African Voters Research Articles

A Impact Analysis of Digitalized Voting System on Voting Behavior and Democratic Consolidation in Nigeria

Election results in most African countries are hardly transmitted using digitalized devices. This has created room for suspicion and discrediting of electoral integrity in part of Africa. Citizens’ suspicion of the electoral process has not only made many African voters believe that votes hardly count, but it has significantly provoked tendencies of political apathy and indifference during elections in some African countries. Political apathy and indifference are partly responsible for the recruitment of mediocre persons to elective political offices, which in the long run, amount to bad governance. While the occupation of elective public offices by mediocre persons is antithetical to democratic consolidation, Africa’s electoral integrity largely depends on, and can only be sustained if election results are digitalized or transmitted in real time electronically. Although studies have extensively examined and identified factors such as competency, integrity, proven track records, vision, ideology, manifesto, and inducements, among others, as factors influencing voting choice or behavior, evidence is very little on how a digitalized transmission of election results, impacts on voting behavior and consolidates Africa’s democracy, using the elite theory. This article thus expanded knowledge on how a digitalized voting method influences voters’ decisions or choices using the qualitative method. Results indicated that a digitalized voting system could enhance vote count, public trust in election results, and the deepening of democracy in Africa. It concluded that a digitalized voting system has the potential to increase citizens trust in the electioneering process in Nigeria. This is a contribution to the general body of knowledge in e-voting and election administration. Keywords: Behavior, Consolidation Democracy, Digitalize, Voting System

Taxation in Namibia: an everyday political practice without deliberation and influence

AbstractTax compliance is a major concern as states try to increase state revenues in order to provide services for their populations. Remarkably, taxation has not figured centrally on the agenda among scholars working on the African voter. This article contributes through studying the social practice of taxes, by asking: how is taxation understood as a political practice? This is studied using focus groups across the private and public sector in Namibia, where the willingness to pay taxes and the relative tax burden is high. This micro-study of citizens’ experiences focuses on the perceived room for political practice in relation to taxes, sense of influence over taxes and whether taxes are thought about in citizenship terms. The article shows that taxes are relegated to a sphere of politics where deliberation and opportunities for accountability are missing, yet ideas of duty are central elements of tax compliance.

The effect of economic downturns on voter turnout in Africa

The academic literature provides two competing hypotheses about the effect of economic downturns on voter turnout: the ‘mobilisation’ hypothesis, according to which people go to the polls to express their discontent with the government's performance; and the ‘withdrawal’ hypothesis, according to which people stay at home on election day, either to attend to more immediate, pressing concerns or to punish the incumbent. In this paper, we test these hypotheses against novel data from 317 presidential elections in 40 African countries over the period from 1960 to 2016. We find that economic growth has a positive effect on voter turnout, consistent with the ‘withdrawal’ hypothesis. The paper contributes to the literature in three ways. First, it provides the most comprehensive macro level analysis of voter turnout in Africa to-date. Second, it proves that African voters respond to changes in aggregate economic measures, thus contributing to the growing literature on economic voting in Africa. Finally, it demonstrates that African voters behave in a way that is consistent with the ‘withdrawal’ hypothesis.

Ethnicity and governing party support in Africa: A longitudinal multilevel analysis

Historically, ethnicity has been considered to play a fundamental role in voting behaviour in Africa. However, researchers on the issue have found contradictory conclusions. The most recent research concludes that the African voter is more rational than expected. Overall ethnicity seems to be less influential than theory used to suggest. Against this background, this paper analyses vote for governing party in Africa and presents evidence that the method and data set used will have an important influence upon the final result. The research takes form of a quantitative analysis making extensive use of survey data from 2005 to 2019. Results indicate that ethnicity, although not exclusively, is still an explanatory factor. At a glance, African vote is rationally ethnic.

The Winning Party Platform: Voter Perceptions of Party Positions and Voting in Urban Africa

Previous literature suggests that some African parties employ non-valence positional issues in their party platforms and that this practice is more prevalent in some countries than in others; however, no quantitative research has analysed the electoral effects of non-valenced campaigns. How do African voters perceive parties’ policy positions? Who uses party platforms to choose candidates? Using data from an original survey experiment conducted in Nairobi, we examine voter perceptions of party platforms and their behaviour in the 2017 Kenyan presidential elections. We find that the opposition party’s clearer messaging helps average voters recognise and characterise the party, compared to the incumbent’s moderate policy stance. Moreover, while both parties’ policy positions positively affect voting, non-partisan voters are more likely to support a candidate advocating moderate policies. This implies an incumbency advantage: incumbents’ broad-appeal strategies help maximise their votes, whereas opposition parties have limited strategy options.

