Brad Lockerbie

East Carolina University | ECU · Department of Political Science

Objective The objective of this study was to examine the relationship between viewing late night political humor and political participation. Methods We used various measures of viewership of late night talk shows and political participation in the 2012 American National Election Studies (ANES) data set. Results We show that viewership of “Late N...

A Recap of the 2016 Election Forecasts - Volume 50 Issue 2 - James E. Campbell, Helmut Norpoth, Alan I. Abramowitz, Michael S. Lewis-Beck, Charles Tien, James E. Campbell, Robert S. Erikson, Christopher Wlezien, Brad Lockerbie, Thomas M. Holbrook, Bruno Jerôme, Véronique Jerôme-Speziari, Andreas Graefe, J. Scott Armstrong, Randall J. Jones, Alfred...

Economic Pessimism and Political Punishment - Volume 49 Issue 4 - Brad Lockerbie

Objectives The purpose of this article is to examine the relationship between religion and voting behavior and political attitudes. Moreover, this work examines the distinction between black and white evangelicals. Methods This article makes use of regression and logit analysis of the American National Election Studies of 1992 through 2008. Results...

At its most basic level, this forecast of the 2012 presidential election performed successfully. The model forecasted the reelection of President Obama. With 53.8% of the two-party vote; he ended up with 51.8% (as of November 28, 2012), yielding an error of 2.0 percentage points. Prior to 2012 the average out-of-sample forecasting error was 3.34 po...

Do our models of political behavior bear any resemblance to reality? Forecasting elections is one opportunity to assess whether our models of voting behavior are accurate. Over the past few decades, political scientists have been willing to put themselves out there to forecast elections. Explaining a past event allows us the ability to retrofit our...

At the start of the 2008 election cycle, not many observers or analysts would have predicted that Senator Elizabeth Dole would lose her seat. Indeed, in their January 2008 analysis of U.S. Senate races, the non-partisan Cook Political Report rated Dole’s seat “solid Republican.” However, the dynamics in North Carolina began to change and Dole was o...

The October 2008 issue of PS published a symposium of presidential and congressional forecasts made in the summer leading up to the election. This article is an assessment of the accuracy of their models. At its most basic level, the Economic Expectations and Time-for-a-Change Model performed well in that it successfully forecast a Barack Obama vic...

This article is about a simple two-variable equation forecasting presidential election outcomes and a three-variable equation forecasting seat change in House elections. Over the past two decades a cottage industry of political forecasting has developed (Lewis-Beck and Rice 1992; Campbell and Garand 2000). At the 1994 meeting of the Southern Politi...

This work examines the role of Retrospective and prospective economic evaluations on vote choice across the presidency, House, and Senate elections. Prospective economic evaluations are the more consequential. Moreover, these economic evaluations also play a role in explaining changes in party identification. Last, economic expectations are strong...

Objectives. Our purpose was to develop and test several hypotheses concerning the impact of poll-question wording on aggregate public support for war. We drew on general insights from framing theory and specific insights from various theories of public support for war. Methods. Our database consisted of two collections of aggregate poll results dra...

Since at least the late 1970s, we have had to grapple with the question of how economics influences politics. Before scholars made use of extensive survey research, most observers, noting the relationship between the state of the economy and election outcomes, argued that individual voters were driven by their own financial concerns. Using survey d...

Using Euro-Barometers 20 and 21, this research examines the role of economic discontent in promoting disenchantment with democracy in Great Britain, France, West Germany, and Italy. Both cognitive and affective economic evaluations have a strong effect on one's level of political alienation. Those who believe the government will have a negative eff...

There are two components to my model of presidential election forecasting: Given the enormous amount of work on voting behavior that finds prospective assessments of the economy to be strongly related to vote choice (e.g., Abramowitz 1985; Kuklinski and West 1981; Lewis-Beck 1988; Lockerbie 1992), I make use of a prospective economic item from the...

Using the American National Election Studies of 1990, 1994, and 1998, we can see that there is an incumbency advantage for governors, senators, and members of the House of Representatives. There is, however, some variability to the magnitude of the incumbency advantage. Moreover, it appears to follow a rather sensible pattern. It appears to be stro...

Forecasting provides the opportunity to put one's self to the test. Are our models of voting behavior accurate? It is easy to retrofit an explanation for what has happened in the past. Taking a chance on a forecast that can go wrong does not afford us that luxury. Forecasting can also teach a lesson in humility. Over the last decade, political scie...

span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: Arial; color: #000000;" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Heading into the 2002 elections, Georgia was the only state that had not elected a Republican governor, and the state legislature continued to be held by Democrats. Organizationally, on the other hand, both parties had made dramatic strides since the 19...

