Electoral Settings Research Articles

Regular Voters, Marginal Voters and the Electoral Effects of Turnout

How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? This article develops a method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors and applies it to two sources of variation in turnout in the United States—weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over 20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular voters—a significant divide. The findings suggest that the expansion or contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences of the citizenry, because the marginal citizens who may stay home have systematically different preferences than those who participate. Finally, the methods developed in the article may enable future researchers to compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many different electoral settings.

Regular Voters, Marginal Voters and the Electoral Effects of Turnout

How do marginal voters differ from regular voters? This article develops a method for comparing the partisan preferences of regular voters to those marginal voters whose turnout decisions are influenced by exogenous factors and applies it to two sources of variation in turnout in the United States—weather and election timing. In both cases, marginal voters are over 20 percentage points more supportive of the Democratic Party than regular voters—a significant divide. The findings suggest that the expansion or contraction of the electorate can have important consequences. Moreover, the findings suggest that election results do not always reflect the preferences of the citizenry, because the marginal citizens who may stay home have systematically different preferences than those who participate. Finally, the methods developed in the article may enable future researchers to compare regular and marginal voters on many different dimensions and in many different electoral settings.

Collective choice and individual action: Education policy and social mobility in England

It is recognised that expressive preferences may play a major role in determining voting decisions because the low probability of being decisive in elections undermines standard instrumental reasoning. Expressive and instrumental preferences may deviate and in electoral settings it is more important to make policies expressively appealing. But policies are even more attractive if they can be made both expressively and instrumentally appealing. This paper studies education policy in England and proposes that the argument for increased state spending in school education is expressively appealing as it appears equitable, but the allocation of students to schools by catchment area is also instrumentally appealing to middle-class families. Allocation to schools by lottery may be expressively but not instrumentally appealing. Cutting education spending and dividing the proceeds between a tax cut to the affluent and a cash transfer to the poor may be instrumentally but not expressively appealing. The effort to provide instrumentally appealing policies with sufficient ethical content to satisfy expressive preferences may lead to inefficiency and distract attention from more serious ethical problems related to the policies.

Personality Traits and Correct Voting

Recent studies in political psychology report a significant association between personality traits and ordinary citizens’ attitudes and behaviors in the political arena. A growing body of literature examines the influence of personality on individuals’ attachment to a political party and vote choice in electoral settings. In line with these studies, we analyze the relationship between personality traits and “correct voting”, i.e., the extent to which citizens vote in accordance with their own preferences and values. Using a large-scale national survey fielded in the context of the 2008 presidential election, we find that, after controlling for well-known predictors of correct voting, some of personality traits not only exert a direct influence on correct voting, but also moderate the effect of strength of party identification, a well-established determinant of correct voting. These findings provide new evidence for the idea that individual differences such as dispositional personality traits are deeply intertwined with both vote choice and democratic representation.

Collective Choice and Individual Action: Education Policy and Social Mobility in England

It is recognised that expressive preferences may play a major role in determining voting decisions because the low probability of being decisive in elections undermines standard instrumental reasoning. Expressive and instrumental preferences may deviate and in electoral settings it is more important to make policies expressively appealing. Policies are even more attractive if they can be made both expressively and instrumentally appealing. This paper studies education policy in England and proposes that arguments for increased state spending in school education is expressively appealing as it appears equitable, but the allocation of students to schools by catchment area is also instrumentally appealing to middle-class families. Allocation to schools by lottery may be expressively but not instrumentally appealing. Cutting education spending and dividing the proceeds between a tax cut to the affluent and a cash transfer to the poor may be instrumentally but not expressively appealing. The effort to provide instrumentally appealing policies with sufficient ethical content to satisfy expressive preferences may lead to inefficiency and distract attention from more serious ethical problems related to the policies.

