THE END OF KENTUCKY’S DUAL PARTISANSHIP?

D. Stephen Voss, University of Kentucky

Democratic Attorney General Jack Conway entered the 2015 Kentucky gubernatorial race in a position of strength. He had put behind him his discouraging 2010 Senate loss to Rand Paul (Voss and Gross 2011) and won reelection a year later with more than 55% of the vote. His second term gained him name recognition, solid approval ratings, and a gubernatorial primary field devoid of high-profile challengers.

The Republican primary could not have been kinder to Conway. His eventual opponent, Louisville businessman Matt Bevin, had not led the GOP nomination battle for many months. He won by only 83 votes after one of the leading candidates faced an accusation of date rape, stemming from his college days. Bevin lacked ties to Kentucky’s Republican organization, and his one serious electoral effort was a quixotic Tea Party primary challenge to Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in 2014.

One clear disadvantage threatened Democrats: the “fundamentals.” The state’s electorate has drifted steadily rightward, a trend that had moved beyond presidential voting and approval ratings to show up in the party identification of registered voters. However, the tilt had not filtered down to state politics. Democrats captured all but one constitutional office in 2011 and handily beat back a 2014 effort by Republicans to seize control of the State House. Kentuckians appeared to exhibit the well-known dual partisanship once characteristic of Southern politics (Hadley 1985).

The trajectory of the general election, meanwhile, favored Democrat Conway. He enjoyed a strong advantage over Bevin in terms of campaign finance, whereas Bevin reportedly squabbled with his main outside backers—the Republican Governors Association—over how much money each should commit to the race. Bevin made questionable campaign decisions that concerned his allies, including two visits to Kentucky Democratic Party headquarters to complain about its campaign messages.

Polls—even those affiliated with the GOP—showed Conway in the lead. The margin of error technically made the race a tossup, but the results exhibited little variation across time or polling organizations, thereby ruling out a fluke caused by sampling error. Either the race was Conway’s to lose or systematic error was throwing off expectations. Both pundits and poll aggregators considered the race to be at least a tossup, if not leaning Democratic—and even the relatively upbeat message coming from Bevin promised little more than a narrow victory.

It was not narrow. Bevin crushed Conway 52.5% to 43.8%. Republicans won three other down-ticket posts, two by wider margins. Democrats retained a pair of statewide offices, but those narrow victories offered little consolation because they had been so mismatched. Incumbent Secretary of State Alison Lundergan Grimes—just off a well-financed battle against Mitch McConnell—won 51.2% to 48.8% over an obscure northern Kentucky state legislator. Attorney Andy Beshear was able to convert heavy financing and name recognition—borrowed from outgoing Governor Steve Beshear, his father—into a slim 50.1% tally.

The landslide Republican victories in Kentucky may have been unexpected, given all the portents of Democratic success, but they epitomize phenomena long discussed by political scientists. Therefore, they offer only limited insight about elections and voting behavior.

Spatial-Voting Models

Kentucky’s shift in party identification may explain recent Republican successes; however, between split tickets and “roll-off,” Kentuckians clearly choose among a party’s various candidates. Republican support in the 2015 contests ranged from more than 60% to less than 49%, variation that seems resistant to explanations rooted in an incumbent’s name recognition (i.e., the sitting auditor lost) or campaign finance (i.e., some losing Democrats outspent their opponents). Rather, the Kentucky election results speak to the importance of ideological positioning.

Judging from incarnations of the Bluegrass Poll taken in 2015, the state’s voters stand out in their conservatism on social and cultural issues (e.g., abortion, same-sex marriage, and environmental policy) compared to their moderation on issues of economic and domestic policy (e.g., minimum wage and health-care reform). Although Kentucky’s gubernatorial battle seemed a prime opportunity for a referendum on the Affordable Care Act, due to Governor Beshear’s use of unilateral executive action to expand Medicaid and implement an Obamacare exchange, a framing that could have helped the Democrats, controversies arose during the election season to frame the contest culturally. In particular, Bevin embraced Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who garnered publicity by refusing to issue same-sex marriage licenses. Controversy also swirled around Planned Parenthood’s trade in fetal tissue.

The two victorious Democrats stood out on hot-button issues. Whereas Conway refused to defend Kentucky’s ban on recognizing same-sex marriages, Beshear’s father hired a legal firm to mount the defense. Beshear polled better among center-right voters than other Democrats on the ticket. Grimes, meanwhile, garnered heavy criticism during her Senate campaign for distancing herself from President Obama and focusing on shoring up her support in rural Kentucky. Yet, she outperformed Conway most dramatically in eastern counties characterized by high levels of both government assistance and moral conservatism. Tacking to the center works.

