in a newspaper or on its front page is influenced by similar factors, but front-page coverage is more sensitive to dramatic conviction reversals and the rarity of executions in a given state. Our results suggest that traditional explanations of the relationship between crime and newsworthiness have limited impact on media attention given to state supreme courts. Media coverage of state high courts is instead associated primarily with the behavior of the court and its justices.

Despite lofty expectations from the item veto's proponents (and fears from its opponents), formal models have suggested that the item veto is unlikely to have much effect beyond what a full veto could render. However, I show that different findings obtain when item vetoes are appreciated more fully as a dimensionality-reducing institution. I begin by developing a package veto model in a generalized multidimensional space. I then show how introducing the item veto changes the outcome by forcing veto bargaining into what is essentially a unidimensional space. As a result, executives with an item veto or other dimensionality-reducing institution (such as a single-subject rule) can be far more powerful in legislative bargaining than executives who lack these tools, other things being equal. I use simulations to demonstrate the model's main implications.

Retail sales on the Internet are growing at a rapid pace. Some states have tapped into this potential revenue source with Internet sales taxes, while others have not. What are the factors that lead states to make these policy decisions? Using a 50-state comparative research design, we find that interest groups, as much as the partisan and economic factors emphasized in previous research on state tax policy, are correlated with adoptions of these state tax innovations. Furthermore, this interest group influence is not limited to a single industry, but comes from self-interested groups representing both sides of the issue, including newly emerging technology interests.

What is the role of legislative term limits in the structure of legislative institutions? Using Mooney’s collective action problem theoretical framework on legislative leadership power, I claim that legislative term limits should be a key determinant in a state Speaker’s power via the delegation of institutional tools that control the lawmaking process. Speakers can use these tools to influence policy outcomes and their colleagues. I test this expectation in an analysis of lower chamber rules in nearly all states between 1981 and 2015. The results indicate that states with implemented term limits are associated with a more powerful Speaker. These findings suggest that a more nuanced relationship between legislative term limits and leadership power exist than previously thought.

Legislators might rely on their partisan base for electoral support—what scholars call their normal vote—or they may cultivate support among nonpartisans through casework or constituency service—what scholars call a personal vote. Previous research frequently argues that legislators face a tradeoff between pursuing the normal vote and a personal vote as traditionally defined, often focusing on resources used by incumbents to build their personal vote. In contrast, we argue that securing the support of partisans and nonpartisans alike should be evaluated based on how a legislator performs in office, and that the so-called normal and personal vote need not be viewed as in conflict. We evaluate our claims using data from state legislative elections following redistricting, focusing on legislative professionalism to measure the resources available to incumbents that they might use to cultivate a personal note.

Why do some people evaluate state supreme courts as more legitimate than others? Conventional academic wisdom suggests that people evaluate courts in nonpartisan ways, and that people make a distinction between how they evaluate individual court decisions and how they evaluate the court's legitimacy more broadly. We challenge this idea by arguing that people's partisan identities have a strong influence on how people evaluate the impartiality of courts, just as they do other aspects of the political world. Using original survey experiments, validated by existing observational survey data, we show that people perceive state supreme courts as being more impartial when courts issue decisions that match the ideological preferences of their preferred political party, while court decisions at odds with their party's policy goals diminish people's belief that courts are impartial arbiters of the law. We also show that the effects of citizen perceptions of impartiality erode evaluations of state court legitimacy, which makes them want to limit the independence of judicial institutions.

The controversial presidential election of 2000 triggered a wide variety of electoral reforms in many states. We examine the impact of a state's politics, ethnicity, and fiscal health on the passage of these reforms. Using state-level data from 2001 and 2002, we find that the partisan make-up of state government frequently influenced the fate of these reforms. States with a divided government or high party competition tended not to adopt several key electoral reforms, while partisanship and the interaction of partisanship and minority representation influenced the adoption of others. Fiscal constraints and institutional arrangements had less impact on reform adoption. Overall, our findings suggest that electoral reforms were shaped more by political factors than by fiscal concerns or any objective need for reform.

Considerable research shows that welfare policies are stricter in states with large African American caseloads. We challenge the universality of this claim by extending Soss, Fording, and Schram's Racial Classification Model to account for the multidimensionality of policy, the constraints imposed by federal funding, and state legislators' ideological goals and racial stereotypes. Examining the work requirements, sanctions, time limits, and exemptions in the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program (TANF), we test our hypotheses using the most detailed measures of state welfare policy yet examined. Consistent with our theory, we show that policy is more generous on some dimensions and less generous on others as the size of the African American caseload increases. This pattern reveals a complexity in welfare policy previously overlooked by research showing only negative effects. The results have important implications for theories addressing race in the context of TANF and other complex policy regimes.

The state courts of last resort are vital components of American judicial system, disposing of many important legal matters. The chief justices of these courts serve consequential roles in these institutions. Although scholars have examined the selection and duties of states' chief justices, their interactions with the elected branches are understudied. We focus on how chief justices on state high courts use their roles to encourage judicial reform. Specifically, we examine the determinants of chief justices' successes or failures as advocates for their justice systems. To analyze why chief justices succeed or fail as reform advocates, we analyze the fate of reform proposals offered in state of the judiciary addresses. Our results indicate that greater ideological similarity between the state legislature and chief justice or state supreme court median increases the odds of an agenda item being enacted. We also find that the scope of a policy request influences the likelihood it will be granted.

The effect of campaign contributions on legislative roll call voting has long been the subject of debate. This study weighs into this debate by examining the impact of teachers' union contributions on votes on two school choice bills in the Florida House of Representatives during the 1998 and 1999 sessions. I find that different types of school choice bills evince different effects of campaign contributions from teachers' unions. Specifically, campaign contributions appear to influence voting on bills that are most important to a group's policy agenda but have no effect on bills more peripheral to their interests. Additionally, legislators receiving campaign contributions from teachers' unions were significantly more likely to vote against vouchers than against charter schools, even after controlling for other influences on their votes.

This article seeks to uncover reasons behind the relatively high levels of third-party voting found at the state level in the early- to mid-1800s. I argue that third parties needed to develop localized bases of support from which they could expand. By analyzing Liberty Party gubernatorial voting in Vermont during the 1840s, the article shows that the party developed support in particular towns, maintained this over election cycles, and spread the party message to neighboring towns after the creation of a formal party organization. I also find that towns with strong Liberty Party support in the early 1840s continued to be strong supporters of the Free Soil Party in the 1850s. I then present evidence that early bases of Liberty Party support tended to vote at much higher levels for the Republican Party in 1855, indicating that the geographic development of an abolitionist party in the early 1840s helped in the establishment of Republican success in Vermont. These findings highlight the importance of geographic context in the development of third-party voting in the early- to mid-1800s and its connection to the rise of the Republican Party.

The lively debate between Berry, Ringquist, Fording, and Hanson (2007, hereafter Berry et al.) and Brace, Arceneaux, Johnson, and Ulbig (2004, hereafter Brace et al.) about the measurement of state public opinion is instructive for scholars of many aspects of state politics and policy. Researchers in need of such a measure now have a variety of choices, but as this debate illustrates, these measures are not simply interchangeable nor can they be used without a good deal of theoretical and methodological thought. Each measure is linked to a different component of state public opinion and each has its limitations. In addition, state policies, and changes in state policies, may have different causal links to these measures depending on policy type, kind of policy change, or environmental factors.