Electoral Research Research Articles

The angry voter? The role of emotions in voting for the radical left and right at the 2019 Belgian elections

This study examines the role of negative (anger, fear) and positive emotions in addition to political attitudes (political trust, populist attitudes, external political efficacy) as key determinants of voting behaviour. We rely on the RepResent voter survey conducted in 2019 in Belgium ( n = 3236) allowing us to assess the relationship between emotions, political attitudes, and the vote for radical right (VB, PP) and radical left parties (PTB-PVDA). Findings indicate that anger is significantly and positively related to voting for radical left and right parties, while controlling for key political attitudes and issue positions. Fear and positive emotions are not significantly more related to voting for radical parties than for other parties. The results suggest that anger should be more systematically integrated in electoral research. These findings call for further analysis on the causal mechanism linking emotions and voting behaviour, and the (in)direct effects of emotions on voting.

The federal election 2021: Germany at the crossroads?

The German Federal Election 2021 has the potential to mark a crossroads in German olitics. Not only the context, e.g., Angela Merkel’s exit from politics, but also the election results leading to the formation of the first “traffic light” coalition have been remarkable. The contributions to this Special Issue analyse the election from various angles, focusing on peculiarities as well as general trends of electoral behaviour and competition. Thereby, they not only help to understand the election and its results better but also address pressing questions of electoral research, such as the role of personalization or the transformation of cleavage politics. This introduction describes the context as well as the main results of the election and provides a brief overview of the articles, systematizing their findings.

POLLSTER APPROACH VERSUS SOCIOLOGICAL APPROACH TO CONDUCTING ELECTORAL RESEARCH

The purpose of the study is to consider the advantages and disadvantages of pollster and sociological approaches to electoral research.The article shows that conducting electoral research in modern election campaigns is carried out equally by pollster (for purely political purposes) and sociological (for scientific and sociological purposes) technologies. It has been proven that optimal results can be achieved by combining pollster and sociological approaches to electoral research. It was determined that today the organization of an effective election campaign requires equally sociologists-pollsters and sociologists-analysts, the result of whose work is respectively collected empirical data and an analytical product, scientific expertise.It has been demonstrated that pollster and sociological approaches to conducting electoral research differ not only in the concepts of public opinion and the styles of its research, but also in the subject field. The electorate as a subject of electoral research acquires different content for different approaches. The pollster approach is more likely to understand the electorate as a circle of voters who vote for one or another party or candidate for an elected position and, in fact, are supporters of a certain political force or personality, while representatives of the sociological approach mostly consider the electorate as a collection of all citizens who vested with the right to vote and who exercise or do not exercise it under specially created conditions. It is argued that the integration of the subject fields of electoral polling and electoral sociological research will allow more effective and productive use of analytical potential in the election campaign, since such an organization of patronage work will help not only to record the results of electoral research, but also to predict the trends of electoral choice, the flow of votes, the reactions of electoral groups to specific political events. The availability of systematic ideas about the types of voters and their personal profiles will help to meaningfully approach the understanding of the electorate.

Prehistory of electoral sociology in pre-revolutionary Russia: an experience of interdisciplinary analysis

The article discusses the process of the emergence of socio-electoral research in pre-revolutionary Russia at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the authors make an attempt to link the emergence of scientific interest in understanding the phenomenon of electoral behaviour with the study of the institution of elections in related scientific disciplines – jurisprudence and political science. It is concluded that the practice of this kind of research led representatives of these sciences to formulate the problem of electoral choice, that was rather difficult to solve within the framework of traditional methodological directions. The appeal to sociological approaches of the theoretical and empirical levels made it possible to advance in the study of electoral issues and led researchers to the idea of separating its part into the area of special scientific research. The main stages of the formation of socio-electoral research are analysed: from the first attempts to study electoral behaviour in order to solve legal and political problems in the aspect of understanding the institution of elections to the emergence of the idea of creating a special sociological discipline, within which the phenomenon of electoral choice should be considered. The heuristic guesses of scientists of pre-revolutionary Russia are highlighted, that anticipated a number of research areas in the electoral sociology of the twentieth century. The methods of empirical electoral research, that were first tested in the practice of scientific and sociological work, are analysed. It is noted that neither the level of development of the institution of elections, nor the level of scientific methodology and methods of sociological research in pre-revolutionary Russia contributed to the formation of a special scientific discipline - electoral sociology, and subsequent political events in the country blocked this process for a long historical time.

