HE ANALYSIS of voting and elections has undoubtedly become one of the ~ principal areas of investigation for political scientists, especially among those .M primarily concerned with American politics. Quite understandably, much of the research on the subject has tended to focus on individual voting behavior and its relationship to psychological and sociological variables.’ This research has pro...

As the utilization of various e-voting technologies has notably increased in the past few years, so has the amount of publications on experiences with these technologies. This article will, therefore, map the literature while highlighting some of the important topics discussed within the field of e-voting. Particular attention will be paid to the non-technical dimensions of implementation, incl...

Many observers and scholars argue that primary elections contribute to ideological polarization in U.S. politics. We test this claim using congressional elections and roll call voting behavior. Many of our findings are null. We find little evidence that the introduction of primary elections, the level of primary election turnout, or the threat of primary competition are associated with partisan...

Fowler, Baker, and Dawes (2008) recently showed in two independent studies of twins that voter turnout has very high heritability. Here we investigate two specific genes that may contribute to variation in voting behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with a polymorphism of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have vote...

Fowler, Baker, and Dawes (2008) recently showed in two independent studies of twins that voter turnout has very high heritability. Here we investigate two specific genes that may contribute to variation in voting behavior. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we show that individuals with a polymorphism of the MAOA gene are significantly more likely to have vote...

Undecided voters represent a major challenge to political pollsters. Recently, political psychologists have proposed the use of implicit association tests (IAT) to measure implicit attitudes toward political parties and candidates and predict voting behavior of undecided voters. A number of studies have shown that both implicit and explicit (i.e., self-reported) attitudes contribute to the pred...

Political Action Committees (PACs) can a€ect public policies in either of two ways: altering legislators' roll-call voting behavior, or in ̄uencing election outcomes. This paper develops a dynamic model demonstrating that the relative importance of the election-in ̄uencing channel is easily underestimated. A one-time contribution to a candidate who supports the PAC's position that alters an elect...

This research is an integration of previous work on political activity and examines a variety of factors thought to be influential in the performance and nonperformance of political behavior. The political participation of a randomly selected sample of local citizens was studied using survey research methods. One hundred and twenty-six individuals responded to survey items assessing participati...