Research

My research focuses on the dynamics of contemporary American elections, with an emphasis on the role of race, ethnicity, and partisan identity on voter behavior. Here I provide information about published and ongoing research projects.

Book

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Why do some racial/ethnic groups vote more than others? Are there policies and institutions that boost, or suppress, minority voting? Does low voter turnout mean that elections do not reflect the wishes of all Americans? The Turnout Gap addresses these questions, examining rates of voting for Whites, African-Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans from the pre-Civil War era to the present. Finding that the longstanding gap between minority and white voter turnout has not closed, the book takes a close look at the factors that explain historical and contemporary disparities in voting rates. Addressing socioeconomic differences, vote suppression, and other factors thought to produce the turnout gap, the book challenges the conventional wisdom and suggests that there are broad patterns of consistency in who votes across racial/ethnic groups: when a group is seen as having the potential to influence election outcomes, citizens from that group are more likely to turn out to vote. Thus, the root cause of low minority turnout is the fact that, in most elections and in most places, African Americans, Latinos, and Asian Americans are perceived to be a less electorally relevant force than non-Hispanic Whites.

The Turnout Gap indicates that the power of the vote can win out when politicians make a point to engage the minority electorate. However, the book also demonstrates the consequences of not remedying this political inequality: American elections are increasingly unrepresentative of the wishes of all Americans, manifesting most clearly in 2016 and other recent contests. The continuing demographic transformation of America will not necessarily lead to political equality for minority citizens; it is instead up to politicians, parties, and citizens themselves to mobilize the tremendous potential of all Americans.

Journal Articles

White, Ariel, Paru Shah, Eric Gonzalez Juenke, and Bernard L. Fraga (2023) "Evaluating the Minority Candidate Penalty with a Regression Discontinuity Approach." British Journal of Political Science. Forthcoming.

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Do parties face an electoral penalty when they nominate candidates of colour? We employ a regression discontinuity design using state legislative election data from 2018, 2019, and 2020 to isolate the effect of nominating a candidate of colour on a party's general election performance. Utilising this approach with real-world data heightens external validity relative to existing racial penalty studies, largely supported by surveys and experiments. We find no evidence that candidates of colour are disadvantaged in state legislative general elections relative to narrowly nominated white candidates from the same party. These findings challenge the leading explanations for the underrepresentation of racial/ethnic minority groups, with implications for candidate selection across the United States.

Ansolabehere, Stephen, Bernard L. Fraga, and Brian F. Schaffner. (2022) "The CPS Voting and Registration Supplement Overstates Minority Turnout." Journal of Politics 84 (3): 1850-1855.

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The Current Population Survey (CPS) is a key source of information on who votes. Turnout estimates derived from the CPS are often cited in academic research on participation, widely used in the calibration of surveys, and central to ongoing legal and policy debates over the protection of voting rights in the United States. We compare CPS estimates to official voter turnout records from 2008–18 and document consistent, significant discrepancies that call into question the reliability of CPS turnout statistics. Specifically, the CPS overestimates black and Hispanic turnout relative to non-Hispanic whites, whether relying on turnout rates as a share of eligible citizens or the racial/ethnic composition of the voting population. Sampling error and commonly used adjustments to CPS estimates do not account for or correct this bias, and thus academics and policy makers should use discretion when judging recent shifts in voter turnout with survey data.

Fraga, Bernard L. and Michael G. Miller. (2022) "Who Do Voter ID Laws Keep From Voting?" Journal of Politics 84 (2): 1091-1105.

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Voter identification (ID) laws have sparked concerns of vote suppression, but existing evidence relies on aggregate analyses or survey self-reports. We leverage unique information from Texas, where registrants without ID filed “reasonable impediment declarations” (RIDs) before voting. Linking 16,000 RID forms to the Texas voter file, we provide the first direct documentation of the traits of voters who would be stopped from voting under strict identification laws. Our preregistered analysis finds registrants voting without ID in 2016 were disproportionately Black and Latinx when compared to voters voting with ID. Examining voters’ stated reasons for not providing ID, we find socioeconomic hardships are not the most commonly cited impediment, but voters with hardships were less likely to vote in a strict-ID election than those who previously had identification. Our findings indicate that strict identification laws will stop a disproportionately minority, otherwise-willing set of registered voters from voting.

