Sam Brownback Case Study

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In 2012, Kansas Governor Sam Brownback signed into law tax cuts that would eliminate income taxes for the owners of 191,000 businesses. Brownback fondly called these tax cuts “a real-live experiment.” One member of the Kansas Republican Party reported that the cuts would result in a $2.7 billion deficit for the state (Rothschild, 2012).
After two years of criticism for his management of Kansas’ finances and questionable cuts to education, Brownback’s approval ratings fell drastically. In February of 2014, only one-third of Kansans approved of the job Brownback was doing (Jensen, 2014). Despite this, he was miraculously reelected just months later in the 2014 midterm elections. Over a year after being reelected, his approval ratings fell to only eighteen percent. Even President Obama—a democratic politician—received higher approval ratings in Kansas, a surprising result for a state so loyal to the
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Gerber, Green, and Larimer (2010) found that citizens who received mailing indicating previous voting behavior significantly increased voter turnout. A portion of the mailings indicated that the citizen voted in the previous election, garnering feelings of pride. Other mailings induced shame by indicated that the citizen had previously abstained from voting. Although all mailings resulted in increased voter turnout, mailings that induced shame saw the highest success. In other words, holding citizens accountable for their voting behavior made them more likely to vote.
Those mailings suggest that conformity can influence voter turnout. Participants never received mailings saying, “You must vote!” or even “We suggest you vote in the next election.” The choice to vote was entirely theirs, not one dictated by the researchers. The simple idea that they were being monitored or that they may face social judgment was enough to nudge them into the voting