The Effects of California’s 2012 Election System Change on Polarization Open Access
Tyler, Minh-Thy (Spring 2024)
Abstract
The discourse surrounding election systems has remained a point of discussion among political scholars and experts. Recent years have witnessed a notable trend where various states and cities across the United States have modified their election systems to find methods that mitigate political polarization, increase fairness in elections, and enact other reforms. One such significant transition occurred in California, where the electoral system transitioned from a closed primary system to a top-two primary system in 2012. This study explores the ramifications of California’s change on the impact of political polarization among elected congressional representatives during federal elections in the 112th and 113th Congresses. Using Adam Bonica's DIME and DIME+ datasets, this research takes a multifaceted approach to offer insights into the dynamics of this change. First, it assesses the ideological shifts among representatives elected in 2010 who became incumbents in the 113th Congress following the 2012 election. Along with this, this research uses a difference-in-difference model to compare ideological shifts among representatives with those in similar states. The second approach conducts a network analysis based on voting behaviors across the two Congresses. Lastly, through sentiment analysis by topic, this study researches the potential changes in political rhetoric surrounding various issues. Despite these methodologies, the findings indicate that California’s electoral reform did not have significant changes in political polarization among representatives in the two years after the 2012 election.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Introduction 1
Motivation 1
Thesis Statement 2
Chapter 2: Literature Review 2
California’s Primary Election System History 2
Network analysis for politician behavior 3
Natural Language Processing (NLP) 3
Chapter 3: Data Collection and Methodology 4
Data Collection 4
Ideological Change 4
Network Analysis 5
Sentiment Analysis 6
Chapter 4: Findings and Analysis 7
Ideological Change 7
Figure 1: Average Incumbent Ideology Comparison 8
Table 1: Average and Median Ideal Points Before and After Reform 8
Table 2: DID OLS Regression Results for Democrat Ideology Scores 9
Table 3: DID OLS Regression Results for Republicans Ideology Scores 9
Network Analysis 10
Figure 2: Group 1 Network of California Representatives in 112th Congress 10
Figure 3: Group 1 Network of California Representatives in 113th Congress 11
Table 4: Group 1 Network Community of 112th California Representatives 12
Table 5: Group 1 Network Community of 113th California Representatives 12
Table 6: Inter-Party Betweenness Centrality 13
Table 7: Inter-party and Intra-Party Degree Centrality 13
Table 8: Group 2 Network Community of 112th California Representatives 14
Table 9: Group 2 Network Community of 113th California Representatives 15
Sentiment Analysis 15
Table 10: Positive, Negative and Neutral Words for 112th and 113th Congress 16
Figure 4: Average Sentiment Scores for Democrats by Topic 17
Figure 5: Average Sentiment Scores for Republicans by Topic 17
Figure 6: Euclidean Distance of Average Sentiment Scores by Topic between Republicans and Democrats 18
Table 11: Wilcoxon Test Values for Sentiment by Topic 19
Chapter 5: Discussion 19
Discussion 19
Limitations and Future Research 20
Chapter 6: Conclusion 20
Bibliography 21
Appendix 23
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