State governments are tasked with making important policy decisions in the United States. How do state legislators use their public communications—particularly social media—to engage with policy debates? Due to previous data limitations, we lack systematic information about whether and how state legislators publicly discuss policy and how this behavior varies across contexts. Using Twitter data and state-of-the-art topic modeling techniques, we introduce a method to study state legislator policy priorities and apply the method to 15 US states in 2018. We show that we are able to accurately capture the policy issues discussed by state legislators with substantially more accuracy than existing methods. We then present initial findings that validate the method and speak to debates in the literature. The paper concludes by discussing promising avenues for future state politics research using this new approach.

In the United States, people are asked to vote on a myriad of candidates, offices, and ballot questions. The result is lengthy ballots that are time intensive and complicated to fill out. In this paper, we utilize a new analytical technique harnessing ballot scanner data from a statewide midterm election to estimate the effects of ballot complexity on voting errors. We find that increases in ballot length, increases in the number of local ballot questions, and increases in the number of candidates listed for single offices significantly increase the odds of encountering ballot marking and scanning errors. Our findings indicate that ballots’ characteristics can help election administrators make Election Day planning and resource allocation decisions that decrease ballot errors and associated wait times to vote while increasing the reliability of election results and voter confidence in the electoral process.

This work explores the ways that federalism exacerbates gender inequality among women by explaining the adoption of domestic violence laws across different states in the context of policy diffusion. Using an original dataset of domestic violence firearm law (DVFL) enactments across all 50 states in the United States from 1990 to 2017, we analyze the circumstances under which states will adopt these laws. Using a set of political and demographic indicators as independent variables, we find evidence that state and federal factors influence policy adoption. In particular, the number of gun-related homicides, partisan control of the legislature, citizen ideology, federal policy, and election years each influence the likelihood of DVFL enactments. We find support for the effects of vertical policy diffusion on initial enactment of federal laws in this domain, but not for reauthorizations, which raises important questions about the continuous influence of the federal government on state policies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has upended every aspect of American life. State governments responded quickly to protect public health and stabilize overwhelmed hospital systems. The most restrictive policy, the stay-at-home order, was seen by public health officials as a cornerstone of successful state mitigation strategies. But like many aspects of contemporary politics, support for these efforts took on a distinctly partisan hue. In this paper, I argue that party politics significantly affected state policy responses to COVID-19, which in turn limited mitigation efforts. To this point, I first demonstrate that Democratic governors were faster and more likely to adopt stay-at-home orders than Republicans. Next, using a synthetic control approach, I show that these orders caused residents to practice greater social distancing. Finally, I find that greater social distancing worked to “flattened the curve” by limiting the growth of COVID-19 cases. Together these findings show how party politics affected state pandemic responses and have important long-term implications as states begin lifting restrictions.

Many important traits of state legislatures vary across chambers within a state. Yet according to existing typologies in the comparative study of bicameralism, the 49 bicameral American state legislatures would be deemed quite homogeneous. To resolve this disjuncture, I identify a novel dimension of bicameralism that distinguishes among state legislatures by capturing the extent to which the two chambers serve as meaningfully different venues for influence. Based on this framework, I develop an index of bicameral “distinctiveness” rooted in three traits that speak to policy influence across chambers: the ratio of seats, bipartisan representation, and constituency dissimilarity. This measure reveals sizable variation across states and a conspicuous geographic pattern, with considerably greater bicameral distinctiveness in the Eastern United States. In turn, I assess the construct validity of this measure, showing how patterns of second chamber bill amendment vary systematically with the level of bicameral distinctiveness.

In 2005, Missouri and Tennessee tightened eligibility for their public health insurance programs, resulting in widespread coverage losses. Leveraging county-level variation in subsequent disenrollment, I show that voters in Tennessee punished the incumbent governor for the Medicaid cuts. In Missouri, by contrast, disenrollment had no impact on the subsequent gubernatorial election but did increase support for Democrats in 2006 state legislative elections, possibly due to the strategic entry and exit of candidates. In both states, the loss of Medicaid coverage was associated with lower support for Democratic presidential candidates, although these declines appear part of a longer-term trend that preceded the coverage loss. The results speak to the potential political costs of welfare spending cuts and the electoral consequences of reducing income-targeted social programs.

This study seeks to explain state adoptions of same-day registration (SDR), with a focus on determining whether the Democratic (Republican) Party’s support of (resistance to) this impactful voting reform is driven by strategic electoral considerations. I find that states have an increased probability of enacting the reform when legislative Democrats are in the precarious position that comes with having just experienced minority status in one or both chambers. Relatedly, I demonstrate that the presence of a Republican legislature does not make adoption less likely until the size of the Black population reaches a certain threshold. In fact, provided the Black population is small enough, Republican control of the legislature encourages reform. The results offer conflicting evidence, however, that large Latino populations deter the GOP from establishing SDR. Considered together, the results cast doubt on the claim that either party’s position is informed by principle alone.

