Vote Choice Research Articles

Negative Campaigning and Vote Choice in Europe: How Do Different Partisan Groups React to Campaign Attacks?

Parties spend parts of their campaigns criticizing other parties’ performance and characteristics, such as honesty, integrity, and unity. These attacks aim to negatively affect the target parties’ electoral performance. But do they work? While attacks are informative, we argue that how voters react to negative campaigning depends on their partisanship. While the target’s copartisans are more likely to get mobilized in favor of their party, the attacker’s copartisans are expected to punish the target due to their respective partisan motivations. We expect null effects for attacks for partisans of third parties as well as nonpartisans. Combining a new dataset on campaign rhetoric with survey data from eight European countries, we show support for most but not all of our expectations. These results have important implications for the electoral campaigns literature.

Assessing Political Brand Relationship as Leverage for Voter Preference in Ghana

This research is an empirical assessment of political brand relationship as leverage for voter preference and choice of candidates by voters in Ghana. The objective of the study is to ascertain the use of political brand relationships for leveraging the preference of voters. The study used a total sample size of 10 key party and labor union representatives. The research found out that voter identification and differentiation of a political party from one another, as a process, has positive effects on the voting motivations of respondents and their choice of candidates. The research established that the political brand of a party causes voters to accept and identify with a particular party. Finally, the research revealed that the desire to help voters, fulfilment of promises, the creation and sharing of wealth, and safety issues were of paramount concern to voters. The study also found out that, political brand relationship building has a positive impact on voter attraction/preference of the voter. Voters identified themselves with political brands on the basis of brand characteristics such as economic freedom, social status, safety, recognition, and personal achievement. The study further found out that political parties are liable to be neglected by voters when there is a failure to establish a brand relationship. The research recommends that in order to track or monitor changes in aspirations and needs, political parties should undertake regular marketing research with a view to obtaining current information regarding what voters want. The study further recommends that politicians should segment, target, and position their parties or candidates properly in the political market space if they are to be victorious in elections.
 

Voting in Clientelistic Social Networks: Evidence From the Philippines*

In clientelistic environments, voters want to know which politicians are most likely to deliver on targeted benefits. We argue that in these contexts, voters use their social proximity with candidates as heuristics to inform vote choice. To test our theory, we rely on local naming conventions to reconstruct family networks spanning one whole city in the Philippines and assess blood and marriage links between voters and local candidates. We then collect survey data on pre-election candidate leanings and actual voting behavior of 894 randomly drawn voters. We show that the degrees of separation between voters and candidates explain not only aggregate electoral outcomes, as previous studies have found, but also individual vote choice, controlling for pre-election leanings. We demonstrate that this is because private inducements are channeled through family networks. These findings highlight the electoral importance of social proximity with politicians as an information shortcut when voters are choosing whom to support at the polls.

Values, Taboos, and Votes: How Basic Human Values Affect Populist Electoral Support

Values, Taboos, and Votes: How Basic Human Values Affect Populist Electoral Support

So thin it’s almost invisible: Populist attitudes and voting behavior in Brazil

Contemporary research classifies populism as a thin-centered ideology, which can be attached to different “host” ideologies. Populist attitudes have been found to predict electoral support for populist candidates in Europe and the Americas, albeit still subsidiary to “thick” ideological issue positions. With the concomitant rise of the radical right, the lingering question is how much do populist attitudes actually matter for voting. We test the effects of populist attitudes and ideology on vote choice in a likely case scenario, the 2018 Brazilian presidential elections, using data from the Brazilian Election Study. Support for the far right populist candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, is explained by right-wing ideology and illiberal attitudes, with populist attitudes playing a very small role, if any. These results reinforce the idea that populist attitudes may be no more than a flamboyant but ultimately irrelevant packaging to explain the global rise of the far right.

When Do Voters Respond to Campaign Finance Disclosure? Evidence from Multiple Election Types

AbstractIn recent American elections political candidates have actively emphasized features of their fundraising profiles when campaigning. Yet, surprisingly, we know comparatively little about how financial information affects vote choice specifically, whether effects differ across types of election, and how robust any effects are to other relevant political signals. Using a series of conjoint experiment designs, I compare the effects of campaigns’ financial profiles on vote choice across direct democratic and representative elections, randomizing subjects’ exposure to additional political cues. I find that while the financial profile of candidates can affect vote choice, these effects are drowned out by non-financial signals. In ballot initiative races, the explicit policy focus of the election appears to swamp any effect of financial information. This paper is the first to explore the comparative effects of financial disclosure across election type, contributing to our understanding of how different heuristics interact across electoral contexts.

