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Political scientists are increasingly using experiments to study important topics, in large part because this methodology allows the researcher more control in specifying relationships & testing causation. The application of experimental methods to questions of political opinions & behavior is still somewhat limited outside the realm of U.S. politics, & in particular within the realm of Mexican politics. In this note, we first present an overview of the strengths, & weaknesses, of experimental research for the study of political behavior. We then present an experimental study conducted in the summer of 2004, using college students as research subjects, to illustrate the benefits of the method for investigating one particular research topic within Mexican politics: the utility of party labels as heuristic aids for opinion formation & expression. We find evidence that party labels, in particular the PRI, influence individuals' policy preferences and, further, that these effects are more pronounced for more difficult issues. We find only limited evidence that party identification conditions the usefulness of the cues. We hope that our study & discussion convincingly demonstrate that experimental methods are appropriate & useful for the study of Mexican political behavior. Adapted from the source document.

"This volume of over thirty essays is organised around five primary dimensions of Hillary Clinton's influence: policy, activism, campaigns, women's ambition and impact on parents and their children. Combining personal narrative with scholarly expertise in political science, this volume looks at American politics through the career of Hillary Clinton in order to illuminate overarching trends related to elections, gender and public policy. Featuring an extraordinarily varied list of contributors working within the field of political science, and a fresh interdisciplinary approach, this book will appeal to broad range of politically engaged audiences, practitioners and scholars."--

AbstractWe consider how frames highlighting religious values shape opinion among individuals who may experience social identity conflict. White evangelical Republicans have ardently supported Donald Trump's restrictionist stances towards refugees, yet those partisan policy stances exist in tension with evangelical Christian values emphasizing care for vulnerable strangers. Our pre-registered national experiment tests whether a religious message can move white self-identified evangelical Republicans' opinions relating to refugees. The pro-refugee Christian values message increases favorable attitudes on some, but not all, measures. The effect is comparatively stronger among those who are more committed to their evangelical identity; unexpectedly, those who identify as strong Republicans are not more resistant to the message. These results demonstrate that moral reframing, which is known to shape attitudes in other domains, can affect self-identified evangelical Republicans' attitudes on refugees, potentially shifting the national discussion of refugees in the U.S. The finding is all the more significant given highly partisan debates over refugees during the Trump presidency, which may have made partisans' opinions especially rigid at the time of our experiment. Our results also speak to the relevance of identity strength in conditioning the impact of religious values frames.

AbstractEven though a record number of women ran for the Democratic nomination in 2020, Clinton's loss in 2016 led pundits, party elites, and voters to worry about whether the country would be willing to support a woman for president, and polling organizations regularly asked questions that tapped into such concerns. While the vast majority expressed willingness to vote for a woman for president in polls, people were more skeptical about how their neighbors felt. Our research question cuts to the heart of this issue: How does polling information about comfort with the idea of a woman president affect perceptions of the electability of actual women running for their party's nomination, and in turn voting decisions? We expect that exposure to signals of low comfort with a woman president will reduce perceptions of electability, and in turn dampen support for women at the nomination stage, but there are competing hypotheses for how signals of high comfort will be received. We further expect that Democratic women will be most affected by such information. We test these expectations with an experiment fielded on the 2019 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES). Our findings have important implications for media coverage of polls related to women running for executive office.

To inform the vital conversation among the nation's political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November 2020, this article reports how a sample of 5612 eligible American voters, surveyed 8–10 April, wanted to see the election run during the COVID-19 crisis. We embedded a randomized experiment presenting respondents with truthful summaries of the projections of two teams of scientists about the pandemic. Our descriptive findings show that in November 2020, four in 10 eligible voters would have preferred to cast their ballot by mail rather than in person and that a majority of respondents favored policies expanding mail voting. Our experimental findings show that respondents who read the scientific projections were more likely to prefer voting by mail, were more likely to trust that a mail ballot would be counted accurately, and were more likely to favor holding the election entirely by mail.

To inform the vital conversation among the nation's political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November 2020, this article reports how a sample of 5612 eligible American voters, surveyed 8–10 April, wanted to see the election run during the COVID-19 crisis. We embedded a randomized experiment presenting respondents with truthful summaries of the projections of two teams of scientists about the pandemic. Our descriptive findings show that in November 2020, four in 10 eligible voters would have preferred to cast their ballot by mail rather than in person and that a majority of respondents favored policies expanding mail voting. Our experimental findings show that respondents who read the scientific projections were more likely to prefer voting by mail, were more likely to trust that a mail ballot would be counted accurately, and were more likely to favor holding the election entirely by mail.

To inform the vital conversation among the nation's political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November 2020, this article reports how a sample of 5612 eligible American voters, surveyed 8–10 April, wanted to see the election run during the COVID-19 crisis. We embedded a randomized experiment presenting respondents with truthful summaries of the projections of two teams of scientists about the pandemic. Our descriptive findings show that in November 2020, four in 10 eligible voters would have preferred to cast their ballot by mail rather than in person and that a majority of respondents favored policies expanding mail voting. Our experimental findings show that respondents who read the scientific projections were more likely to prefer voting by mail, were more likely to trust that a mail ballot would be counted accurately, and were more likely to favor holding the election entirely by mail.

To inform the vital conversation among the nation's political leaders, elections administrators, and scholars about how to hold a safe, accessible, and fair election in November 2020, this article reports how a sample of 5612 eligible American voters, surveyed 8–10 April, wanted to see the election run during the COVID-19 crisis. We embedded a randomized experiment presenting respondents with truthful summaries of the projections of two teams of scientists about the pandemic. Our descriptive findings show that in November 2020, four in 10 eligible voters would have preferred to cast their ballot by mail rather than in person and that a majority of respondents favored policies expanding mail voting. Our experimental findings show that respondents who read the scientific projections were more likely to prefer voting by mail, were more likely to trust that a mail ballot would be counted accurately, and were more likely to favor holding the election entirely by mail.

Public health experts have advocated for wearing protective face masks to combat the COVID-19 pandemic, yet some populations are resistant. Can certain messages shift attitudes toward masks? We investigate the effect of value-consistent messages within a mask-skeptical population: White evangelicals in the United States. An experiment within a national survey of White evangelicals (n = 1,212) assigned respondents to one of three conditions: One group was given a religious message equating mask use with loving your neighbor, another was given a message by Donald Trump saying mask use is patriotic, and a control group received no message. Those exposed to the religious message were more likely to see mask use as important and were more supportive of mask mandates. Republican evangelicals exposed to the patriotism message had similar responses. These findings show that messages that align with individuals' core values—in this case, religious tenets and patriotism—can shift certain views on mask use and government mask policies to combat COVID-19, even among a comparatively mask-resistant group.

The past decade has witnessed a proliferation of media stories about immigration as a result of increases in authorized and unauthorized immigration to the United States. Scholars know little about how this coverage influences political participation across different groups in society. This study employs an experimental design to test the effects of different media frames on immigration in spurring political participation among recent immigrant-rooted communities and non-immigrant-rooted communities. The authors find strong mobilizing effects among Latinos, particularly for frames that highlight social costs and national security concerns, and weak to no effects on Asians, African Americans, and whites. Adapted from the source document.