Likely Voters

Identifying likely voters remains a challenge when making inferences about the electorate. Just as organizations varied in whether they captured the pro-Republican “Enthusiasm Gap” in 2010 and polls skewed away from the GOP in 2014 congressional contests, Republican mobilization outpaced expectations in Kentucky. The Secretary of State revised upward her turnout estimates on Election Day based on a late increase in absentee ballots.

Response Rates

Pollsters struggle with low response rates and, in some contexts, the willingness to answer survey questions may be less common among conservatives. Kentucky’s GOP voters seem especially likely to demur when approached for political information. Political scientist Benjamin Knoll of Centre College organized an exit poll in Boyle County, but even though his sampling frame targeted only actual voters, obviating the need for a likely voter adjustment, his results nevertheless tilted more toward Conway than those indicated by the county’s actual voting behavior (Knoll 2015).

In summary, Kentucky’s cultural conservatives were unexpectedly motivated, upsetting predictions.

REFERENCES

Hadley, Charles D. 1985. “Dual Partisan Identification in the South.” Journal of Politics 47 (1): 254-68.

Knoll, Benjamin. 2015. “2015 Boyle County Exit Poll: comparison of gubernatorial voting responses.” Information Knoll (last accessed 25 January 2016). https://informationknoll.wordpress.com/2015/11/10/2015-boyle-county-exit-poll-comparison-of-gubernatorial-voting-responses/

Voss, D. Stephen, and Donald Gross. 2011. “Poster Child for the Tea Party: Rand Paul of Kentucky.” In Tea Party Effects on 2010 U.S. Senate Elections, ed. William J. Miller and Jeremy D. Walling, 93-125. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

MISSISSIPPI AND THE GREAT WHITE SWITCHEROO

B. D’Andra Orey, Jackson State University

Ernest Dupree III, Jackson State University

In a typical state election year, the Mississippi governor’s race would have been the last topic of discussion, given the forgone conclusion that this seat is reserved for the Republican nominee. The 2015 Democratic primary, however, received national attention when an obscure truck driver, Robert Gray, emerged as the Democratic nominee. Most notably, Gray did not raise any campaign funds, except the 50 dollars he used for gas, and he did not vote, stating that he was “too busy.” Like most observers, Gray was shocked that he won the primary, telling the Associated Press that people voted for his candidacy because “they didn’t know me from anybody else.” This article argues that although the voters may not have known Gray, they did know something about each of the other two candidates: they were women. Vicki Slater is an attorney and Valerie Short is an obstetrician-gynecologist. According to the Secretary of State’s office, Slater spent approximately $300,000 and Short approximately $41,000. Despite having elected two female lieutenant governors, Mississippi has a track record of not supporting female candidates. The state has never elected a female governor or congressperson. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures (2015), women comprise 17.2% of the legislature, ranking Mississippi 38th in the nation.

One variable that may explain the dearth of women in political office is associated with feminine stereotypes, which are based on political beliefs and personality traits. Women are associated with being more nurturing, caring, and sensitive, which tends to align with communal traits. These traits run counter to the agentic roles associated with political candidates and, by extension, men (e.g., financial providers, aggressive, and domineering) (Eagly and Karau 2002; Huddy and Terkildsen 1993). Each female candidate attempted to alter these stereotypes by using campaign strategies that tend to be associated with male candidates. For example, Short often appeared in public wearing her army uniform to overemphasize her military service; Slater was compared to former Governor Kirk Fordice, a staunch conservative.

After the primary election, the Democrats were doomed in the general election despite their unknown candidate. In recent years, the Democrats have continued to see their percentage of the vote decline in each governor’s race since 1999—when the Democratic candidate barely won a plurality of 49.6% of the vote compared to 48.5% for the Republican, with the Independent candidate capturing the rest. In 2003, the Democratic candidate received only 46% of the vote. Similar results occurred in subsequent years, when the Democrats were able to amass only 42% in 2007; in 2011 and 2015, the percentages dropped to 39% and 32%, respectively. It is worth noting that the two most recent elections featured two African American candidates in the general election. Unlike in 2015, the 2011 candidate possessed political experience, having served as mayor of the third largest city in the state.

