I checked 7 public opinion journals on Friday, July 03, 2026 using the Crossref API. For the period June 26 to July 02, I found 11 new paper(s) in 3 journal(s).

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties

Inclusive selectorates, unrepresentative candidate lists? On inclusivity versus representativeness in candidate selection processes
R. E. van Dijk
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Beyond winners and losers: trust and the occurrence of elections in a quasi-experimental setting
Yosuke Sunahara, Steven David Pickering, Martin Ejnar Hansen
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Journal of Survey Statistics and Methodology

Improving the Sensitivity of Controlled Experiments by Stratified Empirical Likelihood Ratio Tests
Yongda Wang, Daijun Chen, Chun Kai Wang, Shifeng Xiong
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This article addresses the challenge of low statistical power in A/B testing with small sample data, such as Automatic Speech Recognition data. Traditional methods, such as the Welch t-test, often underperform in these scenarios. We introduce two novel testing methods, the stratified and post-stratified empirical likelihood ratio tests, which reduce group variance and enhance test sensitivity. Our theoretical analysis and comprehensive experiments on real and synthetic datasets show that these nonparametric empirical likelihood ratio methods outperform the Welch t-test with small-sample data, providing a more effective tool for detecting treatment effects and informing data-driven decision-making.

Public Opinion Quarterly

Women and Left-Wing Citizens Prefer Women Candidates: Testing Consistency and Psychological Processes Across Twenty Diverse Countries
Claire Gothreau, Lasse Laustsen
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Across the world, women remain underrepresented in politics. Yet, recent experimental studies of candidate preferences find that citizens favor women over men candidates, with women and left-wing citizens driving aggregate preferences. This raises both theoretical and empirical puzzles. Theoretically, the underlying processes producing heterogeneous preferences across citizens’ gender and ideology remain unaddressed, and empirically, conclusions rest primarily on data from the United States and Western Europe, which raises questions about generalizability to democracies in the Global South and other regions. This article reports the results from the most comprehensive and geographically diverse test of citizens’ preferences for women candidates to date. We fielded a conjoint candidate choice experiment with a multitude of respondent-level predispositions (e.g., gender, ideology, sexism, and gender typicality) across twenty institutionally, culturally, and economically diverse democracies (N = 14,369). The results advance knowledge about citizens’ preferences for women candidates both empirically and theoretically. On average, women candidates are preferred by three percentage points, and this advantage is statistically significant in fourteen countries. Women—especially those identifying as more gender typical—and left-wing citizens—especially individuals low in social dominance orientation, right-wing authoritarianism, and hostile sexism—display particularly strong preferences for women candidates. These results are discussed with respect to their theoretical and practical implications for women’s political representation.
How Do Americans Explain Their Party Identification and Out-Partisan Animosity?
Anthony Fowler, Gregory A Huber, Rongbo Jin, Lilla V Orr
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Political scientists often claim that partisanship is explained by nonpolicy factors such as early childhood experiences, parental influence, and group membership. In this paper, we use open-ended survey questions to elicit partisan Americans’ own explanations for their affiliations as well as their attitudes toward the opposite party. Policy, values, and ideology are the most common reasons Americans say they identify as a Democrat or Republican and feel the way they do about members of the other party. The rate at which these reasons are cited far exceeds expectations of published scholars of partisanship. Findings do not vary meaningfully across party, region, gender, race, age, or socioeconomic status.
When Bilingual Ballot Designs Promote or Undermine Inclusivity: Evidence from Three Studies
Amy H Liu, Sam Selsky, Meiying Xu, Joel Yew
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Do bilingual ballot designs promote inclusivity? While ethnic politics scholars have argued about the importance of accommodating minorities, there has been little attention paid to one specific institution: the ballot. Likewise, while we know ballot designs are important, the empirical focus has strictly been on monolingual ballots. In this paper, we identify three designs: (1) single: monolingual ballots; (2) separated: one bilingual ballot with two columns, with one language per column; and (3) stacked: one bilingual ballot with one column, with languages collated for each race. We argue that attitudes are most inclusive when ballots are stacked—that is, there are multiple languages sharing the same space. However, this is only the case when language is not a politicized issue. When it is, attitudes in fact become exclusive. To test, we employ three studies that vary on their extent of language politicization: (1) no politicization—the use of an indigenous language and an immigrant language next to Chinese in Taiwan; (2) politicization of the majority language—the use of Spanish alongside English in Texas; and (3) politicization of a minority language—the use of Russian and English in the Republic of Georgia. The results are robust and consistent with our theoretical expectations. Given that the foundation of democracy rests on citizens being able to exercise their voice, it is imperative that we accommodate minority languages effectively on the ballot.
In the Wake of the Past: Contextualizing Political Communication and Participation in Postauthoritarian Countries
Heysung Lee
