Groups Of Voters Research Articles

How Social Desirability Response Bias May Lead to an Overestimation of Obama-Trump Voters

Abstract In this research note, we argue that a segment of Trump voters may be motivated to demonstrate that they are not racially insensitive by saying they voted for Obama in 2012. As a result, what may appear as a substantial group of swing voters may be—in part—partisan voters who want to avoid perceptions of racial bias. Using data from a survey of a nationally representative nonprobability sample from YouGov, polling data from the 2016 election, and a survey experiment conducted with a convenience sample of American adults, we find that Obama-Trump voters score significantly higher on a social monitoring scale than others and that respondents are significantly more supportive of Trump when they are given the opportunity to mention who they voted for in 2012. The combination of results suggests that the number of Obama-Trump voters may be overestimated due to self-monitoring.

What’s on offer: how do parties appeal to women voters in election manifestos?

ABSTRACT Existing research has tended to examine party manifesto appeals to women voters as a homogenous group however we know relatively little about how parties appeal to different groups of women voters. Yet there are strong incentives for parties to respond to and reflect diversity in women’s voting behaviour. Through a gendered analysis of party manifestos at the 2015, 2017 and 2019 British general elections, we investigate the spread and reach of parties’ policy appeals to women voters. We find that, while the principal state-wide parties are increasingly recognizing women’s diversity in their policy pledges, some groups of women remain marginalized from parties’ electoral agendas. Our findings extend the empirical and analytical understanding of how political parties make gendered appeals during election times and to whom. We argue the way parties seek to appeal to the diversity of women is important for the analysis of both issue ownership and interparty competition for women’s votes. Additionally, we make a normative case for parties to recognize diversity and intersectionality in their manifesto policy promises.

Determinants of support for directly-elected mayors in Ireland

ABSTRACT In May 2019, three Irish local authorities ran plebiscites alongside their local elections: Cork City Council, Limerick City and County Council, and Waterford City and County Council. The plebiscites were run to judge support for Government proposals to introduce a reformed, directly-elected mayoral office. The results were, in some ways, the worst possible from a Government perspective: a mix. While voters in Limerick backed the plan by a slight majority, it was marginally rejected in both Cork and Waterford. Faced with disappointing a large group of voters no matter the course of action taken, the Government shelved the plans for Cork and Waterford indefinitely, though the plan for Limerick may proceed. Despite the 2019 rejections, the 2020 UCD Online Election Poll (INES 1) found indications of high levels of support for these reforms: four-in-five respondents agreed that mayors should be directly elected, which is a significantly higher proportion than the Yes vote in any of the three plebiscite areas. This research uses further data from the online poll to establish correlates of support for these reforms, and tentatively suggests that partisan dynamics in turnout are why this support wasn’t reflected in the plebiscite results.

The mechanisms of trust formation under different conditions of political identity: An experiment among Taiwanese voters

Trust and cooperation within and between political identity groups are important issues for building a healthy civil society and democratic development. However, this research problem has seldom been analyzed under different political identity conditions by means of experimental design in Taiwan. Presidential elections have reproduced the polarization between two groups of voters supporting different presidential candidates. Therefore, in this article the authors are interested in whether political identity matters in trust exchanges among strangers. This study applies a three-stage trust game experiment to examine how trust is developed within pairs of subjects with either the same or different political identity. In the first stage subjects were randomly matched in pairs as trustor and trustee, and their political identities were not disclosed. In the second stage the pairs were still randomly matched, but each subject was informed of their partner’s political identity. In the final stage each subject could choose the preferred political identity of his/her partner. There were two mechanisms of trust-behavior formation under different identity conditions. The first mechanism was political identity. Supporters of presidential candidate Ma Ying-Jeou were more trustful than supporters of candidate Tsai Ing-Wen. Under the condition of subjects knowing their partner’s political identity, the identity effect became strongly significant in stages 2 and 3 of the experiment, especially for that of the Ma–Ma group. The second mechanism was mutuality. The mutuality effect was very significant in all three stages of the trust experiment, and that effect was stronger for those who voted for Tsai.

