Politics and the Policy Process

Worries about a new civil war in the United States are misplaced because the Civil War never fully ended. That is essential knowledge for understanding current political divisions, especially the recriminations surrounding the leaked draft Supreme Court Roe decision, negating constitutional protections of a woman's abortion rights.

For abortion and many other issues, our nation is still divided largely along the battle lines of the Civil War: one party remains rooted in the old Confederacy; the other draws its energy from the diverse voters in northern and coastal states. Critics of federal power continue to resist protecting voting rights, women's rights, and educational access, while progressive proponents endorse national voting, health, and education standards. White supremacy pervades these divisions—the color of one's skin remains one of the best predictors of which side you are on.

What motivated Latinos to turnout in 2020 in the middle of a global health pandemic that has devastated their community financially, physically and mentally? How might we explain Latino support for each one of the presidential candidates in the context of these crises? In this paper, we tackle these questions through an investigation of the factors that drove Latino turnout in 2020 and what might explain Latino favorability for Joe Biden and Donald Trump. To contextualize these findings, we compare these results to the 2016 election. We find that the most predictive factors of Latino turnout in 2020 were perceived group discrimination and mobilization efforts by campaigns and other organizations. We also find that Latino candidate preference in 2020 can be best explained by issue prioritization. Latinos for whom the economy was the most important issue were more likely to support Donald Trump. However, Latinos for whom COVID-19 and racism towards the Latino community were the top pressing political priorities were more likely to favor Joe Biden. These findings continue to shed light on the diversity and heterogeneity of the Latino vote and speak to the significance of outreach efforts by political parties, candidates and community organizations.

Scholars of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP) have demonstrated that discrimination shapes the political behavior of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Whites. This scholarship, however, tends to focus on a single group or employ variables that make intergroup comparisons difficult. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey, we examine individuals' perceptions of the discrimination their racial or pan-ethnic group faces relative to other groups and the relationship between those perceptions and presidential vote choice. We argue that perceived relative group discrimination captures group-level perceptions of racial hierarchy in the United States, and present evidence that these perceptions significantly influenced vote choice in the 2016 presidential election. Whites who believe their racial group experiences more discrimination than other groups were significantly more likely to cast a vote for Donald Trump. This finding contradicts similar studies identifying White awareness of their dominance as a catalyst of pro-group behavior. Conversely, Latinos who expressed a greater sense of relative group discrimination were more likely to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. We replicate these findings across multiple datasets and find that relative group discrimination is associated with partisanship among Blacks, Latinos, and Whites since at least 2012.

"President Trump's brandishing of the U.S. military this week — particularly his threat Monday to invoke the Insurrection Act of 1807 — proves his cowardly and undemocratic proclivities," writes LBJ's Jeremi Suri.

"Instead of working with governors and other domestic leaders to address the obvious anger and hurt throughout the country, he would prefer to hide in the White House, spewing aggressive rhetoric behind the uniforms of men and women who signed up for foreign duty — none of whom surely wish to find themselves pointing their weapons at their fellow citizens."

OBJECTIVES: 
Following decades of mainstream bipartisan support, contraception has reemerged as a controversial political issue in the United States. At the same time, opposition to abortion has intensified. State legislatures across the country have enacted highly visible policies limiting access to family planning. Perhaps the most striking example occurred in 2011 in Texas, when legislators instituted unprecedented requirements on abortion providers and cut public funding for contraception by two thirds. Yet, despite popular interpretations of this phenomenon as a simple byproduct of increasing partisan divisions, little is understood about the factors underlying such policy shifts.
STUDY DESIGN:
We fit Bayesian ideal-point models to analyze correlation patterns in record-vote data in the Texas House of Representatives in the 2003 and 2011 Legislatures. Both sessions had large Republican majorities and saw the passage of restrictive abortion bills, but they differed markedly with respect to public funding for contraception.
RESULTS:
We demonstrate that variation in voting on family-planning issues cannot be fully attributed to partisanship in either session. However, the politics of abortion and contraception have converged over time, and - at least for Democrats - the correlation between constituency characteristics and voting behavior on family-planning legislation is markedly higher in 2011 than in 2003. These shifts have been partly driven by legislators from high-poverty, majority Latino districts near the US-Mexico border.
CONCLUSIONS:
Recent dramatic shifts in family-planning policy go beyond simple partisan divisions. As the politics of abortion and contraception have converged, policies that are increasingly hostile to reproductive health and that disproportionately affect low-income minority women have emerged.
IMPLICATIONS:
Recent shifts in family-planning policy restrict women's access to contraception and abortion, yet little research has examined why such shifts are occurring. This paper analyzes factors underlying voting behavior on restrictive policies in Texas. Identification of these factors helps us to better understand the current political climate surrounding our field.