The Gendered Effect of Parenthood on Voting Behaviour in the 2021 German Federal Election

ABSTRACT The effect of parenthood on voting behaviour has so far been largely neglected in electoral research or is assumed to have a negligible effect. However, the 2021 German federal election campaign faced the politicisation of two main family- and children-related issues (i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic and climate change). Based on a comparison of data in the 2017 and 2021 German Longitudinal Election Study, we investigate the gendered effect of parenthood on voting behaviour. Our multinomial logistic regression analysis points to a significant parenthood effect for women during the 2021 election: women with at least one child under the age of 11 have an 8-percentage point higher probability of voting for the Greens than women without children in that age group (controlling among other things for education, age, religiosity and left-right identity). We do not find a similar effect for men. Further analyses suggest that this effect is partly due to a larger importance of climate change issues among mothers of young children. We conclude by highlighting the potential relevance of parents as an electorate force when family- and children-related issues are politicised during electoral campaigns.

Voting behavior as social action: Habits, norms, values, and rationality in electoral participation

The aim of the study is to contribute, theoretically and empirically, to an improved understanding of the social processes and mechanisms generating a citizen’s decisions regarding electoral participation. It seeks to contribute to a solution for the legendary paradox of electoral participation based on formalized social-psychological dual process theories by integrating the Weberian typology of rationalities and related social action into a comprehensive explanation of voter turnout. The empirical analysis, based on two German surveys carried out in 1998 and 2017, reveals that the instrumentally rational voting (purposively rational action) emphasized in the classic rational choice theories used in economic electoral research is rather a special case among modal types of action such as habitual voting (traditional action), norm-related voting (norm-guided action), and voting due to value rationality (value-rational action). Most voters vote out of habit and based on norms and values, while purely purposive-rational voting is more of a special case.

The role of vote advice application in direct-democratic opinion formation: an experiment from Switzerland

In an increasingly digitized world, vote advice applications (VAAs) seem to be effective in providing voters with personalized information about their own positions vis-à-vis parties’ positions and specific policies. Even though electoral research has increasingly paid attention to the role VAAs play in voter’s opinion formation, very few studies have examined VAAs in the context of direct-democratic decisions. This article fills this gap by providing new insights into how VAAs affect individual decision-making in popular votes theoretically and empirically. We use novel data from the referendum campaign on the 2017 new energy law in Switzerland: a VAA experiment carried out in the framework of a three-wave panel survey. In the third wave, which took place a week before the referendum, respondents were randomly assigned to a treatment group and a control group; only the former was shown the VAA and made to use it. The results indicate two main takeaways. First, that using a VAA has a tangible effect inasmuch as the share of undecided voters is smaller among the treatment than among the control group. Second, VAA usage can have both a persuasive effect (i.e., it can change vote intentions) and an intensifying effect (i.e., it can strengthen voters’ preexisting intentions).

Introduction to the Special Issue “The 2019 Swiss National Elections”

AbstractThis Special Issue brings together a large variety of contributions dealing with the influence of issues and issue competition, the structure of attitudes towards immigration and international cooperation and a series of non‐policy factors such as campaign consultants and the rise of female representation in Switzerland. In this introduction we place the contributions in the broader framework of current debates in the international literature and stress the substantial and methodological innovations of the articles. Last, we offer some more general thoughts on almost 30 years of Swiss electoral research taking stock of the historical development.

