CLOSE OBSERVERS of America know that the rules of its democracy often favour Republicans. But the party’s biggest advantage may be one that is rarely discussed: turnout is just 60%, low for a rich country. Polls show that non-voters—both people uninterested in voting and those blocked by legal or economic hurdles—mainly belong to groups that tend to back Democrats.

What would change if America became the 22nd country to make voting mandatory? To estimate non-voters’ views, The Economist used the Co-operative Congressional Election Study (CCES), a 64,600-person poll led by Harvard University. The survey includes demographic data such as race and age, as well as participants’ recollections of whom they voted for and verified records of whether they voted. In general, voters and non-voters from similar backgrounds had similar opinions. Using a method called “multilevel regression and post-stratification”, the relationships between demography and vote choices can be used to project state-level election results—and to estimate what might have happened in the past under different rules.

Shrinking audiences and political coverage cutbacks threaten newspapers’ ability to inform the public about politics. Despite substantial theorizing and widespread concern, it remains unclear how much the public can learn from these struggling news sources. I link measures of the newspaper-produced information environment with large-scale surveys that capture the public’s awareness of their member of Con- gress. This shows the contemporary effects of newspapers on representative-specific awareness are one-half to one-third estimates from earlier eras. Despite this decline newspapers remain an important contributor to political awareness in a changing media landscape, even for those with limited political interest. These results estab- lish broader scope conditions under which the public can learn from the media environment.

What does women's presence in political decision-making bodies signal to citizens? Do these signals differ based on the body's policy decisions? And do women and men respond to women's presence similarly? Though scholars have demonstrated the substantive and symbolic benefits of women's representation, little work has examined how women's presence affects citizens' perceptions of democratic legitimacy. We test the relationship between representation and legitimacy beliefs through survey experiments on a nationally representative sample of U.S. citizens. First, we find that women's equal presence legitimizes decisions that go against women's interests. We show suggestive evidence that this effect is particularly pronounced among men, who tend to hold less certain views on women's rights. Second, across decision outcomes and issue areas, women's equal presence legitimizes decision-making processes and confers institutional trust and acquiescence. These findings add new theoretical insights into how, when, and for whom inclusive representation increases perceptions of democratic legitimacy.

Redistricting poses a potential harm to American voters in limiting choice and accountability at the polls. Although voters still technically retain their right to contact their congressional representatives in order to seek redress for their concerns, we argue that the confusion created when redistricting divides ZIP Codes confounds the constituent-representative link and leaves a substantive minority of voters in representational limbo. ZIP Codes perform a functional role by organizing groups of residents into easily accessible blocs for mail service. However, congressional districts split the ZIP Codes of over 100 million Americans. Split- ting ZIP Codes across multiple congressional districts leads to constituents being confused about who their member is and greater inefficiencies for representatives to mail to their constituents. Additionally, several members of Congress actively ignore out-of-district mail. We posit that constituents from ZIP Codes split by multiple congressional districts will be less likely to recognize, contact, or ideologically identify with their representative. We conducted a population overlap analysis between ZIP Codes and congressional dis- tricts to determine the impact of splitting ZIP Codes on a battery of items on the Cooperative Congressional Election Survey (CCES) from 2008–2016. Our analysis provides evidence that splitting ZIP Codes across multiple congressional districts impairs the constituent-representative link. Finally, we demonstrate the preservation of ZIP Codes in redistricting is feasible and produces a substantive reduction in partisan bias.

Ranked-choice voting (RCV) manufactures an electoral majority in a fragmented candidate field. For RCV to pass at referendum, part of a reform coalition must be willing to lose election to the other part of that coalition, typically an out-of-power major party. A common enemy enables this sort of coalition by assuring (a) the out-of-power party of sufficient transfer votes to win and (b) a winner that junior reform partners prefer to the incumbent. I test this logic against the November 2016 adoption of RCV in Maine. First, I show that the most recent, runner-up party overwhelmingly supplied votes to the ‘yes’ side. I also show elite endorsements tending to come from this party, albeit not exclusively. Then I show a drift in the mass of public opinion, such that reform partners could coordinate. RCV is likely to find favour where voter preferences are polarised and lopsided, and where multiple candidates split the larger ideological bloc.

Widespread concern that voter identification laws suppress turnout among racial and ethnic minorities has made empirical evaluations of these laws crucial. But problems with administrative records and survey data impede such evaluations. We replicate and extend Hajnal, Lajevardi, and Nielson’s 2017 article, which concludes that voter ID laws decrease turnout among minorities, using validated turnout data from five national surveys conducted between 2006 and 2014. We show that the results of their article are a product of data inaccuracies, the presented evidence does not support the stated conclusion, and alternative model specifications produce highly variable results. When errors are corrected, one can recover positive, negative, or null estimates of the effect of voter ID laws on turnout, precluding firm conclusions. We highlight more general problems with available data for research on election administration, and we identify more appropriate data sources for research on state voting laws’ effects.

Legislative staff link Members of Congress and their constituents, theoretically facilitating democratic representation. Yet, little research has examined whether Congressional staff actually recognize the preferences of their Members’ constituents. Using an original survey of senior US Congressional staffers, we show that staff systematically mis-estimate constituent opinions. We then evaluate the sources of these misperceptions, using observational analyses and two survey experiments. Staffers who rely more heavily on conservative and business interest groups for policy information have more skewed perceptions of constituent opinion. Egocentric biases also shape staff perceptions. Our findings complicate assumptions that Congress represents constituent opinion, and help to explain why Congress often appears so unresponsive to ordinary citizens. We conclude that scholars should focus more closely on legislative aides as key actors in the policymaking process, both in the United States and across other advanced democracies.