Book
Sides, John, Chris Tausanovitch and Lynn Vavreck, 2022.
“The Bitter End: The 2020 Presidential Campaign and the Challenge to American Democracy.” Princeton University Press.
[ Princeton University Press | Amazon | JSTOR ]
Reviews in Library Journal and Political Psychology.
Podcast discussions on The Ezra Klein Show, Politico Playbook Depp Dive, Democracy Paradox, The New Republic, Offline with Jon Favreau, and Heartland Politics.
Press coverage in The WashingtonPost, Cook Political Report (1,2), New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times (1,2), Bloomberg, The Atlantic (1,2), The New York Times, and The New Yorker.
Published Papers
Tausanovitch, Chris and Derek Holliday, 2025.
“Income, Education and Policy Priorities.”
Political Science Research and Methods, forthcoming.
[ Abstract | Published | Replication ]
Are people's priorities associated with their income and education levels? There is a long history in political science of claims that priorities are driven by economic interests, but also that low-income and low-education people fail to prioritize their economic interests. In this paper we use measures of revealed importance from Sides Tausanovitch and Vavreck L (2023) to evaluate the priorities of high- and low-income/education voters with respect to 44 different policies. It is well known that there are substantial differences in the preferences of people with lower incomes or education levels and people with higher incomes or education levels, but conditional on preferences we find very small differences among education and income groups in terms of priorities. Like high-income and high-education voters, lower-income and education voters care most about the major issues of the day. They do not care systematically more or less than other voters about policies that expand social welfare, redistribution, or labor rights.
Fowler, Anthony, Seth Hill, Jeffrey B Lewis, Chris Tausanovitch, Lynn Vavreck, and Christopher Warshaw, 2023.
“Moderates.”
The American Political Science Review 117(2), p. 643-660.
[ Abstract | Published | Replication ]
Press coverage in Los Angeles Times.
Moderates are often overlooked in contemporary research on American voters. Many scholars who have examined moderates argue that these individuals are only classified as such due to a lack of political sophistication or conflicted views across issues. We develop a method to distinguish three ways an individual might be classified as moderate: having genuinely moderate views across issues, being inattentive to politics or political surveys, or holding views poorly summarized by a single liberal–conservative dimension. We find that a single ideological dimension accurately describes most, but not all, Americans’ policy views. Using the classifications from our model, we demonstrate that moderates and those whose views are not well explained by a single dimension are especially consequential for electoral selection and accountability. These results suggest a need for renewed attention to the middle of the American political spectrum.
Sides, John, Chris Tausanovitch and Lynn Vavreck, 2020.
“The Politics of COVID-19: Partisan Polarization about the Pandemic Has Increased, but Support for Health Care Reform Hasn’t Moved at All.”
Harvard Data Science Review Special Issue 1, COVID-19: Unprecedented Challenges and Chances.
[ Abstract | Published ]
We investigate trends in public opinion before and during the COVID-19 pandemic on concern about the virus, efforts to combat its spread, and support for various health care policy reforms. Using data from more than 400,000 interviews covering every state in the country over a 1-year period, we demonstrate initially high levels of concern about the virus and support for restrictions to combat it across geography and political party. Over time, however, these sentiments fade, and a partisan divide opens up as Republican concern and support drops more quickly. We find little evidence that the pandemic has shifted opinions on health care reforms such as Medicare-for-all. We argue that the differences in these trends have more to do with messages from party leaders about the pandemic and less to do with the virus’s state-level infection rates. While nearly everyone has been affected in some way by the pandemic, for most voters, the pandemic’s challenges have not translated into a desire for more sweeping change to the nation’s health care system.
Sides, John, Lynn Vavreck, Chris Tausanovitch and Christopher Warshaw, 2020. "On the Representativeness of Primary Electorates."
British Journal of Political Science, 50(2), p.677-685.