Conditions of proximity and directional voting: Voter sophistication, political information, and party identification

This paper contributes to the debate among supporters of the proximity and the directional models of vote choice. It provides a two-fold contribution: first, I utilize a series of critical tests which allow for a straightforward identification of proximity and directional voters and the aggregation of the respective shares at the party, election, and country levels. Secondly, I focus on the reasons which reinforce these alternative or complimentary models. In comparison to the standard proximity model, directional voters are less educated and less informed. They are also more likely to select opposition parties and favor actors with somewhat unclear ideological platforms. At the election level, directional voting is also driven by party system polarization.

Affective and Territorial Polarisation: The Impact on Vote Choice in Spain

ABSTRACT What is the effect of affective polarisation on vote choice? Despite the growing interest in affective polarisation, scholars still do not fully understand the relationship between partisan affective polarisation and political behaviour. Crucially, most existing studies have assumed, often by default, that affective polarisation mainly occurs along a single politicised partisan identity. This article addresses the hitherto neglected relationship between affective polarisation and vote choice in Spain, where distrust between different and opposite groups occurs both on ideological and territorial terms. Using rich panel data, the study findings show that both affective polarisation types are significant predictors of vote choice. While affectively partisan-polarised voters are more likely to support the left, affectively polarised voters on the territorial dimension are more likely to support the right.

The mood of the electorate in the election campaign of 2022

In the final stage of election campaign in the US midterm elections, the main problems of concern to voters have been revealed, and the choice of voters will mainly depend on the conceptions of Americans, which party and which candidate is more capable of solving them. The greatest concern among the voters is caused by economic problems, primarily high inflation, especially the rise in gasoline prices. Republicans, partly justifiably, argue that the Republican administration under Trump's leadership has handled this problem better. The main negative factor reducing support for Republican candidates is the investigation of Trump's role in the failed attempt to cancel the results of the 2020 election during the storming of the Capitol by Trump supporters in January 2021. Republican candidates' support for Trump and his claims of "stealing" his victory serves for many Republican candidates as a test of party loyalty, but can serve as a negative factor in the election due to growth of Trump’s criticism in public opinion. Unexpectedly, the issue of abortion, caused by the decision of the Supreme Court, which actually imposed a ban on abortions, was put forward in the third place in the campaign in terms of importance for voters. Both the majority of the population and the candidates of the Democratic Party have criticized the abortion ban, which will bring them additional support from voters. Other important issues widely discussed in the press, such as the conflict in Ukraine and relations with Russia, racial issues, gun control, health issues, did not become major topics for the election campaign.

Gender and the 2018 U.S. Congressional Election

Nationally in the U.S. women started to identify more than men with the Democratic Party than the Republican Party in the 1960s and began to vote consistently more often than men for a Democratic rather than Republican presidential candidate beginning in 1980. The suspected causes of this political gender gap have tended to vary with shifting social and political contexts. One relative constant has been women’s greater preference for candidates who have expressed support for policies and legislation viewed as promoting economic justice. The current study employs regression analyses of data from online interviews of 1228 voters in five Midwestern states, three of which were won by the Republican candidate for president in 2016 and two by the Democratic candidate, to gauge the relative importance of several factors on gender gaps regarding party preference, opinion on then President Donald Trump, and voter choice in the 2018 Congressional Election. The results suggest that differences between women’s and men’s views on gun control, immigration, economic justice, religious diversity, and criminal justice reform largely accounted for the political gender gaps.

Does digital advertising affect vote choice? Evidence from a randomized field experiment

Despite the increasing sums devoted to online political advertising, our understanding of the persuasive effects of such advertising is limited. We report the results of a ZIP code level randomized field experiment conducted over Facebook and Instagram during the 2018 U.S. midterm elections in Florida. The ads, produced by a Democratic-leaning political action committee, were designed to spur Democratic vote share and were seen more than 1.1 million times with over 100,000 full views. This wide saturation notwithstanding, we find that these advertisements had very small estimated effects on Democratic vote share at the precinct level (−0.04 percentage points, SE: 0.85 points). Our results underline the challenges of political persuasion via digital advertisements, particularly in competitive electoral contexts.