Stauffer, Katelyn E. and Bernard L. Fraga. (2022) "Contextualizing the Gender Gap in Voter Turnout." Politics, Groups, and Identities 10 (2): 334-341.

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Overall women turn out to vote at a higher rate than men, yet few studies have examined the consistency of this finding across American electoral contexts. We use voter file data to compare turnout for men and women at the national-, state-, and district-level from 2008 to 2018, focusing on variation in the gender turnout gap by electoral competition, candidate gender, and race and ethnicity. While we find no relationship between women candidates and the turnout gap, we do find that the gap is largest in presidential election years, and shrinks in the most competitive congressional districts. Most importantly, however, we highlight the critical role of race/ethnicity in our understanding of the nature and contours of the turnout gap, adding to the growing body of scholarship calling for an intersectional approach to the study of political participation.

Fraga, Bernard L., Daniel J. Moskowitz, and Benjamin Schneer. (2022) "Partisan Alignment Increases Turnout: Evidence from Redistricting.” Political Behavior. 44 (4): 1883-1910. (Winner of the Best Paper in Political Behavior award, 2023)

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Partisan gerrymandering and polarization have created an electoral landscape where Americans increasingly reside in congressional districts dominated by one party. Are individuals more likely to vote when their partisanship aligns with the partisan composition of the district? Leveraging nationwide voter file data and the redistricting process, we present causal evidence on this question via a longitudinal analysis of individual-level political participation. Tracking turnout before and after a redistricting cycle, where the boundaries of congressional districts change, we observe what happens when registrants experience a shock to the partisan composition of their district. We find turnout increases for individuals assigned to districts aligned with their partisanship as compared to individuals in misaligned districts, consistent with voters deriving expressive benefits from voting for the winning party. By demonstrating how districting influences political participation, our findings suggest a new implication of partisan gerrymandering that may clash with other democratic goals.

Fraga, Bernard L. and Hans J.G. Hassell. (2021) "Are Minority Candidates Penalized by Party Politics? Race, Gender, and Access to Party Support." Political Research Quarterly. 74 (3): 540-555.

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Racial/ethnic minorities and women continue to be underrepresented in public office in the United States. Here, we evaluate the role of general election political party support for women and minorities in structuring these inequalities, as a key part of general election success is support from party networks. With detailed data on party support and the demographics of congressional candidates, we use two difference-in-differences strategies to leverage within-district and candidate-constant change over time. Thus, we are able to separate the effect of race/ethnicity and gender from other factors we demonstrate to be associated with party support. We find that, all else equal, Democratic and Republican minority nominees do not receive less support than their white counterparts. We also find that white women receive more party support from Democrats than Democratic men or minority women in the general election and that this support is more responsive to changes in electoral competitiveness. These findings suggest that party elites may provide additional support to candidates from underrepresented groups in the general election to broaden their appeal to voters.

Fraga, Bernard L. and John B. Holbein. (2020) "Measuring Youth and College Student Voter Turnout." Electoral Studies. 65 (3): 102086.

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Young adulthood is a critical period in civic development. However, measuring electoral participation among this group generally—and the many young people who go to college in particular—is fraught with potential pitfalls stemming from a reliance on survey-based measures of voting. In this note, we compare patterns of youth turnout in two large-scale, survey-based datasets commonly used to measure voting, the Current Population Survey and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, to two voter-file based datasets: the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE) and a comprehensive nationwide voterfile provided by the Data Trust. We find high levels of concordance between measures in the NSLVE, Data Trust, and the CPS. However, despite linking their sample to validated voter records, the CCES does not mirror these benchmarks. We conclude by discussing the challenges and opportunities that shape the study of youth turnout.

Fraga, Bernard L., Eric Gonzalez Juenke, and Paru Shah. (2020) "One Run Leads to Another: Minority Incumbents and the Emergence of Lower Ticket Minority Candidates." ​Journal of Politics 82 (2): 771-775.

