Working Papers
Zárate, Marques, Enrique Quezada, and Angel Armenta. "Se Habla Español: Spanish-language appeals and Candidate Evaluations in the United States" Revise and resubmit
Political candidates engage in Spanish-language appeals in efforts to increase support among Hispanic voters. We argue that candidates, Hispanic or not, can use Spanish to signal closeness to Hispanics and posit that the effectiveness of these appeals is conditional on fluency. To test this, we run an experiment where participants listen to an audio clip of a hypothetical candidate's stump speech. We vary the ethnicity of the candidate (Anglo or Hispanic) and the language of the speech (English, non-native Spanish, and native-sounding Spanish). We find that Hispanic support for the Anglo and Hispanic candidates is higher in the native-like Spanish condition compared to the English-only condition. Relative to the English condition, non-native Spanish does not increase support for the Anglo candidate but decreases support for the Hispanic candidate. Similar findings are found for Anglo participants. Our results suggest that candidates can effectively appeal to Hispanic voters using Spanish-language messages.
Zárate, Marques. "Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say: Dimensions of Pandering Perceptions among Hispanic Americans" Revise and resubmit
When non-Hispanic candidates make an appeal in Spanish they are typically labeled as `Hispandering.' Some evidence has shown, however, that Hispanics have higher evaluations of candidates who make Spanish appeals, regardless of ethnicity. This paper explores how perceptions of pandering are formed among Hispanics. I expand the expectations gap literature by arguing that trait ownership and expectations are relevant for race. Given the expectation for a candidate’s ability to perform a certain appeal, perceptions of pandering will be conditioned on the candidate’s ability to exceed or fall short of those expectations. I test this idea with Spanish language appeals. I run an experiment where I randomly assign participants to hear a message given by an Anglo or Hispanic candidate where the message is either in English or Spanish. I find support for the expectations gap theory. Anglo candidates, who are not expected to be able to speak Spanish can increase their perceived sincerity by speaking in grammatically correct Spanish. Meanwhile, Hispanic candidates who speak in non-native sounding Spanish have lower evaluations compared to their native-like or English-speaking counterparts. Given the low levels of political trust among Hispanics, I test the implications of perceived pandering on political trust. I run another experiment where I test whether perceiving that one politician panders has spillover effects for other candidates. I find that perceiving pandering decreases trust in that candidate but otherwise pandering had no spillover effect on other candidates' political trust. These studies help illuminate the important dimensions of pandering perceptions.
Zárate, Marques. "How Voting History and Issue Type Shape Perceptions of Political Pandering"
Politicians are often accused of pandering to groups they appeal to despite evidence that suggests politicians do not pander Jacobs and Shapiro, 2000; Sulkin, 2009). Whether politicians pander or not likely does not matter for them electorally if voters perceive that they do and it affects voter political behavior. In this paper, I argue that perceptions of pandering are products of motivated evaluations (Taber and Lodge, 2006), and knowledge of a candidate’s voting history (Simas, Milita and Ryan, 2021). People are motivated to believe that candidates from their party are sincere even when they have an inconsistent history of supporting a given issue or policy. This may not be true, however, if the candidate is inconsistent on an ideological or principled issue (Tavits, 2007). I conduct a 2x2x2 quasi-pre-post repeated measures experiment with 758 Republicans and 770 Democrats recruited from Prolific. Participants were asked to read a short news article reporting on either a Republican or Democrat politician at a campaign event. The politician was reported to either be talking about a principled or pragmatic issue and was later reported to either have a consistent or inconsistent voting record on that issue. I find evidence that politicians from the opposite party tend to be perceived as pandering and that regardless of party, politicians who have an inconsistent history on a given issue are perceived as pandering. I do not find evidence that the type of issue matters for how perceptions of pandering are formed.