Exemplary but not Canonical: The South African Voters’ Rights Cases

In this paper, I argue that the idea of the constitutional ‘canon’ is deeply problematic and should be replaced with the idea of the ‘exemplary’. Even the latter, however, has its problems. Examples are offered as opportunities for engagement which may be refused on the ground that even critical engagement with examples of constitutional cases involves buying in provisionally to the thought that some legitimating basis for a political order is at stake, some plausible conception of ‘We, the people’. My examples are deeply problematic because they come from a deeply divided society, apartheid South Africa. I analyse the three Voters Rights cases from the late 1950s to provide a basis for my argument that engagement is worthwhile despite the problems. I sketch the afterlife of the cases in two other deeply divided societies, Rhodesia and Israel, as well as in one of the major works of the last century in philosophy of law, HLA Hart’s The Concept of Law. I conclude by returning to the question of what these cases exemplify. That I acknowledge is a normatively loaded question. But its normative load, once rendered explicit, makes it a question of more than academic interest. It is also pertinent to practitioners of human rights law.

Zuma versus Ramaphosa: Factors Influencing Party Choice of South Africans in the Run-up to the 2019 Elections

The outcome of the 2016 local government elections in which the ANC lost substantial support, fuelled early speculation on not only the outcome of the 2019 general elections, but also on the factors which were likely to determine party support. Added to this was the deteriorating political and socio-economic situation in South Africa. Against this background, two national surveys were undertaken in October/November 2017 and October/ November 2018 to establish the factors at these particular times that were likely to influence the vote choice of South Africans. From both surveys it was found that South African voters increasingly base their choice of a party on rational considerations. Trust in the president was a particularly important predictor of voter choice. In the first survey, loss of trust in the president (Zuma) resulted in a loss of faith in the ANC and in support of the party; while in the second survey, the converse was true: an increase in trust in the president (Ramaphosa) reflected an increased trust in and support for the party. Other predictors of vote choice in both surveys include a desire for socio-economic well-being and hope for a better future; the fear of losing a social grant; age; and racialised party images.

Choice and Choice Set in African Elections

This paper argues for a reorientation of how we think about ethnic voting, away from an exclusive focus on voters to one that links voter behavior to the supply side of candidates. It introduces the concept of choice set, or the set of choices a voter sees on the ballot on election day, and shows that the modal choice set in three legislative elections – Kenya (2007), Ghana (2008), and Uganda (2011) – is not the mixed co-ethnic/non-co-ethnic set assumed in much of the literature on ethnic voting in Africa. Most African voters in fact see ballots that consist of either all co-ethnics or no co-ethnics. These uniform choice sets constrain choice in ways that predetermine behavior. Moreover, breaking behavior into choice and choice set reveals that differences in prevalence rates of co-ethnic voting across cases is driven as much by the choices voters see on their ballots as the choices they make in the voting booth. Shifting from choice to choice set thus induces us to identify and theorize factors shaping electoral outcomes in Africa beyond those rooted in individual voter psychology: the entry decisions of candidates and parties, constituency boundaries, and the distribution of groups across geography.

Voter Demand for Legislator Attention in Kenya

What do African voters want from their legislators? Do they want legislators who focus mainly on national level policy-making? Or do they favor locally oriented legislators who prioritize the needs of their local constituency? Existing studies describe voters in sub-Saharan Africa as holding an overwhelmingly strong and uniform preference for legislators to spend more time and attention in their local constituencies rather than in national assembly. Yet this research is based on a relatively limited body of work with findings that may reflect artifacts of survey design more than the reality on the ground. This chapter proposes a new theory of voter preference for legislator attention as an allocation problem, informed by qualitative evidence gathered from an in-depth focus group discussion. Using a survey experimental evidence from Kenya, I find that voters do not uniformly favor local service to the exclusion of work in the parliament. Rather voters prefer a balance between national and local attention. I show that such a preference for a balance is similar to that exhibited by voters in advanced democracies.

Do Election Campaigns Matter in South Africa? An Examination of Fluctuations in Support for the ANC, DA, IFP and NNP 1994–2019

ABSTRACTElection campaigns in democratic South Africa have been eventful affairs. Despite the electoral dominance of the African National Congress (ANC) since 1994, political parties in South Africa have campaigned fiercely. At face value then, it would appear that election campaigns constitute an integral and valuable part of South Africa’s democratic system. Yet, at the same time, following the 1994 elections and given the racialized dynamics of South Africa’s electoral landscape, a view has emerged that does not regard South African voters as active agents consuming relevant political information. This view, which sees voters as guided primarily by symbolic or identity concerns, was strongly challenged by several analysts. However, the question as to whether election campaigns are relevant in the South African context still remains. In this article, I examine the relevance of campaigning in the South African context. I focus on the African National Congress (ANC), the Democratic Party (DP)/Democratic Alliance (DA), Inkatha Freedom Party (IFP) and the National Party (NP) /New National Party (NNP). I argue that campaign messaging and party credibility are important contributors of performance at the polls. Inconsistent and contradictory campaign messages, poor decisions and destructive behaviour had substantial repercussions for parties at the polls.