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The primary determinant of minority office holding is the racial/ethnic composition of the legislative district. Using comprehensive data on the race/ethnicity of state legislative candidates in 2012 and 2014, we find that minority candidates still emerge at lower rates than whites after accounting for district composition. Leveraging information about the overlap between congressional and state legislative districts, we demonstrate that the victories of candidates of color for Congress reduce the coethnic/racial demographic thresholds associated with state legislative candidacy and that the same pattern holds for white incumbents and state legislative candidacies. Once accounting for both the race of congressional incumbents and the racial/ethnic composition of state legislative districts, white, Latino, African American, and Asian American state legislative candidates emerge at similar rates. These results suggest that perceptions of minority candidate viability play a key role in structuring contemporary disparities in who runs for office.

Fraga, Bernard L. and Eitan D. Hersh. (2018) "Are Americans Stuck in Uncompetitive Enclaves? An Appraisal of U.S. Electoral Competition." Quarterly Journal of Political Science 13 (3): 291-311.

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Most elections in the United States are not close, which has raised concerns among social scientists and reform advocates about the vibrancy of American democracy. In this paper, we demonstrate that while individual elections are often uncompetitive, hierarchical, temporal, and geographic variation in the locus of competition results in most of the country regularly experiencing close elections. In the four-cycle period between 2006 and 2012, 89% of Americans were in a highly competitive jurisdiction for at least one office. Since 1914, about half the states have never gone more than four election cycles without a close statewide contest. More Americans witness competition than citizens of Canada or the UK, other nations with SMSP-based systems. The dispersed competition we find also results in nearly all Americans being represented by both political parties for different offices.

Ansolabehere, Stephen and Bernard L. Fraga. (2016) "Do Americans Prefer Co-Ethnic Representation? The Impact of Race on House Incumbent Evaluations." Stanford Law Review 68 (6): 1553-1594.

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Theories of representation often assert that citizens prefer representatives who are of the same racial or ethnic background as themselves. Examining surveys of over 80,000 individuals, this Article quantifies the preference for coethnic representation among whites, blacks, and Hispanics. The large sample size provides sufficient statistical power to study constituents in districts with minority representatives, as well as those with white representatives. We find that individuals strongly prefer representatives who share their ethnic background, yet partisanship explains most of the preference for coethnic representation. Controlling for party, whites express a slight preference for white representation, but blacks and Hispanics express equal support for minority and white incumbents. The differential preference for white representation among white Democrats is explained by a bias associated with attitudes about race-related policy. These findings suggest that legal and political theories of race, especially regarding the Voting Rights Act, must be tied to voters’ policy and party preferences, not merely their racial identity.

Fraga, Bernard L. (2016) "Redistricting and the Causal Impact of Race on Voter Turnout." Journal of Politics 78 (1): 19-34.

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Recent work challenges traditional understandings of the link between race and voter turnout, suggesting that there is limited evidence of increased minority voting due to co-ethnic representation and majority-minority districts. Here I examine 65.3 million registration records from 10 states to trace individual-level participation before and after the 2012 round of redistricting, testing whether a shift in congressional representation, candidacy, and/or district ethnic composition affected an individual’s decision to participate. Separating results for non-Hispanic white, black, Latino, and Asian American registrants, I find that individuals change their behavior in response to ethnoracial context, with African Americans more likely to vote when assigned to majority-black districts with black candidates or incumbents. White and Asian registrants also turn out in higher numbers when a co-ethnic candidate is on the ballot, but Latinos may be less likely to vote in the short term when assigned to majority-Latino districts.

Fraga, Bernard L. and Julie Lee Merseth. (2016) "Examining the Causal Impact of the Voting Rights Act Language Minority Provisions." Journal of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics 1 (1): 31-59.

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The following study investigates the causal impact of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) language minority provisions, which mandate multilingual election assistance if certain population thresholds are met. While lower rates of Latino and Asian American political participation are often attributed to language barriers, scholars have yet to establish a direct impact of the provisions on electoral behavior. Building off of previous state- and county-level analyses, we leverage an individual-level voter file database to focus on participation by Latino and Asian American citizens in 1,465 counties and municipalities nationwide. Utilizing a regression discontinuity design, we examine rates of voter registration and turnout in the 2012 election, comparing individual participation rates in jurisdictions just above and just below the threshold for coverage. Our analysis attributes a significant increase in Latino voter registration and Asian American turnout to coverage under the VRA.