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated | Replication ]
Primary voters are frequently characterized as an ideologically extreme subset of their party, and thus partially responsible for party polarization in government. This study uses a combination of administrative records on primary turnout and five recent surveys from 2008–14 to show that primary voters have similar demographic attributes and policy attitudes as rank-and-file voters in their party. These similarities do not vary according to the openness of the primary. These results suggest that the composition of primary electorates does not exert a polarizing effect above what might arise from voters in the party as a whole.
Chris Tausanovitch, 2019. "Why are Subnational Governments Responsive?"
The Journal of Politics, 81(1), p. 334-342, Subnational Policy Making Symposium.
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated ]
It is now well established that states and localities differ substantially in their policies and that these differences are associated with differences in public opinion. However, this fact is puzzling. People are mostly ignorant of state and local government, and state and local elections appear increasingly linked to their federal counterparts, despite very different candidates and policy stakes. The leading solution to this puzzle is the partisan accountability theory of Erikson, Wright, and McIver. However, this explanation does not fit neatly with the recent literature. I show that ideological divisions in state-level elections fit poorly with the theory as well. New theoretical developments are needed to address this puzzle. I suggest two directions that this could take.
McCarty, Nolan, Jonathan Rodden, Boris Shor, Chris Tausanovitch and Christopher Warshaw, 2019. "Geography, Uncertainty, and Polarization."
Political Science Research and Methods, 7(4), p.775-794.
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated | Appendix | Replication ]
Using new data on roll-call voting of US state legislators and public opinion in their districts, we explain how ideological polarization of voters within districts can lead to legislative polarization. In so-called “moderate” districts that switch hands between parties, legislative behavior is shaped by the fact that voters are often quite heterogeneous: the ideological distance between Democrats and Republicans within these districts is often greater than the distance between liberal cities and conservative rural areas. We root this intuition in a formal model that associates intradistrict ideological heterogeneity with uncertainty about the ideological location of the median voter. We then demonstrate that among districts with similar median voter ideologies, the difference in legislative behavior between Democratic and Republican state legislators is greater in more ideologically heterogeneous districts. Our findings suggest that accounting for the subtleties of political geography can help explain the coexistence of polarized legislators and a mass public that appears to contain many moderates.
Hill, Seth and Chris Tausanovitch, 2018. "Southern Realignment, Party Sorting, and the Polarization of American Primary Electorates, 1958-2012."
Public Choice, 176(1), p. 107-132.
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated ]
Press coverage in The New York Times.
Many scholars have argued that primary elections are an important factor in the polarization of the American Congress. Yet little research measures change in the policy preferences of primary electorates to evaluate the connection directly. We create the first explicit measures of the preferences of primary voters over the last 60 years using a Bayesian item-response theory model. Although the overall distribution of population preferences has changed little, the preferences of primary voters are now much more related to the party of the primary that they attend. We show that liberals are much more likely to turn out in Democratic primaries and conservatives are much more likely to turn out in Republican primaries. We estimate that the divergence of primary from general electorates is six times larger in 2012 than in 1958 owing to this “primary sorting”. This trend began with the emergence of the Southern Republicans. As the Republican party became viable, conservative Southerners switched to Republican primaries leading to a leftward shift in Democratic primary electorates. Nationwide, primary sorting began sometime after it began in the South. We speculate that Southern realignment played a clarifying role that contributed to subsequent sorting of primary electorates nationwide.
Tausanovitch, Chris, and Christopher Warshaw, 2018.
"Does the Ideological Proximity Between Congressional Candidates and Voters Affect Voting Decisions in Recent U.S. House Elections?"
Political Behavior, 40:223-245.
