[EL] message from Thad Kousser re Public Opinion on Voter Fraud

[Rick Hasen]

 From Thad:

To fill in a bit of detail on one of the studies that Richard cited this morning, I coauthored (along with fellow political scientists Justin Phillips (Columbia) and Boris Shor (Chicago)) "Reform and Representation: Assessing California's Top-Two Primary and Redistricting Commission," available athttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2260083.  We compare the 2010 and 2012 legislative elections in California, using a "joint-scaling" approach that puts both candidates and registered voters on the same ideological scale based on the positions that they took on a common set of policy questions.  We find:

1. California has, unsurprisingly, a representational problem.  In 2010, Democratic and Republican lawmakers were located far to the extremes of the average voters in their districts and even the average voters registered with their party.  The two parties are out-of-step with voters by roughly equal margins.

2. At least in 2012, the reforms of the top-two primary and the Citizens Redistricting Commission failed to fix this problem.  The winners of these elections (and losing candidates as well) were just as ideologically extreme and out-of-step with voters as in 2010, and the winners were a bit more extreme because a few moderate Republicans were replaced by liberal Democrats.

3. Why?  We show that when the top-two primary set up a general election contest between two candidates from the same party -- the type of race that many expected to deliver victories for moderates -- the candidate who was more extreme was just as likely to win as the candidate who was more centrist and closer to the average voter.  We also find that legislators in the new competitive districts delivered by the Commission were not significantly closer to the ideological locations of their average voters.  We speculate that this is because it is so hard for voters to learn about the policy differences between two candidates of the same party in down-ballot races, and because parties and interest groups (who do know their policy positions!) still play a major role in pushing candidates to the extremes.

This is only evidence from one set of elections in one state, and it may be that moderate candidates will learn how to use the new rules or that they will have a different effect on statewide, top-of-the-ticket races in 2014.  And it is important to note that both reforms have had many other effects that their proponents can rightly cheer.  We find no evidence, though, that either provided an immediate cure for hyper-partisanship.
            Best,
               Thad
  
Thad Kousser, Associate Professor
Department of Political Science, UC San Diego
9500 Gilman Drive
La Jolla, CA 92093-0521
tkousser at ucsd.edu     http://polisci.ucsd.edu/faculty/kousser.html
  858-534-3239         californiachoices.org<http://californiachoices.org>  
    

-- 
Rick Hasen
Chancellor's Professor of Law and Political Science
UC Irvine School of Law
401 E. Peltason Dr., Suite 1000
Irvine, CA 92697-8000
949.824.3072 - office
949.824.0495 - fax
rhasen at law.uci.edu
hhttp://www.law.uci.edu/faculty/full-time/hasen/
http://electionlawblog.org