In recent decades, Canada and other democracies have experienced a significant rise in migrant settlement. This has sparked much interest among scholars and policy makers in the forces that encourage or impede the political incorporation of newcomers. In this research note, we consider a factor that has received relatively little scrutiny, the impact of immigrants’ attention to native-country politics on willingness to participate in residential-country elections and affiliate with a political party in that country. We examine this through an original survey of Americans in Canada conducted during the 2020 US election cycle. A randomized experiment demonstrates that directing the attention of American emigrants to US campaigns can lower interest in Canadian elections and weaken attachments to a Canadian political party, particularly for those who are less integrated into Canadian society. These findings point to a potential tension between political engagement as an emigrant versus as an immigrant.

Most research on voting behaviour and elections has focused on cross-sectional analysis of particular elections. This technique is very useful in telling us about the influences on individual voter decision making. Less commonly research has focused on short-term electoral change, and has tried to explain specific election results with respect to one another, or in relation to long-term trends.

By any standard, the 2000 presidential election was close. It was close in the Electoral College, where Bush prevailed by the slimmest majority (271–266), and it was close in the national popular vote, where Gore edged Bush by about 540,000 votes in an electorate of more than 100 million. Needless to say, the 2000 election was also astonishingly close in individual states like Florida, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Oregon.

The contemporary presidential nomination process is widely criticized for contributing to the candidate-centered nature of American politics. In particular, candidates mobilize their own followings during the nomination stage, which contributes to factionalization and divisiveness within the party. While the critics have a point, we contend that these qualities of presidential nominations may also contribute to party responsiveness and change. Insurgent candidates like Pat Robertson are especially likely to attract underrepresented interests and mobilize them into nomination campaign activity. We show that this nomination-stage mobilization tends to carry over and spill over into the general election stage, both in the party's campaign for president and in U.S. House campaigns. Robertson's candidacy had extraordinary potential to change the Republican Party because his supporters were very different from supporters of other candidates, and a large proportion were newcomers to active involvement in the presidential nomination process.

The traditional view of partisanship as largely fixed and unaffected by contemporaneous events has been replaced by one which sees it as changeable, particularly responsive to ideological and issue appeals. At the same time, Wattenberg (1994) and others have found politics to have become much more candidate centered. This piece combines these two sets of findings, the lability of partisanship and the role of candidates, to show that attitudes toward presidential candidates (both winning and losing) have a short and long-term effect on individual-level party identification. Using the Jennings-Niemi seventeen-year panel of students, evaluations of both McGovern and Nixon, assessed in 1973, have a significant effect on 1982 partisanship, controlling for the student's 1965 partisanship. Even controls for attitudes toward more recent candidates and attitudes toward issues (assessed in both 1973 and 1982) fail to remove the significant candidate effects for either 1972 presidential nominee.

The moderation hypothesis, that ideologically moderate candidates in a two-party contest are more likely to win elections than extreme candidates, is both prevailing wisdom and a major conclusion of spatial theories of elections. We examine the hypothesis using perceptual data from samples of caucus attenders in the 1984 and 1988 presidential nomination campaigns at both the individual and the cross-candidate levels of analysis. In both analyses, we find qualified support for the moderation hypothesis. In explaining individuals' perceptions of the four nominees' electability, we find a modest effect of perceived proximity to the American voter for all candidates, save George Bush. Other variables, such as party, candidate affect, and nomination chances are stronger predictors, and the candidate's perceived abilities on TV rivals moderation in its impact. In our comparative analysis of some 20 candidates, we find that Ronald Reagan and John Glenn were very significant outliers in what is otherwise a strong relationship between moderation and electability. We also find that performance on TV is a strong and significant predictor of electability. We conclude that the moderation hypothesis holds up reasonably well for the large majority of candidates, but that other candidate factors are also important to include in any complete assessment of candidate electability in November.

We analyze three explanations of candidate choice in presidential nomination campaigns: (1) a preference model, which contends that nomination choice is based on the ideological, issue, or candidate preferences of the voter; (2) a candidate-chances explanation that argues choice is motivated by the chances candidates have of winning the nomination or the general election; and (3) an expected utility model that includes both preferences and candidate chances by discounting ideological, issue, and candidate-trait preferences by the perceived chances each candidate has of winning in November.

We test these explanations on samples of Democratic caucus attenders and state convention delegates from Iowa in 1984. The expected utility model most successfully predicts candidate choice in both samples. Even with appropriate controls for candidate affect, both preference and candidate chances measures have significant independent effects on candidate choice. Our analysis suggests that the interests of individual nomination participants and party organizations may not be as disparate as many critics of the contemporary process believe.

Although candidates are very concerned about garnering prenomination group endorsements, there is virtually no research on the effects of such endorsements at the presidential level. In 1984, teachers', women's, and labor groups all endorsed Mondale for the Democratic nomination. Using a survey of Democratic caucus participants, we examine the effects of these endorsements on both candidate support and prenomination activity for the endorsed candidate. We find substantial effects of labor and teachers' group endorsements on the candidate choice of their members, but virtually no effect of women's groups. Labor union membership also had the greatest impact on campaign activity for Mondale.

This paper examines to what extent, and in what ways, voters are willing to go beyond the information given—when that information consists of either a candidate's personal traits or his issue positions—to make broader candidate assessments. Based on an experiment in which students were given either personal trait or issue information about candidates for president, we find strong evidence for voter inferences from traits to issues and vice versa (although there is greater inference from issues than from traits). Finally, we find that, although inferences are frequently made, they are often idiosyncratic. Only in particular cases (i.e., relating candidate's compassion with his support of government providing jobs), do different types of respondents make the same inferences (a finding which is also borne out by the 1984 NES).