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated | Replication ]
Do citizens hold congressional candidates accountable for their policy positions? Recent studies reach different conclusions on this important question. In line with the predictions of spatial voting theory, a number of recent survey-based studies have found reassuring evidence that voters choose the candidate with the most spatially proximate policy positions. In contrast, most electoral studies find that candidates’ ideological moderation has only a small association with vote margins, especially in the modern, polarized Congress. We bring clarity to these discordant findings using the largest dataset to date of voting behavior in congressional elections. We find that the ideological positions of congressional candidates have only a small association with citizens’ voting behavior. Instead, citizens cast their votes “as if” based on proximity to parties rather than individual candidates. The modest degree of candidate-centered spatial voting in recent Congressional elections may help explain the polarization and lack of responsiveness in the contemporary Congress.
Caughey, Devin, Chris Tausanovitch and Christopher Warshaw, 2017.
"Partisan Gerrymandering and the Political Process: Effects on Roll-Call Voting and State Policies."
Electoral Law Journal, 16(4):453-469.
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated | Replication ]
Recent scholarship has documented the advantages of a new measure of partisan gerrymandering: the difference in the parties' wasted votes, divided by the total number of votes cast. This measure, known as the efficiency gap (EG), can be calculated directly from aggregate vote totals, facilitating comparison of the severity of party gerrymandering across states and time. In this article, we conduct the first analysis of the EG's effects on legislative representation and policymaking in the states. We first show that the partisan outcome of legislative elections has important causal effects on the ideological representation of individual districts, the ideological composition of legislative chambers, and the conservatism of state policymaking. We then show that variation in the EG across state-years is associated with systematic differences in the ideological location of the median state legislator and in the conservatism of state policies. These results suggest that partisan gerrymandering has major consequences not only for who wins elections but for the political process as a whole.
Tausanovitch, Chris and Christopher Warshaw, 2017.
"Estimating Candidates' Political Orientation in a Polarized Congress." Political Analysis, 25(2).
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated ]
Over the past decade, a number of new measures have been developed that attempt to capture the political orientation of both incumbent and nonincumbent candidates for Congress, as well as other offices, on the same scale. These measures pose the possibility of being able to answer a host of fundamental questions about political accountability and representation. In this paper, we examine the properties of six recent measures of candidates’ political orientations in different domains. While these measures are commonly viewed as proxies for ideology, each involves very different choices, incentives, and contexts. Indeed, we show that there is only a weak relationship between these measures within party. This suggests that these measures are capturing domain-specific factors rather than just candidates’ ideology. Moreover, these measures do poorly at distinguishing between moderate and extreme roll call voting records within each party. As a result, they fall short when it comes to facilitating empirical analysis of theories of accountability and representation in Congress. Overall, our findings suggest that future research should leverage the conceptual and empirical variation across these measures and avoid assuming they are synonymous with candidates’ ideology.
Tausanovitch, Chris, 2016.
"Income, Ideology, and Representation." RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 2(7).
[ Abstract | Published ]
Do legislators represent the rich better than they represent the poor? Recent work provides mixed support for this proposition. I test the hypothesis of differential representation using a data set on the political preferences of 318,537 individuals. Evidence of differential representation in the House of Representatives is weak. Support for differential representation is stronger in the Senate. In recent years, representation has occurred primarily through the selection of a legislator from the appropriate party. Although the preferences of higher-income constituents account for more of the variation in legislator voting behavior, higher-income constituents also account for much more of the variation in district preferences. In light of the low level of overall responsiveness, differential responsiveness appears small.
Oh, Jason S., and Chris Tausanovitch, 2016.
"Quantifying Legislative Uncertainty: A Case Study in Tax Policy."
Tax Law Review, 69(4).
[ Abstract | Ungated ]
Whether a legislature will or will not enact law is often uncertain. This Article offers an empirical model for quantifying that uncertainty, and it develops this argument in the context of federal income tax rates. Specifically, we estimate a model of legislator preferences on tax rates and show that the political process can be well understood in terms of the preferences of key legislators. We use our statistical model to quantify the uncertainty of tax rates and forecast the direction of likely rate changes in the future. This argument has several implications for policymaking and the analysis of legislative uncertainty more generally. First, quantifying legislative uncertainty offers insight into the behavioral effects of the law. How people respond to the law depends on their perception of the law’s future trajectory. Second, our analysis allows us to explore the stability of major legislative reform. Our methodology allows us to demonstrate that reforms are sometimes predictably unstable. Such reforms can have the perverse result of increasing future legislative uncertainty.