State legislative seats also were up for grabs. Unlike prior years—when the explanation was simply that the Republicans had made strides—an interesting case arose when two candidates received an identical number of votes. In a game of chance, Mississippi Republicans appeared to be simply one straw short of capturing a supermajority in the State House when an election was decided based on straw-drawing. The straw drawing was necessary because both the Democratic candidate, Bo Eaton, and Republican candidate, Mark Tullos, each received 4,589 votes. In Mississippi, ties are first settled by the drawing of straws. In this case, the Republican, Tullos, came up short. After the drawing, Tullos complained that voter irregularities had taken place and that five of Eaton’s votes should be thrown out. The law states that all election disputes are to be handled by the legislative body. When put to a vote, the House voted along party lines 67-49 to seat Tullos, thereby giving the Republicans the one vote that was needed to capture a super majority. The Republicans increased their advantage in the 122-seat State House from 67 to 75. The other elections, meanwhile, were predictable: the number of white Republicans continued to increase. Whereas the number of African Americans increased from 36 to 38, the number of white Democrats continued to decline, from 19 to 10. The biggest defeat for the Democrats was that of a 32-year incumbent, House Minority Leader Bobby Moak. The increase in white Republicans further solidified the “Great White Switch,” dating back to the 1964 presidential elections, in which white Republicans overwhelmingly supported the Republican presidential candidate for the first time since Reconstruction. The pattern in Mississippi is consistent with realignment theory—specifically, secular realignment—in that the Republican takeover of the legislature occurred slowly. It took almost 50 years to come to fruition, when the Republicans achieved a trifecta by securing the Office of the Governor and a majority in both the House and the Senate. The one positive note coming from the Democratic camp is that it was able to hold onto its lone statewide seat: Jim Hood remained the only Democratic Attorney General in the Deep South.

Similar to the rest of the South, the Republican legislators are all white and the Democrats are almost exclusively African Americans. Indeed, the Democratic Party saw the racial composition of whites decrease from 19 in 2011 to 10 in 2015. This deep racial divide has been attributed to the unintended consequences associated with the collaboration between African Americans and Republicans during redistricting to increase the number of African American seats. The average percentage of African Americans in districts with African American legislators is 69% (Orey, King, and Billingsley 2015). These overly “packed” districts make it almost impossible to influence the outcomes of adjacent white districts. Facing a similar problem, citizens of Alabama took action by filing a voting-rights lawsuit, arguing that such districts dilute African American opportunities to elect candidates of their choice.

Finally, an important and controversial issue on the ballot was an initiative that would force the legislature to improve the funding of public education. More than 200,000 citizens signed a petition calling for the initiative. Proponents complained that the legislature has funded public schools only twice in the last 20 years, resulting in a statewide shortfall of approximately $1.7 billion. According to the Clarion Ledger (2015), the initiative would allow people to sue if the state fails to “provide an adequate and efficient system of free public schools.” The most controversial issue related to the initiative was the language crafted by state legislators. Proponents contended that the ballot was confusing, calling for voters to cast two votes. Because the initiative called for changing the constitution, the first measure forced voters to make a decision to do so. The second measure was to choose to support either Initiative 42, proposed by citizens to fully fund public schools, or Initiative 42A, the alternative proposed by the State Legislature. According to the Secretary of State’s office, it was the first time in the history of Mississippi that the State Legislature attempted to offer a competing constitutional amendment to an initiative (Mississippi Secretary of State 2015).

Some viewed the issue as racially charged. The most explicit racial appeal, however, came from a state legislator, Lester “Bubba” Carpenter, who stated: “If 42 passes in its form, a judge in Hinds County, Mississippi—predominantly, it’s going to be a black judge—they’re going to tell us where the state education money goes” (Hall 2015).

In conclusion, the news from Mississippi is that African Americans and women continue to find it impossible to compete in statewide elections and that the Great White Switch is increasing. Additionally, in what may go down in history as the Great Switcheroo, the Republicans were able to capture a super majority in the House when members of the House voted along party lines to reverse a prior decision to seat the Democrat. Relative to race, the chair of the Democratic Party, Ricky Cole (who is white), used strong language, stating: “I believe in the people, that our people are good. It’s just sometimes our leaders try to exploit the xenophobia and the tensions and divides we have in Mississippi as a result of white supremacy’s legacy…. I think we are going to solve the problems of xenophobia and prejudice one heart at a time” (Pender 2015). If Cole’s prediction of changing hearts one at a time is accurate, it will be a long time before African Americans and women witness one of their own winning a statewide seat.