How stable are ‘left’ and ‘right’? A morphological analysis using open-ended survey responses of parliamentary candidates

The left–right scale is widely used to measure ideological orientation. Relying on Freeden's approach to political ideology as a ‘conceptual morphology’, we argue that the meaning of ‘left’ and ‘right’ may change, but these changes are more likely for peripheral than core concepts. To test this argument, we analyze open-ended questions on the meaning of ‘left’ and ‘right’ included in two waves of surveys of German parliamentary candidates collected before and after the 2015 European migration crisis. The empirical results based on Structural Topic Models show that the candidates’ party affiliation colours the connotations of political concepts. In particular, we find that the core concepts ascribed to the meaning of left and right remained stable, while changes occurred with one peripheral concept in particular, namely, ‘Racism’, which is most often ascribed to the term ‘right’. We conclude that morphological analysis can help better understand the concurrency of change and stability in ideological orientations and provides a fruitful linkage between electoral research and political theory.

The consequences of repeatedly losing on legitimacy beliefs

AbstractModern democracies are dependent on regular elections and citizens’ legitimacy beliefs. Studies have shown that repeated electoral defeats are associated with lower levels of satisfaction with democracy and political trust. However, previous studies have only considered one type of legitimacy belief at a time, never in comparison. What is more, all previous work is based on observational studies and has not been able to identify any causal effects of losing repeatedly. Building on previous work and classic theories of political legitimacy beliefs, we argue that repeatedly losing in elections represents a form of long‐term exclusion from democratic power that has additional negative effects on people's legitimacy beliefs because they lose faith in the system and start questioning its evenhandedness. We support our predictions using six‐wave panel data and test our hypothesis a total of 16 times within the same context. The findings show that repeated losers are never less satisfied with democracy but that an additional electoral loss leads to lower levels of political trust. The findings have important implications for the meaning of different indicators of legitimacy beliefs but also for electoral research and the underpinnings of stable democracies.

Die Bundestagswahl 2021 im Spiegel der repräsentativen Wahlstatistik

Germany’s representative election statistics, which accompany the Bundestag elections since 1953 (except 1994 and 1998), are unique in the electoral world . They show the effective voter turnout in ten age classes as well as gender- and age-based voting behavior . They also provide information on vote-splitting, voting in presence or by mail-in-ballot and on inva- lid votes . The Union’s loss of 11 .9 percentage points among men and 5 .9 percentage points among women constitutes the largest gender-specific difference in 2021 . With regard to voting behavior in different age groups, the Union and the SPD turned out to be “old par- ties” . Whereas both underperformed among younger voters, the “young parties” - Greens and FDP - were able to gain in this group . The electoral behavior of Die Linke’s voters are somewhat conflicted: Its results among senior voters were best in the East, but worst in the West . The AfD was the party with the largest electoral gender gap: it received votes from 13 .0 percent of male and 7 .8 percent of female electors . Although neither age nor gender determines electoral behavior, Germany’s representative election statistics have been indis- pensable for electoral research over time .

«Екологічна» школа електоральних досліджень: становлення, сучасний стан та перспективи розвитку

Purpose: to reveal the peculiarities of the formation of «ecological» (contextual, spatial) school of electoral research, characterization of its current state and determine the prospects for the development of this area of electoral studies. The results of the study: it was shown that the formation of the «ecological» school is associated with the expansion of the electoral corps in Western European countries in the second half of the nineteenth century in connection with the introduction of universal suffrage, as well as the strengthening of the role of elections in the political life of Western countries on the basis of representative democracy; determined that the predecessors of the «ecological» direction of electoral research were statistical scientists E. Engel and O. Fokardi, who studied electoral statistics through the prism of political and geographical approach; it is established that the founder of the «ecological» school of electoral research is A. Siegfried, who proposed a contextual («ecological») model of voting analysis, where the key factor determining the electoral position of the voter and his electoral behavior is the environment in which the voter is; proved that the institutionalization of the «ecological» school of electoral research is associated with the activities of F. Gogel, who formulated the basic credo of «ecologicalists» – any research in the field of electoral behavior should be based on comparing election results and factors that may explain these results; it is traced that the further development of the «ecological» school in the second half of the twentieth century – the beginning of the twenty-first century carried out by P. Bois, R. Aron, M. Dogan, R. Heberle, J. Sartori, G. Tingsten, and others. Conclusions: «ecological» (contextual, spatial) school of electoral research is mainly applied; it focuses on the development of statistical methods for the study of aggregated quantitative data for prognostic purposes; political and geographical approach to the analysis of voting results allows to identify spatial changes in voter behavior; prospects of «ecological» approach to the study of electoral behavior are associated with a combination of classical methods of «ecologicalists» with various techniques of applied analysis (including qualitative).

