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The relationship between approval of the state legislature and political polarization in the legislature is investigated by matching responses from a large national survey to Shor and McCarty's ideological scores for state parties. In contrast to popular wisdom, citizens do not have a negative view of more polarized legislatures or more extreme majority parties, all else constant. Instead, legislative approval is filtered primarily through a partisan lens; partisans are more approving when their party is in control and more extreme (and less approving when the opposing party is in control and more extreme).

Graphic presentation of a survey regarding State Representation in Legislatures. Data representations include graphs, charts, tables and maps.

In Summer 2003, the Institute of Public Policy conducted a mail survey of state legislators to determine how legislators feel about constituency service and the use of technology, whether they believe email has a positive effect on communication, whom they contact via email and the impact of the internet on the legislature. The states that were surveyed were chosen based on a number of legislative features including multimember districts (MMDs) versus single member districts (SMDs) and term limits. Arizona, New Jersey, North Dakota, and South Dakota are all MMDs for the lower level chambers and single member district SMDs for the upper level chamber while Colorado, Missouri, Pennsylvania, and South Carolina are entirely SMDs. Of these states, Arizona, South Dakota, Colorado and Missouri currently have term limits in place.

In 1984, New York became the first state to enact a mandatory seat belt law; since then, the District of Columbia and every state except New Hampshire have adopted similar laws. Of the 49 states with seat belt laws, eight states included in their original seat belt laws primary enforcement provisions, which allow police to stop a driver solely on the basis of not wearing a seat belt (New York, Hawaii, North Carolina, Texas, Connecticut, Iowa, New Mexico, and Oregon). During the 1990s, beginning with California, nine states upgraded their seat belt enforcement provisions from secondary to primary. According to a recent survey of nearly 2000 adults conducted by the Insurance Research Council, there is considerable public support for primary and secondary seat belt enforcement: 47% of the survey respondents indicated support for primary enforcement, while 41% of respondents favored secondary enforcement.

Powerpoint presentation by Dr. Lilliard E. Richardson on the topic of traffic safety legislation presented at the Blue Print for Safer Roadways conference November 30 2006.

E‐mail has changed the policy process in state legislatures because political actors now have a new way to present their message to state legislators. What little research has been conducted on this topic examines e‐mail communication generally and does not compare results by policy actor. Using an original survey of state legislators in eight states, we test for systematic effects of variables on general e‐mail views and for effects specific to particular policy actors. We find that legislators have a nuanced approach to e‐mail usage in the policy process with their assessment of its impact differing significantly for constituents, intermediary groups, and policy insiders. Only gender consistently shapes legislators' beliefs about e‐mail with all groups, but institutional features, legislator characteristics, and legislator beliefs shape views on e‐mail with different target groups. Clearly, legislators are attuned to the audience communicating via e‐mail, and they value e‐mail with each group differently.

Many political pundits characterized the 2010 election as a referendum on President Obama's health care reform law. The political science literature on issue voting, however, does not consistently demonstrate that these types of policy evaluations are central to citizens' vote choices. Moreover, existing theories suggest different predictions about how the health care reform issue would affect elections across different levels of government. Studying data from the 2010 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), the analysis indicates that those opposed to health care reform were less likely to vote for Democratic candidates in the U.S. House, the U.S. Senate, state gubernatorial, and state attorneys general contests, controlling for partisan affiliation, political ideology, perceptions of the economy, and evaluations of other salient policy issues. These findings suggest that, across the board, Democrats were penalized for their support of health care reform, and more generally provide evidence of the role of noneconomic issue voting in U.S. elections.