On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races

The regression discontinuity (RD) design is a valuable tool for identifying electoral effects, but this design is only effective when relevant actors do not have precise control over election results. Several recent papers contend that such precise control is possible in large elections, pointing out that the incumbent party is more likely to win very close elections in the United States House of Representatives in recent periods. In this article, we examine whether similar patterns occur in other electoral settings, including the U.S. House in other time periods, statewide, state legislative, and mayoral races in the U.S. and national or local elections in nine other countries. No other case exhibits this pattern. We also cast doubt on suggested explanations for incumbent success in close House races. We conclude that the assumptions behind the RD design are likely to be met in a wide variety of electoral settings and offer a set of best practices for RD researchers going forward.

Gender Stereotypes and Corruption: How Candidates Affect Perceptions of Election Fraud

How do stereotypes of female candidates influence citizens' perceptions of political fraud and corruption? Because gender stereotypes characterize female politicians as more ethical, honest, and trustworthy than male politicians, there are important theoretical reasons for expecting female politicians to mitigate perceptions of fraud and corruption. Research using observational data, however, is limited in its ability to establish a causal relationship between women's involvement in politics and reduced concerns about corruption. Using a novel experimental survey design, we find that the presence of a female candidate systematically reduces the probability that individuals will express strong suspicion of election fraud in what would otherwise be considered suspicious circumstances. Results from this experiment also reveal interesting heterogeneous effects: individuals who are not influenced by shared partisanship are even more responsive to gender cues; and male respondents are more responsive to those cues than females. These findings have potential implications for women running for office, both with respect to election fraud and corruption more broadly, particularly in low-information electoral settings.

Contrasting Fortunes, Differing Futures? The Rise (and Fall) of the Front National and the British National Party

Since the early 1980s the Front National (FN) has been a significant feature on the French political landscape, performing consistently in national, local and European electoral settings. The party has consolidated its position in terms of votes cast as the third largest in France with Marine Le Pen polling over 18% of the vote in the first round of the 2012 presidential elections. More recently the party were victorious in the 2014 European elections, polling just short of 25% and underlining Marine Le Pen's status as the ‘leader’ of the contemporary Far Right in Europe. This progression is in contrast to the electoral evolution of the British National Party (BNP), which, under the leadership of Nick Griffin, has struggled to make an impact in the national electoral context and, after reaching a peak at the 2009 European elections where it won two seats in the Strasbourg chamber, fell away in the 2014 contest polling just over 1% of the vote. By concentrating primarily on ‘supply-side’ theories of the rise of the Far Right, the purpose of this paper is to account for the dramatically contrasting electoral fortunes of the two parties and to explain the electoral longevity and durability of the FN in contrast to the BNP. It examines the importance of ‘supply-side’ variables such as national tradition, political opportunity structures, charismatic leadership and the role of the media in order to account for their contrasting fortunes. In short, the article aims to contribute to the burgeoning debate about the rise (and durability) of Far Right parties in Europe.

On the Validity of the Regression Discontinuity Design for Estimating Electoral Effects: New Evidence from Over 40,000 Close Races

The regression discontinuity (RD) design is a valuable tool for identifying electoral effects, but this design is only effective when relevant actors do not have precise control over election results. Several recent papers contend that such precise control is possible in large elections, pointing out that the incumbent party is more likely to win very close elections in the U.S. House of Representatives in recent periods. In this paper, we examine whether similar patterns occur in other electoral settings, including the U.S. House in other time periods, statewide, state legislative, and mayoral races in the U.S., and national or local elections in a variety of other countries. No other case exhibits this pattern. We also cast doubt on suggested explanations for incumbent success in close House races. We conclude that the assumptions behind the RD design are likely to be met in a wide variety of electoral settings and offer a set of best practices for RD researchers going forward.

When Candidates and Vote Distribution Matter: A New Indicator of Electoral Competitiveness

The electoral competitiveness among candidates vying for single elected positions (e.g. president, members of parliament single member districts, or candidates for the party leadership) lacks an appropriate measurement. This paper reevaluates previous measurements and proposes a new indicator that accounts for the interaction between the number of candidates and the distribution of votes. The resulting indicator overcomes the oversensitivity problem associated with earlier specification and provides better competitiveness estimate for various electoral settings. Its applicability is universal and allows for cross-cases and longitudinal comparisons.