Economic and Pandemic Performance Voting in the 2021 Czech National Election

The literature on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected vote choice provides evidence of both ‘rally-’round-the-flag’ effects and the influence of perceived government pandemic performance. However, this evidence concerns short-term effects. Much less is known about how COVID-19-related economic changes and government measures in response to the pandemic have affected vote choice over a longer period. Using a post-election survey from the Czech Republic fielded in October 2021, we examine the effect of pandemic-related issues on support for governing parties in an election one and a half years after the pandemic started, focusing on a general evaluation of the economy and of government pandemic performance and on individual economic and health-related experiences of COVID-19. First, a negative health-related experience of COVID-19 did not affect vote choice. Second, only business loss negatively affected governmental support; job loss had no effect. Third, retrospective evaluations of the national economy and government pandemic performance affected vote choice, while retrospective evaluation of one’s personal economic situation did not. Fourth, the majority of the above-mentioned effects drove support for the dominant governing party (ANO) and only in a limited way support for the junior cabinet partner (ČSSD).

Affect toward Minority and Majority Groups in the Era of Donald Trump

U.S. voters’ affect toward such minority groups as blacks, Muslims, and transgender people has become warmer in recent years. Warming affect toward minority groups is a surprise for the influential theory of affective polarization. In arguing that voters’ partisan allegiances fuel dislike of groups associated with the opposing political party, this theory predicts that it is primarily Democratic identifiers whose affect has become warmer, as affect is assumed to reflect partisanship and little more. Yet this is not what the authors find, analyzing high-quality data from the 2012–2020 American National Election Studies. Not only have Republicans (like Democrats) become warmer toward minority groups, but this influenced voter choice and contributed heavily to the outcome of the 2020 presidential election. Voters’ affect toward social groups may matter independently of the powerful force of partisanship. The authors discuss study limitations, alongside implications for affective polarization theory, research on Trumpism, and classical sociological scholarship on liberalization.

The Logic of the Punisher: Retrospective Voting and Hyper-Accountability in Lithuania

This article explores the roots of electoral hyper-accountability in Central and Eastern Europe. I focus on Lithuania: a country that is a stable liberal democracy, but has re-elected none of its governments (in the same party composition) since the restoration of independence. Survey data from the Lithuanian National Election Study reveal that Lithuanian voters are constantly dissatisfied with the economy and retrospectively evaluate it worse than the objective indicators would suggest. This partially explains why the Lithuanian voters constantly turn away from the government parties at parliamentary elections. However, their subsequent choice between parliamentary and new (previously marginal) parties is another puzzle. Using the 2016 Lithuanian post-election survey, I test how retrospective voting (economic and corruption issues) and political factors (trust and satisfaction with democracy) explain vote choice between the three types of parties (governmental, oppositional, and successful new party). It appears that new parties in Lithuania capitalize on double dissatisfaction, as the logic of the punisher comprises two steps. First, due to economic discontent, she turns away from the incumbent. Second, due to political mistrust, she often turns not to the parliamentary opposition, but to new parties. An analysis of retrospective economic evaluations hints at the political roots of hyper-accountability: these two steps are connected, as dissatisfaction with democracy is a strong predictor of negative retrospective evaluations of economy. Additional analysis of the 2019 post-election survey corroborates the results and reveals that a similar logic also applies in direct presidential elections.

Explaining the educational divide in electoral behaviour: testing direct and indirect effects from British elections and referendums 2016–2019

ABSTRACT An educational divide has become apparent in Western democratic politics. Our understanding of why this divide has emerged remains limited as existing studies have not utilized mediation methodologies, which allow detailed examination of how education’s shaping effect on electoral behaviour is transmitted. This study addresses this gap in knowledge – providing a more complete picture of why modern British politics divide along educational lines. It applies the Karlson–Holm–Breen method to British Election Study data to explore firstly, what proportion of education’s total effect on vote choices, cast in the 2016 referendum, 2017 and 2019 General Elections, was transmitted indirectly, and secondly, the relative contribution of economic orientations, cultural attitudes and political cue-taking behaviours as drivers of this divide. Findings show 67–91% of education’s total effect on vote choices was transmitted indirectly and crucially, that vote choices divided along educational lines largely because educational groups exhibited divergent economic orientations, cultural attitudes and cue-taking behaviours. Results also highlight that educational division(s) in the referendum and General Election voting were driven by different mechanisms.