ELECTORAL POLITICAL SCIENCE: FROM APPEARANCE TO AUTONOMIZATION

The article considers the development of electoral political science as a new direction of Ukrainian political science. It is noted that in connection with the democratization of post-Soviet political regimes, there is an objective need to conduct electoral research, which should explain the peculiarities of voter behavior and the prospects for the use of electoral technologies. The origins of electoral research in American political science (P. Lazarsfeld, B. Berelson, G. Goda, E. Katz) and their perspectives in the context of possible autonomy in Ukrainian political science are shown. The contribution of specific foreign and domestic scientists to the development of electoral political science is highlighted. It is concluded that in Ukraine electoral political science as a scientific discourse emerged in the last decade of the twentieth century almost "from scratch" and is now formed as an autonomous branch of domestic political science.

Candidate authenticity and the Iowa Caucus

Candidate ‘authenticity’ has become a frequent explanation of electoral performance. Yet its study in electoral research has been largely neglected. Building on recent work, we test its relationship with candidate support in the 2020 Iowa Democratic Caucus through a survey of likely Caucus goers. The Caucus offers an ideal setting — a contest focused on candidates and their personalities, in a context having far-reaching political implications. We demonstrate that authenticity perceptions played an important role in individual vote intentions. Indeed, for Biden and Buttigieg perceptions of their authenticity were strongly associated with vote intention even when controlling for other established traits. Warren, unlike the others, benefited indirectly, because her authenticity triggered substantial support among female voters. The performance of the authenticity trait, direct and indirect, points to its pivotal potential in the 2020 presidential campaign.

Negativity and Political Behavior: A Theoretical Framework for the Analysis of Negative Voting in Contemporary Democracies

Recent developments in Western societies have motivated a growing consideration of the role of negativity in public opinion and political behavior research. In this article, we review the scant (and largely disconnected) scientific literature on negativity and political behavior, merging contributions from social psychology, public opinion, and electoral research, with a view on developing an integrated theoretical framework for the study of negative voting in contemporary democracies. We highlight that the tendency toward negative voting is driven by three partly overlapping components, namely, (1) an instrumental–rational component characterized by retrospective performance evaluations and rationalization mechanisms, (2) an ideological component grounded on long-lasting political identities, and (3) an affective component, motivated by (negative) attitudes toward parties and candidates. By blueprinting the systematic relationships between negative voting and each of these components in turn, and suggesting multiple research paths, this article aims to stimulate future studies on negative voting in multi-party parliamentary systems to motivate a better understanding of the implications of negativity in voting behavior in contemporary democracies.

Predicting political sentiments of voters from Twitter in multi-party contexts

Prior Twitter-based electoral research has mostly ignored multi-party contexts and ‘mix tweets’ that jointly mention more than one party. Hence, we investigate the complex nature of these mix tweets in a multi-party context, and we argue mix tweeting patterns of users implicitly capture their political opinions. We predict the political leaning of users based on their mix tweeting patterns in the context of the 2014 Indian General Election. We have agglomerated 2.4 million tweets from 0.15 million unique users. Next, we employ a multinomial logit regression model to test the hypothesized causal relation between mix tweeting patterns and the political leaning of users. Additionally, we also employ neural network-based algorithms to predict political leaning. Our study demonstrates that user-level mix-tweeting patterns can reveal the political opinions of Twitter users.

