Delving into the complicated and often politically fraught process of redrawing electoral distric... more Delving into the complicated and often politically fraught process of redrawing electoral district boundaries after each decennial census, this chapter examines whether there is evidence that the purportedly gerrymandered maps played a role in the 2012 election. Using the 2012 U.S. House election, the authors reveal why partisan control of the process should be regarded with suspicion. For the first time since 1970, Illinois did not have divided government in the first session following a census and reapportionment, and thus Democrats were free to draw any maps they liked. • After Illinois lost a House seat due to reapportionment, the Democrat-drawn map ensured that Republican incumbents faced fewer familiar voters than Democrats. The new district map produced fewer competitive seats, most of which lean to the Democrats, providing Democratic U.S. House candidates in Illinois a clear advantage. • Nineteen states, including Illinois, gave complete control to one party or the other in ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in most states making numerous changes to electoral procedures... more The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in most states making numerous changes to electoral procedures, in an effort to assist those voters wishing to avoid crowded polling places, and the health risks they pose. Illinois, like most others, will permit in-person voting, both on Election Day and in advance, but will also encourage voters to take advantage of mail-in voting. Survey data from recent years reveal that many voters, not without cause, worry slightly more about absentee or mail ballots not being counted, and may believe that fraud is more likely when voting is remote. To boost confidence in the integrity of the 2020 election, accordingly, we recommend that Illinois officials publicize details of the new rules, caution about some likely consequences, including delayed final results, and strive to ensure uniform application of rules. Generally, any important change in voting procedures should be accompanied by some public-service education campaign. With many changes being made, ...
It is frequently claimed that the House of Commons' select committees have grown in prominence si... more It is frequently claimed that the House of Commons' select committees have grown in prominence since key reforms were implemented in 2010. Brian J. Gaines, Mark Goodwin, Stephen Holden Bates and Gisela Sin test this claim specifically in relation to press coverage. They find a pattern of increased newspaper attention after the reforms, but caution that these results show no consistent sustained increase, and also vary considerably depending on committee.
A knowledge representation server is described which provides a fast, memory-efficient and princi... more A knowledge representation server is described which provides a fast, memory-efficient and principled system component. Modeling the server through intensional algebraic semantics leads naturally to an openarchitecture class library into which new data types may be plugged in as required without change to the basic deductive engine. It is shown that the operation of an existing knowledge representation system, CLASSIC, may be implemented through one data type supporting sets with upper and lower set and cardinality bounds. The architecture developed is cleanly layered by complexity of inference so that fast propagation of constraints is separated from potentially slow modelchecking search. Client programs may obtain estimates of the complexity of a request, and may control the resources allocated to its complete solution.
The 2012 Chicago Area Study surveyed 229 center directors in 33 ZIP Codes on the West and North s... more The 2012 Chicago Area Study surveyed 229 center directors in 33 ZIP Codes on the West and North sides of Chicago. All centers and preschools that served three and four year olds in these ZIP Codes were eligible, except those located in the public schools. Eligible settings included preschools in churches, private schools, and community organizations as well as preschool programs and full-day care in standalone child-care centers. Fully 70% of eligible directors participated in the study. For simplicity we refer to all participants as “centers.” We prepared a set of initial research briefs to disseminate basic study findings. Each of these briefs describes a set of data collected in the survey for the sample as a whole and across five types of ZIP Codes. The five ZIP Code types allow us to provide a basic portrait of differences in center characteristics depending on the raceethnicity and income of the community. The five types of ZIP Codes are: (1) mixed race, low income, (2) majority non-Hispanic Black, low income, (3) majority Hispanic, low income, (4) majority non-Hispanic White, middle income, and (5) majority non-Hispanic White, high income. The cutoffs between low/middle and between middle/high income are $48,500 and $70,000 respectively (about two and three times the federal poverty line for a family of four in 2011). We define a location as being a majority of one race-ethnicity if the ZIP Code is comprised of at least 50% of that racial/ethnic group (see CAS 2012 Research Brief #1 for additional details). This CAS 2012 Research Brief #4 summarizes directors’ responses to questions about their experiences with financial distress, including budget adequacy, worries about paying for space and staff, turnover of teachers and classrooms, raising center rates, and conditions of space and materials. The tables at the end of this document present means and proportions for the variables (tables of supplementary information, including statistical tests, are available from the study investigators). Here we highlight some of the major results.