Thank You for Voting: Gratitude Expression and Voter Mobilization

Political scientists are increasingly exploring the psychological underpinnings of voting behavior using field experimental techniques. Research in psychology demonstrates that gratitude expression reinforces prosocial behavior. This article reports the results of the three randomized field experiments designed to investigate the impact of gratitude expression on voter turnout. The experiments were conducted in a range of electoral settings, and the results suggest thanking voters for voting in a previous election boosts participation levels in subsequent elections. Moreover, the gratitude expression effect I observe appears to be distinct from social pressure and is robust across subgroups of voters, including minorities and women, and both low- and high-propensity voters.

A New Measure of Group Influence in Presidential Elections: Assessing Latino Influence in 2008

The importance of the Latino electorate has been the subject of both academic inquiry and media discourses. The question of Latino influence is frequently limited by an approach that focuses on single variable considerations (e.g., voter turnout or ethnic-targeted campaign spending) that are often contest-specific idiosyncrasies. Relying on theoretically appropriate concepts, the authors measure Latino political influence as a function of three factors: in-group population traits, electoral volatility, and mobilization. Using the 2008 presidential election, the authors demonstrate the utility of incorporating a multifaceted measure that accounts for the contemporary complexity within the electoral environment. Because this framework is rooted in theoretical concepts, as opposed to discrete group or contest characteristics, it may be applied to any “influence group” in different electoral settings. Data are culled from several publicly available outlets, making it possible for scholars to replicate these measures and further investigate questions associated with group influence in American politics.

Uninformed Voters for Sale: Electoral Competition, Information and Interest Groups in the US

SUMMARY This paper analyses how certain electoral settings affect the activity of special interest groups within US state politics. The main result of cross-sectional regression analyses suggests that informed and educated voters prevent political parties from catering to special interests, diminishing the number of lobby registrations, the total amount of campaign contributions as well as groups' overall influence. Electoral competition is believed to exert a curvilinear effect on groups' importance within the political decision making process of each state. Another finding indicates that, in a situation of high electoral competition, voters' level of information plays a pivotal role in determining interest groups' activities. Parties seem to increasingly value median voter's concerns whenever the electorate is informed and political races are expected to be close. An environment of competitive elections and uninformed voters, in contrast, furthers interest groups' activity and strengthens their position within the political arena. This is explained by the rationale that, under such circumstances, politicians increasingly exchange narrowly targeted policies for campaign contributions in order to buy the votes of impressionable citizens.

Online Electoral Competition in Different Settings

This article takes a close look at two important theories concerning the effects that online party campaigning has on party competition. The equalization and normalization theories are tested for systematic logical dependence on conditions present in existing studies within the research field. The conditions are country-specific contextual settings and studyspecific methodology. The method of qualitative comparative analysis is used, such that variable based reasoning can be applied in the low n case study. The main result of the analysis is that findings of normalization are mostly dependent on offline conditions — electoral settings in particular — being favourable to major parties. Concerning findings of equalization, an online media environment favourable to minor parties, compared to the offline environment proved important. Through a meta-analytical approach, the article brings important information to light on how scholarly interpretations of the two theories have been constructed.

Meeting the Challenge of Latino Voter Mobilization

Latino political participation rates are consistently lower than those for other racial/ethnic groups. While some of the disparities can be attributed to low levels of Latino citizenship, socioeconomic status, and age, lack of mobilization by political parties and candidates also contributes to the problem. Field experiments in voter mobilization have found that personal canvassing can have a significant effect on turnout. This article reviews four experiments in Latino voter mobilization, conducted over a period of three years in a variety of electoral settings. The results demonstrate that Latinos are very receptive to voter mobilization campaigns. Getting Latinos to the polls does not require unusually large budgets or special “Latino” approaches. Latino voters can be mobilized to vote by the same sorts of door-to-door, personal efforts that are currently in vogue among campaign professionals. Canvassing can increase Latino turnout substantially, and relatively cheaply, and may even influence election results.