Zárate, Marques, and Matthew Hayes. "Some of My Best Constituents are Black: Pandering and Policy Responsiveness to African Americans in the U.S. House" Draft available upon request
Past research has found that Black constituents often receive lower quality responsiveness from their elected officials, especially when those officials are white (Whitby, 1987; Butler and Broockman, 2011; Grose, 2011; Clark, 2019). This is potentially exacerbated by the partisan nature of gerrymandering in most states, with African American voters packed into districts with high majority populations (Cameron, Epstein and O’Halloran, 1996). In the 2020 elections, Republicans increased their control of state legislatures, thus giving them substantial power to redraw Congressional district lines in response to the Decennial Census which many fear will lead to even greater packing and vote dilution for minority and Democratic voters. This poses an important question: are legislators likely to be responsive to changes in the racial demographics of their district? Using data from before and after the 2010 redistricting cycle, we examine whether MCs engaged in policy responsiveness to Black constituents (using LCCR voting scores), or instead pandered to Black voters by simply depicting more African Americans in their campaign advertisements (using data on Congressional television ads). Our expectation is that candidates will be more likely to depict African Americans in their campaign appeals when their district increases in Black population but will not be more likely to score highly on LCCR scores. This work thus sheds important new light into the quality of representation Black Americans experience from their representatives in Washington.
Zárate, Marques, and Matthew Hayes. "Does Political Trust Moderate the Relationship between Anxiety and Political Participation?"
We examine whether political trust moderates the relationship between feelings of anxiety and political participation. Political trust was tested as the moderator as one way to account for previous inconsistent findings regarding the link between anxiety and political participation. Anxiety prompts a fight or flight reaction in the individual, producing two possible causal directions. In today’s political environment, uncertainty and threat are relatively high, making the study of the effect of anxiety on political participation important. We propose that anxieties effect on political participation is moderated by the level of trust an individual has in either their elected representatives to make good decisions or in the United States government ability as an institution to mitigate and address threatening issues. We posit that individuals with greater trust in the government are more likely to participate in politics when confronted with threat and uncertainty while those individuals with little or no trust in the government are likely to stray away from political participation when confronted with threat and uncertainty.
Political candidates engage in Spanish-language appeals in efforts to increase support among Hispanic voters. We argue that candidates, Hispanic or not, can use Spanish to signal closeness to Hispanics and posit that the effectiveness of these appeals is conditional on fluency. To test this, we run an experiment where participants listen to an audio clip of a hypothetical candidate's stump speech. We vary the ethnicity of the candidate (Anglo or Hispanic) and the language of the speech (English, non-native Spanish, and native-sounding Spanish). We find that Hispanic support for the Anglo and Hispanic candidates is higher in the native-like Spanish condition compared to the English-only condition. Relative to the English condition, non-native Spanish does not increase support for the Anglo candidate but decreases support for the Hispanic candidate. Similar findings are found for Anglo participants. Our results suggest that candidates can effectively appeal to Hispanic voters using Spanish-language messages.
Zárate, Marques. "Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say: Dimensions of Pandering Perceptions among Hispanic Americans" Revise and resubmit
When non-Hispanic candidates make an appeal in Spanish they are typically labeled as `Hispandering.' Some evidence has shown, however, that Hispanics have higher evaluations of candidates who make Spanish appeals, regardless of ethnicity. This paper explores how perceptions of pandering are formed among Hispanics. I expand the expectations gap literature by arguing that trait ownership and expectations are relevant for race. Given the expectation for a candidate’s ability to perform a certain appeal, perceptions of pandering will be conditioned on the candidate’s ability to exceed or fall short of those expectations. I test this idea with Spanish language appeals. I run an experiment where I randomly assign participants to hear a message given by an Anglo or Hispanic candidate where the message is either in English or Spanish. I find support for the expectations gap theory. Anglo candidates, who are not expected to be able to speak Spanish can increase their perceived sincerity by speaking in grammatically correct Spanish. Meanwhile, Hispanic candidates who speak in non-native sounding Spanish have lower evaluations compared to their native-like or English-speaking counterparts. Given the low levels of political trust among Hispanics, I test the implications of perceived pandering on political trust. I run another experiment where I test whether perceiving that one politician panders has spillover effects for other candidates. I find that perceiving pandering decreases trust in that candidate but otherwise pandering had no spillover effect on other candidates' political trust. These studies help illuminate the important dimensions of pandering perceptions.