Hill, Seth, and Chris Tausanovitch, 2015.
"A Disconnect in Representation? Comparison of Trends in Congressional and Public Polarization."
Journal of Politics, 77(4).
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated | Replication ]
While it is widely agreed that Congress has polarized over the past 40 years, there is considerable disagreement about the extent of public polarization and its connection to congressional polarization. We present the first estimation of time series of polarization using the same method on the most comprehensive data for both the public and the Senate. With statistics of various definitions of polarization, we find little increase in the dispersion of views in the public from 1956 to 2012 but do find an increase in ideological sorting starting around 1980. The two time series bear little resemblance to one another with respect to divergence. Further, while congressional sorting exceeds that in the public today, we find that Congress has always been unrepresentative of the public. These results suggest that it is unlikely that changes in public preferences alone explain the widening gulf between the two parties in Congress.
Tausanovitch, Chris, and Christopher Warshaw, 2014.
"Representation in Municipal Government."
American Political Science Review, 108(3).
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated ]
Press coverage in The
Economist, The
Economist's Daily Chart, New
Republic, Vox,
Forbes
Magazine, The
Atlantic's City Lab, Washington
Post, USA
Today, Arizona
Republic, WBUR
Boston, Torontoist,
Virginia
Pilot, Atlanta
Magazine, Long
Beach Post, Boston
Globe, Seattle
PI, Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel, Colorado
Public Radio, San
Francisco Magazine, University Herald
Municipal governments play a vital role in American democracy, as well as in governments around the world. Despite this, little is known about the degree to which cities are responsive to the views of their citizens. In the past, the unavailability of data on the policy preferences of citizens at the municipal level has limited scholars’ ability to study the responsiveness of municipal government. We overcome this problem by using recent advances in opinion estimation to measure the mean policy conservatism in every U.S. city and town with a population above 20,000 people. Despite the supposition in the literature that municipal politics are non-ideological, we find that the policies enacted by cities across a range of policy areas correspond with the liberal-conservative positions of their citizens on national policy issues. In addition, we consider the influence of institutions, such as the presence of an elected mayor, the popular initiative, partisan elections, term limits, and at-large elections. Our results show that these institutions have little consistent impact on policy responsiveness in municipal government. These results demonstrate a robust role for citizen policy preferences in determining municipal policy outcomes, but cast doubt on the hypothesis that simple institutional reforms enhance responsiveness in municipal governments.
Tausanovitch, Chris, and Christopher Warshaw, 2013.
"Measuring Constituent Policy Preferences in Congress, State Legislatures, and Cities."
Journal of Politics, 75 (2):330-342.
[ Abstract | Published | Ungated | Appendix A | Appendix B]
Blog summary at LSE's USApp
Little is known about the American public’s policy preferences at the level of Congressional districts, state legislative districts, and local municipalities. In this article, we overcome the limited sample sizes that have hindered previous research by jointly scaling the policy preferences of 275,000 Americans based on their responses to policy questions. We combine this large dataset of Americans’ policy preferences with recent advances in opinion estimation to estimate the preferences of every state, congressional district, state legislative district, and large city. We show that our estimates outperform previous measures of citizens’ policy preferences. These new estimates enable scholars to examine representation at a variety of geographic levels. We demonstrate the utility of these estimates through applications of our measures to examine representation in state legislatures and city governments.
Unpublished Papers
Tausanovitch, Chris. “Are There Minorities Intense Enough to Overcome Majority Preferences?”