. The effects of gender cues and political sophistication on candidate evaluation: A comparison o... more . The effects of gender cues and political sophistication on candidate evaluation: A comparison of self-report and eye movement measures of stereotyping. Communication Research.
The 2000 presidential election made various electoral institutions—from ballot format to voting m... more The 2000 presidential election made various electoral institutions—from ballot format to voting mechanisms—suddenly prominent in public debate. One institution that garnered little attention, but nonetheless affected the outcome, was apportionment. A few commentators, looking ahead to 2004, noticed that Bush would have won more comfortably had the apportionment based on the 2000 census already been in place for the 2000 election. Little attention, however, was paid to the method by which 1990 census data were used to generate the 1992–2000 apportionment, even though there are many ways to perform that allocation, the United States has used different methods over its history, and the precise algorithm turned out, in this instance, to matter. More generally, previous discussions of apportionment methods have neglected the point that allocation to states of US House seats simultaneously determines Electoral College weights. Since the Electoral College has built-in biases favoring small...
Too often, a gulf separates academic political science and popular commentary on politics by jour... more Too often, a gulf separates academic political science and popular commentary on politics by journalists, practitioners, and interested citizens. Both scholars and pundits are keenly interested in what is required of citizens by democracies, and whether the public is informed and interested enough to play its part. Academic research can seem narrow or irrelevant as a consequence of a scientific, hypothesis-testing mindset and a concomitant tendency for questions to be narrowly defined and conclusions heavily qualified. Yet, quantitative academic work on elections should be of interest not only to the small community of professional psephologists, but to the broad citizenry. To build that case, I discuss scholarly work on voter turnout and, very briefly, anti-incumbent swings in "moderating elections" as examples where research on American and German elections demonstrates useful complementarities for number crunchers and newshounds.
* Correspondence: Brian J. Gaines is associate professor of political science, University of Illi... more * Correspondence: Brian J. Gaines is associate professor of political science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801. James H. Kuklinski is the Matthew T. McClure Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ...
Scholars have recently highlighted a critical, but previously neglected, facet of racially discri... more Scholars have recently highlighted a critical, but previously neglected, facet of racially discriminatory public policies—such policies may be motivated by either economic or psychological forces. That is, racially discriminatory policy may be the result of self-interest and competition in the face of scarcity or prejudices and affects based on group identities. We test if these motivations were behind the passage of an important, openly discriminatory public policy: California's Alien Land Law of 1920. We find that neither motivation alone accounts for the initiative vote that passed this law; both played a role. Our analysis also illustrates how racially discriminatory policies in the early 20th century fit into the ordinary politics of the day.
... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in,... more ... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in, government and political figures. Around ... Bush's job by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Page 2. performance. In ...
... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in,... more ... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in, government and political figures. Around ... Bush's job by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Page 2. performance. In ...
Popular Myths About Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illin... more Popular Myths About Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign An official recount was ... Jr., a free elector whose vote tolal in the May 31 runoff was 145,434, a 0.2% margin over loyalist William D. Partlow, who received ...
Scholars of political behavior increasingly embed experimental designs in opinion surveys by rand... more Scholars of political behavior increasingly embed experimental designs in opinion surveys by randomly assigning respondents alternative versions of questionnaire items. Such experiments have major advantages: they are simple to implement and they dodge some of the difficulties of making inferences from conventional survey data. But survey experiments are no panacea. We identify problems of inference associated with typical uses of survey experiments in political science and highlight a range of difficulties, some of which have straightforward solutions within the survey-experimental approach and some of which can be dealt with only by exercising greater caution in interpreting findings and bringing to bear alternative strategies of research.