Zárate, Marques. "How Voting History and Issue Type Shape Perceptions of Political Pandering"
Politicians are often accused of pandering to groups they appeal to despite evidence that suggests politicians do not pander Jacobs and Shapiro, 2000; Sulkin, 2009). Whether politicians pander or not likely does not matter for them electorally if voters perceive that they do and it affects voter political behavior. In this paper, I argue that perceptions of pandering are products of motivated evaluations (Taber and Lodge, 2006), and knowledge of a candidate’s voting history (Simas, Milita and Ryan, 2021). People are motivated to believe that candidates from their party are sincere even when they have an inconsistent history of supporting a given issue or policy. This may not be true, however, if the candidate is inconsistent on an ideological or principled issue (Tavits, 2007). I conduct a 2x2x2 quasi-pre-post repeated measures experiment with 758 Republicans and 770 Democrats recruited from Prolific. Participants were asked to read a short news article reporting on either a Republican or Democrat politician at a campaign event. The politician was reported to either be talking about a principled or pragmatic issue and was later reported to either have a consistent or inconsistent voting record on that issue. I find evidence that politicians from the opposite party tend to be perceived as pandering and that regardless of party, politicians who have an inconsistent history on a given issue are perceived as pandering. I do not find evidence that the type of issue matters for how perceptions of pandering are formed.
Zárate, Marques, and Matthew Hayes. "Some of My Best Constituents are Black: Pandering and Policy Responsiveness to African Americans in the U.S. House" Draft available upon request
Past research has found that Black constituents often receive lower quality responsiveness from their elected officials, especially when those officials are white (Whitby, 1987; Butler and Broockman, 2011; Grose, 2011; Clark, 2019). This is potentially exacerbated by the partisan nature of gerrymandering in most states, with African American voters packed into districts with high majority populations (Cameron, Epstein and O’Halloran, 1996). In the 2020 elections, Republicans increased their control of state legislatures, thus giving them substantial power to redraw Congressional district lines in response to the Decennial Census which many fear will lead to even greater packing and vote dilution for minority and Democratic voters. This poses an important question: are legislators likely to be responsive to changes in the racial demographics of their district? Using data from before and after the 2010 redistricting cycle, we examine whether MCs engaged in policy responsiveness to Black constituents (using LCCR voting scores), or instead pandered to Black voters by simply depicting more African Americans in their campaign advertisements (using data on Congressional television ads). Our expectation is that candidates will be more likely to depict African Americans in their campaign appeals when their district increases in Black population but will not be more likely to score highly on LCCR scores. This work thus sheds important new light into the quality of representation Black Americans experience from their representatives in Washington.
Zárate, Marques, and Matthew Hayes. "Does Political Trust Moderate the Relationship between Anxiety and Political Participation?"
We examine whether political trust moderates the relationship between feelings of anxiety and political participation. Political trust was tested as the moderator as one way to account for previous inconsistent findings regarding the link between anxiety and political participation. Anxiety prompts a fight or flight reaction in the individual, producing two possible causal directions. In today’s political environment, uncertainty and threat are relatively high, making the study of the effect of anxiety on political participation important. We propose that anxieties effect on political participation is moderated by the level of trust an individual has in either their elected representatives to make good decisions or in the United States government ability as an institution to mitigate and address threatening issues. We posit that individuals with greater trust in the government are more likely to participate in politics when confronted with threat and uncertainty while those individuals with little or no trust in the government are likely to stray away from political participation when confronted with threat and uncertainty.