Outcome measurement instrument selection for lung physiology in systemic sclerosis associated interstitial lung disease: A systematic review using the OMERACT filter 2.1 process

ObjectiveThe Outcome Measures in Rheumatology (OMERACT) is a research organization focused on improving health care outcomes for patients with autoimmune and musculoskeletal diseases. The Connective Tissue Disease-Interstitial Lung Disease (CTD-ILD) Working Group on Lung Physiology is a group within OMERACT charged with identifying outcome measures that should be implemented in studies of patients with CTD-ILD. The OMERACT Filter 2.1 is an evidence-based algorithm used to identify outcome measures that are truthful, feasible, and able to discriminate between groups of interest. Our objective was to summate evidence (published literature, key opinion leader input, patient perspectives) that would influence the CTD-ILD Working Group's vote to accept or reject the use of two measures of lung physiology, the forced vital capacity (FVC) and the diffusion capacity of carbon monoxide (DLco) for use in randomized controlled trials (RTCs) and longitudinal observational studies (LOSs) involving patients with systemic sclerosis associated ILD (SSc-ILD). MethodsPatient Research Partners (those afflicted with SSc-ILD) and the CTD-ILD Working Group on Lung Physiology were polled to assess their opinion on the FVC and DLco in terms of feasibility; the CTD-ILD Working Group was also queried on these instruments’ face and content validity. We then conducted a systematic literature review to identify articles in the SSc-ILD population that assessed the following measurement properties of FVC and DLco: (1) construct validity, (2) test-retest reliability, (3) longitudinal construct validity, (4) clinical trial discrimination/sensitivity to detect change in clinical trials, and (5) thresholds of meaning. Results were summarized in a Summary of Measurement Properties (SOMP) table for each instrument. OMERACT CTD-ILD Working Group members discussed and voted on the strength of evidence supporting these two instruments and voted to endorse, provisionally endorse, or not endorse either instrument. ResultsForty Patient Research Partners reported these two measures are feasible (are not an unnecessary burden or represent an infeasible longitudinal assessment of their disease). A majority of the 18 CTD-ILD Working Group members voted that both the FVC and DLco are feasible and have face and content validity. The systematic literature review returned 1,447 non-duplicated articles, of which 177 met eligibility for full text review. Forty-eight studies (13 RCTs, 35 LOSs) were included in the qualitative analysis. The FVC SOMP table revealed high quality, consistent data with evidence of good performance for all five measurement properties, suggesting requisite published evidence to proceed with endorsement. The DLco SOMP table showed a lack of data to support test-retest reliability and inadequate evidence to support clinical trial discrimination. There was unanimous agreement (15 [100%]) among voting CTD-ILD Working Group members to endorse the FVC as an instrument for lung physiology in RCTs and LOSs in SSc-ILD. Based on currently available evidence, DLco did not meet the OMERACT criteria and is not recommended for use in RCTs to represent lung physiology of SSc-ILD. The OMERACT Technical Advisory Group agreed with these decisions. ConclusionThe OMERACT Filter 2.1 was successfully applied to the domain of lung physiology in patients with SSc-ILD. The FVC was endorsed for use in RCTs and LOSs based on the Working Group's vote; DLco was not endorsed.

“I STAND ON THE RIGHT SIDE”: A WAR OF SOCIAL MEDIA AVATARS IN THE 2014 INDONESIAN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN

The development of social media in the realm of democracy through internet technology has been used by numerous groups for various purposes. A number of software programs with their applications make it easier for someone to produce countless content on social media. One of the functions of such programs is to create different images in relation to the 2014 Indonesian presidential election. In the 2014 presidential election, there was a rivalry between the two groups of voters who attacked each other using various image products through social media. Those supporting Joko Widodo (Jokowi) created a campaign image in the form of an avatar template containing the number “2” with the words "I Stand on the Right Side". The image then went viral and was responded to by the voters for the presidential candidate Prabowo Subianto with a variety of contending images. This research documents and analyzes the various images created and circulated during the 2014 Indonesian presidential election, as well as reconstructing the conflict between the two groups of voters in the presidential election in the context of Indonesian democracy, which was still in its development. Data was collected from various websites and social media from May to October 2017. This research was conducted through historical methods. Meanwhile, in examining the various images, this research used a visual communication approach to graphic design.KEYWORDS: Avatar Meme, Presidential Campaign, Social Media

Three English By‐Elections–What Have we Learned?

AbstractThere have been three recent English Westminster by‐elections, in Hartlepool, Chesham and Amersham, and Batley and Spen. Each of these seats illustrates a different type of party competition and so taken together allow a picture of how voters’ preferences are evolving in the post‐Brexit and post‐pandemic world. This article places each of these by‐elections into a longer‐term perspective, looking at the underlying political changes that have driven the different results. The decline of party identification over this period means that voters are less attached to parties than in the past, more willing to vote for smaller parties and as a result, less predictable in their behaviour. Each of the by‐elections highlights the behaviour of a different group of voters, related to both Brexit and other social identities. The results suggest that we should continue to expect the unexpected when the British electorate goes to the polls, as voting behaviour becomes influenced by complex combinations of values, identities and interests.

