Electoral Preferences Research Articles

In-Group Love and Out-Group Hate: White Racial Attitudes in Contemporary U.S. Elections

Over the past two decades, political scientists have demonstrated that racial animus among white Americans is increasingly associated with evaluations of presidential candidates. Like most work on white racial attitudes, these efforts have focused almost exclusively on the out-group attitudes whites possess toward racial and ethnic minorities. Work in social psychology, however, suggests that intergroup attitudes are usually comprised of both an out-group and an in-group component. Nevertheless, political scientists have tended to overlook or dismiss the possibility that whites’ in-group attitudes are associated with political evaluations. Changing demographic patterns, immigration, the historic election of Obama, and new candidate efforts to appeal to whites as a collective group suggest a need to reconsider the full nature and consequences of the racial attitudes that may influence whites’ electoral preferences. This study, therefore, examines the extent to which both white out-group racial resentment and white in-group racial identity matter in contemporary electoral politics. Comparing the factors associated with vote choice in 2012 and 2016, and candidate evaluations in 2018, this study finds that both attitudes were powerfully associated with candidate evaluations in 2012 and early 2016, although white out-group attitudes overshadowed the electoral impact of in-group racial attitudes by the 2016 general election. The results suggest that there are now two independent racial attitudes tied to whites’ political preferences in the contemporary U.S., and understanding the dynamics of white racial animus and white racial identity across electoral contexts continues to be an important avenue for future work.

Do Black Politicians Matter? Evidence from Reconstruction

This paper exploits the history of Reconstruction after the American Civil War to estimate the effect of politician race on public finance. While the effect of black politicians is positive and significant, black officials may be endogenous to electoral preferences for redistribution. I therefore use the number of free blacks in the antebellum era (1860) as an instrument for black political leaders during Reconstruction. Instrumental variables (IV) estimates show that an additional black official increased per capita county tax revenue by $0.20, more than an hour’s wage at the time. The effect was not persistent, however, disappearing entirely once black politicians were removed from office at Reconstruction’s end. Consistent with the stated policy objectives of black officials, I find positive effects of black politicians on land tenancy and black literacy. These results suggest that black political leaders had large effects on public finance and individual outcomes over and above electoral preferences.

The Cultural Realignment of State White Electorates in the 21st Century

Since the beginning of the new millennium, the partisan leanings and presidential voting of state white electorates have been changing. Drawing on party realignment theories and analyses of cultural politics, this paper hypothesizes that cultural issues may be the dimension along which the realignment is occurring. The empirical findings are consistent with this view. The cultural issue preferences of state white electorates are strongly related to change in partisanship from 2000 to 2016. Further, only cultural issue attitudes have become a stronger predictor of state white presidential voting over this period. The apparent effects of partisanship, economic issue attitudes, and racial attitudes have either declined over time or been substantial in some elections and less so in others.

МИГРАЦИОННЫЙ ФАКТОР ТРАНСФОРМАЦИИ ПОЛИТИЧЕСКОГО ЛАНДШАФТА В СТРАНАХ ЕВРОСОЮЗА

The paper considers the impact of the European migration crisis, expressed in the intensification of migration flows from the Middle East (Syria and Iraq), on the change EU member States populations’ electoral preferences. The study reviews the elections to the European Parliament in 2009–2019. In addition, the article surveys the attitude of residents of EU countries to immigration and, in particular, to immigration from Muslim countries. The paper proves a tendency to increase the representation of anti-migrant parties, both at the European level and at the countries level.

A New Web-Based Big Data Analytics for Dynamic Public Opinion Mapping in Digital Networks on Contested Biotechnology Fields.

