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A growing body of work adopts a "thin" ideology conception of populism, which attributes populist parties' electoral success to anti-elite and people-centric appeals that resonate with voters holding populist attitudes. A second tradition, however, has attributed the success of populist parties to particular "thick" or "host" ideologies, such as anti-immigration, anti-globalization, or pro-redistribution positions. This creates a need to unpack which exact components of thin and/or thick populist ideology attract voters to these parties. We address this question by leveraging conjoint survey experiments that allow us to causally identify the effects of several thin and thick populist attributes on vote choice. Examining the case of Germany, results from experiments embedded in two high-quality panel surveys demonstrate that populist anti-immigration and proredistribution positions as well as people-centric political priorities are the most vote-maximizing components of populist ideology. In contrast, anti-elite priorities as well as Eurosceptic and antiglobalization positions do not boost support, not even among voters with strong populist attitudes.Our findings also call into question conventional wisdom about the interplay between supply and 2 demand in the electoral marketplace. Surprisingly, populist voters, in general, are not significantly more attracted to candidates who advocate populist priorities than non-populist voters.

Since 2002, 26 U.S. states have passed laws that enhance restrictions on voters who intend to register and vote. Most have been sponsored by Republican legislators and passed by states with large Republican majorities. Proponents of such identification requirements argue that they are necessary to ensure the integrity of the electoral system by reducing voter fraud. Many Democrats have cried foul, arguing these laws are motivated by crass partisanship at best, and racial bias at worst, because they disproportionately disenfranchise minorities. Surprisingly, empirical evidence for significant demobilization, either in the aggregate or among Democrats specifically, has thus far failed to materialize. We suspect strong emotional reactions to the public debate about these laws may mobilize Democrats, counterbalancing the disenfranchising effect. We find support for this conjecture in a nationally representative survey and an experiment where news frames about voter identification (ID) laws are carefully manipulated.

Following racially charged events, individuals often diverge in perceptions of what happened and how justice should be served. Examining data gathered shortly after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri alongside reactions to a novel officer-involved shooting, we unpack the processes by which racial divisions emerge. Even in a controlled information environment, white Americans preferred information that supported claims of a justified shooting. Conversely, Black Americans preferred information that implied that the officer behaved inappropriately. These differences stemmed from two distinct processes: we find some evidence for a form of race-based motivated reasoning and strong evidence for belief updating based on racially distinct priors. Differences in summary judgments were larger when individuals identified strongly with their racial group or when expectations about the typical behaviors of Black Americans and police diverged. The findings elucidate processes whereby individuals in different social groups come to accept differing narratives about contentious events.

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