Reintroducing Political Science Fridays

Reintroducing Political Science Fridays

Political Research Fridays

One of the most popular segments of this blog was “Political Science Fridays”. It was a blog post each Friday that presented a quick hit of academic research in the areas of political science, political psychology, and/or voting behavior.

At some point, I stopped doing the posts. I was recently asked to start doing them again. So, consider this the first, new “Science Friday”.

The Influence of Identity Salience on Framing Effectiveness: An Experiment.

This is a survey experiment exploring the importance of identities on framing effectiveness.

As the author explains, we all have a few social identities. For example, I am a “father”, “a brother”, “an owner of a small business”, and “an evil political consultant” to name a few. At different points in my life / day those identities will rise and fall in importance to me (salience) depending on the context around me.

The experiment explores priming a frame(s) – “parental identity” or “partisan identity”- and the effect, if any, on the highly polarized issue of climate change.

In this experiment, if you were in the parental frame group, it simply asked you questions about your family – How many children do you have? What ages are your children? “How important is it for you, personally, to make the world a better place for your children?” and “Some parents are worried that priorities that they have as a parent are being threatened by current policies. What about you? When you make political decisions, how important is it to protect your priorities as a parent?” That is it. Four questions.

For the partisan group, one was asked about their political party registration, length of party registration, “How important is it for you, personally, to see the policies supported by your political party implemented?” and “Some voters are concerned that the principles that underlie their party affiliations are being threatened by current policies. What about you? When you make political decisions, how important is it to protect your party’s principles?” That is it. Four questions.

Then each group was presented “neutral” information on climate change, and finally each group was asked questions about climate change – specifically “level of concern about climate change, likelihood of undertaking personal and political behavior in support of climate change mitigation, and support for climate change policies.”
As you can see, fairly simple in design.

Results

“Among Republicans, both the Frame Only and the Parent Prime + Frame treatments significantly increased climate change concern and likelihood to undertake proclimate behaviors, while the partisan prime eliminated this framing effect.”

“The results for the Democrats in the sample were fairly consistent with the hypotheses, with the important difference that priming a partisan identity seemed to increase framing effectiveness more than priming a nonpartisan (parental) identity. “

“Through a survey experiment, I found evidence that identity salience does matter to framing effectiveness. Specifically, presenting a frame about the impact of climate change on future generations increased climate concern and intended proclimate behaviors among Republican parents, but first priming a partisan identity eliminated this framing effect. For Democrats, priming a partisan identity increased climate change concern compared to the control, while priming a parental identity did not lead to any increase in attitudes. Priming partisan identities resulted in significantly more polarized policy support, while priming parental identities resulted in significantly less polarized policy support between Republicans and Democrats.”

Conclusion

As you would guess, our identities at any given time are intertwined. One is never ‘only’ a Republican or ‘just’ a parent. This study suggests our immediate frame of reference activates what information we are receptive to listening to. If we are in a Republican frame of mind, we will think like …. a Republican.

The biggest take away? If you want to talk politics – especially about polarized topics – maybe start by talking about anything other than politics.

DOWNLOAD PAPER.

Type of Paper: Survey Experiment, n=978
four subgroups:
• Frame only group, n=213
• Parent Prime + Frame Group, n=234
• Partisan Prime + Frame Group, n=234
• control group, n=297

Finding(s):
“suggest that political communication on polarized issues is likely to be more effective at building bipartisan agreement when nonpartisan identities are salient.”

Discussion / Additional Questions:

Additional research is needed to measure duration of effects.

Study omitted Independents and No Party Affiliations.

The author used UNICEF as a nuetral presenter of information on climate change – stating “UNICEF is largely viewed positively by the public due to its generally nonpolitical work in promoting the welfare of children around the world (Quesnel, 2004). It was therefore chosen as a neutral message source.” This could be problematic in exploring partisans – in that anything affiliated with the United Nations could be seen as anything other than neutral to a segment of political partisans.

citation: Diamond, Emily P. “The Influence of Identity Salience on Framing Effectiveness: An Experiment.” Political Psychology, 22 June 2020, 10.1111/pops.12669. Accessed 17 Sept. 2020.

