Research

My Google Scholar Profile is Available Here.

Huber, Gregory A., Alan S. Gerber. Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. Forthcoming. “Can Raising the Stakes of Election Outcomes Increase Participation? Results from a Large-Scale Field Experiment in Local Elections..” British Journal of Political Science.

Abstract: Political campaigns frequently emphasize the material stakes at play in election outcomes to motivate participation. But field experimental academic work has given greater attention to other aspects of voters’ decisions to participate, despite theoretical models of turnout and substantial observational work signaling that a contest’s perceived importance affects the propensity to vote. We identify two classes of treatments that may increase the material incentive to participate and test these messages in a large-scale placebo-controlled field experiment in which approximately 24,500 treatment letters were delivered during Connecticut’s 2013 municipal elections. We find some evidence that these messages are effective in increasing participation, and also that some of them may be more effective than typical non-partisan GOTV appeals. While these results remain somewhat preliminary, our findings have important implications for our understanding of how voters decide whether to participate and how best to mobilize citizens who would otherwise sit out elections. [Supporting Information] [Replication Data]

Biggers, Daniel R., and Shaun Bowler. Forthcoming. "Citizen Assessment of Electoral Reforms: Do Evaluations of Fairness Blunt Self-Interest?" Political Behavior.

Abstract: A large literature shows that citizens care about the procedural fairness of rules and institutions. This body of work suggests that citizen evaluations of institutional changes should be constrained by fairness considerations, even if they would personally benefit from the reforms. We test this expectation using two panel studies to examine whether citizens become more accepting of proposals rated as unfair (in wave one) after we experimentally manipulate (in wave two) whether the proposals aid their party’s electoral prospects. Using this approach, we are able to establish what citizens see to be fair or unfair separate from their evaluation of a given rule change. We find that supporters of both parties are consistently more favorable toward reforms their fellow partisans and, crucially, they themselves, claim reduce electoral fairness when framed as advancing their partisan interests. The results provide important insights into how citizens evaluate electoral processes, procedural fairness, and, hence, the acceptable limits of institutional change. [Supporting Information] [Replication Data]

Biggers, Daniel R. 2021. "Can the Backlash Against Voter ID Laws Activate Minority Voters? Experimental Evidence Examining Voter Mobilization Through Psychological Reactance." Political Behavior 43(3): 1161-1179.

[SEE BLOG POSTING ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE POLITICAL BEHAVIOR BLOG]

Abstract: Research on the participatory consequences of electoral reforms that increase voting costs largely ignores how the perception that those efforts’ purpose is to disenfranchise certain individuals may affect turnout. Leveraging psychological reactance theory, I test whether invoking that perception activates African Americans (who disproportionately bear those higher costs). A survey experiment shows that framing the most prominent ballot access restriction, voter identification laws, as designed to keep Blacks from voting increases reactance among this group, reduces their support for ID laws, and raises the perceived threat to their franchise. However, three field experiments on African American registrants find that this message fails to mobilize subjects in general and provide at best limited evidence that this argument spurs elderly Black participation. The results signal that emphasizing the perception that increased voting costs are designed to reduce turnout can alter attitudes but may not ultimately change behavior (i.e., the decision to vote). [Supporting Information] [Replication Data]

Biggers, Daniel R., and Daniel A. Smith. 2020. "Does Threatening their Franchise Make Registered Voters More Likely to Participate? Evidence from an Aborted Voter Purge." British Journal of Political Science 50(3): 933-954.

Abstract: Prior research predicts that election administration changes that increase voting costs should decrease participation, but it fails to consider that some interpret those changes as attacking their franchise. Drawing on psychological reactance theory, we test whether such perceived attacks might instead activate such citizens. We leverage the State of Florida’s multi-stage effort in 2012 to purge suspected noncitizens from its voter rolls, comparing the voting rates of suspected noncitizens whose registration was and was not formally challenged by the state. Within-registrant difference-in-difference and matching analyses estimate a positive, significant participatory effect of being challenged, particularly for Hispanics (the vast majority of our sample). Placebo tests show those challenged were no more likely than those not challenged to previously vote. [Supporting Information] [Replication Data]

Biggers, Daniel R. 2019. "Does Partisan Self-Interest Dictate Support for Election Reform? Experimental Evidence on the Willingness of Citizens to Alter the Costs of Voting for Electoral Gain." Political Behavior 41(4): 1025-1046.

