Michael G. Miller

To what extent are partisan differences about voting rules rooted in sincere disagreements about the relative importance of maximizing turnout versus preventing ineligible voters from casting ballots? We document partisan differences in preferences regarding this trade-off over time, demonstrating that these differences are particularly pronounced among the most politically interested respondents. We then report findings from two pre-registered survey experiments that shed light on whether these gaps are a product of partisan sorting or responses to elite cues. The experiments asked participants to make trade-offs between a pair of voting systems. One system would entirely prevent ineligible votes, randomly varying turnout rates among eligible voters; the other would yield universal turnout among eligible voters, but result in some randomly varied number of ineligible voters casting ballots. Some participants were also provided with cues signaling which party endorsed which system. Our results suggest that the effects of divergent partisan cues, rather than differing priorities regarding maximizing eligible turnout and minimizing ineligible turnout, are the more likely explanation for the partisan gaps we find in our observational data. Taken together, the findings suggest that strategic elites can stoke partisan disagreements about how the democratic process should work.

We provide the first examination of the extent to which voters cast ballots for copartisan candidates in nonpartisan elections using cast vote record (CVR) data. These records permit direct observation of whether demonstrably partisan voters vote for copartisan candidates at the same rate in partisan and nonpartisan local elections. We find that voters classified as partisan based on their vote choices in federal/state elections cast ballots for candidates—whose partisanship we ascertain based on their primary election voting records—from the opposing party at higher rates in nonpartisan compared to partisan elections. We also find that partisan voters appear to respond to the race and gender of the candidates, but those heuristics do not always line up in the predicted partisan manner for voters. These results suggest that many voters cast ballots in nonpartisan elections that they may not have otherwise with more complete partisan information about the candidates.

The American electorate is increasingly affectively polarized. Partisans dislike members of the opposing party, even going so far as to discriminate against opposing partisans in nonpolitical domains. Given the potentially pernicious consequences of affective polarization, especially in nonpolitical settings, scholars have suggested facilitating contact between members of opposing parties as a means of reducing affective polarization. We test this approach in the context of a large introductory American government class comprised almost entirely of Democrats. Our pre-registered experiment randomly assigned recitation sections to treatment or control conditions, where the treatment was an hour-long discussion with a county chair from the Republican Party, and the control was an hour-long discussion with an attorney with no party connection. Partisan attitudes and evaluations were measured extensively at baseline, within a few days of the intervention, and two months later. We find no evidence that the treatment changed students’ partisan evaluations. We conclude by considering theoretical avenues for future experiments that change the nature and extent of cross-party social interaction.

We explore electoral explanations for U.S. governors’ willingness to commute death sentences in their state. Across descriptive tests and pre-registered regression specifications, we find little evidence that election timing or term limits affect either the probability of commuting death sentences or the proportion of such sentences governors might commute. However, we do find evidence that governors are more likely to commute sentences – and commute sentences for a higher proportion of defendants – during the “lame duck” period after their successor’s election but before their inauguration.

Canonical work argues that macropartisanship—the aggregate distribution of Democrats and Republicans in the country at a given time—is responsive to the economic and political environment. In other words, if times are good when Democrats are in charge (or bad when Republicans are in charge), more Americans will identify with the Democratic Party. We extend the pioneering work of MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson (1989), who analyzed macropartisanship from 1953 through 1987, to 2021, assessing whether consumer sentiment and presidential approval still influence macropartisanship in an era of nationalized elections and affective polarization. We find that change has occurred. The effect of consumer sentiment on macropartisanship is no longer statistically distinguishable from zero, and we find evidence of “structural breaks” in the macropartisanship time series. Macropartisanship appears to have become less responsive to economic swings; approval-induced changes in macropartisanship have become more fleeting over time.

Women in Congress are highly effective legislators. Yet, if women are more likely than men to be interrupted during committee work, they may face a gender-related impediment. We examine speech patterns during more than 24,000 congressional committee hearings from 1994 to 2018 to determine whether women Members are more likely to be interrupted than men. We find that they are. This is especially true in Senate committees—where women are about 10% more likely to be interrupted. Furthermore, in hearings that discuss women’s issues, women are more than twice as likely to be interrupted than while discussing other issues. We see a similar pattern for rapid-fire “interruption clusters,” an aggressive form of interruption. We further consider a range of moderating factors, which yields little evidence that women change their communication strategy as they gain experience in Congress. We also find suggestive evidence that interruptions are driven by mixed-gender interactions.

We explore political explanations for U.S. governors' willingness to commute death sentences in their state. Across descriptive tests and pre-registered regression specifications, we find little evidence that election timing or term limits affect either the probability of commuting death sentences or the number of such sentences governors might commute. We do however find that governors are more likely to commute sentences during the "lame duck" period after their successor's election but before their inauguration.

Growing evidence suggests that extreme candidates perform worse, in part because their party’s share of turnout declines. But does candidate ideology affect the decision of whether to abstain in a House race among voters who already turned out in the presidential election? I examine the relationship between candidates’ ideology and voter abstention in the House contest, reporting two main results. First, fewer voters abstain in elections featuring more ideologically polarized House candidates. A consideration of party effects reveals more nuance, however: In most cases, roll‐off is lower when extreme candidates run, but the effect of an extreme Republican is substantially larger than that of an extreme Democrat. Further analysis suggests that decreased roll‐off is probably due to extreme candidates mobilizing out‐partisans. My results suggest that allowing for the possibility of voter abstention is an important theoretical addition to understanding the behavioral effects of extremist candidates.