Delving into the complicated and often politically fraught process of redrawing electoral distric... more Delving into the complicated and often politically fraught process of redrawing electoral district boundaries after each decennial census, this chapter examines whether there is evidence that the purportedly gerrymandered maps played a role in the 2012 election. Using the 2012 U.S. House election, the authors reveal why partisan control of the process should be regarded with suspicion. For the first time since 1970, Illinois did not have divided government in the first session following a census and reapportionment, and thus Democrats were free to draw any maps they liked. • After Illinois lost a House seat due to reapportionment, the Democrat-drawn map ensured that Republican incumbents faced fewer familiar voters than Democrats. The new district map produced fewer competitive seats, most of which lean to the Democrats, providing Democratic U.S. House candidates in Illinois a clear advantage. • Nineteen states, including Illinois, gave complete control to one party or the other in ...
The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in most states making numerous changes to electoral procedures... more The COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in most states making numerous changes to electoral procedures, in an effort to assist those voters wishing to avoid crowded polling places, and the health risks they pose. Illinois, like most others, will permit in-person voting, both on Election Day and in advance, but will also encourage voters to take advantage of mail-in voting. Survey data from recent years reveal that many voters, not without cause, worry slightly more about absentee or mail ballots not being counted, and may believe that fraud is more likely when voting is remote. To boost confidence in the integrity of the 2020 election, accordingly, we recommend that Illinois officials publicize details of the new rules, caution about some likely consequences, including delayed final results, and strive to ensure uniform application of rules. Generally, any important change in voting procedures should be accompanied by some public-service education campaign. With many changes being made, ...
It is frequently claimed that the House of Commons' select committees have grown in prominence si... more It is frequently claimed that the House of Commons' select committees have grown in prominence since key reforms were implemented in 2010. Brian J. Gaines, Mark Goodwin, Stephen Holden Bates and Gisela Sin test this claim specifically in relation to press coverage. They find a pattern of increased newspaper attention after the reforms, but caution that these results show no consistent sustained increase, and also vary considerably depending on committee.
A knowledge representation server is described which provides a fast, memory-efficient and princi... more A knowledge representation server is described which provides a fast, memory-efficient and principled system component. Modeling the server through intensional algebraic semantics leads naturally to an openarchitecture class library into which new data types may be plugged in as required without change to the basic deductive engine. It is shown that the operation of an existing knowledge representation system, CLASSIC, may be implemented through one data type supporting sets with upper and lower set and cardinality bounds. The architecture developed is cleanly layered by complexity of inference so that fast propagation of constraints is separated from potentially slow modelchecking search. Client programs may obtain estimates of the complexity of a request, and may control the resources allocated to its complete solution.
The 2012 Chicago Area Study surveyed 229 center directors in 33 ZIP Codes on the West and North s... more The 2012 Chicago Area Study surveyed 229 center directors in 33 ZIP Codes on the West and North sides of Chicago. All centers and preschools that served three and four year olds in these ZIP Codes were eligible, except those located in the public schools. Eligible settings included preschools in churches, private schools, and community organizations as well as preschool programs and full-day care in standalone child-care centers. Fully 70% of eligible directors participated in the study. For simplicity we refer to all participants as “centers.” We prepared a set of initial research briefs to disseminate basic study findings. Each of these briefs describes a set of data collected in the survey for the sample as a whole and across five types of ZIP Codes. The five ZIP Code types allow us to provide a basic portrait of differences in center characteristics depending on the raceethnicity and income of the community. The five types of ZIP Codes are: (1) mixed race, low income, (2) majority non-Hispanic Black, low income, (3) majority Hispanic, low income, (4) majority non-Hispanic White, middle income, and (5) majority non-Hispanic White, high income. The cutoffs between low/middle and between middle/high income are $48,500 and $70,000 respectively (about two and three times the federal poverty line for a family of four in 2011). We define a location as being a majority of one race-ethnicity if the ZIP Code is comprised of at least 50% of that racial/ethnic group (see CAS 2012 Research Brief #1 for additional details). This CAS 2012 Research Brief #4 summarizes directors’ responses to questions about their experiences with financial distress, including budget adequacy, worries about paying for space and staff, turnover of teachers and classrooms, raising center rates, and conditions of space and materials. The tables at the end of this document present means and proportions for the variables (tables of supplementary information, including statistical tests, are available from the study investigators). Here we highlight some of the major results.