[SEE BLOG POSTING ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE POLITICAL BEHAVIOR BLOG]

Abstract: Elite support for modifying electoral institutions and policies generally depends on whether a proposed change is expected to improve their party’s electoral prospects. Prior studies suggest that the average citizen evaluates potential reforms in a similar manner, but they fail to directly demonstrate that individuals actually consider their partisan self-interest when forming policy preferences. I address this limitation through two survey experiments that manipulate the specific group for whom reforms make voting more or less difficult. The results provide strong causal evidence that individuals update their attitudes as expected in response to that information. Members of both parties consistently express greater support for changes when framed as advancing their party’s electoral prospects than when characterized as benefiting their opponents. The findings have important implications for the constraints faced by political actors in gaming the electoral system in their favor and for understanding the role of self-interest in shaping policy attitudes. [Supporting Information] [Replication Data]

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Can Political Participation Prevent Crime? Results from a Field Experiment about Citizenship, Participation, and Criminality." Political Behavior 39(4): 909-934.

[SEE BLOG POSTING ON THIS ARTICLE ON THE POLITICAL BEHAVIOR BLOG]

Abstract: Democratic theory and prior empirical work support the view that political participation, by promoting social integration and pro-social attitudes, reduces one’s propensity for anti-social behavior, such as committing a crime. Previous investigations examine observational (survey) data, which are vulnerable to bias if omitted factors affect both propensity to participate and risk of criminality or their reports. A field experiment encouraging 552,525 subjects aged 18-20 to register and vote confirms previous observational findings of the negative association between participation and subsequent criminality. However, comparing randomly formed treatment and control groups reveals that the intervention increased participation but did not reduce subsequent criminality. Our results suggest that while participation is correlated with criminality, it exerts no causal effect on subsequent criminal behavior. [Supporting Information]

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Marc Meredith, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. "Does Incarceration Reduce Voting? Evidence about the Political Consequences of Spending Time in Prison." Journal of Politics 79(4): 1130-1146.

Abstract: The rise in mass incarceration provides a growing impetus to understand the effect that interactions with the criminal justice system have on political participation. While a substantial body of prior research studies the political consequences of criminal disenfranchisement, less work examines why eligible ex-felons vote at very low rates. We use administrative data on voting and interactions with the criminal justice system from Pennsylvania to assess whether the association between incarceration and reduced voting is causal. Using administrative records that reduce the possibility of measurement error, we employ several different research designs to investigate the possibility that the observed negative correlation between incarceration and voting might result from differences across individuals that both lead to incarceration and low participation. As this selection bias issue is addressed, we find that the estimated effect of serving time in prison on voting falls dramatically and for some research designs vanishes entirely. [Supporting Information] [Replication Data]

Biggers, Daniel R., and Michael J. Hanmer. 2017. "Understanding the Adoption of Voter Identification Laws in the American States." American Politics Research 45(4): 560-588.

SEE INTERVIEW ABOUT THIS ARTICLE AT THE HUFFINGTON POST

Abstract: Recently, many states have reversed the decades-long trend of facilitating ballot access by enacting a wave of laws requesting or requiring identification from registrants before they vote. Identification laws, however, are not an entirely new phenomenon. We offer new theoretical insights regarding how changes in political power influence the adoption of identification laws. In the most extensive analysis to date, we use event history analysis to examine why states adopted a range of identification laws over the past several decades. We consistently find that the propensity to adopt is greatest when control of the governor’s office and legislature switches to Republicans (relationships not previously identified), and that this likelihood increases further as the size of black and Latino populations in the state expands. We also find that federal legislation in the form of the Help America Vote Act seems to enhance the effects of switches in partisan control. [Supporting Information]

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. “Self Interest, Beliefs, and Policy Opinions: Understanding the Economic Source of Immigration Policy Preferences.” Political Research Quarterly 70(1): 155-171..

Abstract: Research on how economic factors affect attitudes toward immigration often focuses on labor market effects, concluding that, because workers’ skill levels do not predict opposition to low- versus highly skilled immigration, economic self-interest does not shape policy attitudes. We conduct a new survey to measure beliefs about a range of economic, political, and cultural consequences of immigration. When economic self-interest is broadened to include concerns about the fiscal burdens created by immigration, beliefs about these economic effects strongly correlate with immigration attitudes and explain a significant share of the difference in support for highly versus low-skilled immigration. Our results suggest that previous work underestimates the importance of economic self-interest as a source of immigration policy preferences and attitudes more generally. [Supporting Information]

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2017. “Why Don’t People Vote in U.S. Primary Elections? Assessing Theoretical Explanations for Reduced Participation.” Electoral Studies 45: 119-129.

