Voters can be aggregated into a large, multi-member district, with each citizen voting for several candidates (‘at-large elections’), or disaggregated into several smaller, single-member districts, with each citizen voting for only one candidate (‘district elections’). How voters are aggregated not only affects who legislators are accountable to, but also which coalitions achieve representation. Political scientists Michael Hankinson and Asya Magazinnik will use the permitting of new housing to measure the effects of voter aggregation on policy.
Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Andrew Guess and computer scientist Christo Wilson will analyze the extent to which selective exposure online is the result of algorithms versus human behavior. They propose to test four hypotheses. First, that personalization algorithms significantly change recommended content and search results on online platforms. Second, that observed differences in search results due to these algorithms will be correlated with demographic and attitudinal factors (such as ideology and party identification).
While immigration hearings are civil proceedings, they are commonly misunderstood as criminal. As a result, immigrants and asylees face harsh sanctions, such as detention, but are not entitled to an attorney if they cannot afford one. Nonprofit organizations attempt to help low-income immigrants but struggle with scarce resources. This raises the question: Does legal assistance to immigrants make a difference in the outcomes of their hearings?
Leveraging quasi-experimental designs, this project tests whether personal networks effectively structure the political opportunity of individuals. We theorize that the propensity of individuals to run for and attain office is shaped by who they know—and that, in extension, representational inequalities visible in US electoral institutions is driven by the prevalence of informal networks. To test our theory, we web scrape biographical information of individuals that ran for state assemblies during the period of 1996 - 2016.
In the 2018 midterm elections, concerns around health care—including pre-existing condition protections, prescription drug prices, women’s health care, and even single-payer health care proposals—were central to voter mobilization efforts. These issues played a prominent role in many House, Senate and gubernatorial races, and health care-related measures were on the ballot in several states.
Co-funded with the Carnegie Corporation
The U.S. has lower rates of naturalization than other major immigration destination countries such as Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom. As anti-immigrant rhetoric, hardline immigration policies and policing threaten immigrants’ social rights, benefits, security, and belonging, are more eligible lawful permanent residents becoming American citizens?
Political scientist Boris Shor will study the extent to which state legislators represent their constituents’ preferences about health care. He will use newly available data on ideology, roll-call votes, and interest groups—some of it collected by him—and gather new opinion data from different states to compare legislators' responsiveness to constituents across districts. He will also investigate the extent to which factors such as partisanship, ideology, special interests, and constituency opinions and needs affect legislators' behavior.