Objective. Existing research establishes that political trust is not only an important determinant of individual political behavior and government effectiveness, but may also measure the health of civic society. This article looks specifically at trust among Latinos of Mexican descent, demonstrating that acculturation is corrosive of political trust. Methods. Logit and ordered logit models are used to simultaneously test two theories of acculturation—classic assimilation theory and ethnic competition theory. Data come from the Latino National Political Survey (LNPS). Results. Support is found for both modes of acculturation. Conclusions. Although the results do not conclusively side with one particular mode of acculturation, they consistently show that acculturation is corrosive of political trust. Latinos of Mexican descent become more cynical about American government as they incorporate into or are exposed to mainstream American culture, and as they become more aware of or concerned about racism and discrimination.

The rise of micro-targeting in American elections raises new questions about the effects of identity-based mobilization strategies. In this article, we bring together theories of expressive voting with literature on racial and ethnic identification to argue that prior studies, which have found either weak or null effects of identity messages targeting minority groups, have missed a crucial moderating variable—identity strength—that varies across both individuals and communities. Identity appeals can have powerful effects on turnout, but only when they target politicized identities to which individuals hold strong prior attachments. Using two innovative GOTV field experiments that rely on publicly available data as a proxy for identity strength, we show that the effects of both ethnic and national identity appeals among Latinos in California and Texas are conditional on the strength of those identities in different communities and among different Latino subgroups.

Existing research establishes that political trust is not only an important determinant of individual political behavior and government effectiveness, but may also measure the health of civic society. This article presents evidence that assimilation is corrosive of political trust, focusing specifically on the incorporation of Latinos in Chicago. Various strands of assimilation theory predict that as Mexicans naturalize and join the electorate, and as Puerto Ricans migrate to the mainland, they will be increasingly cynical about politics. This theory is tested with data from a recent survey of the Latino population in Chicago. Mexican American citizens are found to be less trusting of government, while Mexicandescent non-citizens remain more idealistic. Puerto Ricans born on the island of Puerto Rico are found to be more trusting than are Puerto Ricans born in the United States.

In their 2009 article published in the American Journal of Political Science, Dale and Strauss (DS) introduce the Noticeable Reminder Theory (NRT) of voter mobilization, which posits that mobilization efforts that are highly noticeable and salient to potential voters, even if impersonal, can be successful. In an innovative experimental design, DS show that text messages substantially boost turnout by levels comparable to personalized mobilization strategies, challenging previous field experimental research which argues that social connectedness is the key to increasing participation. This paper replicates DS's research design and extends it in two key ways. First, whereas the treatment in DS's experiment is a "warm" text message that was combined with some form of contact, we test NRT more cleanly by examining the effect of "cold" text messages that are completely devoid of auxiliary interaction. Second, because we have data on subjects' recent voting histories, we can test an implication of NRT that habitual voters should exhibit the largest treatment effects in lower-salience elections, whereas casual voters should exhibit the largest treatment effects in higher-salience elections. Via these two extensions, we find support for NRT.

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