Publications
“Perceived Partisan Preemption: When and Where States Override Local School Boards”
with Karin Kitchens and Luke Baldwin
Abstract:
During the COVID-19 pandemic, school board members played a prominent role in deciding reopening plans. Using an original large-scale survey of board members, our goal is to understand how the polarized, political context of pandemic responses shaped the decision-making processes of members as they experienced dramatic increases in workload. We find school board members are much more likely to identify at the extremes of partisan identity, as strong Democrats or strong Republicans. How they identified mattered in who they trusted to tell them information, how much control they felt the board should have in the process of reopening plans, and who should interpret data about COVID. If the other party was in power at the state level, members from opposing parties had less trust in state sources. Most school board elections are nonpartisan, but that does not mean that the members themselves do not strongly identify with a party.
“Perceived Partisan Preemption: When and Where States Override Local School Boards”
with Karin Kitchens
Absract:
While school boards played a prominent role in deciding district policies during COVID, many found themselves overruled by state policies. Using survey data of individual school board members, we assess if members who represent districts that are politically out-of-step with their state’s partisan preferences report perceived policy preemption more often than districts with members who are more aligned with partisan preferences of the state. We find members who are in districts that are incongruent with state level partisanship were more likely to report that the state tried but failed to preempt the board. If a district vote for president was 10 percentage points different than the state, then it would increase the likelihood that the member perceives preemption by 10 percentage points. When we focus on members who reported perceived successful state preemption attempts, the only significant variable is district size. Political incongruence with the state was associated with perceived attempts at preemption but not reports of perceived successful preemption.
“The Effect of Associative Racial Cues in Elections.”
with Adam Berinsky, Michele Margolis, and Justin de Benedictis-Kessner
Abstract:
How do positive racial signals associating candidates with minority supporters change voters’ perceptions about a candidate and their support for a candidate? Given the presence of competing information in campaigns, voters may rely on heuristics, such as race, to make the process of voting easier. These information signals may be so strong that they cause voters to ignore other, perhaps more politically relevant, information. In this paper we test how associative racial cues sway voters’ perceptions of and support for candidates using two experiments that harness real-world print and audio campaign advertisements. We find that the signals in these ads can sometimes overwhelm cues about policy positions when the two are present together. Our results highlight how voters gather and use information in elections with low amounts of information and demonstrate that campaign strategies that use racial associations can be powerful.