Abstract: Primary election participation in the United States is consistently lower than general election turnout. Despite this well-documented voting gap, our knowledge is limited as to the individual-level factors that explain why some general election voters do not show up for primary contests. We provide important insights into this question, using a novel new survey to examine three theoretical perspectives on participation never before empirically applied to primary races. Compared to general elections, we find that for U.S. House primary elections sizable segments of the electorate consider the stakes lower and the costs of voting greater, feel less social pressure to turn out and hold exclusionary beliefs about who should participate, and are more willing to defer to those who know and care more about the contests. Multivariate analysis reveals that these attitudes explain validated primary election participation. These findings point to new directions for future research. [Supporting Information]

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2016. “A Field Experiment Shows that Subtle Linguistic Cues Might Not Affect Voter Behavior.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(26): 7112-7117.

Abstract: One of the most important recent developments in social psychology is the discovery of minor interventions that have large and enduring effects on behavior. A leading example of this class of results is in the work by Bryan et al. [Bryan CJ, Walton GM, Rogers T, Dweck CS (2011) Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 108(31):12653–12656], which shows that administering a set of survey items worded so that subjects think of themselves as voters (noun treatment) rather than as voting (verb treatment) substantially increases political participation (voter turnout) among subjects. We revisit these experiments by replicating and extending their research design in a large-scale field experiment. In contrast to the 11 to 14% point greater turnout among those exposed to the noun rather than the verb treatment reported in the work by Bryan et al., we find no statistically significant difference in turnout between the noun and verb treatments (the point estimate of the difference is approximately zero). Furthermore, when we benchmark these treatments against a standard get out the vote message, we find that both are less effective at increasing turnout than a much shorter basic mobilization message. In sum, in our experiments, we find no evidence that describing a subject as a voter rather than as voting has a positive relative or absolute effect on subject behavior. In our conclusion, we detail how our study differs from the work by Bryan et al. and discuss how our results might be interpreted. [Supporting Information]

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2016. "Reply to Bryan et al.: Variation in Context Unlikely Explanation of Nonrobustness of Noun versus Verb Results." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113(43): E6549-E6550. [Supporting Information]

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Marc Meredith, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2015. "Can Incarcerated Felons Be (Re)integrated into the Political System? Results from a Field Experiment." American Journal of Political Science 59(4): 912-926.

Awarded Best Paper for Work Presented at the Previous APSA Meeting by APSA Public Policy Section, 2014

Abstract: How does America’s high rate of incarceration shape political participation? Few studies have examined the direct effects of incarceration on patterns of political engagement. Answering this question is particularly relevant for the 93% of formerly incarcerated individuals who are eligible to vote. Drawing on new administrative data from Connecticut, we present evidence from a field experiment showing that a simple informational outreach campaign to released felons can recover a large proportion of the reduction in participation observed following incarceration. The treatment effect estimates imply that efforts to reintegrate released felons into the political process can substantially reduce the participatory consequences of incarceration. [Supporting Information] [Replication Data]

Biggers, Daniel R., and Michael J. Hanmer. 2015. “Who Makes Voting Convenient? Explaining the Adoption of Early and No-Excuse Absentee Voting in the American States.” State Politics & Policy Quarterly 15(2): 192-210.

SEE BLOG POSTING ON THIS ARTICLE AT THE LSE AMERICAN POLITICS AND POLICY BLOG

Abstract: Recent elections have witnessed substantial debate regarding the degree to which state governments facilitate access to the polls. Despite this newfound interest, however, many of the major reforms aimed at increasing voting convenience (i.e., early voting and no-excuse absentee voting) were implemented over the past four decades. Although numerous studies examine their consequences (on turnout, the composition of the electorate, and/or electoral outcomes), we know significantly less about the factors leading to the initial adoption of these policies. We attempt to provide insights into such motivations using event history analysis to identify the impact of political and demographic considerations, as well as diffusion mechanisms, on which states opted for easier ballot access. We find that adoption responded to some factors signaling the necessity of greater voting convenience in the state, and that partisanship influenced the enactment of early voting but not no-excuse absentee voting procedures. [Supporting Information]

Park, Won-Ho, Michael J. Hanmer, and Daniel R. Biggers. 2014. “Ecological Inference Under Unfavorable Conditions: Straight and Split-Ticket Voting in Diverse Settings and Small Samples.” Electoral Studies 36: 192-203.