Not all undecided voters are alike: Evidence from an Israeli election

The literature dealing with undecided voters – a growing group of citizens in many democracies that can determine who wins in election campaigns – suggests two very different profiles. The first approach describes undecided voters as being generally uninformed about politics, while the second sees undecideds as sophisticated citizens who follow a campaign closely before making their final voting decision. The current study tries to make sense of this contrast, while examining differences between sophisticated and less sophisticated undecideds (their level of sophistication was based on their political interest and knowledge). Using two panel surveys, conducted before and after the April 2019 elections in Israel (N = 1427; N = 912), we examine a number of hypotheses about differences in terms of the undecided citizens' demographic backgrounds, how they search for political information during the election campaign, how they come to make their final decisions, and whether they ended up voting. The findings indicate that the typical sophisticated undecided voter is a citizen from a more privileged social background, exhibits greater trust in traditional media, consumes more news to follow the campaign (from various traditional news outlets and social media), is more likely to carry out online discussions about the elections, is more likely to base his or her decision on policy issues, is more likely to debate between parties within the same ideological camp (internal floater), and more likely to vote than less sophisticated undecided voters. Our typology, which makes a distinction between sophisticated and less sophisticated undecided voters, as well as these findings (and the comparison to the committed voters), can help political scientists and practitioners widen their understanding regarding this important group of voters in todays' complex political reality.

Voting Behavior of Immigrants and Their Children in Sweden

We still know remarkably little about the voting behavior of immigrant populations, and in particular, the children of immigrants – who grow up in the same society as their contemporaries, but may be subject to different patterns of socialization. This article uses verified voting behavior in Swedish municipal elections to offer at least two new perspectives on these questions. First, we are able to separate out the impacts of family socialization, general societal socialization, and citizenship acquisition on electoral participation. Second, we are also able to add to our knowledge of the differences in political participation levels between different groups of foreign-background voters.

Catholicism in Modern Ireland – Ellen Coyne's Are You There, God? It's Me, Ellen

Catholicism in Modern Ireland – Ellen Coyne’s Are You There, God? It’s Me, Ellen Greg Daly Signs of the times Few phrases from the Second Vatican Council fall more readily from the lips of those familiar with it than ‘signs of the times’. Christmas 1961 saw its first use in a conciliar context, when in his message convening the Council the following year, Pope St John XXIII reminded people that Christ has not left the world he redeemed, and recommended ‘that one should know how to distinguish the signs of the times’.1 Anybody serious about the Church’s mission and identity in modern Ireland should already have taken on board the jolts of recent years’marriage and repeal referendums, with Dublin’sArchbishop Emeritus Diarmuid Martin famously having said in May 2015 that the 62% vote to redefine marriage showed the extent to which the Church needed a ‘reality check’ in terms of understanding and responding to what he described as a cultural revolution.2 The 2018 repeal referendum underlined this reality with an even more decisive headline figure of 66.4% voting to remove Ireland’s constitutional protections for unborn human life. Far from being seen as signs of the times, pointers to a cultural revolution that demanded understanding and creative responses, some too easily decreed these two-to-one defeats as evidence that the tide could be turned. If constitutional protections for the unborn could be installed with a two-to-one vote in 1983, and overturned by a similar two-to-one vote in 2018, maybe in a generation it would be possible to restore the totemic ‘Eighth Amendment’. Aside from an arguably misplaced focus on the constitutional amendment itself, rather than on what the amendment was intended to help achieve, such analyses tended to miss how referendums are blunt tools, and how the real devil in these matters tends to be in the details. RTÉ’s exit poll from the 2018 vote should have banished any naïve hopes about the likely stance of Irish society a generation from now. Studies • volume 110 • number 438 191 Yes, 66.4% of voters overall had opted to repeal Ireland’s constitutional protections for the unborn, but among the two youngest groups of voters, those aged 25–34 and 18–24, support for repeal stood far higher, at 84.6% and 87.6% respectively. What’s more, when asked what factors were important to these voters in making their decisions, just 27% of those aged 25–34 said they thought the right to life of the unborn was a significant factor in their calculations, with this dropping to a mere 20% among those aged 18–24. Further, just 5–6% of voters in these age groups said their religious views had been important to them when considering how they should vote.3 Desperate figures, especially given how many of these voters would have gone through Catholic schools, one might think, and truly alarming ones for a Church that has described itself as an expert in humanity and decisively teaches a duty to cherish the dignity of every single human, a duty of solidarity with our fellow humans, and a duty to work for the good of humanity as a whole. For all that, though, further excavation of the data uncovers faint signs of hope. These groups still largely identify as Catholic – 65% in the older cohort and 63% in the younger one – with worship rates, though low compared to the practice of recent decades, still being surprisingly high. 12% of voters aged 18–24 attended services at least weekly, with the number of those worshipping rising to 23% when those attending at least monthly were factored in, and 54% when those attending just a few times a year were taken into account; the figures for those in the 25–34 group are higher again, with 13% attending services at least weekly, a total of 26% attending at least monthly, and 62% attending at least a few times a year.4 One indisputable reading of this, as with the overall national figures, is that plenty of those who clearly supported the decision to repeal the Eighth Amendment were practising...

