John J. Cho

Published Works

5. "Descriptive or Partisan Representation? Examining Trade-Offs among Asian Americans." (with Mia Costa and Yusaku Horiuchi). Forthcoming at British Journal of Political Science.
   Abstract

   
   

   Do voters want representatives who share their race, ethnicity, or partisanship? We examine this question with a focus on Asian Americans who face trade-offs between descriptive (i.e., Asian American or “pan-ethnic”) and partisan representation, as well as trade-offs involving “co-ethnic” (e.g., Korean for Korean) and “cross-ethnic” (e.g., Indian for Korean) descriptive representation. We find that when Asian Americans are asked about collective representation in Congress, they prioritize increased co- ethnic and pan-ethnic legislators over co-partisan legislators. However, in a competitive electoral setting, they often trade off race/ethnicity for partisanship. Further analysis shows that Asian Americans are sometimes willing to cross party lines to vote for a co-ethnic candidate but never for a cross- or pan-ethnic candidate. These findings shed light on the importance of considering heterogeneous preferences along ethnicities within the same racial "in-groups," such as Asian Americans, a heavily understudied and heterogeneous group in American politics.



6. Gloating Villain: Two Field Experiments of the Effect of Anger on Turnout" (with Al Fang, Greg A. Huber, and Alan S. Gerber). Forthcoming at British Journal of Political Science.
   Abstract

   
   

   In two field experiments conducted in Mississippi and Florida, we present novel evidence about how emotions can be harnessed to increase voter turnout. When we inform respondents that a partisan villain would be happy if they did not vote (for example, a Gloating Villain treatment), we find that anger is activated in comparison to other emotions and turnout increases by 1.7 percentage points. In a subsequent field experiment, we benchmark this treatment to a standard GOTV message, the social pressure treatment. Using survey experiments that replicate our field experimental treatments, we show that our treatment links the act of voting to anticipated anger. In doing so, we contribute the first in-the-field evidence of how we can induce emotions, which are commonly understood to be fleeting states, to shape temporally distant political behaviours such as voting.



7. "Disagreements About Threats to Electoral Integrity: Beliefs About the Severity and Frequency of Fraudulent, Uncounted, and Forgone Votes in the 2020 and 2024 Elections." (with Gregory A. Huber, Scott E. Bokemper, Alan S. Gerber, William Brady, Killian McLoughlin, Molly J. Crockett). Forthcoming at Political Behavior.
   Abstract

   
   

   In a series of surveys and survey experiments (n = 14,700) conducted during the 2020 and 2024 elections, we deployed novel measures of concerns about election integrity to investigate beliefs about the frequency and severity of different election errors. In these studies, we measured beliefs about three types of errors: counting fraudulent ballots, failing to count legitimately cast ballots, and causing eligible voters to be unable to vote. In abstract descriptions of election errors (Study 1, 2020 and 2024) and vignettes describing errors alongside other features (Study 2, 2020 and 2024), we find that Republicans believed fraudulent votes were both more frequent and more serious than did Democrats, with the opposite pattern for forgone votes. In the ex-ante choices between election rules (Study 3, only 2020), we find that Democrats give much greater weight to concerns about forgone votes (turnout) than do Republicans. Overall, these three studies point to the importance of improved measurement to understand individual- and group-level differences in concerns about threats to electoral integrity.



8. "The Importance of Breaking Even: How Local and Aggregate Returns Make Politically Feasible Policies." (with Alan S. Gerber, Gregory A. Huber, and Patrick D. Tucker). 2024. British Journal of Political Science 54(3): 730-747.
   Abstract

   
   

   Policies that promote the common good may be politically infeasible if legislators representing ‘losing’ constituencies are punished for failing to promote their district's welfare. We investigate how varying the local and aggregate returns to a policy affects voter support for their incumbent. In our first study, we find that an incumbent who favours a welfare-enhancing policy enjoys a discontinuous jump in support when their district moves from losing to at least breaking even, while the additional incremental political returns for the district doing better than breaking even are modest. This feature of voter response, which we replicate, has significant implications for legislative politics generally and, in particular, how to construct politically feasible social welfare-enhancing policies. In a second study, we investigate the robustness of this finding in a competitive environment in which a challenger can call attention to a legislator's absolute and relative performance in delivering resources to their district.



9. "Do Elite Appeals to Negative Partisanship Stimulate Citizen Engagement?" (with Mia Costa and Dartmouth undergraduate students). 2022. The Forum 20(1): 135–153.
   Abstract

   
   

   Scholars have extensively studied whether campaign attack advertisements—messages that attack individual candidates—mobilize or demobilize voters with mixed results. We argue that group-oriented partisan affect in campaigns—messages about the parties in general—is just as important given increasing trends of affective polarization. We use two survey experiments, one right before the 2020 presidential election and the other before the subsequent Georgia Senate runoff election, to examine the effects of partisan rhetoric on several measures of civic engagement. In the presidential election, neither positive partisan, negative partisan, nor personal apartisan appeals had a statistically significant effect on voters’ enthusiasm, likelihood to volunteer, or likelihood to seek out more information about engaging in the election. In the second study, negative partisan appeals led registered voters in Georgia to report much higher levels of enthusiasm about their preferred candidate, but this result was driven by Republicans only. The findings contribute new insights about electoral context and asymmetric affective polarization to the literature documenting the mobilizing effects of negativity in campaigns.

Under Review

1. “The Challenge of Estimating Percentages: Reassessing the Origins and Meaning of Apparent Partisan Stereotypes.” (with Lilla Orr and Gregory Huber). Under review.

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