DC On My Mind: National Considerations in State Political Decisions

• In Event: Political Behavior and Public Opinion Under Federalism

Abstract

Recent research suggests national-level politics inform state-level behavior in the US. To what extent is such behavior driven by lack of local political information or strength of partisan identity? In this paper, we hypothesize the effect of policy information is conditioned by how “nationalized” the policy domain is. Because policy positions on national issues are typically higher salience and better indicators of partisan type, voters may give more weight to such information in state-level political decision-making even when then have equal access to state issue positions. By randomly assigning state- and national-level issue positions to candidates for state and national legislative office in a conjoint experiment, we identify the importance voters place on such issue positions. Our results speak to the relative strengths of identity- versus information-driven theories if nationalization in US politics.

Authors

• Derek Holliday, University of California, Los Angeles

• Aaron Rudkin, UCLA