A parameterized perspective on protecting elections

We study the parameterized complexity of the Optimal Defense and Optimal Attack problems in voting. In both the problems, the input is a set of voter groups (every voter group is a district consisting of a set of votes) and two integers ka and kd corresponding to respectively the number of voter groups the attacker can attack and the number of voter groups the defender can defend. A voter group gets removed from the election if it is attacked but not defended. In the Optimal Defense problem, we want to know if it is possible for the defender to commit to a strategy of defending at most kd voter groups such that, no matter which ka voter groups the attacker attacks, the outcome of the election does not change. In the Optimal Attack problem, we want to know if it is possible for the attacker to commit to a strategy of attacking ka voter groups such that, no matter which kd voter groups the defender defends, the outcome of the election is always different from the original one (without any attack). We show that both the Optimal Defense problem and the Optimal Attack problem are computationally intractable for every scoring rule and the Condorcet voting rule even when we have only 3 candidates. We also show that the Optimal Defense problem for every scoring rule and the Condorcet voting rule is W[2]-hard for both the parameters ka and kd, while it admits a fixed parameter tractable algorithm parameterized by the combined parameter (ka,kd). The Optimal Attack problem for every scoring rule and the Condorcet voting rule turns out to be much harder – it is W[1]-hard even for the combined parameter (ka,kd). We propose two greedy algorithms for the Optimal Defense problem and empirically show that they perform effectively on many voting profiles.

Women’s Political Representation in Indonesia: Who Wins and How?

This article analyses barriers to women’s political representation in Indonesia and the ways that women candidates overcome them. Surveying the literature and drawing on three data sources – findings of thirteen teams of researchers studying women candidates running in the 2019 election, a survey of 127 such candidates, and a nationally representative survey of Indonesian citizens – the article identifies widespread patriarchal attitudes as one significant barrier, alongside structural disadvantages. It highlights two distinctive methods by which women candidates aim to overcome these barriers: one group of candidates target women voters and draw on women’s networks to mobilise what has been called “homosocial capital”; another group of dynastic candidates rely on the political and financial resources of (often male) relatives. The article briefly surveys the place of political Islam in both impeding and facilitating women’s representation. By surveying these issues, the article introduces this special issue on women’s political representation and the 2019 election.

Introduction: Corbynism and its Aftermath

Introduction: Corbynism and its Aftermath

Manipulable outcomes within the class of scoring voting rules

Coalitional manipulation in voting is considered to be any scenario in which a group of voters decide to misrepresent their votes in order to secure an outcome they all prefer to the outcome of the election when they vote honestly. The present paper is devoted to studying coalitional manipulability within the class of scoring voting rules. For any such rule and any number of alternatives, we introduce a new approach allowing us to characterize all the outcomes that are manipulable by a coalition of voters. This then opens the possibility of determining the probability of manipulable outcomes for some well-studied scoring voting rules in the case of small number of alternatives and large electorates, under a well-known assumption on individual preference profiles.

Competing for Loyalists? How Party Positioning Affects Populist Radical Right Voting

As populist radical right parties muster increasing support in many democracies, an important question is how mainstream parties can recapture their voters. Focusing on Germany, we present original panel evidence that voters supporting the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD)—the country’s largest populist radical right party—resemble partisan loyalists with entrenched anti-establishment views, seemingly beyond recapture by mainstream parties. Yet this loyalty does not only reflect anti-establishment voting, but also gridlocked party-issue positioning. Despite descriptive evidence of strong party loyalty, experimental evidence reveals that many AfD voters change allegiances when mainstream parties accommodate their preferences. However, for most parties this repositioning is extremely costly. While mainstream parties can attract populist radical right voters via restrictive immigration policies, they alienate their own voters in doing so. Examining position shifts across issue dimensions, parties, and voter groups, our research demonstrates that, absent significant changes in issue preferences or salience, the status quo is an equilibrium.

