Contact with individual lesbians and gay men leads to more positive evaluations of the group and more support for pro-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender) public policies. Increasingly, gay rights activists are making "gay families" central to their communications to the public about gay issues and policies. This prompts a new question in the area of contact theory: does contact with same-sex couples have a different impact on attitudes about gays/lesbians and gay-related public policies than contact with gay/lesbian individuals? On general attitudes, the two versions of contact perform similarly, but in specific policies, divergence shows itself. Contact with couples is a stronger force in shaping support for expansion of same-sex partnership recognition. However, while contact with individual gay men and lesbians is a significant indicator, contact with couples is not on other issues raising questions about the effectiveness of the focus on "gay families" for the broader goals of the contemporary LGBT movement.1 Endogeneity is the possibility that the true lines of causality between the dependent variable and a crucial independent variable is reversed. In this area of research, it is the possibility that LGBT individuals are more likely to be open with already tolerant straight persons rather than the contact with LGBT folks promoting such tolerance.

Decades of research suggests that campaign contact together with an advantageous socioeconomic profile increases the likelihood of casting a ballot. Measurement and modeling handicaps permit a lingering uncertainty about campaign communication as a source of political mobilization however. Using data from a uniquely detailed telephone survey conducted in a pair of highly competitive 2002 U.S. Senate races, we further investigate who gets contacted, in what form, and with what effect. We conclude that even in high-profile, high-dollar races the most important determinant of voter turnout is vote history, but that holding this variable constant reveals a positive effect for campaign communication among ''seldom'' voters, registered but rarely active participants who-ironically-are less likely than regular or intermittent voters to receive such communication.

Just after three in four Arkansas voters endorsed a state constitutional amendment barring state recognition of same-sex marriages, a comprehensive state-level survey allowed a closer look into the attitudes of Arkansans on a variety of gay- and lesbian-related issues. When placed in the context of Arkansas's political culture and ideological patters, this serves as a case study of the relationship between public opinion, specific policy issues, and the diffusion (or nondiffusion) of policies in an individual state. Copyright (c) 2009 by the Southwestern Social Science Association.

Generally speaking, campaign-related contact motivates voters. One form of such contact not much explored in the voter mobilization literature is the petitioning for ballot initiatives that occurs with considerable frequency in about half the states and even more localities. Using newly-available data that allow us to match individual petition signers with their subsequent election behavior, we explore the role of having had a hand in a ballot measure's qualifying stage in propelling individual voters to the polls. Specifically, we perform multivariate analysis on a random sample of 1,000 registered Arkansas voters, 1,100 registered Florida voters, and all 71,119 registered voters in Gainesville, Florida to measure the influence of petition-signing in spurring voter turnout. We find marginal effects in the statewide samples, but substantial and significant turnout effects in the Gainesville municipal election-an off-cycle, low-profile election. Furthermore, the effect of petition-signing-across all of our samples-is strongest among irregular, as compared to habitual, voters. These findings are in keeping with recent campaign mobilization experimental research and comport with previous findings on the ''educative effects'' of ballot measures on voter turnout. Keywords Voter mobilization Á Direct democracy Á Voter turnoutThe turnout question has occupied the attention of political scientists for decades. Early scholarship placed a heavy emphasis on resources, i.e., the higher a voter's

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