Undermining the party: anti-black attitudes, presidential vote choice, and split-ticket voting among white voters

ABSTRACT American politics has entered, what Michael Tesler calls, a “most racial period,” causing racial attitudes to be increasingly salient. This shift provides an opportunity to examine the consequences to white Americans’ political behavior when their racial attitudes are easily activated. In this paper, we examine the influence of racial attitudes on (1) white Americans’ presidential vote choice and (2) how racial attitudes, in this period, may undercut the influence of partisanship on vote choice. We use data from the American National Election Studies Time Series Survey conducted from 2004 to 2020 to explore these questions. First, we find that anti-Black attitudes increasingly predict white vote choice. Next, we find that during this period, racially resentful, white Democrats became less likely to vote for the Democrat. This was not the same for white Republicans who, regardless of their racial attitudes, did not shift to the Democratic party. Finally, we find that white Republicans appear to hunker down and become significantly less likely to split their vote as they express more anti-Black attitudes. White Democrats become significantly more likely to jump ship as they endorse more anti-Black attitudes, revealing that racial attitudes were influential enough to overcome party loyalties during this period.

Local voting at local elections revisited: ‘Friends and neighbors voting’ at mayoral elections in rural Poland

Voters' tendency to support local candidates, often referred to as ‘friends and neighbors voting’, is a spatial-political phenomenon studied for over 70 years. The last decade has seen a revival of interest in this issue. Relevant studies typically focus on large-scale national electoral contests, such as national parliamentary elections. The research efforts targeting local elections are, by contrast, scarce, in most cases dating back to the 1970s. In this article, we address this relative gap in the electoral geography literature and study ‘friends and neighbors voting’ at the most recent set of mayoral elections in Poland, held in 2018. Based on a rich dataset, covering elections in over 700 rural municipalities, we demonstrate strong local candidate effects in both voter choice and voter turnout. The results point to the potential relevance of both geographic distance and a place (locality) attachment; voters tend to prefer candidates living close to them and candidates enjoy an additional surplus of votes in their home localities. Our results also tend to echo the sparse previous findings emphasizing the possibility that the presence of a local candidate boosts voter turnout in a given area. While the limitations of our data do not allow unequivocal conclusions about the exact mechanisms driving the aforementioned effects, we put forward a number of plausible, grounded conjectures as to how such effects may operate.

Coronavirus Pandemic Response and Voter Choice

Does the public perception of governments’ coronavirus pandemic responses actually make a difference to their electoral fortunes? In this research note, we answer that question by presenting the preliminary results of a survey of more than 3,000 voters in Croatia and Serbia conducted on a dedicated mobile app and web platform directly preceding parliamentary elections that took place in these two countries during the summer of 2020. This survey was part of our larger project tracking political competition, public discourse, and conspiracy theories in Southeast Europe during the coronavirus pandemic. The preliminary findings presented in this research note demonstrate Croatian and Serbian voters were rationally retrospective and rewarded parties in power based on evaluations of their crisis management performance. We also find evidence of voters who have personally witnessed the health consequences of the coronavirus being more likely to support the parties in power. We believe this is evidence of the coronavirus pandemic increasing affected citizens’ expectations of and trust in national governments where those governments respond strongly to the pandemic’s first wave, as was the case in both Croatia and Serbia.

How Does the Strength of the Far Right Affect Ethnic Minority Political Behaviour?

AbstractThis article considers how the far right affects ethnic minority vote choice and party evaluations, using the case of the British National Party (BNP). Minorities were more likely to vote for Labour in 2010 where the BNP received more votes, and a quasi-experimental increase in the BNP’s salience also increased support for Labour. However, ethnic minority voters evaluated the Conservatives more positively when the BNP put forward a candidate or received more votes. The strength of the far right may mobilise and reinforce traditional partisan loyalties among minorities, while changing perceptions of traditionally unpopular—but mainstream—alternatives.

Ethnic Bias after Ethnic Conflict: Preferential Voting and the Serb Minority in Croatian Elections

ABSTRACT In spite of growing interest in democratization and electoral competition after ethnic conflict, we know little about the impact of ethnic violence on voter choice in post-conflict societies. This article uses an original dataset of local-level electoral results, communities’ exposure to war violence, and candidates’ ethnicity derived from names in contemporary Croatia to uncover the relationship between local post-conflict ethnic distribution, ethnic violence, and the electorate's ethnic bias. Our analysis points to the presence of ethnic bias that is determined by local interethnic balance and exposure to war violence – particularly for communities populated by the Serb minority.