Explanation Of Vote Research Articles

Restrictive rules of speechmaking as a tool to maintain party unity: The case of oppressed political conflict in German parliament debates on the euro crisis

In parliaments with party-centred rules of speechmaking, like the German Bundestag, we observe an overrepresentation of loyal frontbenchers on the speakers’ list. Previous research shows that party-controlled access to the plenary floor limits opportunities to voice dissent, but we lack empirical investigation of the overall impact on the contestation in debates. This article presents a case study of Bundestag debates on the euro crisis, which estimates the discursive impact by comparing speeches with MPs’ written expressions, known as explanations of vote (EoVs), and introducing association rule mining in an innovative network analytical approach. The findings confirm that restrictive rules reduce the visibility of intra-party conflict and constrain the space for coherent narratives, backbench concerns and political alternatives at an aggregate level, raising questions about the democratic functions of parliamentary debates. In this case, MPs use EoVs as an alternative channel to promote transnational solidarity in a European crisis.

Scepticisms and beyond? A comprehensive portrait of climate change communication by the far right in the European Parliament

ABSTRACT Amid the existing scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change (ACC), research on political ideologies and climate change indicates varying degrees of scepticism amongst conservatives and, especially, the far right, the latter ranging from the anti-liberal radical right to the anti-democratic extreme right. We contribute to this emerging literature by drawing a comprehensive portrait of far-right articulations of climate change to date through an analysis of contributions to plenary debates and explanations of vote delivered by far-right Members of the European Parliament (parliamentary terms 6–8, 2004–19). We illustrate the need for a differentiated understanding of far-right climate-change communication, as most arguments are sceptical not towards the existence of ACC, but the ways in which it is addressed. Furthermore, our analysis indicates that extreme-right actors are slightly more ‘climate-friendly’ than radical-right ones. Therefore, this article contributes to our knowledge of and analytical framework for examining far-right climate-change communication.

Forecasting Federal Elections: New Data From 2010–2019 and a Discussion of Alternative and Emerging Methods

AbstractI produce and compare election forecasts for the period 2010–19. The dominant methods of polls, odds and economic models have mixed success, each predicting three out of four federal elections. Consistent with prior research, polls then prediction markets are found to produce the most volatile forecasts, while economic models produce the least. Prediction markets are found to efficiently price available information. Economic models performed well at the 2019 election, however, they were limited by outdated dummy variables for ‘honeymoon effects’. I conclude by discussing some alternative and emerging forecasting methods, including demographic explanations of voting and online sentiment analysis.

Gatekeeping the Plenary Floor: Discourse Network Analysis as a Novel Approach to Party Control

In the German parliament, the Bundestag, floor time is a scarce resource and is allocated to MPs by leaders of their respective parliamentary party groups. Previous research indicates that highly salient plenary debates tend to be dominated by party leaders and other loyal frontbenchers. Plenary speeches can therefore offer only limited insights into party unity. Any MP can give a so-called ‘explanation of vote’ (EoVs) to justify their voting decision and/or express their point of view. These written statements provide a more accurate depiction of the range of viewpoints present within legislative parties. In order to assess the effect of party control on observed party unity and parliamentary contestation, discourse network analysis has been employed in this study to compare legislative speech with EoVs in debates on the Greek crisis between 2010 and 2015. Discourse network analysis combines content analysis with an actor-centred approach, and this is the first time this method has been used to study party control and (dis)unity. Bundestag debates on the Greek crisis present an interesting case study, as the issue became increasingly controversial over time, both in the public and the legislature. While this became evident in declining voting unity and individual-level mobilisation through EoVs, the extent to which gatekeeping impedes contestation on the plenary floor needs to be assessed. In terms of representation, it is important that European Union issues not only make it to the plenary agenda but that these debates also reflect the different viewpoints of MPs.

Die mündliche Erklärung zur Abstimmung gemäß § 31 Absatz 1 GOBT – eine parlamentarische Wundertüte mit Potenzial?

According to the Rules of Procedure of the German Bundestag (”GOBT”), every Member of Parliament is granted a five minutes’ verbal explanation of vote . It is granted for nearly every kind of vote in the House . The verbal explanation is often considered a privilege to MPs going against the position taken by their group . Yet, it is also used to confirm the party position and it is abused to continue already closed debates . In either case, they can be a grab bag for both parliament’s plenum and its president; the verbal explanation’s content is only revealed when the explanation is given . A quantitative and qualitative analysis of the explanations given in the Bundestag shows that explanations from dissenters contribute quantitatively, but not to a large extent . While members of the coalition more often declare to go against their parliamentary party group, members of the opposition tend to confirm the line of their respective party . When used to reveal personal implications in the decision‑making process, the verbal explanation is meaningful and widely accepted .