REFERENCES

Black, Earl., and Black, Merle. 2002. The Rise of Southern Republicans. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Eagly, Alice. H., and Karau, Steven. J. 2002. “Role Congruity Theory of Prejudice toward Female Leaders.” Psychological Review 109 (3): 573-98.

Hall, Sam. R. 2015. “Rep. Carpenter injects race into Initiative 42. Retrieved from http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/local/dailyledes/2015/10/1”8/rep-bubba-carpenter-black-judge-and-initiative-42/74196426/. October 19.

Huddy, Leonie., and Terkildsen, Nadya. 1993. “Gender Stereotypes and the Perception of Male and Female Candidates.” American Journal of Political Science 37 (1): 119.

Mississippi Secretary of State. 2015. “Mississippi’s Initiative Process.” Retrieved from http://www.sos.ms.gov/Elections-Voting/Pages/Mississippi’s-Initiative-Process.aspx

National Conference of State Legislatures. 2015. “Women in State Legislatures For 2015.” Retrieved from http://www.ncsl.org/legislators-staff/legislators/womens-legislative-network/women-in-state-legislatures-for-2015.aspx. November 4.

Orey, B. D’Andra, Athena M. King and Gloria Billingsley. 2015. “The Evolution and Devolution of the Voting Rights Act: Black Descriptive and Substantive Representation.” In Minority Voting in the United States, edited by Kyle L. Kreider and Thomas J. Baldino.

Pender, Geoff. 2015. “Legislature Turns Deeper Shade of Red.” Retrieved from http://www.clarionledger.com/story/news/2015/11/04/legislature-gop-majority/75151030/. November 4.

Royals, Kate. 2015. “We Support Initiative 42: Our View.” Retrieved from http://www.clarionledger.com/story/opinion/editorials/2015/10/24/we-support-initiative-42-our-view/74463490/. November 5.

HOW DID STORIES OF PROSTITUTES, PATRIOTS, AND THUGS AFFECT LOUISIANA VOTER CHOICE IN THE 2015 GOVERNOR’S RACE?

Michael Henderson, Louisiana State University

Martin Johnson, Louisiana State University

Key credited Louisiana’s unique political character to the idiosyncrasies of individual leaders and structural cleavages within the electorate (Key Reference Key1949). The state’s 2015 gubernatorial election demonstrated that personality continues to affect Louisiana elections. Despite an outcome that seems to contradict the state’s general shift toward Republicans in recent decades, the contest between Democratic State Representative John Bel Edwards and Republican US Senator David Vitter revealed that the partisan forces underlying this shift remain in place. We attributed Edwards’s victory to his success in defining the election around personality rather than policy issues. Louisiana should continue to be more favorable to Republican than Democratic candidates in future elections.

What led an electorate that leans Republican to support a Democrat? To understand the dynamics of decision among Louisiana voters, we fielded a panel survey with two waves of interviews conducted with the same respondents during the final weeks of the campaign. Qualtrics fielded the study online among Louisiana registered voters. The initial sample included 776 respondents who were interviewed November 9–13, 2015; 349 of those respondents were reinterviewed November 18–21, 2015. This article reports results from the sample of respondents who participated in both interviews.

The opt-in nature of the online panel, combined with non-random attrition between wave 1 and wave 2, means that this is a non-probability sample. It over-represents whites (91% of reinterviews) and Republicans (55%, including leaners). Democrats and Independents comprise 33% and 12% of the sample, respectively. Because it is a non-probability sample, our findings should not be interpreted as representative of Louisiana registered voters as a whole. Rather, the unique usefulness of these data is in the repeated interviews of the same respondents, which allowed us to track opinion dynamics at the individual level rather than in the aggregate. This approach allowed us to identify how the final weeks of the campaign affected trends in opinion because we could hold voters constant across the interviews—which is not possible when comparing independent cross sections.

Comparative Advantages

Respondents rated themselves and the candidates on a seven-point scale of symbolic political ideology that ranged from “very liberal” to “very conservative.” On average, those in our sample perceived themselves as ideologically closer to Vitter than to Edwards by approximately a half point. On most issues, respondents generally did not trust one candidate more than the other. However, they trusted the Republican more on immigration, guns, and homeland security. Unfortunately for Vitter, these are national issues and only a fraction of voters considered them important to their vote choice. We asked respondents to rank influences on their vote decision: national issues, state and local issues, character and experience, and party. The most important criteria were state and local issues (ranked first by 45.6% of the sample) and the candidate’s character and experience (ranked first by 35.8%).

