none

The purpose of this thesis is to study the relationship between prevalence of swing voters and the occurrence of political protest. Taking a Rational Choice approach, I hypothesize that fewer swing voters will lead to more protests, because it would incentivize polarizing behavior by political candidates. The hypothesis is tested using protest data from US congressional districts during six months of 2020 as the dependent variable, and the concept of voter elasticity as the main independent variable in a multiple regression analysis, along with various control variables. The results tentatively indicate that the hypothesis is correct, but exhibit high levels of uncertainty, highlighting potential for future research.

No description available.

In the 2004 Presidential Election social and wedge issues were among the most publicized mobilization tools utilized by the Bush Campaign. Specifically, same-sex marriage has been suggested as a key wedge issue that may have mobilized voters, although research differs on its impact. My contention is that these previous studies miss the point with regard to wedge issues, which is that they are useful on persuadable voters, and persuadable voters live in swing states. I estimate a logit model using 2004 American National Election Studies survey data. I utilize voters’ decisions to turn out as the dependent variable and control for respondents’ positions on terrorism, the economy, same-sex marriage, political interest, party identification, and socio-economic status. These findings demonstrate, consistent with my hypothesis, voters in swing same-sex marriage ballot measure states were more likely to turn out. These voters may not have been persuadable, but rather the Republican base.

In the 2004 Presidential Election social and wedge issues were among the most publicized mobilization tools utilized by the Bush Campaign. Specifically, same-sex marriage has been suggested as a key wedge issue that may have mobilized voters, although research differs on its impact. My contention is that these previous studies miss the point with regard to wedge issues, which is that they are useful on persuadable voters, and persuadable voters live in swing states. I estimate a logit model using 2004 American National Election Studies survey data. I utilize voters’ decisions to turn out as the dependent variable and control for respondents’ positions on terrorism, the economy, same-sex marriage, political interest, party identification, and socio-economic status. These findings demonstrate, consistent with my hypothesis, voters in swing same-sex marriage ballot measure states were more likely to turn out. These voters may not have been persuadable, but rather the Republican base.

Esta tesis investiga la economía política de las transferencias intergubernamentales. Se centra en los factores políticos que determinan la asignación de fondos bajo control de gobiernos centrales a las diversas regiones. El primer capítulo, contribuye a este asunto a través de un nuevo análisis de los datos del panel y una medida comprensiva de necesidades de gastos para el caso de Rusia. El segundo capítulo, desarrolla nuevas herramientas metodológicas para analizar sistemas políticos del multi-partido. Estas herramientas permiten medir a votantes cambiantes en dos dimensiones ideológicas usando datos individuales de los estudios electorales. En el tercer capítulo se utilizan las medidas de votantes cambiantes para probar teorías de las políticas distributivas para el caso de España. Este capítulo demuestra que las variables políticas son significativas en la asignación de las subvenciones del estado, y la magnitud del efecto es comparable a la de variables económicas. / This thesis investigates the political economy view of intergovernmental grants. It centers on the political factors that determine allocation of funds under the control of central governments to different regions. The first chapter contributes to this topic by a novel analysis of panel data and a comprehensive measure of expenditure "needs" for the case of Russia. The second chapter develops new methodological tools for analyzing multi-party political systems. These tools allow to measure swing voters on two "ideological" dimensions using individual survey data. In the third chapter the measures of swing voters are used to test theories of distributive politics for the case of Spain. This chapter shows that political variables are significant in the allocation of state subventions, and the magnitude of the effect is comparable to that of economic variables.