Prospektives versus retrospektives Argumentieren.

This study aims to investigate the linguistic differences between an argumentation referring to a potential future action (prospective argumentation) and one justifying a past action (retrospective argumentation) in the parliamentary arena. It is based on the analysis of German and French speeches taken from the protocols of the plenary sessions of the European Parliament.
 In a plenary session, parliamentary votes are preceded by a general debate. During this debate, speakers may give reasons supporting their own choice in an upcoming vote, but they may also try to persuade other Members of Parliament to vote the same way. This argumentation is prospective. After the vote, Members may give an oral or written explanation of vote designed to justify their decision. The argumentative orientation in this case is retrospective. In an exemplary approach, 50 speeches per language (German/French) and communication situation (prospective/retrospective) will be analyzed. The study argues that the macrostructure of the speeches is influenced by the orientation of the conclusion: In a prospective argumentation, speakers tend to first present their arguments before coming up with their conclusion, the conclusion being a declaration of one’s own intent to vote or a recommendation for other Members of Parliament. In a prototypical explanation of vote, the conclusion precedes the arguments. Special attention is given to the analysis of argument and conclusion markers. The study tries to show that conclusion markers are relatively more frequent in prospective argumentation, while retrospective argumentation makes broader use of argument markers.

Racial Identity and Voting: Conceptualizing White Identity in Spatial Terms

Recent political events have prompted an examination of the analytical tools and conceptual frameworks used in political science to understand voting and candidate choice. Scholars in the behavioral tradition have highlighted the empirical relationship between racial resentment and anti-black affect among white voters during and after President Obama’s successful run for re-election. The theoretical role of white identity within the context of the privileged status of this racial group has seen much less scholarly attention by political scientists, particularly with respect to racial group identification and its implications. To address this lacuna, we argue that racial identification among white voters can be conceived of as a utility-based trait relevant to candidate choice, combining a social-psychological approach of group membership together with a rational choice perspective. This conceptualization of the political utility of white racial identity provides wider conceptual latitude for empirical tests and explanations of voting in U.S. elections.

Are Backbenchers Fighting Back? Intra-Party Contestation in German Parliament Debates on the Greek Crisis

Over the course of the Eurozone crisis, we have witnessed a disintegration of the pro-European consensus in the German Bundestag. This study focuses on patterns of intra-party contestation by examining individual-level determinants of the growing party disunity. Party leaders constrain the room of manoeuvre of individual legislators, but the degree of party control they face varies depending on their position within the party, and we expect this to be reflected in their behaviour. Our comprehensive case study of plenary debates on the Greek crisis in the Bundestag (2010–2015) analyses legislative speech, voting defection and explanations of vote. Our results show that an MP’s rank, experience, electoral mandate and gender matter in their inclination to voice dissent. Here, the frontbencher–backbencher categorisation shows the most consistent effect.

LEARNING THE ECONOMIC VOTE AT LOCAL ELECTIONS: CASE OF LITHUANIA, 1995-2011

This paper argues that economic voting is not limited to first-order elections and also can be observed in local elections (usually considered as second-order). Though local governments do not have the power to shape the macro-economic policy of the state, they may have some instruments to influence the well-being of their regions. Moreover, voters may perceive them as accountable for the state of the economy in the region and punish or reward them in local elections on basis of the economic trends. Lithuania appears to be a quite interesting case in which to test these theoretical arguments. Party identification and cleavages are quite weak here: therefore economic voting can be expected to provide at least some explanation of voting (it should not be shadowed by other social factors). Six local municipal council elections were held in Lithuania since the transition to democracy: the first were held in 1995 and the last in 2011. While controlling for important political-contextual factors, this paper strives to compare the impact of economic voting at Lithuania’s municipal elections across time five separate time periods. Results of the empirical analysis reveal that Lithuanians are learning the economic vote with unemployment being more significant as a factor in explaining changes in votes for dominant parties in the municipal councils in the more recent period than in the first several elections. A referendum effect is also observed: parties that belong to the national government parties are punished more during economic downturns.

Candidate geolocation and voter choice in the 2013 English County Council elections

The degree of ‘localness’ of candidates, including their residential location, has long been theorised to influence voters at election time. Individual-level tests of distance effects in the 2010 British general elections demonstrated that, controlling for standard explanations of vote, the distance from a voter’s home to that of the candidate was negatively associated with the likelihood of voting for that candidate. To test this theory in a sub-national electoral context more likely to produce distance effects than a national election, this paper builds upon previous analysis by using the 2013 English County Council elections. It improves upon the previous analysis in a number of ways, analysing an election where ‘localness’ effects would be expected to be stronger; combining a bespoke YouGov survey of voters with more precise locational data; including United Kingdom Independent Party candidates in its specification; and considering more closely how voters construe distance. It finds that distance does matter, not only as a linear measure but also in terms of candidates living in the same or different electoral division to voters. Finally, the paper simulates the effect of distance on candidate performances in this type of election to measure its real-world strength.

