- Binghamton, NY, United States
- 6076213020
John E. McNulty
Binghamton University, Political Science, Department Member
- Political Science, Elections, Elections and Voting Behavior, Voter Turnout (Electoral Behavior), Research Methodology, American Politics, and 15 moreVoting Systems, Voting Behavior, Elections, public opinion and voting behaviour, Politics, Electoral Behavior, Voting, Political Mobilization, Partisan Mobilisation, History, Psychology, Computer Science, Economics, Communication, Social Sciences, and Media Studiesedit
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A search of recent political science literature and conference presentations shows substantial fascination with the concept of the natural experiment. However, there seems to be a wide array of definitions and applications employed in... more
A search of recent political science literature and conference presentations shows substantial fascination with the concept of the natural experiment. However, there seems to be a wide array of definitions and applications employed in research that purports to analyze natural experiments. In this introductory essay to the special issue, we attempt to define natural experiments and discuss related issues of research design. In addition, we briefly explore the basic methodological issues around the appropriate analysis of natural experiments and give an overview of different techniques. The overarching theme of this essay and of this issue is to encourage applied researchers to look for natural experiments in their own work and to think more systematically about research design.
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Votomatic-style punch card voting systems produce higher rates of residual voting than other technologies, but the effect of punch card voting systems is not uniform. Minority voters are less likely to have their votes properly recorded... more
Votomatic-style punch card voting systems produce higher rates of residual voting than other technologies, but the effect of punch card voting systems is not uniform. Minority voters are less likely to have their votes properly recorded with punch card systems than are nonminorities. This racial gap occurs, for the most part, because punch card systems lead to higher rates of “undervoting ” by minorities. When election administrators switch to other systems, such as optical scan systems, the racial gap is significantly reduced. Punch card voting systems, then, constitute a disproportionate obstacle to minority voting. This effectively gives less weight to votes cast by minorities than to votes cast by nonminorities, and arguably violates constitutional requirements for equal voting rights.The mechanism is similar to the literacy tests that were abandoned after the 1970 amendments to the Voting Rights Act. P unch card voting has been with us for over forty years.It originated at the ...
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TABLE 1 TABLE 3 Effects of Turnout on Vote Shares of Presidential Candidates in Non-Southern States for Effects of Turnout on Vote Shares of Presidential Candidates in Southern States, Elections Without Significant Third-Party Candidates:... more
TABLE 1 TABLE 3 Effects of Turnout on Vote Shares of Presidential Candidates in Non-Southern States for Effects of Turnout on Vote Shares of Presidential Candidates in Southern States, Elections Without Significant Third-Party Candidates: 1972, 1976, 1984, 1988 Dependent Variables Dependent Variables Republican Democratic Democratic Republican Third-Party Vote Vote Share Vote Share Vote Share Vote Share Share Independent Variable B SE B B SE Independent Variable B SE B SE SE Turnout Turnout Democratic Incumbent Democratic Incumbent (Dropped) *** 2.67 Republican Incumbent Republican Incumbent Adjusted R-sq Adjusted R-sq Number of of Cases Number Cases NOTE: Estimates from regression equations, using least squares with dummy variables for NOTE: Estimates are are from regression equations, using least squares with dummy states. variables for states. Vote shares are measured cast. The table omits constants and Vote shares are measured as percentages of total votes as percentages of tota...
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The act of voting is the fundamental building block of a functioning democracy, a necessary if insufficient component in the exercise of popular self-rule. Schoolchildren are taught, starting before even kindergarten, that voting is a... more
The act of voting is the fundamental building block of a functioning democracy, a necessary if insufficient component in the exercise of popular self-rule. Schoolchildren are taught, starting before even kindergarten, that voting is a sacred duty, a treasured privilege, and a high honor; when older, they are often reminded that soldiers die in wars in order to protect and preserve our right to cast a ballot. Yet, this process of socialization is clearly incomplete. Voter turnout is and shall always be far short of the theoretical ideal (if it is an ideal) of near perfection. Perhaps the most significant advance in solving the puzzle of why people don’t vote came over half a century ago when Anthony Downs (1955) demonstrated that abstention was actually the rational choice when confronted with the question to vote or not vote, from a pure cost-benefit perspective. Nevertheless, some people do vote, and the discipline shifted from treating voter turnout as a puzzle – “Why don’t people...
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This paper uses the consolidation of polling places in Los Angeles County during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election to study the costs of voting. The consolidation afforded an opportunity to observe a natural experiment: those... more
This paper uses the consolidation of polling places in Los Angeles County during the October 2003 gubernatorial recall election to study the costs of voting. The consolidation afforded an opportunity to observe a natural experiment: those whose polling places were changed in the consolidation should be statistically comparable to those whose polling places are not changed. Thus, we may observe both groups' turnout rates and ascribe any differences to the treatment of the change in polling locus. We find evidence that changing polling place locations does decrease turnout overall by a substantial 1.5 percentage points; a drop in polling place turnout of 3.3 percentage points is offset by an increase in absentee voting of 1.8 percentage points.