Amelia’s 2021 TRENDS IN DIGITAL MEDIA, POLITICAL RESEARCH, AND DATA

Digital Media

Censorship has been an issue in the past as we know and it isn’t going anywhere in 2021. The problem will only increase as tech companies continue to gain power and influence. People on the right side of the aisle feel this issue far more than the left. It is no secret that these large tech companies lean far left. 90% of Republicans say it is likely that social media sites censor certain political viewpoints and there are so many different instances that have led a large majority of Republicans to feel this way. Twitter alone has locked President Trump out of his account dozens of times for extended periods of time during his presidency. Twitter and Facebook also worked together prior to the 2020 Presidential election to silence a New York Post article regarding the investigation of Hunter Biden to prevent harm to Joe Biden so soon to election day. These tech companies constantly play favorites and I predict the silencing of conservative voices will only get worse under the Biden administration over the next 4 years.

Political Research

Still following the topic of social media, there are hot-button words used online that trigger conservatives and liberals differently. A study was done at multiple universities such as Berkeley and John Hopkins where they scanned the brains of three dozen politically left and right leaning individuals as they watched videos on hop topics such as immigration. What they found was that liberals and conservatives responded differently when the content contained vocabulary that frequently pops up in political campaign messaging. This research showed a glimpse into the partisan brain and proved the power language can have in driving polarization or persuasion.

 Source for reference: 

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201020150509.htm

Political Data

After the 2020 presidential election, the majority of the youth turnout was for Biden over trump. The youth turnout is estimated to be between 52%-55% between the ages of 18-29 and has increased by 10% since 2016. Joe Biden was able to secure the youth vote over Trump by a 25-point margin but still more than a third of the youth vote (36%) supported Trump. It isn’t terribly surprising that the left has been able to sway the youth vote more in their favor. They are more savvy on social media with their campaigns and have a modern appeal that can easily sway new voters. The Republican party could use a digital facelift in order to win more of the youth vote in the next election cycle.

 Source for reference: 

 https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/election-week-2020#the-views-of-young-trump-voters

 

 

 

Ben’s 2021 Trends in Digital Media, Political Research, and Data

Digital Media

Peer-to-peer (P2P) Texting 

With an estimated 3 billion political texts sent during the 2020 election – texting has become an effective weapon for political campaigns. This number is expected to grow as more campaigns include texting in their political digital media portfolio. Prepare to have a full inbox every other November.

What do us political digital nerds like about texting? Open rates and speed. 

The average open rate for political texts sits around 70%-98%, which is much higher than the 15%-25% open rate for political email campaigns. In addition, campaigns are fast-paced and when opportunities arise, you have to act immediately. Unlike other forms of media, texting allows campaigns to send direct, personalized messages to targeted audiences within hours. In 2022, expect texting to be a staple of political campaigns.

Source for reference:

https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/28/1011301/why-political-campaigns-are-sending-3-billion-texts-in-this-election/

 

Political Research

While political texting is personal, direct, and effective – like all things – it isn’t immune to misuse and political shenanigans. Researchers at the University of Texas Center for Media Engagement studied texting shenanigans during the 2020 election. Although I do not endorse the conclusions of the authors, they do a great job providing examples of how political organizations and operatives are using political texting to communicate controversial – and sometimes unethical – messages with voters.  

Negative Campaign Message Attacking Joe Biden:

“Joe Biden endorsed giving 8 and 10 year olds sex change treatments. This is way too extreme for me. I can’t support him.” 

The study states, “this message, claiming to come from an unnamed ‘Democratic volunteer’, began lighting up on people’s phones in swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania the week before the 2020 election.”

The Beto O’Rourke Campaign “Imposter”:

“Hi, it’s Patsy here with w/ Beto for Texas. We are conducting an internal poll and would like to know your thoughts on the dangers of socialism.”

In this example, an individual volunteered for the Beto campaign with the intention of turning voters away from the Democratic candidate. Volunteer “spies” have always existed – be careful who sends texts for your campaign!

Byron Donalds Fake Dropout Text:

On election day, candidate and now Congressman-elect for Florida’s 19th District, Byron Donalds, was the victim of a black-hat, dark money texting campaign. The text told voters that Donalds dropped out of the race – which was not true. 

There are plenty of other examples within the report. Whether ethical, unethical, controversial, or just good, solid messaging – political texting is a powerful tool for campaigns. We will see more of it in the coming years. 

Glover, K., Gursky, J., Joseff, K., & Woolley, S. C. (2020, October 28). Peer-to-Peer texting and the 2020 U.S. election: Hidden messages and intimate politics. Center for Media Engagement. 