Abstract: Problems of ecological inference have long troubled political scientists. Thomsen’s (1987) estimator for ecological inference has been shown to produce estimates close to the individual level estimates for transitions across elections, but it is unknown how well it performs under unfavorable conditions. We fill this void by testing the estimator as the across-unit variance increases and introduce a new procedure to examine the bias of the estimates as the number of aggregate units decreases. Looking at partisan voting patterns across races within the 2000 general election in Florida counties and taking advantage of ballot image data to study straight-ticket voting we demonstrate that the estimator performs well in both heterogeneous societies and when the number of aggregate units is limited. [Supporting Information]

Gerber, Alan S., Kevin Arceneaux, Cheryl Boudreau, Conor M. Dowling, D. Sunshine Hillygus, Thomas R. Palfrey, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2014. Reporting Guidelines for Experimental Research: A Report from the Experimental Research Section Standards Committee.” Journal of Experimental Political Science 1(1): 81-98.

Abstract: The Standards Committee of the Experimental Research section of the American Political Science Association has produced reporting guidelines that aim to increase the clarity of experimental research reports. This paper describes the Committee’s rationale for the guidelines it developed and includes our Recommended Reporting Standards for Experiments (Laboratory, Field, Survey). It begins with a content analysis of current reporting practices in published experimental research. Although researchers report most important aspects of their experimental designs and data, we find substantial omissions that could undermine the clarity of research practices and the ability of researchers to assess the validity of study conclusions. With the need for reporting guidelines established, the report describes the process the Committee used to develop the guidelines, the feedback received during the comment period, and the rationale for the final version of the guidelines.

Gerber, Alan S., Gregory A. Huber, Daniel R. Biggers, and David J. Hendry. 2014. “Ballot Secrecy Concerns and Voter Mobilization: New Experimental Evidence about Message Source, Context, and the Duration of Mobilization Effects.” American Politics Research 42(5): 896-923.

Abstract: Recent research finds that doubts about the integrity of the secret ballot as an institution persist among the American public. We build on this finding by providing novel field experimental evidence about how information about ballot secrecy protections can increase turnout among registered voters who had not previously voted. First, we show that a private group’s mailing designed to address secrecy concerns modestly increased turnout in the highly contested 2012 Wisconsin gubernatorial recall election. Second, we exploit this and an earlier field experiment conducted in Connecticut during the 2010 congressional midterm election season to identify the persistent effects of such messages from both governmental and non-governmental sources. Together, these results provide new evidence about how message source and campaign context affect efforts to mobilize previous non-voters by addressing secrecy concerns, as well as show that attempting to address these beliefs increases long-term participation. [Supporting Information]

Biggers, Daniel R. 2012. “Can a Social Issue Proposition Increase Political Knowledge? Campaign Learning and the Educative Effects of Direct Democracy.” American Politics Research 40(6): 998-1025.

Abstract: Proponents of direct democracy contend that the institution increases political knowledge, but limited evidence supports this assertion over a single election. Previous studies of the relationship, however, do not account for the heterogeneous effects of each proposition and employ political knowledge scales that insufficiently rely on information directly related to political campaigns. I address these limitations by looking at the issue content of each ballot measure and using the 2006 and 2008 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies (CCES), which contain numerous voting-relevant and policy-oriented questions from which to construct an improved measurement of actual campaign learning. Although I find no effect attributable to the total number of measures on the ballot, those addressing social issues, because they are well known, highly salient, and tap into existing social cleavages, do exhibit the hypothesized effect on political knowledge. I discuss the implications of these findings in the conclusion. [Supporting Information]

Biggers, Daniel R. 2011. “When Ballot Issues Matter: Social Issue Ballot Measures and Their Impact on Turnout.” Political Behavior 33(1): 3-25.

Abstract: Evidence for whether direct democracy positively affects turnout is mixed, which can be attributed to a theoretical ambiguity about the proper way to measure the institution. The most common measure, a count of the number of initiatives on the ballot, is incomplete, because it unrealistically assumes that all propositions have an equal impact on turnout and focuses exclusively on initiatives. These deficiencies are addressed by looking at the issue content of all ballot measures. I find that the number of social issues on the ballot, because they are highly salient, tap into existing social cleavages, help to overcome barriers to voting, and fit within a framework of expressive choice, had a positive impact on turnout for all midterm and some presidential elections since 1992. In contrast to previous findings, however, the total number of propositions on the ballot was rarely associated with an increase in turnout. I discuss the implications of these findings in the conclusion. [Supporting Information]