[ Abstract ]
The literature on democratic representation is permeated by the claim that voters who care more about particular policies have disproportionate influence. One mechanism for this influence is that these voters are more likely to vote on the basis of candidate positions. In a simple extension of spatial voting, candidates hew towards the preferences of these more intense voters rather than simply taking the position of the median. This paper tests this mechanism empirically. I measure intensity of preferences in the United States using conjoint analysis, the same method used in Sides, Tausanovitch, and Vavreck (2022). Using 4,941,690 experiments from Nationscape, I show that there is a very strong relationship between conjoint effects, which allow for the impact of intensity, and survey marginals, which do not. Among 44 issues, there are no cases in which the vote-maximizing position disagrees with the majority position. This strong relationship between marginals and intensity-weighted effects holds true across the nation as a whole and within all 50 states. However, within the Republican party there are a few counter examples. Most notably, Republicans in primary elections may benefit from supporting abortion bans and bans on immigration from predominantly Muslim countries even though these policies are opposed by large majorities of Republicans. Taking account of preference intensity can be vitally important to representation, but these cases appear to be rare.
Lewis, Jeffrey B., and Chris Tausanovitch.
"gpuideal: Fast Fully Bayesian Estimation of Ideal Points with Massive Data."
White paper.
[ Abstract | Paper | Github ]
In this white paper, we describe the R package gpuideal. This software package estimates two-parameter item response models, often used in political science to calculate legislator ideal points based on roll call vote matrices (see Clinton, Jackman, and Rivers, 2004). The software is much faster than existing fully Bayesian approaches (Jackman, 2017) but unlike alternative estimation approaches such as Expectation Maximization (Imai, Lo, and Olmsted, 2016) it still provides draws from the full posterior of the model. This is essential for estimating quantities such as polarization, where naive estimates based on maximum or expected a posteriori estimates can be highly misleading (Hill and Tausanovitch, 2015). The software relies on the fact that the estimation procedure used by Jackman (2017) is highly parallelizable and can take advantage of the wide availability of graphics processing units.
Dormant
Lewis, Jeffrey B., and Chris Tausanovitch.
"When Does Joint Scaling Allow For Direct Comparisons of Preferences?"
[ Abstract ]
Achen’s (1978) famous critique of Miller & Stokes (1963) shows that correlations between the policy stances taken by legislators and the policy stances taken by constituents do not establish whether or not these policy stances are proximate to one another. In general, proximity cannot be established when the two measures are not on the same scale. The recent literature on joint scaling of legislators and constituents proposes a solution to this problem. However, we show that this solution is insufficient. Jointly estimated item response models of legislator and constituent positions rest on the assumption that some items have the same parameter values for both groups. We show that this assumption fails statistical tests. This result explains the divergent findings in the literature about the relative positions of legislators and their constituents. Legislators take positions in a context that is fundamentally different from the context of public opinion polling.
Tausanovitch, Chris and Christopher Warshaw.
"How Should We Choose Survey Questions to Measure Citizens' Policy Preferences?"
[ Abstract | Paper ]
The effect of variation in citizens' policy preferences on salient political outcomes lies at the heart of a number of research agendas in political science. Little attention, however, has been paid to the quality of our measures of policy preferences. Even less attention has been paid to how we might improve our measures of policy preferences by asking better questions. In this paper, we address these questions using a unique survey of the American public with over 100 policy questions on economic and social issues. First, we evaluate the dimensionality of citizens’ policy preferences. We show that one dimension captures the policy preferences of the American public. Although this does not imply that the public is “unidimensional” per se, “off-dimensional” opinions are probably idiosyncratic for most voters. Next, we show that different sets of survey questions yield substantively different estimates of policy preferences for the same set of respondents. A small number of policy questions or inadequate question quality can lead to incorrect inferences for research questions on polarization and issue voting. Finally, we examine how to select survey questions to optimize our measure of policy preferences, and provide recommendations for survey designers.