Political Ambivalence towards the Parti Quebecois and its Electoral Consequences, 1970-2003

Political ambivalence towards the Parti Québécois remains a basic characteristic of Quebec electoral politics, but no attention has been paid to it by analysts. Yet the notion of ambivalence is central in Zaller's new synthesis concerning the nature of mass opinions. The ambivalence towards the Parti Québécois stems from opposite forces, that is, attraction towards it and reservations concerning its sovereignist option. While the analysis shows that those who do not reveal their vote intentions to pollsters are always a source of the underestimation of support for the Quebec Liberal Party, independently of ambivalence, the latter remains a more critical factor in many respects. First when in an election a high degree of ambivalence prevails, vote intentions for the Parti Québécois are highly overestimated in polls, which leads vote intentions for the Liberal Party to be more underestimated than usual. Second, because of this ambivalence, the Parti Québécois never reaps the benefits which satisfaction or dissatisfaction towards incumbents should yield, while the Liberal Party often does better than prevailing levels of satisfaction/dissatisfaction would entail. On the basis of that analysis, new solutions are proposed for the correction of systematic poll errors in Quebec elections, solutions which could be relevant in other similar instances. The possible importance of ambivalence in other electoral settings is finally mentioned.

What to Expect from Electoral Expectations

While scholars recognize that the media devote significant attention to electoral expectations, most notably in the form of horse race coverage, little is known about the content of and variance in these media expectations. In this article, the author argues that the media's reporting on electoral expectations should vary in sensible and meaningful ways. In particular, he examines the basis for media expectations, the extent of this coverage, and how expectations coverage varies across electoral settings and over the course of elections. Based on an analysis of the media coverage of eight gubernatorial elections, the author demonstrates that while electoral expectations are a significant component of campaign coverage, the media expectations environment is less uniform than is typically assumed and that this variance in electoral expectations matters politically.

The Mobilization of U.S. State Electorates in the 1988 and 1990 Elections

Considering a range of political mobilization questions, this study examines the turnout of U S state electorates in the 1988 and 1990 elections High stimulus presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial campaigns encourage participation, controlling for the structuring influence of state sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., levels of education, age, and urbanization). Relying on an analytic framework that conceptualizes state electorates within a stream of differentiated electoral information, the analyses also reveal the importance of distinguishing among campaigns and across electoral settings In an on-year, an overriding stimulus from the presidential contest markedly attenuates the role of lower-level contests in mobilizing a state's citizenry. In an off-year, similar to their relative influence on electoral outcomes, high-profile campaigns on the part of gubernatorial and senatorial challengers appear to be more important than the campaigns of incumbents in getting voters to the polls.

The Mobilization of U.S. State Electorates in the 1988 and 1990 Elections

Considering a range of political mobilization questions, this study examines the turnout of U S state electorates in the 1988 and 1990 elections High stimulus presidential, gubernatorial, and senatorial campaigns encourage participation, controlling for the structuring influence of state sociodemographic characteristics (e.g., levels of education, age, and urbanization). Relying on an analytic framework that conceptualizes state electorates within a stream of differentiated electoral information, the analyses also reveal the importance of distinguishing among campaigns and across electoral settings In an on-year, an overriding stimulus from the presidential contest markedly attenuates the role of lower-level contests in mobilizing a state's citizenry. In an off-year, similar to their relative influence on electoral outcomes, high-profile campaigns on the part of gubernatorial and senatorial challengers appear to be more important than the campaigns of incumbents in getting voters to the polls.

David R. Mayhew, Planing Parties in American Poli tics. Organization, Electoral Settings and Government Activity in the Twentieth Century, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986, 396 p.

David R. Mayhew, Planing Parties in American Poli tics. Organization, Electoral Settings and Government Activity in the Twentieth Century, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1986, 396 p. - Volume 45 Issue 1