Fraga, Bernard L. (2016) "Candidates or Districts? Reevaluating the Role of Race in Voter Turnout." American Journal of Political Science 60 (1): 97-122. (Brief Summary)

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Leading theories of race and participation posit that minority voters are mobilized by co‐ethnic candidates. However, past studies are unable to disentangle candidate effects from factors associated with the places from which candidates emerge. I reevaluate the links between candidate race, district composition, and turnout by leveraging a nationwide database of over 185 million individual registration records, including estimates for the race of every voter. Combining these records with detailed information about 3,000 recent congressional primary and general election candidates, I find that minority turnout is not higher in districts with minority candidates, after accounting for the relative size of the ethnic group within a district. Instead, Black and Latino citizens are more likely to vote in both primary and general elections as their share of the population increases, regardless of candidate race.

Fraga, Bernard L. and Eitan Hersh. (2011) "Voting Costs and Voter Turnout in Competitive Elections." Quarterly Journal of Political Science 5 (4): 339-356.

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In the United States, competitive elections are often concentrated in particular places. These places attract disproportionate attention from news media and elec- tion campaigns. Yet many voting studies only test stimuli in uncompetitive environ- ments, or only test for average effects, and simply assume the results are relevant to competitive contexts. This article questions that assumption by utilizing Election Day inclement weather as an exogenous and random cost imposed on voters. We test how voters in competitive and uncompetitive environments respond to this random cost and find that while rain decreases turnout on average, it does not do so in competitive elections. If voters in different electoral contexts do not react the same way even to rain, then serious doubt should meet claims that voters will react the same way to campaign appeals, economic factors, or other treatments tested in the literature. Careful consideration of effects that are heterogeneous with respect to electoral context can make the difference between a result that calls democracy into question and one that is politically irrelevant.

Working Papers

Fraga, Bernard L., Yamil R. Velez, and Emily A. West. (2024) “Reversion to the Mean, or their Version of the Dream? Latino Voting in an Age of Populism.” American Political Science Review. Forthcoming.

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In 2020, support for Joe Biden among Latina/o/x voters was 8 percentage points lower than support for Hillary Clinton in 2016, the largest drop of any racial/ethnic group. While much media and academic attention has focused on understanding the impact of misinformation, COVID concerns, and racial animus on Latino voters in 2020, we take a step back and clarify the demographic and core ideological characteristics of Latino voters who voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Using a mix of national survey data, precinct returns, and voter file records, we disaggregate components of electoral change. We find evidence of an increasing alignment between Latinos' ideology, issue positions and vote choice. Correspondingly, we observe significant pro-Trump shifts among working-class Latinos and modest evidence of a pro-Trump shift among Latinos closer to the immigration experience. These findings, coupled with an analysis of the 2022 CES, point to a more durable Republican shift than currently assumed.

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Voter files are an essential tool for both election research and campaigns, but relatively little work has established best practices for using these data. We focus on how the timing of voter file snapshots affects the most commonly cited advantage of voter file data: accurate measures of who votes. Outlining the panel structure inherent in voter file data, we demonstrate that opposing patterns of accretion and attrition in the voter registration list result in temporally-dependent bias in estimates of voter turnout for a given election. This bias impacts samples for surveys, experiments, or campaign activities by skewing estimates of the potential and actual voter populations; low-propensity voters are particularly impacted. We provide an approach that allows researchers to measure the impact of this bias on their inferences. We then outline methods that measurably reduce this bias, including combining multiple snapshots to preserve the turnout histories of dropped voters.

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Theories of race and representation suggest that the racial/ethnic group composing a majority of the electorate gains co-ethnic representation, contrasting with both observational evidence and party-based understandings of who gets elected to Congress. I reconcile these notions by examining the emergence and success of over 8,900 White, Black, Latinx, and Asian American congressional candidates from both the Democratic and Republican parties from 2006-2018. I find race plays a dominant role in determining who seeks office and who wins primary elections, and that incumbents are more likely to face a challenge from a non-co-ethnic when there is a “mis- match” between incumbent race and district demographics. Regardless of nominee race, however, partisanship determines general election outcomes. Using a regression discontinuity approach that leverages close primary elections, I find no evidence that minority candidates face a penalty after winning either party’s nomination. These analyses clarify the distinct roles of race and party in producing contemporary election results, and outline the conditions necessary to advance representational equality.