Procedural Signaling, Party Loyalty, and Traceability in the U.S. House of Representatives

In this article, we take advantage of a new source of data providing updates from the Majority Leader’s Office that signal the leadership’s positions on floor votes. We offer a more nuanced explanation of voting in the U.S. House as our findings suggest that not all procedural votes are created equal. While the most liberal members of the party vote with the leadership on procedural votes at high rates and nearly 100 percent of the time when signaled by the majority leader, moderate members are significantly less likely to support the party and are not responsive to these signals.

Het spook van de rechtse arbeidersklasse

textabstractThe traditional class approach to politics maintains that the working class 'naturally' votes for left-wing parties because those represent their economic interests. This traditional working class voting pattern has however become less typical, giving rise to today's 'Death of Class Debate' in political sociology. Against this background, we study why so many people, working and middle class alike, today vote for parties that do not represent their 'real class interests'. Critically elaborating on Lipset's work on working-class authoritarianism and Inglehart's on post -materialism, we first confirm that 'natural' voting perfectly complies with the logic of class analysis. 'Unnatural' voting, however, is not driven by economic voting motivations and class, but by cultural voting motivations and cultural capital. Right wing working class voting is thus caused by its cultural conservatism that stems from its limited cultural capital. Voting for the two small leftist parties in Dutch politics underscores the significance of this cultural explanation: those with limited cultural capital and culturally conservative values vote for the Socialist Party ('old left') rather than the Greens ('new left'). The spectre of the rightist working class that haunts today's political sociology can thus be dispelled by breaking the traditional monopoly of the one-sided class approach and give a complementary cultural approach its proper place in the explanation of voting.

Overreporting Voting

The key to understanding why people overreport is that those who are under the most pressure to vote are the ones most likely to misrepresent their behavior when they fail to do so. Among all nonvoters, the most likely to overreport are the more educated, partisan, and religious, and those who have been contacted and asked to vote for a candidate. The greater the concentration of African-American and Latino nonvoters in a district, the greater the probability of overreporting in those districts, both among those in the relevant minority group and among white Anglos. White nonvoters are more likely to overreport in the Deep South than elsewhere. Overreporting matters: using reported votes in place of validated votes substantially distorts standard multivariate explanations of voting, increasing the apparent importance of independent variables that are related in the same direction to both overreporting and voting and sharply decreasing the apparent importance of independent variables related in opposing directions to those two variables.

Economics, Issues and the Perot Candidacy: Voter Choice in the 1992 Presidential Election

Theory: Theories of presidential elections (economic voting and spatial issue and ideology models), combined with the popular explanation of voting, are used to account for voter choice in the 1992 presidential election. Hypotheses: Voter choice in this three-candidate race is a function of economic perceptions, issue and ideological positions of voters and candidates, or voter anger. Methods: Multinomial probit analysis of 1992 National Election Studies data including individual-specific and alternative-specific variables. Simulations based on counterfactual scenarios of ideological positions of the candidates and of voter perceptions of the economy Results: The economy was the dominant factor in accounting for voter decisions in 1992, and Clinton, not Perot, was the beneficiary of economic discontent. While issues (mainly abortion) and ideology did play some role, Clinton was not perceived by the electorate as a New Democrat. We find little support for the hypothesis of angry voting. Last, Perot took more votes from Bush than from Clinton.

Level-of-Analysis Effects on Explanations of Voting: The Case of the 1982 US Senate Elections

The availability of rich survey data, and concerns over the ecological fallacy, have led voting researchers to focus on the explanation of individual voting decisions at the expense of accounting for patterns of aggregate election outcomes. This has skewed our understanding of the relative importance of various factors in the electoral process. A framework for analysis of elections at multiple levels is developed and applied using data from twenty-three exit polls from the US Senate elections. Comparable parameters for a simple voting model are estimated for individual voting and for election outcomes. Election-level factors, especially candidates' issue strategies and incumbency, are substantially more important in accounting for election outcomes than in explaining individual voting decisions. Finally, working with election outcomes permits an estimate of a path model of Senate election outcomes that shows key relationships that are not accessible from individual level data.