Party identification has long been thought to be the unmoved mover of political evaluations. The research presented here shows that party identification is changeable. In fact, over a 2-year period (1990-1992), we can see that there is a substantively important amount of movement. MacKuen, Erikson, and Stimson argue that expectations, not retrospec...

The power of incumbency in congressional elections is widely accepted. Is there a partisan component to the incumbency advantage? The theories of divided government push in two directions. Jacobson's argument would lead one to believe that the Democrats should be advantaged. Fiorina's argument would lead one to believe that there should be no diffe...

The power of incumbency in congressional elections is widely accepted. Is there a partisan component to the incumbency advantage? The theories of divided government push in two directions. Jacobson's argument would lead one to believe that the Democrats should be advantaged. Fiorina's argument would lead one to believe that there should be no diffe...

We propose and test an integrative multivariate model predicting aggregate annual presidential success on House and Senate roll calls from 1953 to 1994. We incorporate presidency-centered, Congress-centered, agenda, and timing variables in our analysis. Our results show that there are important similarities and dissimilarities across legislative ch...

The conventional wisdom of national elections suggests that there are electoral costs associated with opposing declarations of war. However, an alternative literature contends that the negative electoral consequences of waging war may be borne by legislators who supported war, especially those members of the majority party. The authors test this as...

The incumbency advantage and its cause(s) is a question that political scientists have addressed for several years. This article looks at one piece of the puzzle: the sophomore surge. Using the American National Election Panel Studies of 1956-1960 and 1972-1976, I examine three possible scenarios for the sophomore surge: conversion, mobilization, a...

Although the role of political parties in structuring vote choice has become considerably weaker in the last 30 years, we find that parties continue to be active organizations and contact one-fifth to one-quarter of the electorate, an activity that has important consequences. Specifically, when contacted by the parties, individuals have a greater p...

This study delineates the impact of a member′s personal attributes, constituency characteristics, and party affiliation on willingness to support public funding of abortions in select instances for economically disadvantaged women. Our analysis of roll-call voting on H.R. 2990 (101st Congress) demonstrates that, while party is an important cue for...

span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: Arial; color: #000000;" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"This research addresses the question of what factors influence policy responsiveness by members of Congress. Data from the 95th and 96th sessions of Congress and the 1978 American National Election Study are employed to test two possible influences on p...

span style="font-size: 100%; font-family: Arial; color: #000000;" data-sheets-value="{"1":2,"2":"Robert A. Bernstein\u2019s comment on my paper asks some intriguing questions and raises some important concerns that should be addressed. First, I will discuss the selection procedure for the roll-call votes. Second, I will discuss the interpretation o...

The research presented in this article concerns the time frame of the electorate. Do voters look to the past, the future, or both when deciding how to vote in presidential elections? An analysis of the American National Election Studies of 1956 through 1988 supports the argument that voters look both backward and forward when deciding for whom to v...

Recent work on voting behavior suggests that both retrospective and prospective evaluations are important components of vote choice. To test the generalizability of the prospective model, (1) the same model of voting behavior is applied to groups of differing cognitive abilities, (2) a comparison of the extent to which each group extrapolates from...

Economics has long been thought to influence vote choice. Unfortunately, the temporal pattern of economic evaluations is little studied. Using the Senate elections of 1956 through 1988, this research presents an assessment of the role of retrospective and prospective evaluations on vote choice. The findings of this research support the argument tha...

How does question wording affect the results of polls? How can we distinguish question wording effects from genuine change? In this analysis, we make use of a series of polls concerning President Reagan's policy toward Nicaragua. We identify five variations in wording in the survey items that have been used on this topic, and we find evidence that...

In Western European studies, general investigations of mass political participation are an established tradition. However, these efforts have not drawn from the vigorous current of research on economics and politics. Specifically for Western Europe, there exists no systematic work on economic conditions and political participation (conventional or...

In the past few years, a new direction has been taken in the study of economics and politics. Researchers have begun to focus on the role of prospective economic evaluations. The research presented here applies the prospective model to changes in partisanship. Regardless of the time period examined, these prospective economic evaluations exert an i...

Different methodological approaches sometimes lead to different substantive conclusions. Nowhere is this more evident than in studies relating assessments of presidential skill to legislative success. Scholars of the historical, traditionalist school of presidency research argue that presidents who are perceived to be adept at getting what they wan...

Polls taken in late 1980 and 1984 varied by up to 20 points in the spread they reported between Democratic and Republican identifiers. We found three systematic and sizable differences across polls: polls that sample only voters, polls that emphasize "today" or the present in their question wording, and polls that are taken close to election day (a...