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As public opinion research increasingly recognizes the importance of context, this study investigates how the authoritarian past can explain the mobilizing role of political communication in participatory behaviors. Positing that postauthoritarianism can serve as a sociopolitical context shaping citizens’ responses to interpersonal discussion and media use, the current research employs cross-national survey data from 14 countries in the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP). Employing multilevel modeling, this research examines how interpersonal political discussion with strong and weak ties and attitude-congruent media use can be related to two modes of political participation: protesting and voting. The findings suggest that frequent weak-tie political discussion is associated with increased protest participation; this mobilizing role is less pronounced in postauthoritarian countries compared to countries without an authoritarian past. Moreover, exposure to attitude-congruent media exhibits different patterns in facilitating voting regarding previous regime ideologies, left-wing or right-wing. By suggesting postauthoritarianism as a contextual layer, this study advances a more nuanced, cross-national understanding of democratic engagement.
Ignoring Gender Compromises the Comparability of Cross-Cultural Survey Research
Andrej Findor, Kristína Kironská, Roman Hlatky, Ondrej Buchel, Matej Hruška, Amy H Liu
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Survey measures of intergroup attitudes may not necessarily be comparable across countries. Androcentric bias—the propensity to position men as the universal standard—is more likely to arise among speakers of grammatically gendered languages than among speakers of languages without grammatical gender. When combined with outgroup male target bias—the tendency to evaluate outgroup men more negatively than outgroup women—androcentric bias may distort cross-national comparisons of survey measures across different language types. To evaluate, we conducted survey experiments with over 19,500 participants from 13 European countries. We randomly assigned participants to evaluate: (a) masculine or gender-neutral outgroup labels, or (b) gender-inclusive alternatives. On average, gender-inclusive labels evoked more favorable evaluations. Importantly, these positive effects were more consistently present in grammatically gendered languages. Our findings highlight potential challenges to measurement validity posed by variations in the grammatical embedding of gender across languages. Using gender-inclusive language improves measurement and may serve as a first step toward bolstering cross-national comparability.
Not Your Mama’s Ideology (But Close): Modest Generational Differences in Ideological Alignment in Postcommunist Europe
Lenka Hrbková, Tadeas Cely, Matej Jungwirth
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This paper examines whether generational change in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) is associated with shifts in how political attitudes align along the conventional economic–cultural left–right dimension. Because cohorts in the region were socialized under different political–economic systems, CEE provides a setting to assess whether younger generations display patterns of attitude alignment that differ from those of older cohorts. Using pooled European Social Survey data (2004–2023) and original surveys from Czechia, Hungary, and Lithuania, we combine an age–period–cohort analysis of left–right alignment with a network analysis of associations among thirteen salient issues. We find modest generational differences in the early 2000s, but these diminish over time, with all cohorts exhibiting similarly low levels of left–right alignment. Economic and cultural attitudes remain weakly connected, and EU- and foreign-policy issues often form separate clusters. The findings indicate that generational replacement has not produced a shift toward a more conventional left–right organization of belief systems in the region.
Partisan Differences in Support for Political Violence: Results from a Natural Experiment in the United States
Chiara Vargiu, Alessandro Nai
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The polarized reaction to the assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO in December 2024 underscored the potential of ideologically framed acts of violence to undermine societal cohesion and challenge democratic norms. While many condemned the killing as an unjustifiable attack on a private citizen, others celebrated Mangione as a “folk hero,” glorifying him and his act as a symbol of resistance against an industry perceived as corrupt and dehumanizing. Using data from a rolling cross-sectional survey in the United States, we causally tested partisan differences in support for political violence before and after the CEO’s assassination and the perpetrator’s subsequent arrest. While Democrats initially condemned violence against Republicans, their support for partisan violence increased following Mangione’s arrest. These results underscore the role of public discourse in shaping attitudes toward political violence, raising concerns about the normalization of politically motivated aggression, even among groups traditionally less inclined to endorse it.
Partisan Approval for the Supreme Court After Dobbs : The Demise of Presidential Copartisanship?
Brandon L Bartels, Eric Kramon
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Prior research demonstrates that partisan alignment with the president—presidential copartisanship—has structured Supreme Court job approval and confidence for multiple decades. Presidential copartisans are more approving of the Court than outpartisans, an effect that persists throughout a presidency despite high-salience Court decisions. We examine whether the presidential copartisanship effect persisted into the Biden era despite Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) and other conservative rulings. We extend rolling cross-sectional job approval and confidence data through 2024, with surveys before and after Dobbs. We show that the presidential copartisanship effect disappears after Dobbs. Moreover, after Dobbs, partisan divisions reach historic highs, with Democrats dropping to record low approval levels (14 percent). We elaborate on whether this new dynamic will persist and its implications for Supreme Court legitimacy and decision-making.