Now showing items 1-20 of 22

    • The American Public's Energy Choice 

      Konisky, David; Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel (Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 2012)
      Public opinion about energy can be understood in a uni½ed framework. First, people evaluate key attributes of energy sources, particularly a fuel’s cost and environmental harms. Americans, for example, view coal as relatively ...
    • Asking About Numbers: Why and How 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Meredith, M.; Snowberg, E. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2013)
      Survey questions about quantities offer a number of advantages over more common qualitative questions. However, concerns about survey respondents’ abilities to accurately report numbers have limited the use of quantitative ...
    • Constituents' responses to congressional roll call voting 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Jones, Philip Edward (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010)
      Do citizens hold their representatives accountable for policy decisions, as commonly assumed in theories of legislative politics? Previous research has failed to yield clear evidence on this question for two reasons: ...
    • The Effects of Redistricting on Incumbents 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Snyder, James M. (Mary Ann Liebert, 2012)
      We analyze the effects of redistricting on the electoral fortunes of incumbent legislators, using voting data on U.S. congressional districts, state legislative districts, and statewide races. We find little evidence that ...
    • Electoral Institutions, Party Strategies, Candidate Attributes, and the Incumbency Advantage 

      Llaudet, Elena (2014-06-06)
      In developed democracies, incumbents are consistently found to have an electoral advantage over their challengers. The normative implications of this phenomenon depend on its sources. Despite a large existing literature, ...
    • Essays in Congressional Communication 

      Hickey, Emily Grace (2013-10-08)
      Members of Congress must manage both their representative and legislative responsibilities.
    • How Electoral Institutions Shape Citizen Participation and Legislative Behavior 

      Schneer, Benjamin H. (2016-05-14)
      The electoral system is often treated as fixed, but throughout U.S. history significant changes in electoral institutions, or in political conditions dictated by electoral institutions, make it possible to identify more ...
    • Judging Gerrymandering: Improving Methods for Measuring Partisan Distortion and Its Component Parts 

      Rosenblatt, Elizabeth M. (2017-07-14)
      This paper improves upon the existing mathematical methods for measuring partisan distortion and evaluating partisan gerrymandering in plurality-won, single-member district electoral systems. The measures and models presented ...
    • Measuring election system erformance 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Persily, Nathaniel (New York University, 2010)
    • Measuring the Consequences of Delegate Selection Rules in Presidential Nominations 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; King, Gary (Cambridge University Press, 1990)
      In this paper, we formalize existing normative criteria used to judge presidential selection contests by modeling the translation of citizen votes in primaries and caucuses into delegates to the national party conventions. ...
    • Movers, Stayers, and Registration: Why Age is Correlated with Registration in the U.S. 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel (Now Publishers, 2012)
      Age is among the strongest predictors of political participation, yet it is also among the least well understood. We offer a probability model of participation in the U.S. voter registration system - the first step in the ...
    • Partisanship, Public Opinion, and Redistricting 

      Fougere, Joshua; Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Persily, Nathaniel (Mary Ann Liebert, 2010)
    • Primary Elections and Partisan Polarization in the U.S. Congress 

      Hirano, Shigeo; Snyder, James M., Jr.; Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Hansen, John Mark (Now Publishers, 2010)
      Many observers and scholars argue that primary elections contribute to ideological polarization in U.S. politics. We test this claim using congressional elections and roll call voting behavior. Many of our findings are ...
    • Profiling originalism 

      Greene, Jamal; Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Persily, Nathaniel (Columbia Law Review Association, Inc., 2011)
      Originalism is a subject of both legal and political discourse, invoked not just in law review scholarship but also in popular media and public discussion. This Essay presents the first empirical study of public attitudes ...
    • Public Attitudes Toward Construction of New Power Plants 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Konisky, D. M. (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2009)
      Increased demand for U.S. electricity generation will require the construction of hundreds of new power plants in the coming decades. We examine attitudinal data from the 2008 MIT Energy Survey to measure public support ...
    • Race, Party, and the Impact of Electoral Influence on Political Participation 

      Fraga, Bernard L. (2013-10-08)
      The following study is comprised of three essays, each examining a different manner by which race and party impact political participation. Through the analysis of both intra-party primary and inter-party general elections, ...
    • Race, Region, and Vote Choice in the 2008 Election: Implications for the Future of the Voting Rights Act 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Persily, Nathaniel; Stewart, Charles, III (Harvard University, 2010)
      The election of an African American as President of the United States has raised questions regarding the continued relevance and even constitutionality of various provisions of the Voting Rights Act (VRA). Barack Obama's ...
    • Residential Mobility, Family Structure, and The Cell-Only Population 

      Ansolabehere, Stephen Daniel; Schaffner, Brian (Oxford University Press (OUP), 2010)
      The cell-phone-only (CPO) population has grown rapidly over the past several years, causing concern for researchers who rely mostly on random digit dialing (RDD) of landlines to conduct their research. While early research ...
    • The Status Quo and Perceptions of Fairness: How Income Inequality Influences Public Opinion 

      Trump, Kris-Stella (2013-10-08)
      This dissertation argues that public opinion regarding the acceptability and desirability of income differences is affected by actual income inequality. Cross-national survey evidence is combined with laboratory and survey ...
    • Three Essays on Congressional Elections and Representation 

      Williams, Joseph Russell (2013-09-30)
      Democracy depends upon the competition between candidates or ideas. However, practices or procedures sometimes preclude the consideration of the full range of options. Can campaign spending predict who wins elections? ...