Download the Report:

https://mediaengagement.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Peer-to-Peer-Texting-and-the-2020-U.S.-Election.pdf

Political Data

How will the RNC use the “Trump-only” voter data? 

Over the past 4 years, the RNC and Trump campaign have collected an insane amount of voter data. Particularly, I am interested in the data collected on individuals who have never voted in their lifetime until casting a vote for Donald Trump in 2016 or 2020. As 2020 showed us, Republicans cannot afford to lose voters in key states and districts. The RNC knows who these people are. It will be interesting to see how the RNC plans to keep these “Trump-only” voters engaged during the post-Trump era as we gear up for the 2022 midterms.

 

2021 Trends in Digital Media, Political Research, and Political Ad Tech

2021 Trends in Digital Media, Political Research, and Political Ad Tech

Digital Media

The acceleration of TV to Online. Far too many people have been saying “TV is Dead” for far too long – ignoring the actual amount of television people watch. Americans watch, on average, an astounding nearly 8 hours of television a day. (Nielsen). We watch as much TV now as we did before Facebook, Netflix, and YouTube. However, we are observing accelerated changes to HOW people are watching television. In the most recent Nielsen Total Audience Report – we observe adults 18+ spending 50% of their daily time on digital devices and only 40% on Live+Time Shifted TV. One of the accelerators of this trend appears to be people shifting to work from home models, and with a number of workers preferring to continue to work from home, this will have profound effects on reaching political audiences.

 Download the report:

https://www.nielsen.com/us/en/insights/report/2020/the-nielsen-total-audience-report-august-2020/

Political Research

It is no secret that some in the polling industry had a rough couple of cycles. While we are still collecting data, we are finding evidence that the conventional wisdom that the polling was catastrophically off is wrong. One reason conservatives may be so down on the polling industry and quick to disregard it – there is growing evidence that our political biases are leading to a biased evaluation of polls and pollsters.

“Respondents viewed polls as more credible when majority opinion matched their opinion.”, a study in Political Behavior (2020) by researchers Gabriel Mason and Sunshine Hillygus of Duke University finds “evaluations of polls are biased by motivated reasoning.”

In an online survey experiment, participants were shown polling results from one of three conditions:   a roughly even split, one with a clear majority (61% to 34%), or one with the opposite support (34% to 61%).  The question was on a registration for immigrants from Muslim countries.    Respondents were then asked questions about perceived accuract, trustworthiness, and informativeness.

In addition, there was a pre-treatment of the participants asking them their opinions prior to seeing the “polling results.”  The expectation was the “perceieved polling credibility depends on the respondent’s prior opinion towards the issue.”

In addition, the authors conducted a second study using a horse race question between Trump and Clinton.

Using these two experiments, they find “evidence that the American public evaluates the credibility of a poll based on the extent to which the poll’s results offers support to the predispositions.”

Simply put the starting point matters.   We understand this in political communication – the more you care and the stronger your opinion – the more difficult to change your mind – again, the strength of priors matter.   What this is demonstrating is the same effects at work on receiving information.

For me this is a difficult read, because we pride ourselves on using polling to get us out of our bubbles and to test our critical assumptions.  The day will allow polling and research to be soley used to confirm our biases is the day polling ceases to be a worthy tool.

Madson, G.J., Hillygus, D.S. All the Best Polls Agree with Me: Bias in Evaluations of Political Polling. Polit Behav 42, 1055–1072 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-019-09532-1

Political Data

In my 2020 year in review, I spoke of the death of third party cookies and what that may mean for political adversting.  Where is ad tech going? Monopoly cases!  As of now, several antitrust cases are working their way through the court system – against Google, Facebook, and likely soon to be Amazon and Apple.    Nothing is likely to be decided this year – the gears of justice turn slowly; however, we are likely to see effects this year as big tech begins to change in response to the suits.   For this year, while important, it is not how they respond in court it is how they respond in privacy and ad markets.  

2020 Electoral College Contest Results

2020 Electoral College Contest Results

Ozean Media and Meer Research recently sponsored a contest asking people to predict the Electoral College outcome for 2020. We thought we would share the predictions and results with you.

Winner of Electoral College – Biden / Harris

90% of the contestants picked the correct winner of the Electoral College to be President-elect Joe Biden.