Dealignment, realignment and generational differences in The Netherlands

A central question in Western European electoral research is whether electoral changes over the past decades should be interpreted in terms of dealignment or realignment. Although many scholars study this question, they have not paid much attention to the role of generational replacement. This ‘age-period-cohort’ (APC) study fills this void by examining the last 10 national elections in the Netherlands (1986–2017). The hypothesis is tested that the determinants of party choice differ systematically across generations. With regard to period effects, it is found that the association between party preference and its predictors has mainly weakened. Over generations, contrarily no decreasing associations are found. The effects of religion, social class, partisanship, left–right and redistribution have not structurally decreased with each successive generation, whereas the effects of education, immigration and European unification are stronger for younger generations. Taken together, these findings reveal how dealignment over time can co-exist with realignment over generations.

The Methodological Consequences of Subconscious Electoral Psychology-why Polls do not “Predict” Election Results

All those suggestions are direct methodological implications of recent electoral psychology research and suggest that whilst...

Public space of the trustworthiness of sociological knowledge: The case of electoral research

The paper analyses specific features of sociological data circulation in a public space during an election campaign. The basic components of this kind of space with regard to sociological research are political actors (who put themselves up for the election), voters and agents. The latter refer to professional groups whose corporate interests are directly related to the impact on the election process. Sociologists can also be seen as agents of the electoral process when experts in the field of electoral sociology are becoming intermingled with manipulators without a proper professional background and publications in this field. In a public space where an electoral race is unfolding, empirical sociological research becomes the main form of obtaining sociological knowledge, and it is primarily conducted to measure approval ratings. Electoral research serves as an example of combining the theoretical and empirical components of sociological knowledge, as well as its professional and public dimensions. Provided that sociologists meet all the professional requirements, electoral research can be used as a good tool for evaluating the trustworthiness of results reflecting the people’s expression of will. Being producers of sociological knowledge, sociologists act in two different capacities during an election campaign: as analysts and as pollsters. Therefore, it is essential that the duties and areas of responsibility for professional sociologists should be separated from those of pollsters. Another thing that needs to be noted is the negative influence that political strategists exert on the trustworthiness of survey findings which are going to be released to the public. Using the case of approval ratings as an illustration, the author analyses the most common techniques aimed at misrepresenting and distorting sociological data in the public space. Particular attention is given to the markers that can detect bogus polling companies, systemic violations during the research process and data falsification.

Valstatistik i bruk. Socialdemokratin, väljarna och den osäkra demokratin 1912–1929

[Using election statistics. Social democracy, the electorate and Sweden’s uncertain democracy 1912–1929] Long before opinion polls and electoral research, official election statistics provided politically useful quantitative knowledge of voters. When voting rights and the electorate quickly expanded in Sweden in the early 1900s, this knowledge aroused considerable interest. Petter Tistedt’s article explores how three leading Swedish social democrats – Rickard Sandler, Gustav Moller and Per Albin Hansson – made use of election statistics during the breakthrough period of both Swedish democracy and the Swedish Social Democratic Party. The study shows how this form of knowledge was not regarded as an already finished, politically neutral view of the electorate. Instead, it was treated as an imperfect tool that could be reworked, criticized, and form the basis for new knowledge – or be dismissed. As such, it was drawn into crucial discussions about the representative claims of the party and its long-term strategies for parliamentary takeover. Publication history: Published original. (Published 16 June 2020) Citation: Tistedt, Petter (2020) “Valstatistik i bruk. Socialdemokratin, valjarna och den osakra demokratin 1912–1929”, in Arkiv. Tidskrift for samhallsanalys , issue 12, pp. 61–93. DOI: https://doi.org/10.13068/2000-6217.12.2