Voting Preferences of Protesters and Non-protesters in Three South African Elections (2014–2019): Revisiting the ‘Ballot and the Brick’

ABSTRACTThis article examines the relationship between protest and voting by revisiting Booysen's ‘ballot and the brick' thesis. Booysen argued that, in South Africa, protest forms part of a ‘dual repertoire' that poor communities use to fight for service delivery between elections but that protesters, ultimately, remain loyal to the African National Congress (ANC). Since Booysen first elaborated this argument the political landscape has altered considerably. The ANC has suffered declines in electoral support at a time when protest across many social spheres has been increasing. Yet, there is little scholarship that attempts to examine the relationship between these two phenomena. This article addresses this gap through the analysis of data collected in three surveys of South African voters. Our analysis reveals that while the ANC remains the party of preference of both voters who have not engaged in protest and those that have not, we find that opposition parties are, to a greater extent, characterised by voting protesters. We suggest that party loyalty to the ANC has become a much less binding constraint on voting protesters’ indirect and direct political actions.

Privacy concerns, internal political efficacy, intrusiveness, and voter resistance to the acceptance of political mobile marketing campaigns

Political parties increasingly rely on information systems‐based approaches to present their messages, engender voter participation, and solicit voter support. Although research is being conducted on how mobile devices, mobile Internet, and social media are used to galvanize voters' participation in the political process, there is an observable dearth of research on how the use of these approaches by politicians might be resisted by voters. This study examines the antecedents of voter resistance to political mobile marketing campaigns with a conceptual model, and it employs reactance and internal political efficacy theories. Data for the empirical testing of the conceptual model were obtained through a survey of 971 South African voters. The findings of the study suggest that the proposed model provides a reasonable explanation of voter resistance to political mobile marketing campaigns and identifies privacy concerns, intrusiveness, and internal political efficacy as salient factors underlying voter resistance to political mobile marketing. The findings further suggest that internal political efficacy significantly moderates and reinforces the positive impact of privacy concerns on resistance. These findings provide important guidelines for reducing voters' resistance to political mobile marketing campaigns. They also provide a point of departure for future research into this relatively unexplored but potentially fertile domain.

Patrons, Parties, Political Linkage, and the Birth of Competitive-Authoritarianism in Africa

Abstract:Few scholars have taught us more about African voters, legislators, and legislatures than Joel Barkan. Drawing on Barkan’s analysis, the first part of this article argues that the African one-party state can be usefully viewed as a competitive-authoritarian system underpinned by a form of political linkage that allows for elements of coercion and competition. Building on this framework, the second part demonstrates that the political linkage structures that emerged in single-party systems such as those of Kenya, Senegal, and Tanzania have played an important role in shaping the dynamics of multiparty politics and the prospects for democratic reform.

African voters indicate lack of support for climate change policies

Will African voters support climate change policies? By 2020, the United Nations’ Green Climate Fund intends to provide tens of billions of dollars per year to African nations to support climate adaptation and mitigation policies. It is widely assumed that African citizens will support implementation of these climate policies. We observe the opposite result. In this article – across two experimental studies – we find evidence that Sub-Saharan African politicians who commit to climate change policies may lose electoral support. Electorally important swing voters with weak party affiliations are least likely to support party statements about climate change. Interviews with standing elected officials from Malawi and South Africa corroborate our experimental findings. The combined results suggest voter preferences may hinder the successful implementation of climate change policy in Sub-Saharan African democracies.

Ethnic Voting and Accountability in Africa: A Choice Experiment in Uganda

The strong support that African presidents retain among voters of their own ethnicity, despite clear evidence of shirking and corruption, has prompted numerous empirical investigations into whether an incumbent's ethnicity or performance is more important to African voters. The model of vote choice underlying almost all of these studies is additive and implies that either coethnicity or good performance can increase a candidate's vote share. However, there is little theoretical justification for such a model. In the dominant theory of ethnic voting in Africa, coethnicity is a signal of better outcomes, indicating that ethnicity and performance are not separate considerations. Using an experiment that is designed to determine how Ugandan voters make choices, the author shows that the effects of coethnicity and good performance interact: neither attribute increases support for a candidate in the absence of the other. Though previous analyses indicate that, all else being equal, voters always prefer coethnics, this study demonstrates that coethnics only have an advantage when they are not shirkers. Additionally, though previous studies indicate that voters always prefer good performers, this analysis shows that voters are indifferent to the performance of non-coethnic candidates. The article provides evidence that this pattern is in fact a result of voters' beliefs that they will only receive future goods from coethnics, making a demonstrated ability to provide such goods relevant for the electability of coethnic candidates, but not for non-coethnics. Since a large number of African voters do not share the ethnicity of their incumbent, this finding has troubling implications for accountability of African leaders.