The electorate’s focus on personal traits and state and local issues favored Edwards. His campaign certainly sought to keep the focus on character issues, at one point releasing an ad that accused the Republican of choosing “prostitutes over patriots” while extolling the Democrat’s military service. Respondents gave Edwards the edge on four of five candidate traits that we queried: honest, experienced, cares about people like the respondent, and shares the respondent’s values. For example, 44% agreed with the statement that Edwards is honest and trustworthy and 25% disagreed. For Vitter, 16% agreed and 61% disagreed.

Vitter’s Lift Too Little Too Late

If the public had focused instead on ideology or national issues, Vitter would have had stronger footing. Voters began drifting away from Edwards and toward Vitter between the first and second interviews. The average trend in favorability toward Edwards was -0.13 (i.e., on a four-point scale from “very unfavorable” to “very favorable”), whereas the average trend toward Vitter was +0.09 on the same scale. Each trend is equal to approximately one tenth of a standard deviation in wave 1 baseline opinion. The trend was strongest among Republicans, for whom opinions of Edwards slipped by -0.24 and those of Vitter rose +0.20, on average.

The shift in favorability coincided with changes in how voters felt about the candidates’ personal traits as well as their policies. Perceptions of Edwards’s honesty, empathy, experience, and values all shifted in a negative direction by -0.09, -0.10, -0.12, and -0.11, respectively, on a five-point scale. The average trend was driven by larger shifts among Republicans. At the same time, respondents increasingly viewed the candidates as farther apart ideologically—which increased the perceived gap between the candidates by a half point on the seven-point ideological scale, also driven by Republicans. They perceived Edwards as more liberal than in the previous week and shifted their perceptions of Vitter in a conservative direction. The sample also began to trust Vitter more in several policy areas: job creation (-0.13 on a five-point scale ranging from “trust Vitter a lot more” to “trust Edwards a lot more”), health care (-0.13), elementary and secondary education (-0.11), government ethics and corruption (-0.10), immigration (-0.13), and crime (-0.11). Edwards did not gain trust in any issue in the final weeks of the campaign.

Of course, the data cannot disentangle what specifically caused Republicans’ opinions to shift in a more favorable direction toward Vitter. Although the candidate specifically emphasized issues related to immigration and Syrian refugees in the final week, the shifts may just as well represent a general partisan “homecoming” common in many elections. Despite this late lift for Vitter, the Republican did not succeed in increasing the association that partisanship or ideology had on vote choice. The standardized coefficients for party identification, perceived ideological distance between the respondent and Edwards, and perceived ideological distance from Vitter remained unchanged when comparing models of wave 1 and wave 2 voter intention. The standardized coefficients remain much smaller than those for perceptions of the candidates’ traits.

Racial Politics and Voters’ Views

The legacy of Louisiana’s racial history persists in contemporary politics. Key noted that white voters who live in areas with higher percentages of black residents tend to give more support to conservative candidates, particularly those who took conservative positions on race issues (Key Reference Key1949). In the decades since Key’s work, Southern whites have moved toward the Republican Party. Democrats have struggled at times to secure a sufficient share of white votes to win elections. For example, according to exit polls, the Democrat in the 2014 US Senate race won only 18% of white voters. Racial polarization in the electorate—that is, when 90% or more of black voters support the Democrat and 70% or more of white voters support the Republican—tends to favor Republican candidates.

The Vitter campaign was criticized for making what some perceived as racialized appeals to white voters. In one ad, his campaign claimed that Edwards promised students at Southern University that he would release thousands of “thugs” from prison. In the last week of the campaign, he criticized Edwards for missing a candidate forum to attend an event at a “hip-hop nightclub.”

There is evidence that past racial dynamics are still in play. White voters who reside in parishes with larger black populations tended to have more favorable opinions of Vitter, similar to Key’s finding seven decades ago. However, the Vitter campaign apparently did not translate these dynamics into greater antipathy toward Edwards. White voters in these areas were no less favorable to Edwards than white voters in counties with a smaller share of black residents—despite the fact that those voters expressed a much less favorable attitude toward President Obama.

The Republican Party maintains its structural advantage in Louisiana, but this election was a reminder that the classic formula for Democratic victories still holds: a coalition of black voters and a sizable fraction of white voters (Parent Reference Parent2004). In this case, the Democrat was helped by an unappealing Republican alternative.