Two papers will be presented at this meeting.  Brown-baggers are welcome.

"Economic Performance and Presidential Trait Evaluations," a multiple-authored paper presented at this meeting by Lisa Argyle and Skylar Covich.
Brief Abstract:
"Presidential traits (such as morality, intelligence, and leadership) have long been assumed to be idiosyncratic personal characteristics of the individual president and are treated as exogenous from other political and economic factors. Prior literature has shown that both presidential characteristics and economic performance are important elements of vote choice and presidential approval.  In this analysis, we demonstrate an important link between these two factors, showing that objective and subjective indicators of economic performance are significant predictors of presidential character trait evaluations."
(co-authors for this paper are Lisa Argyle, Marcus Arrajj, Skylar Covich, Egidio Garay, Julian Gottlieb, Heather Hodges, Eric Smith)?

"Gender, Race, and Constituency Communication," by Nicole Filler and Lisa Argyle.
Brief Abstract:
"We aim to describe differences in how U.S. House members portray themselves to their constituents by coding and analyzing the visual images presented on their official websites.  Specifically, we test whether women, minorities, and Democrats are more likely to portray themselves as 'outsiders' than white, male, or Republican politicians, who we expect to portray themselves as Washington 'insiders.'   We find that self-portrayal strategies are significantly conditioned by party, race, and gender."