Abstract
Undecided voters represent a major challenge to political pollsters. Recently, political psychologists have proposed the use of implicit association tests (IAT) to measure implicit attitudes toward political parties and candidates and predict voting behavior of undecided voters. A number of studies have shown that both implicit and explicit (i.e., self-reported) attitudes contribute to the prediction of voting behavior. More importantly, recent research suggests that implicit attitudes may be more useful for predicting the vote of undecided voters in the case of specific political issues rather than elections. Due to its direct-democratic political system, Switzerland represents an ideal place to investigate the predictive validity of IATs in the context of political votes. In this article, I present evidence from three studies in which both explicit and implicit measures were used ahead of the vote on four different referendums. Explicit measures predicted voting better than implicit attitudes for decided voters while implicit and explicit attitudes were equally good predictors among undecided voters. In addition, implicit attitudes predicted voting behavior descriptively, but not significantly better for undecided voters while, also from a descriptive point of view, explicit attitudes predicted voting better for decided respondents. In sum, results suggest that, as argued in previous research, the predictive value of implicit attitudes may be higher in the context of issue-related votes but still not as high as initially hoped-for.
Highlights
Perhaps the most compelling way for implicit social cognition to establish its relevance to the study of politics is to enhance researchers’ ability to predict political behavior. (p. 558) [1]Explaining the political behavior of people lies at the heart of political research
ST-implicit association test (IAT) Predict Voting Behavior in Swiss Referendums whether they are undecided or unwilling to report their voting intention, undecided voters represent a major source of uncertainty when it comes to predicting the outcome of an election or vote
Strong correlations between implicit and explicit attitudes were associated with high predictive validity of implicit attitudes overall but only little predictive value over and above explicit measures
Summary
Perhaps the most compelling way for implicit social cognition to establish its relevance to the study of politics is to enhance researchers’ ability to predict political behavior. (p. 558) [1]Explaining the political behavior of people lies at the heart of political research. ST-IATs Predict Voting Behavior in Swiss Referendums whether they are undecided or unwilling to report their voting intention, undecided voters represent a major source of uncertainty when it comes to predicting the outcome of an election or vote. For this reason, political scientists have been looking for ways to improve polling accuracy by allocating undecided voters to the respective candidates, parties, or political camps. Evidence strongly suggests that political pollsters should take into account both explicit and implicit measures when concerned with the prediction of voting behavior
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