Research

Abstract:

How do information environments shape political preferences among rural Americans? This study examines how variation in local television news exposure shapes rural Americans’ political preferences about government spending on law enforcement. These governmental spending preferences are often shaped by skepticism grounded in rural place-based identity. Drawing on agenda-setting theory, I argue that exposure to different media markets—particularly those from more populous urban areas where coverage of crime and law enforcement is more prevalent—creates distinct informational contexts that influence political preferences. Using survey data from rural respondents in the 2016, 2020, and 2022 Cooperative Election Studies and a matching design, the analysis finds that rural Americans exposed to local television news from urban media markets express greater support for increasing law enforcement spending, even at the expense of other public services. These findings challenge the idea that rural Americans hold rigid, identity-based political preferences rooted in place. Instead, this study demonstrates that rural political preferences are malleable and shaped by information environments.

Abstract:

In this article, we detail how the rise of executive-centered partisanship has transformed president-Senate relations since 1993. We argue that the growing centrality of the president as a figurehead for their party has produced incentives for both co-partisans and out-partisans. We use a measure of presidential “success” to model variation over time and between individual senators. We show that rising presidential partisanship has increased the likelihood for out-partisans to oppose the president’s legislative position, even after controlling for other markers of partisan polarization. This relationship is strongest among electorally vulnerable out-partisans. In addition, our data suggest that Republican out-partisans asymmetrically oppose Democratic presidents. We conclude that the growing centrality of the presidency in party affairs has had effects beyond administrative preemption of the legislative process; it has increasingly set a hard limit on bi-partisan cooperation on legislation and nominee confirmations in the Senate.