The expression "public opinion" has long been part of common parlance. However, its value as a scientific measure has been the topic of abundant academic debates over the past several decades. Such debates have produced more variety and contestations rather than consensus on the very definition of public opinion, let alone on how to measure it. This study reports on the usefulness of web-based big data digital network analytics in deciphering the distributed meanings and sense making related to controversial biotechnology applications. Using stem cell therapies as a case study, we argue that such digital network analysis can complement the traditional opinion polls while avoiding the sampling bias that is typical of opinion polls. Although the polls cannot account for the opinion dynamics, combining them with web-based big data analysis can shed light on three dimensions of public opinion essential for sense making: counts or volume of opinion data, content, and movement of opinions. This approach is particularly promising in the case of ongoing scientific controversies that increasingly overflow into the public sphere morphing into public political debates. In particular, our study focuses as a case study on public controversies over the clinical provision of stem cell therapies. Using web entities specifically addressing stem cell issues, including their dynamic aggregation, the internal architecture of the web corpus we report in this study brings the third dimension of public opinion (movement) into sharper focus. Notably, the corpus of stem cell networks through web connectivity presents hot spots of distributed meaning. Large-scale surveys conducted on these issues, such as the Eurobarometer of Biotechnology, reveal that European citizens only accept research on stem cells if they are highly regulated, while the stem cell digital network analysis presented in this study suggests that distributed meaning is promise centeredness. Although major scientific journals and companies tend to structure public opinion networks, our finding of promise centeredness as a key ingredient of distributed meaning and sense making is consistent with therapeutic tourism that remains as an important facet of the stem cell community despite the lack of material standards. This new approach to digital network analysis has crosscutting corollaries for rethinking the notion of public opinion, be it in electoral preferences or as we discuss in this study, for new ways to measure, monitor, and democratically govern emerging technologies.

The Effect of Community Size on Electoral Preferences: Evidence from Post-Wwii Southern Germany

Populous communities often prefer more government involvement than less populous communities, but does community size per se affect citizens' preferences for government? Endogeneity commonly prevents testing for causal effects because (i) people can select into communities while (ii) government structures can affect community size (e.g., by en- or discouraging migration and fertility decisions). This paper studies a plausibly exogenous setting from post-WWII Baden-Wurttemberg (located in Southern Germany), in which the French occupation zone prevented the entry of German expellees after 1945, whereas the U.S. occupied zone did not. Consequently, municipalities on the U.S. side, just across the border from the French zone, experienced large and relatively homogenous population shocks. Studying voting patterns in the 1949 national- and 1952 state-level elections for 828 municipalities, we find more populous municipalities systematically preferred the SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands), the party advocating for greater government involvement in virtually all areas of policymaking, over the CDU (Christlich Demokratische Union), the major conservative party that emphasized free markets. Our results hold when accounting for a host of potential confounding factors, county-fixed effects, pre-WWII vote shares, employing fractional response models and alternative instrumental variable specifications. Our benchmark estimates imply that a one standard deviation increase in population size (equivalent to ≈4,000 citizens) raised the SPD vote share by more than 11 percentage points.

US urban agglomerations electoral shifts in 2000–2016

More than 80% of US population live in metropolitan areas. Voting in agglomerations largely determines the outcome of the presidential, or any other, elections. The electoral processes inside high-density territories are a derivative of settlement peculiarities, and socio-economic status, ethnic and racial composition of people at these areas. Researchers record the increase of polarization level in recent decades. This increase closely related to the population’s political preferences. Polarization can lead to the disunity of society, a reduction in socio-economic interactions and to local isolationism in the long term. This article analyzes the results of the US presidential election at the level of metropolitan areas in the period of 2000–2016 and shows the distribution of all 382 agglomerations depending on the voting results within their boundaries. It is also revealing the spatial patterns of locations of these agglomerations. The article determined that more than two-thirds of all agglomeration’s population has stable electoral preferences, and also provides evidence of the ongoing and, in some cases, intensifying process of “The Big Sort” and an increase of polarization level in US urban population.

