The impact of a campaign on voters' decisions depends, in part, on when voters make their decisions. Voters who decide at the start of a campaign will be much less influenced by the campaign than those who decide at the end. But what explains when voters make their decisions? We address this...

We examine how people evaluate a series of competing political messages received over the course of a campaign or policy debate. Instead of assuming a message has a fixed effect, we emphasize the variable effect of a message depending on when it is received in relation to other messages. We...

Analysts make competing claims about when and how politicians can use fear to gain support for suboptimal policies. Using a model, we clarify how common attributes of fear affect politicians' abilities to achieve self-serving outcomes that are bad for voters. In it, a politician provides...

Can the President or the Senate affect the balance of power in the House? We find that they can. Our answer comes from a model that links House leadership decisions to the constitutional requirement to build lawmaking coalitions with the Senate and President. Changing the ideal point of a...

The success and influence of survey-based electoral research is fueling the ambitions of survey analysts and producers. As a result, many new forms and uses of survey data are emerging. These new activities bring with them important questions about credibility. I address several of these...

Several prominent scholars use results from social choice theory to conclude that legislative intent is meaningless. We disagree. We support our argument by showing that the conclusions in question are based on misapplications of the theory. Some of the conclusions in question are based on...