Public mask use has emerged as a key tool in response to COVID-19. We develop a classification of statewide mask mandates that reveals variation in their scope and timing. Some US states quickly mandated wearing of face coverings in most public spaces, whereas others issued narrow mandates or no mandate at all. We consider how differences in COVID-19 epidemiological indicators and partisan politics affect when states adopted broad mask mandates, starting with the earliest mandates in April 2020 and continuing through the end of 2020. The most important predictor is the presence of a Republican governor, delaying statewide indoor mask mandates an estimated 98.0 days on average. COVID-19 indicators such as confirmed case or death rates are much less important predictors. This finding highlights a key challenge to public efforts to increase mask wearing, one of the most effective tools for preventing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 while restoring economic activity.

During the most recent round of redistricting, many states have enacted a number of reforms to their mapmaking practices. One reform that has received increased attention in recent years is a ban on prison gerrymandering—the practice of counting incarcerated individuals in prisons instead of their home addresses. Eleven states drew districts while counting incarcerated persons in their homes after the 2020 Census. Though substantial research has investigated redistricting practices, far less attention has been paid to empirically examining the effect of prison gerrymandering on elections. We seek to fill this void by evaluating the effect of New York’s ban on prison gerrymandering on state legislative elections between 2002 and 2020. We find that altering how the prison population is counted, indeed, altered the electoral dynamics across the state.

I examine the relationship between labor unions and voter turnout in the American states. Though it is well known that unions increase turnout directly, we know less about their indirect effects. Moreover, the indirect effects may consist of nonmember mobilization and aggregate strength. To examine the direct and indirect mechanisms, I analyze both state-level panel data and individual-level data with a multilevel approach. First, my panel analysis shows that unions are positively associated with turnout as expected. Yet, the association is observed only in midterm elections, but not in presidential elections. Second, more importantly, my individual-level analysis suggests that indirect nonmember mobilization and indirect aggregate strength are positively related to turnout, while direct member mobilization is not. The findings imply that the direct effects are limited and, thus, that decreasing levels of voter turnout due to recently declining union membership come primarily from indirect mobilization rather than direct mobilization.

While many scholars and analysts have observed a decline in civility in recent years, there have been few examinations of how political, economic, and institutional structures may partially explain inter-state differences in these trends. We suggest three potential explanations: (1) institutional structures, such as legislative professionalism and gubernatorial power, have created different contexts in which legislators build and maintain inter-personal relationships; (2) partisan competition has led to less bipartisan cooperation and contributed to strained relationships between members of different parties; and, (3) economic inequity and change has contributed to economic anxiety among citizens, contributing to conflict in legislative bodies as elected officials attempt to navigate emerging policy challenges. To test these explanations, we develop an innovative measure of civility using a national survey of lobbyists and a partial Multilevel Regression and Poststratification (MRP) design. Findings suggest that there is some validity to all three explanations, and signifying that civility is at least partially a result of structural issues.

The power of conference committees is well documented and studied by scholars of the US Congress. But little is known about politics of bicameral agreement within state legislatures. Leveraging variation across states, I explore the conditions under which legislative leaders prefer formal bicameral conference negotiations to informal talks to reach final legislative agreements. Deploying an original dataset of state legislative decisions between 2005 and 2018, I find that ideologically cohesive majority parties favor the use of conferences, disproportionately relying on them to reconcile bicameral differences on salient measures. Majority parties, however, refrain from going to conference in those assemblies that empower the minority party to select its preferred conferees. The interaction of chamber rules and partisan dynamics thus shapes the contours of legislative agreements in systematic ways across the states.

Do attempts to level the financial playing field lead more candidates to run for office? In theory, public financing should increase competition, presumably because additional funding from taxpayers motivates more challengers to run for office. I provide a novel test of this logic with data on all candidates running for state legislature across all US states between 1976 and 2018. The results suggest that public financing exerts a generally positive effect on the total number of candidates running for state legislative office and specifically increases the number of candidates running in elections for every additional year after the passage of public financing. This effect is amplified in states that offer greater amounts of public funds. I conclude that the availability of public financing can be an equalizing force in elections, and that state legislative elections continue to experience increased competition in the years after the introduction of public financing.