Le amministrative 2019 a Firenze e le cifre del PD

The 2019 municipal elections in Florence confirm the electoral success of the Democratic Party and the Mayor, Dario Nardella. The center-right candidate, Ubaldo Bocci, an entrepreneur and member of local catholic associations, collected 25% of the votes. The Five Star Movement, with Roberto De Blasi as mayoral candidate, and the left candidate Antonella Bundu got about 7% of the electoral preferences each.In which areas of the city did the PD win? Is it possible establish a causal relation between voting behaviour, the neighbourhood and sociodemographic variables? To answer these questions, the article examines the electoral results through a geographical approach, based on the 72 «elementary areas» of Florence and other variables provided by ISTAT. This analysis identifies four macro-areas, distinguished for the different combinations of the presence of the political parties. Overall, the preferences collected by the PD, more than 50%, make difficult to found a link between the vote and the social background.In order to understand the electoral success of the PD and of local politicians other factors, like political culture or specific contextual features, have to be taken into consideration. Indeed, from a qualitative perspective, this contribution suggests to consider Florence as a «urban regime», composed by several actors who share interests and visions about the growth of the city.

APPLICATION OF THE THEORY OF SELF-ORGANIZED CRITICALITY TO THE STUDY OF ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR

The article is devoted to methodological problems associated with the application of the theory of self-organized criticality (SOC) to political processes. The author considers the dynamics of electoral preferences in the elections of US representatives in different states from 1958 to 2016. The purpose of the study is to verify whether the hypothesis of Japanese researchers I. Shimada and T. Koyama can be extended to the United States. The hypothesis is that the detection of pink noise (an attribute of SOC) in the time series of electoral activity can be a good indicator to identify the political and transformational potential of the society. The author shows that voters’ preferences changed in pink noise mode in some states. This gives reason to build assumptions about possible avalanche-like jumps in electoral behavior in the future.

Типові та девіантні регіони у контексті еволюції української партійної системи

The study investigates typical / deviant regions in the context of the evolution of the Ukrainian party system supporting parliamentary and local electoral cycles. The study of this indicator was achieved to examine the Euclidean model. It is indicated that the results of the 1998 parliamentary elections highlight the development of a party system that allows for opposition atypical regions. The distance at this time was an ideological struggle, and in the past has constantly dispersed in the vector "east-west". The description describes that for the results of the 2002 parliamentary elections, there is a transition from the ideological component of opposition in the electoral space to the component structure / opposition of the ruling political forces. A Euclidean survey of the 2006 election results, showing that what happens in the party system survey, using the factors used, using regional authorities in the area, and so on. According to the results of the 2012 parliamentary elections, the level of the national party system exists only once, when a formal functional system of the party system is used, the political party on a large scale is represented in different regions. Research on the results of the 2014 parliamentary elections has shown, having reconciled a significant split of electoral preferences in your vinyl class of small party systems. This tendency was in opposition to a certain growth of the national party system in Ukraine

Governance of electoral preferences: consensus expectations and voting intention in students of a public university

The objective of this work was to validate a predictive model of voting intention. An exploratory, cross-sectional and correlation study was carried out with an intentional sample of 253 students from a public university, considering the intensive use of electronic networks. Three factors were found that explained 70 % of the variance. Although the research design limits the results to the study sample, the extension of the model to other scenarios is suggested.

Terror attacks, issue salience, and party competence: Diagnosing shifting vote preferences in a panel study

How does a dramatic shift in political context that renders security concerns the most salient electoral issue influence voting? To address this question, we take advantage of the peculiar timing of elections and heightened terror attacks in Turkey with the use of original panel data. The June 2015 Turkish general election resulted in a hung parliament, and a snap election was held in November. While the period before June was relatively calm, the inter-election period witnessed an upsurge of terror attacks and casualties. A three-wave panel enables us to track how voters’ electoral preferences changed over this period. Our analyses suggest that the terror attacks led voters to prioritize parties’ perceived competence in addressing security concerns at the ballot box. The abrupt change in issue salience has bolstered support for the incumbent Justice and Development Party which was evaluated by voters as more competent than other parties.