. The effects of gender cues and political sophistication on candidate evaluation: A comparison o... more . The effects of gender cues and political sophistication on candidate evaluation: A comparison of self-report and eye movement measures of stereotyping. Communication Research.
The 2000 presidential election made various electoral institutions—from ballot format to voting m... more The 2000 presidential election made various electoral institutions—from ballot format to voting mechanisms—suddenly prominent in public debate. One institution that garnered little attention, but nonetheless affected the outcome, was apportionment. A few commentators, looking ahead to 2004, noticed that Bush would have won more comfortably had the apportionment based on the 2000 census already been in place for the 2000 election. Little attention, however, was paid to the method by which 1990 census data were used to generate the 1992–2000 apportionment, even though there are many ways to perform that allocation, the United States has used different methods over its history, and the precise algorithm turned out, in this instance, to matter. More generally, previous discussions of apportionment methods have neglected the point that allocation to states of US House seats simultaneously determines Electoral College weights. Since the Electoral College has built-in biases favoring small...
Too often, a gulf separates academic political science and popular commentary on politics by jour... more Too often, a gulf separates academic political science and popular commentary on politics by journalists, practitioners, and interested citizens. Both scholars and pundits are keenly interested in what is required of citizens by democracies, and whether the public is informed and interested enough to play its part. Academic research can seem narrow or irrelevant as a consequence of a scientific, hypothesis-testing mindset and a concomitant tendency for questions to be narrowly defined and conclusions heavily qualified. Yet, quantitative academic work on elections should be of interest not only to the small community of professional psephologists, but to the broad citizenry. To build that case, I discuss scholarly work on voter turnout and, very briefly, anti-incumbent swings in "moderating elections" as examples where research on American and German elections demonstrates useful complementarities for number crunchers and newshounds.
* Correspondence: Brian J. Gaines is associate professor of political science, University of Illi... more * Correspondence: Brian J. Gaines is associate professor of political science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801. James H. Kuklinski is the Matthew T. McClure Professor of Political Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, ...
Scholars have recently highlighted a critical, but previously neglected, facet of racially discri... more Scholars have recently highlighted a critical, but previously neglected, facet of racially discriminatory public policies—such policies may be motivated by either economic or psychological forces. That is, racially discriminatory policy may be the result of self-interest and competition in the face of scarcity or prejudices and affects based on group identities. We test if these motivations were behind the passage of an important, openly discriminatory public policy: California's Alien Land Law of 1920. We find that neither motivation alone accounts for the initiative vote that passed this law; both played a role. Our analysis also illustrates how racially discriminatory policies in the early 20th century fit into the ordinary politics of the day.
... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in,... more ... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in, government and political figures. Around ... Bush's job by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Page 2. performance. In ...
... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in,... more ... in focus. Here, I attempt an early, mid-rally assessment of public approval of, and trust in, government and political figures. Around ... Bush's job by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Page 2. performance. In ...
Popular Myths About Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illin... more Popular Myths About Popular Vote-Electoral College Splits by Brian J. Gaines, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign An official recount was ... Jr., a free elector whose vote tolal in the May 31 runoff was 145,434, a 0.2% margin over loyalist William D. Partlow, who received ...
Scholars of political behavior increasingly embed experimental designs in opinion surveys by rand... more Scholars of political behavior increasingly embed experimental designs in opinion surveys by randomly assigning respondents alternative versions of questionnaire items. Such experiments have major advantages: they are simple to implement and they dodge some of the difficulties of making inferences from conventional survey data. But survey experiments are no panacea. We identify problems of inference associated with typical uses of survey experiments in political science and highlight a range of difficulties, some of which have straightforward solutions within the survey-experimental approach and some of which can be dealt with only by exercising greater caution in interpreting findings and bringing to bear alternative strategies of research.
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