This article examines how the racial composition of newsrooms and that of the news audiences influence campaign coverage of candidates. Using observational data compiled from multiple sources for analyses, our findings suggest that candidate trait coverage is influenced by what we term racial congruence at two levels. First, when the number of non-white journalists increases in newsroom, white candidates are more likely to receive positive trait coverage than non-white candidates, which is likely compounded by multiple constraints racial minority journalists face in the newsroom. This racial congruence phenomenon is also present in areas with large non-white adult populations. The larger this population, the higher is favorable news coverage for non-white candidates compared to white candidates. The race of candidates, journalists, and audiences does not have a combined effect on news coverage, indicating that the effects of more diverse newsroom members are not necessarily driven by market incentives.

Do policymakers learn from the policy experiences of other governments, and if so, what do they learn? A long-established normative claim suggests that intergovernmental learning can and should occur among the US states, which serve as “laboratories of democracy” for the nation. We put this claim to a tough test, comparing the influences on the diffusion of instrumental Targeted Regulation of Abortion Providers (TRAP) laws with that of more symbolic abortion regulation, from 1993 to 2016. We find evidence of substantive intergovernmental learning in policy diffusion even for abortion regulation—but only for instrumental abortion regulation. On symbolic abortion policy, states appear to learn mainly political lessons. Furthermore, proponents and opponents appear to learn different lessons in these diffusions, with loss aversion motivating opponents especially highly. Our results suggest that policymakers have a sophisticated understanding of the differences among policies’ goals and act strategically in pursuit of those goals.

We use the case of education interest groups to examine how and when policy changes lead interest groups to polarize in their support for political parties. Using over 145,000 campaign contributions from all 50 states from 2000 to 2017, we test whether the passage of private school choice, charter laws, and labor retrenchment policies led to the polarization of education interest groups over time. In 2000, teachers unions were the dominant group and mostly aligned with Democrats. Meanwhile, Republicans lacked support from any education groups. This pattern was consistent across states. Over time, coalitions in some states became polarized, meaning unions grew even more aligned with Democrats and reform groups with Republicans, while other states did not experience such polarization. We show that private school choice programs, but not labor retrenchment or charter laws, contributed to this changing partisan alignment. Our findings demonstrate that policy feedback can shape both the electoral mobilization and party alignments of interest groups.

Theories that explain the power of legislative leaders have been developed for the U.S. Congress and lower chambers of state legislatures, but they have not been tested for state senates, even though senate leaders can be quite influential. Following Mooney (2013a), I develop a new numerical index score measuring the formal power of the top chamber-elected leader of each state senate from 1995 through 2010. I then use the data to test various hypotheses explaining variation in the power of legislative leaders. The results uncover partial evidence for conditional party government theory, but only for senates that elect their own president. When the lieutenant governor serves as senate president, senators do not perceive their top chamber-elected leader as an officer able to best carry out their ideological, electoral, or policy objectives. This underscores crucial differences between senate chambers that elect their own presidents and those that do not.

State governments, often described as “laboratories of democracy,” design and implement many public policies, but this moniker also implies course correction when initial efforts fail. But how do states learn from failure? Existing hypotheses about policy learning and broad research capacity are insufficient. Using case studies of failed juvenile justice policies in Texas and Washington, I explore when failure acknowledgment occurs at all. I argue that a state’s bureaucratic capacity to gather data—distinct from its analytical capacity—is necessary for public officials to acknowledge failure, highlighting the impact of policy and institutional design on evidence-based policy making and policy corrections.

Representation frequently links state politics to policy. Current research, however, overlooks the interplay between bureaucratic and legislative representation and how local representation may be influenced by state policy environments. There is also a need to test current theories of state politics and policy, driven by the study of US federalism, in different national contexts to indicate how general such theories might be and to provide new insights into the study of US politics and policy. This article studies how gender representation and local policy implementation interacts with state environment factors to affect representation outcomes in K–12 education across 28 states in India. The research points to the generalizability of current theories of representation and state politics across national federal contexts, the conditional nature of the influence of bureaucratic representation on state policy implementation, and the need to better understand the interdependence of representation across political institutions.

Scholars posit that groups play an important role in the legislative process and legislator decision making, but find these questions difficult to empirically study due to the private information exchanges. This article exploits a legislative reporting institution to explore group involvement in policy making. In the California state legislature, extra-legislative individuals or organizations that write legislation and secure a legislator to author the bill may be listed as sponsors. Data come from California bill analyses and extend from 1993 to 2014. This group tactic is frequently used: 40% of bills introduced and over 60% of bills that become law list an extra-legislative sponsor. Group sponsorship is significantly related to passage, even after matching on a number of covariates. Legislators use fewer group bills and substitute out of group bills as they gain experience. Group input serves as an integral part of a legislative portfolio and the agenda-setting stage of legislative decision making.