Вибори до Європейського парламенту в 2019 р.: ідеологічні особливості

The article aims to analyze the structure of the distribution of political forces in the European Parliament in the light of the 2019 elections, depending on the participation and ideological features of the vote at the supranational and national levels of each EU member state. The study was conducted using statistical, benchmarking and systematic approach. It is shown that an assessment of the overall results of the vote at EU level made it possible to develop a structure for the distribution of political forces in the 2019 elections to the European Parliament at the supranational level. Establishing voter turnout in these elections, related to the orientation of EU voters to develop and strengthen their influence on political processes, understanding their ability to realistically solve significant problems in various fields. It is proved that the overall structure of Euro-optimists positions outweighs the structure of Euro-skeptics positions in the 2019 elections. There has been a definite increase in the presence of Eurosceptics, in particular, a political far-right, radical, nationalist political force, and an increase in the influence of the United Left, which is oriented towards European integration. The prerequisites for the development and level of electoral preferences of the population of the EU Member States in the results of the 2019 elections are studied. The distribution of electoral support by political forces following the elections to the European Parliament at the national level has been determined, and changes have been compared with previous elections. The structure of influence of ideological priorities, attitude towards European integration of the EU member states on the results of the European Parliament elections in 2019 is presented. The list of participating countries that resulted in a change of attitude towards European integration, including: Denmark (change of Euro-optimistic and Euro-skeptical direction and Euro-optimism), France, Italy and Poland (change of Euro-optimism to Euro-skepticism), Greece and Greater Europe focus on Euro-optimism).

Determinants of voting results in Poland in the 2015 parliamentary elections. Analysis of spatial differences

This paper analyses spatial differences in the voting results in Poland in the 2015 parliamentary elections. Eleven clusters defining different support profiles are determined using the two most popular stopping rules. Parameters of the multinomial logit model are estimated and determinants of Polish communes' membership in specific clusters are identified. The results of the estimation indicate that economic, sociodemographic and location variables strongly determined the Poles' electoral preferences. However, historical and cultural factors turned out to be the most important determinants.

Turnout, preferential voting and vote flows in the E.U. election1

ABSTRACTThis article aims at focusing on four main features of the European elections that were held on 26 May 2019. Firstly, it analyses electoral turnout, both from a diachronic and a geographical point of view. Secondly, it presents electoral data and identifies winners and losers of the vote, not only by comparing 2019 E.U. results to 2014 E.U. results and 2018 political results, but especially focusing on the territorial dimension of electoral dynamics. Thirdly, it discusses flows of vote in five Italian cities (Brescia, Turin, Florence, Naples, Palermo), in order to give a clearer picture of how citizens (potentially) changed their electoral preferences from 2018 to 2019. Fourthly, it focuses on preferential vote, with the aim of distinguishing between parties characterized by ‘micro-personalization’ and ‘macro-personalization’. On many of these aspects, the 2019 European elections in Italy can be understood on the basis of the well-known ‘second-order election theory’. Yet, there are also interesting empirical findings that deviate from this pattern, among which the electoral success of the League – one of the two parties in government at the moment of the elections – merits further attention and can be mostly explained on the basis of government political action. That same electoral success, in addition, represented one of the causes that led to the end of the so-called yellow-green government in August 2019.

Territorial Analysis of Political Preferences of the Population (Based on the Lower Volga Mesoregion of the Southern Federal District of Russia)

Introduction. In modern Russian society, understanding of elections as an important component of the country’s social and political life in the context of differences in political orientations of the population is increasingly affirmed. This statement makes it possible to consider the geography of elections both in individual regions and in the country as a whole, as well as to conduct a deep historical analysis to better understand the current political processes in the country. Methods. It seems most important to consider this problem in the context of the federal elections for the post of President of the Russian Federation using the statistical method. The comparative and cartographic methods contribute to a better understanding of geographical features of political preferences of the electorate. Analysis. The study shows that the development of any process, including political one, is seriously influenced by the regional specificity of the territory, affecting all of its spheres. In this regard, it is necessary to single out the reasons for the nature of changes in electoral preferences of voters in the territory under study. Results. The authors trace the dynamics of the electoral activity of the population of the Lower Volga mesoregion in the presidential elections. The researchers reveal the change of electoral preferences of voters for the period under review. The paper presents the territorial analysis of the political preferences of the population identified in the process of federal elections; marks their multidirectional nature. The authors identify the main reasons for the changes in electoral preferences of voters in the Lower Volga mesoregion at the presidential elections.

