Abstract
ABSTRACT Candidate endorsements affect the likelihood that people vote for a candidate since they reduce the efforts devoted to vote choices. However, the effects of endorsements from different sources remain under-explored. Furthermore, the effects of endorsements are believed to vary with the level of political sophistication, as voters with low sophistication are more reliant on such shortcuts, but it is unclear whether these differences are similar for different sources. We study the effects of endorsements from three different sources – family and close friends, networks on social media and Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) – on candidate favorability. We do so with a choice-based conjoint experiment embedded in a survey from Finland (n = 1021), where we also examine differences in effects across political sophistication (political interest, frequency of political discussions, internal political efficacy, party identification, and voting in the last parliamentary election). The results show that endorsements from VAAs and family and friends have positive effects while social media networks do not. We do not find systematic differences in effects across levels of political sophistication no matter how we operationalize it. This shows that it is important to consider the source of an endorsement to appreciate the effect, no matter who is the recipient.
Highlights
During election campaigns, voters are confronted with an overflow of campaign messages, and rather than basing their decisions on all available information, they tend to apply various information shortcuts that allow them to reduce the transactional costs involved in gathering relevant political information, and help them make an vote choice
We find that endorsements from family and close friends and Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) affect candidate favorability, whereas endorsements from networks on social media do not seem to change candidate favorability
While research on the effect of political sophistication is not fully univocal, we find it reasonable to argue that individuals with lower levels of political sophistication are affected to a greater extent by endorsements when making their choice
Summary
Voters are confronted with an overflow of campaign messages, and rather than basing their decisions on all available information, they tend to apply various information shortcuts that allow them to reduce the transactional costs involved in gathering relevant political information, and help them make an (informed) vote choice. Some of the most accessible information pieces regarding politics come from social networks like family and close friends that may potentially simplify the voting decision for citizens with less experience Along these lines, research shows that social media platforms are more influential among young, less experienced voters, who find close friend’s recommendations, or posts with high amounts of reads and reactions as credible (Ohme, de Vreese, and Albaek 2018). While previous studies have examined similar questions, the use of conjoint analysis for studying the impact of endorsements provides advantages compared to research based on traditional survey items (Hainmueller, Hopkins, and Yamamoto 2014) Conjoint analysis makes it possible to examine the effects of multiple traits on candidate choice (Franchino and Zucchini 2015; Kirkland and Coppock 2018; Marx and Schumacher 2018; Breitenstein 2019).
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