The proliferation of increasingly strict voter identification laws around the country has raised concerns about voter suppression. Although there are many reasons to suspect that these laws could harm groups like racial minorities and the poor, existing studies have been limited, with most occurring before states enacted strict identification requirements, and they have uncovered few effects. By using validated voting data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study for several recent elections, we are able to offer a more definitive test. The analysis shows that strict identification laws have a differentially negative impact on the turnout of racial and ethnic minorities in primaries and general elections. We also find that voter ID laws skew democracy toward those on the political right. V oting is the bedrock of democracy. Through the vote, citizens choose leaders, sway policy, and generally influence democracy. By contrast, citizens who do not vote can be ignored. It is thus not surprising to see that the laws that shape turnout and determine who can and who cannot vote generate enormous attention and controversy. The latest front in this debate concerns voter identification laws. Voter identification laws have been a topic of discussion since 1950, when South Carolina became the first state to request some form of identification at the polls (NCSL 2015). Since then, more and more states have instituted some form of voter ID law. But it is only within the past decade that the strictest forms of voter ID have proliferated and that voter ID laws have received widespread attention. Today these voter ID laws take several distinct forms. Strict voter ID laws require identification in order to cast a regular ballot. Other more lenient laws request, but do not require, voters to show some kind of identification document at the polls. These laws can also be distinguished by whether or not they allow or consider nonphoto identification. All told, 34 states currently enforce some form of a voter identification law (NCSL 2015). Of these, 11 are strict ID law states that require a person to show identification in order to vote. 1 More states appear to be waiting in the wings. New Mexico, Nevada, Iowa, and others are all considering new stricter voter identification laws (NCSL 2015). The consequences of all of this could be enormous. Given that more than half of the nation's population is currently subject to these laws, that stricter laws are being considered in multiple states, and that the courts are actively evaluating the merits of these laws in a series of landmark cases, there is a compelling need to know exactly what the true impact of these laws is. There is no shortage of opinions about these laws. On one side, the proliferation of these laws raises real concerns for critics who believe that they are unnecessary and ultimately detrimental to democracy. Activist groups, like the Brennan Center for Justice, claim that voter ID laws serve as effective barriers that limit the legitimate participation of racia...

While extant research has documented the existence of negative attitudes toward Muslim Americans, it is unclear whether old-fashioned racism (OFR) is at the root of contemporary Islamophobia, and whether beliefs in the inherent inferiority of Muslims are linked to support for political actors and policies that aim to further isolate them. Bringing to bear a unique dataset of 1,044 white, black, Latino, and Asian participants, we demonstrate that a nontrivial portion of survey respondents make blatantly racist evaluations and rate Muslim Americans as the least “evolved” group. Next, we illustrate that these dehumanizing attitudes are strongly linked to modern objections of Muslim Americans, which we measure with a new Muslim American resentment scale (MAR). Our mediation analysis reveals that the relationship between OFR, support for President Trump, and various policy positions is powerfully mediated by MAR. These results suggest that the relevance of OFR in contemporary politics should not easily be dismissed, and that the literature on racial attitudes, which has predominantly focused on the Black-white dichotomy, should also be extended to appraisals of Muslim Americans.

Since 9/11, scholarly work has demonstrated that Muslim Americans are viewed unfavorably, but existing measures lack enough contextual specificity to capture the unique experiences and situation of Muslims in the United States. Given the central role that Muslims and the war on terror played in the 2016 presidential campaign and election, we fill this void by introducing a new measure that focuses on Muslim Americans, specifically, and then examine its role in explaining presidential vote choice in 2016. Across five distinct surveys fielded on convenience and nationally representative samples from May 2016 to June 2017, we find that anti-Muslim American sentiment is a strong and significant predictor of supporting Trump, even when controlling for a whole host of factors. Our measure of Muslim American sentiment also more strongly and consistently predicts support for Trump, relative to previous measures of anti-Muslim sentiment. S ince 9/11, scholarly work has demonstrated that Muslim Americans are viewed unfavorably and evaluated negatively along a series of stereotypes (e.g., Kalkan, Layman, and Uslaner 2009; Khan and Ecklund 2013; Panagopoulos 2006; Sides and Gross 2013). But the existing measures of Muslim American resentment (e.g., favorability ratings, feeling thermometers, group stereotypes) lack enough contextual specificity to capture the unique experiences of Muslims in the United States, particularly in light of the specific group stereotypes that have arisen in the aftermath of 9/11 and the War on Terror. Thus, to date, we lack any systematic or empirical evidence to determine the extent to which attitudes toward Muslim Americans have affected political outcomes. This is a critical oversight given the undeniable role that attitudes toward Muslims played in Donald Trump's primary and general election campaigns during the 2016 US presidential election. A key pillar of his campaign was the highly controversial promise of a ban on all Muslim immigration to the United States, which drew resounding cheers and standing ovations from his supporters. He also supported a national registry for all Muslims residing in the United States, as well as surveillance at mosques. These calls arrived at a time when anti-Muslim sentiment and discrimination were already quite high (Calfano, Lajevardi, and Michelson 2017; Collingwood, Lajevardi, and Oskooii 2017). In light of the increasingly negative rhetoric directed toward Muslim Americans, which in turn could stoke the fears and anxieties of US voters, resentment toward them could have produced a very real and tangible impact on the way voters cast their ballots in the 2016 general election. 1 This may be especially true in light of the way negative attitudes toward minority groups have been shown to influence political attitudes and behaviors (Kalmoe and Piston 2013; Masuoka and Junn 2013; Parker and Barreto 2014). To more accurately assess the role that Muslim American sentiment played in explaining 2016 presidential Nazita Lajevardi

No abstract

No abstract