Voting and the Social Environment

This article develops a model of voting. A central tenet of this piece is that voting is a simple decision for most voters, and thus should be modeled simply. Working within the Kelley (1983) framework, I argue that to improve existing explanations of voting, we need to take account of the voter's social environment, that is, the views of friends and family. This new model better captures the process through which the voter decides and increases the explanatory power of the Kelley model. My model predicts 90.9% of the votes correctly—a 6.4% increase over the Kelley approach. The Center for Political Studies (CPS), however, only asked the appropriate questions in 1952. The lack of data shows the failure of students of voting to include the immediate social environment in their models.

Shifts of meaning within explanations of voting and party competition

Rational choice models are increasingly used in explanations of voting and elections. Their adoption is often urged, rather uncritically, on the grounds that they provide a unified and exact explanation across political science. Far from doing so, however, their definitions of ‘rationality’ may differ radically even within a limited area, such as party and voting behaviour. Shifts of meaning from one model to another may be obscured by mathematical formalism, which concentrates attention on the derivation of conclusions from basic assumptions, rather than on the practical relevance of their relationship to the assumptions behind other models. A mathematical formulation may not, however, be the most relevant for purposes of electoral explanation. Rigorous verbal formulations can represent electors' and politicians' decision procedures more realistically, while remaining generally accessible and supporting detailed inter-comparisons of their working assumptions. Through these, rational choice explanations can be brought closer together and decisions between them made with a clear knowledge of what is involved, thus providing a better basis for cumulative research. The process of theoretical evaluation and assimilation is illustrated here with two original theories of voting and party competition.

Ideology and Senate Voting on the Panama Canal Treaties

This research examines the relative utility of ideology (as compared to party affiliation, regionalism, election status, and presidential leadership) in explaining Senate voting decisions on the two Panama Canal Treaties in March and April 1978. Employing bivariate and multivariate techniques, we demonstrate that the ideological explanation of voting was more potent than the others for these two treaties. In addition, when we analyzed separately senators who decided early and senators who decided close to the vote, we again found that the ideological variable remained the crucial factor in the decision calculus of both groups. Only among late deciders do we begin to witness the significant effect of another factor, regionalism. We discuss the implication of the results for salient issues in American foreign policy.

Comment: The Filling of Wine Bottles Is Not Easy

Concepts do not travel; theories do. The distinction is an important one because the concept party identification and its measurement in different contexts provides students of voting with one of a class of problems in comparative analysis. Comparative analysis implies a search for and the development of general laws about human behaviour, laws which are valid across political systems. The way that this search is carried out is through the development, confirmation, and modification of theory. One such theoretical exchange has involved explanations of voting and a major concept in these theories has been “party identification.” The concept is controversial to the extent both that different theories describe it and its role differently and that variations have been observed in patterns of the relationship between some aspects of party identification and political behaviour. However, the role of theory and its status in analysis is problematical in David Elkins' “Party Identification: A Conceptual Analysis.” Comparative analysis requires, first and foremost, that the theory within which any concept is located be specified.

Determinants of Participation in Presidential Elections

T Princeton University HIS paper presents an empirical analysis of the determinants of the probability that an individual will vote in Presidential elections. Our interest in this subject is prompted in part by an interest in social policy. In the last fifteen years there have been drastic changes in law, and in the interpretation of law, as it bears on voting. The Constitution has been altered by both the 24th Amendment, outlawing the poll tax, and the 26th Amendment, lowering the age of voter eligibility from 21 to 18 years of age.' The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sent federal registrars into many Southern communities that had low rates of registration and a history of discrimination against blacks, and it suspended literacy tests as a qualification for voting in six Southern states. Amendments to the Voting Rights Act in 1970 suspended such tests in all states and abolished residence requirements for voting in presidential elections. In 1972 a decision of the U.S. Supreme Court sharply reduced the length of residence that could be required for voting in state and local elections. All of these changes were calculated to enlarge the number of voters exercising the right to vote, and all except the lowering of the age of eligibility were expected to increase rates of voting. That they achieved this latter objective, even among voters 21 and older, is not obvious, the turnout of voters in the presidential election of 1972 was markedly lower than it had been a dozen years earlier. We are interested also in a better explanation of voting. Since 1960 understanding of participation in elections has also increased, even if not so dramatically as the pace of change in electoral law. Fifteen years ago solid knowledge about voting was based almost entirely on simple correlation analyses that related voting to dozens of demographic and sociopsychological variables. Since then, multivariate analyses have become more common and there have been conscious efforts to integrate theoretical and empirical analyses of voting behavior. We designed our research to build upon these trends. To a large extent, the major theories of voting have developed independently of each other; we decided to make them compete to explain a given body of data. We also