FACTORS OF INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL REACTION TO DIFFERENTIATE STATUSES IN CONTEXT OF THE CHANGE ELECTORAL PREFERENCES

The article deals with the problem of influence of inequality factors on the formation of electoral orientations of politically active population, as well as determines the factors of choice by different groups of class-oriented individuals. On the basis of statistical data processing, the analysis of the peculiarities of the formation of the social structure of Ukrainian society and the peculiarities of their influence on the election results were made. The issue of conditionality of political choice of citizens and its correspondence to the strategic course of development of Ukraine are separately actualized. Given the lengthy discussions on the nature of the political environment, the main role in which, according to the authors of the studies, mental factors play, it is proposed to pay attention to the existing socio-economic realities in the country and their relationship with the peculiarities of the functioning of political institutions, access to the population of material benefits, the formation of a new structure of social stratification, because they radically affect the change in the electoral preferences of Ukrainians and their ideas about May utnye state.

CANDIDATOS INDEPENDIENTES EN MÉXICO: ANÁLISIS DE LAS ESTRATEGIAS PERSUASIVAS EN LAS ELECCIONES LOCALES (2015-2016)

This document presents a grounded theoretical explanation (Grounded Theory) on the diversity of persuasive strategies, used by independent candidates (CI-insider), during their participation in three of the ordinary local elections held on June 5, 2016. Data analyzed are mainly from two sources: i. of the results of the electoral preference; and, ii. Of 30 interviews that such candidates gave to various media. It is concluded that the persuasive strategies of these actors, which are always circumstantial, were inclined to: 'show their qualities', 'take distance from the political party to which they belonged', 'expose the deficiencies of the political parties' and 'build an image as an independent candidate'.

Transformacja kultury wyborczej na Ukrainie: od praktyk autorytarnych do modelu demokratycznego

<p>Autorzy przeprowadzają analizę transformacji kultury wyborczej na Ukrainie od praktyk autorytarnych do modelu demokratycznego. Korzystanie z reguł metodologicznych współczesnej nauki politycznej, ukształtowanych w angielsko-amerykańskim dyskursie politologicznym, umożliwiły uzasadnienie tego, że zmiany w kulturze wyborczej Ukrainy w kierunku demokratyzacji stały się możliwe w latach 2014–2018. W tym procesie istotną rolę pełniły również czynniki o charakterze cywilizacyjnym. Europejskie stałe cywilizacyjne w postaci tradycji historycznych, wartości kulturowe oraz cechy mentalności mają istotny wpływ na preferencje elektoralne wyborców. Właśnie one kształtują wybór określonego rodzaju narodowego lidera politycznego, który współcześnie ostatecznie uzyskał cechy polityka europejskiego. Jednocześnie pewne archetypy świadomości politycznej Ukraińców – etatyzm, kolektywizm, radykalizm polityczny, uwidoczniają się w ich kulturze wyborczej w postaci orientacji na partię władzy, które z pewnym stopniu hamują ostatecznie zadomowienie się modelu demokratycznego kultury wyborczej na Ukrainie.</p>

Unintended consequences of negative campaigning: Backlash and second-preference boost effects in a multi-party context

This study examines effects of negative campaigning by political parties on citizens’ electoral preferences in the 2015 General Election in England. We do so by using a large Internet panel study and an operationalisation of (perceived) negative campaigning that avoids social desirability. Our study acknowledges England’s multiparty system by distinguishing between the campaign tones of all parties. Potential problems of endogeneity are addressed by leveraging the panel structure of the data and by extensive controls. We find that electoral preferences are weakened for parties engaging in negative campaigning and that this backlash effect gets stronger over the course of the campaign. We also find support for a second-preferences boost hypothesis: preferences for one’s second-most preferred party are strengthened if its campaign is more positive than that of one’s most-preferred party.