Electoral College – Detail

On average, our contestants predicted 320 Electoral College votes for Joe Biden and 219 for Donald Trump. (totals do not equal 538 due to rounding).

Electoral College Prediction Accuracy

On average, contestants were more bullish on Joe Biden’s chances – predicting approximately 14 more Electoral College votes for Joe Biden than the actual results.

Electoral College – States Detail

On average, 8 states / electoral college allocations were predicted incorrectly by contestants. 

The most missed / incorrect calls:  ME CD2 (79% incorrect), GA (76% incorrect), NC (72% incorrect), NE CD2 (62% incorrect), and Florida (55% incorrect). 

The perfect calls:  100% of contestants picked correctly:  AL, MA, NY, and VT. 

Popular Vote Prediction Accuracy

On average, contestants predicted the popular vote share as:  51.8% for Joe Biden, 45.1% for Donald Trump, and 3.1% for Other.  

As of the writing of this, the Cook Political Report shows a popular vote share of 50.9% for Joe Biden, 47.3% for Donald Trump, and 1.8% for Other.

Conclusion

We enjoyed hosting the contest, and found the results to be interesting.

We are awaiting permission from the winner to publicly release his name, and if granted we will do so.

The most interesting thing to me was the fact that someone could in theory mis-call a significant number of states and yet still arrive at the “correct” electoral votes. Something to think about when writing contest rules.

POTUS IMPEACHMENT – More Research Needed

POTUS IMPEACHMENT – More Research Needed

Interesting test this week with Meer Research in regard’s to the impeachment of President Donald Trump. This is a cross-post from Meer Research.

We had an internal debate on the potential wording of the question. Instead of guessing, we set out to do a quick simple test – exploring a small variation in a question.

  • Donald Trump has not done anything wrong and doesn’t deserve impeachment or removal from office.
    • Donald Trump has done nothing wrong and doesn’t deserve impeachment of removal from office.
  • Donald Trump has done something wrong, deserves a reprimand but not impeachment or removal from office.
  • Donald Trump has done something wrong, deserves impeachment, but not removal from office.
  • Donald Trump has done something wrong, deserves impeachment and removal from office

That was the test – the first question.

Again, quick test. Put it on Facebook and another request on reddit. Survey started 1/30/2020 and ended 2/1/2020. (In the end, there was no difference between the question versions.)

However, an observation indicates additional research is likely needed on the impeachment question.

Let me add some MAJOR caveats here: This is by no means a proper sample. When compared to registered voters, respondents skew whiter (much), skew older, and likely skew towards higher levels of education. Interestingly, the distribution among ideology is almost a perfect bell curve -ranging from very conservative to very liberal.

Ambivalence

Often impeachment is offered as a binary choice – Yes / No, and often this is a decent indicator in today’s political environment. But there is significant research that indicates the public has a much more nuanced approach to issues. For example, abortion. Abortion is pretty black and white and often presented in a binary choice – pro-life vs pro-choice. But there is a significant body of research showing Americans often have a more nuanced approach to the abortion issue. (Shout out to Dr. Craig and Dr. Martinez at University of Florida – Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut, Sometimes You Don’t: Citizens’ Ambivalence About Abortion)

What we observe with this small, flawed survey is that early, exploratory indications are there may be some nuance towards impeachment even in this hyper polarized environment.

Impeachment by Party

Impeachment by Ideology

(I apologize for not making the graphs prettier but there is only so much a person can do while waiting on his daughter to finish dance class) But they are color coded from green (President Trump did nothing wrong, should not be impeached, should not be removed from office) to red (President Trump did something wrong and should be impeached and removed from office)

I took a peek at impeachment across party identification and ideology (5 point scale).

I repeat: this is NOT a scientific survey – BUT this shows me impeachment deserves a deeper look than the binary choice offered by the process.

Well not among my liberal and Democrat friends – you guys are pretty much in lock step with “throw the President out.”

But my conservative friends, moderate friends, and Independents – all are blinking “nuance”.

Conclusion on Impeachment Indicators

I want to be be very clear: I wouldn’t draw anything from this other than more research is needed on the topic, but……. if I am a Republican operative, I would do the research quickly.

PS. A respondent offered their own choice: “Donald Trump has done something wrong but doesn’t deserve impeachment or removal.” (dropping the reprimand) I do think that is a valid point and even more nuance.