Do African Voters Favor Coethnics? Evidence from a Survey Experiment in Benin

AbstractCan African politicians play the ethnic card? Ethnicity matters for a host of outcomes in Africa, but debate remains about the extent to which it motivates the African voter. In experimental settings, we know that ethnicity shapes political support for hypothetical candidates. This paper offers an experimental test of the extent to which ethnicity shapes political support for actual, real-world politicians. Relying on Benin’s mixed-ethnicity President, this paper proposes a survey experiment that measures the independent effect of coethnic cues in boosting support across both coethnic groups. The results reveal that coethnic cues work: the same political actor can draw support from two different ethnic groups based solely on subtle ethnic cues.

The Influence of the Social Context on South African Voters

Using data from the Comparative National Elections Project 2004 and 2009 South African post-elections surveys, this paper argues that political discussion within interpersonal discussant networks plays a primary role in shaping political attitudes and vote choice in South Africa. The extent of partisan homogeneity or heterogeneity within discussant networks has important yet distinct implications for voting behaviour. While homogeneous discussion networks tend to encourage stronger partisan loyalties and fewer defections in vote choice, people in heterogeneous networks show less consistency in their attitudes and behaviour during elections. The analysis also shows how momentous socio-political events at the time of a particular election can change the nature of social networks, with important consequences for electoral outcomes.

Did Floor-Crossing Alienate South African Voters? Evidence from Municipal Legislatures

Floor-crossing, the practice of defecting from one political party to join another, is common in democracies. While empirical research has answered a number of questions about the determinants of party switching and the motivations of party switchers, little is known about the consequences of floor-crossing in electoral democracies, especially for the voters who watch their elected representatives ‘switch uniforms’ in the middle of the game. From 2002 to 2008, floor-crossing was legal in South Africa and defections at all levels of government were numerous. Critics of the country's floor-crossing regime often speculated that rampant defections would drive voters away from the polls and undermine voters' trust and political engagement. This paper uses data cataloguing defections in municipal legislatures to assess the extent to which floor-crossing in South Africa may indeed have alienated voters. The paper finds strong evidence that floor-crossing may have suppressed voter turnout, at least in immediately subsequent elections, but only weak evidence to suggest that floor-crossing had any direct or lasting effect on voters' attitudes about government and the politicians who run it.

The Adoption and Challenges of Electronic Voting Technologies Within the South African Context

Literature has shown that countries such as Brazil and India have successfully implemented electronic voting systems and other countries are at various piloting stages to address many challenges associated with manual paper based system such ascosts of physical ballot paper and other overheads, electoral delays, distribution of electoral materials, and general lack of confidence in the electoral process. It is in this context that this study explores how South African can leverage the opportunities that e-voting presents. Manual voting is often tedious, non-secure, and time-consuming, which leads us to think about using electronic facilities to make the process more efficient. This study proposes that the adoption of electronic voting technologies could perhaps mitigate some of these issues and challengesin the process improving the electoral process. The study used an on-line questionnaire which was administered to a broader group of voters and an in-depth semi-structured interview with the Independent Electoral Commission officials. The analysis is based on thematic analysis and diffusion of innovations theory is adopted as a theoretical lens of analysis. The findings reveal that relative advantage, compatibility and complexity would determine the intentions of South African voters and the Electoral Management Bodies (IEC) to adopt e-voting technologies. Moreover, the findings also reveal several other factorsthat could influence the adoption process. The study is limited to only voters in Cape Town and these voters were expected to have some access to the internet. The sample size limits the generalizability of the findings of this study.

What Drives the Swing Voter in Africa?

What makes African voters “up for grabs”? Existing approaches to the swing voter have several liabilities. This article introduces a new measure enabling a more comprehensive assessment of swing voting, including the differentiation between clientelistic and collective goods motivations. The issue of swing voting is then brought to an environment where voters are rarely considered persuadable: Africa. Using a count‐model estimation technique and original survey data from Ghana's critical 2008 elections, the analysis challenges the near consensus in African politics on clientelism as the only electoral strategy. When voters perceive politicians as providing collective, developmental goods, the efficacy of clientelism as a tool to win over voters is reduced. Many persuadable voters can also be won over by both clientelistic and collective goods, thus contradicting the literature presenting these as mutually exclusive. Finally, the analysis shows that incumbents do better when they provide collective goods even in highly clientelistic environments.