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Partisan Effects of Voter Turnout: Turnout Effects by Race and Region John McNulty Spring 2000
Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout favors Democrats. Previous studies of this hypothesis rely on presidential and House elections or on survey data, but senatorial and gubernatorial elections offer better conditions for... more
Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout favors Democrats. Previous studies of this hypothesis rely on presidential and House elections or on survey data, but senatorial and gubernatorial elections offer better conditions for directly testing turnout effects in U.S. politics. In a comprehensive analysis of these statewide elections since 1928, we find that the conventional theory was true outside the South through 1964, but since 1965 the overall relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes has been insignificant. Even before the mid-1960s, the turnout effect outside the South was strongest in Republican states and insignificant or negative in heavily Democratic states. A similar but weaker pattern obtains after 1964. In the South, which we analyze only since 1966, higher turnout helped Republicans until 1990, but in 1990–94 the effect became pro-Democratic. The conventional theory cannot account for these complex patterns, but they are impressively consistent with DeNardo's (1980) theory.
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Page 1. 1 THE COSTS OF VOTING: EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT Henry E. Brady hbrady@csm.berkeley.edu Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley John E. McNulty mcnulty@berkeley ...
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The consolidation of polling places in the Vestal Central School District in New York State during the district's 2006 budget referendum provides a naturalistic setting to study the effects of polling consolidation on voter turnout on... more
The consolidation of polling places in the Vestal Central School District in New York State during the district's 2006 budget referendum provides a naturalistic setting to study the effects of polling consolidation on voter turnout on an electorate quite distinct from previous work by Brady and McNulty (2004, The costs of voting: Evidence from a natural experiment. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Political Methodology, Palo Alto, CA). In particular, voters in local elections are highly motivated and therefore might be thought to be less affected by poll consolidation. Nevertheless, through a matching analysis we find that polling consolidation decreases voter turnout substantially, by about seven percentage points, even among this electorate, suggesting that even habitual voters can be dissuaded from going to the polls. This finding has implications for how election administrators ought to handle cost-cutting measures like consolidation.
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Page 1. http://ann.sagepub.com/ Political and Social Science The ANNALS of the American Academy of http://ann.sagepub.com/content/601/1/41 The online version of this article can be found at: DOI: 10.1177/0002716205278176 2005 601: 41 ...
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Page 1. 1 THE COSTS OF VOTING: EVIDENCE FROM A NATURAL EXPERIMENT Henry E. Brady hbrady@csm.berkeley.edu Department of Political Science University of California, Berkeley John E. McNulty mcnulty@berkeley ...
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Previous studies of turnout effects in U.S. elections have reported perplexingly different results for presidential as opposed to major statewide (senatorial and gubernatorial) contests. By justifying and applying a consistent... more
Previous studies of turnout effects in U.S. elections have reported perplexingly different results for presidential as opposed to major statewide (senatorial and gubernatorial) contests. By justifying and applying a consistent methodology, the authors find that results for both types conform to the pattern previously reported by Nagel and McNulty for senatorial and gubernatorial races. Outside the South, higher turnout helped Democratic presidential candidates from 1928 through 1964. In 1968 through 1996, however, the impact of turnout in straight two-party contests was insignificant, except in the South, where Democrats benefited from higher turnout. In the earlier period, high turnout helped Democrats most in states where Republicans usually prevailed. Its effects became weaker or even pro-Republican in the most strongly Democratic states. All of these findings uphold DeNardo's mathematical model, which provides an empirically supported theory of the partisan effects of turnou...
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Could changing the locations of polling places affect the outcome of an election by increasing the costs of voting for some and decreasing them for others? The consolidation of voting precincts in Los Angeles County during... more
Could changing the locations of polling places affect the outcome of an election by increasing the costs of voting for some and decreasing them for others? The consolidation of voting precincts in Los Angeles County during California's 2003 gubernatorial recall election provides a natural experiment for studying how changing polling places influences voter turnout. Overall turnout decreased by a substantial 1.85 percentage points: A drop in polling place turnout of 3.03 percentage points was partially offset by an increase in absentee voting of 1.18 percentage points. Both transportation and search costs caused these changes. Although there is no evidence that the Los Angeles Registrar of Voters changed more polling locations for those registered with one party than for those registered with another, the changing of polling places still had a small partisan effect because those registered as Democrats were more sensitive to changes in costs than those registered as Republicans. ...
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Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout favors Democrats. Previous studies of this hypothesis rely on presidential and House elections or on survey data, but senatorial and gubernatorial elections offer better conditions for... more
Conventional wisdom holds that higher turnout favors Democrats. Previous studies of this hypothesis rely on presidential and House elections or on survey data, but senatorial and gubernatorial elections offer better conditions for directly testing turnout effects in U.S. politics. In a comprehensive analysis of these statewide elections since 1928, we find that the conventional theory was true outside the South through 1964, but since 1965 the overall relationship between turnout and partisan outcomes has been insignificant. Even before the mid-1960s, the turnout effect outside the South was strongest in Republican states and insignificant or negative in heavily Democratic states. A similar but weaker pattern obtains after 1964. In the South, which we analyze only since 1966, higher turnout helped Republicans until 1990, but in 1990–94 the effect became pro-Democratic. The conventional theory cannot account for these complex patterns, but they are impressively consistent with DeNard...