Partisanship and generalized trust in response to the 2016 U.S. presidential election

ABSTRACT Election outcomes often produce winner-loser gaps in political attitudes. However, existing research has largely overlooked the relationship between election outcomes and generalized trust. This article explores the impact of electoral loss on how partisan losers view the trustworthiness of the general public. I test this question with panel data collected before and after the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The results indicate that the only group of voters with a meaningful decline in trust following the election were those who voted for the losing candidate and had strong attachments to the Democratic Party. Those with weak attachments to the Democratic Party, as well as election winners, experienced no substantial change in trust following the election. The evidence suggests that in times of partisan polarization, election outcomes may weaken some people’s willingness to trust others.

A swing vote from the ethnic backstage: The role of German American isolationist tradition for Trump's 2016 victory

We question the growing consensus in the literature that European Americans behave as a homogenous pan-ethnic coalition of voters. Seemingly below the radar of scholarship on voting groups in American politics, we identify a group of white voters that behaves differently from others: German Americans, the largest ethnic group, regionally concentrated in the ‘Swinging Midwest’. Using county level voting returns, ancestry group information from the American Community Survey (ACS), current survey data and historical census data going back as early as 1910, we provide evidence for a partisan and a non-partisan pathway that motivated German Americans to vote for Trump in 2016: a historically grown association with the Republican Party and an acquired taste for isolationist attitudes that mobilizes non-partisan German Americans to support isolationist candidates. Our findings indicate that European American experiences of migration and integration still echo into the political arena of today.

Strategi Kampanye Caleg Kiagus Ishak (PAN) dan Syafruddin (PPP) dalam Pileg 2019 Kota Palembang

Seeing from the phenomenon of legislative candidates who use various political campaign strategy methods used in competing in the legislative general election is very important, so in this study the author examines the problem of winning strategies that have been carried out by the incumbent legislative candidate from the PAN Party named Kiagus Ishak. Yasin and H. RM. Syafruddin, SE, .MM from the PPP Party as a new legislative candidate running where the two legislative candidates are both local male legislative candidates who come from Palembang aristocratic descent in winning the 2019 legislative elections in Palembang City what caused the success and the failure of the two legislative candidates. This study aims to determine the winning strategy used by the two candidates in their election area.
 Based on the theory used. The defensive strategy is used when the legislative candidates want to retain the majority or if the vote is achieved, they want to be preserved. This strategy was developed by legislative candidates as a way to maintain votes from the support surrounding the local community. The offensive political strategy is a political campaign strategy used to influence voters, what must be sold or displayed is the difference to the prevailing conditions at that time and the benefits that can be expected from it so that new voter groups can be formed in addition to existing voters.
 The results of the research conducted by the researchers, among others, were able to find that although both of them both bear the title of clan from the native area of ​​Palembang City, several factors were also found that led to the effectiveness of the strategies used by the two local male legislative candidates above, both Incumbent and incumbent candidates, namely Kiagus Ishak Yasin and a local legislative candidate, a local newcomer, H. RM. Syafruddin, SE, .MM so that it had a direct impact on the legislative candidates who won, namely Kgs Ishak Yasin from the PAN Party and there were also legislative candidates who failed to be elected or lost to H. RM. Syafruddin, SE, .MM from the PPP Party.

The reshaping of political representation in post-growth capitalism: A paradigmatic analysis of green and right-wing populist parties

This article aims to provide an analysis of the reconfiguration of political orientations in the face of weakening economic growth. We address a widely observed new polarization in the party systems of Western democracies, with radically universalist and ecological orientations, often represented by green parties, versus industrialist and authoritarian values, mainly represented by right-wing populism. In our effort to explain this constellation, we offer an alternative to accounts that merely focus on an underlying change of class structures or that, conversely, declare socio-economic factors obsolete in their relevance for voting behaviour. While the one side focuses on the ‘losers of modernization’ or deindustrialization, the other side emphasizes a cultural conflict between new cosmopolitan values and a defence of male, white, heterosexual, non-migrant privileges. In contrast to such accounts, we analyse how the general trend towards decelerated economic growth provoked new orientations on the (liberal) left and on the (populist) right. In a first step, we provide an overview of diagnoses of ‘secular stagnation’ and of the rise of radically universalist and right-wing parties in Western Europe, focusing in particular on the last decade and looking to the US by way of comparison. We then focus on the attitudes which the political actors in question entertain towards economic growth and offer an interpretation of their ‘cultural’ motives as struggles over economic distribution. The third and last step presents a Gramscian extension of socio-economic analysis beyond the study of voter groups and their attitudes. Here, we take into account the interests of the ruling classes along with the quest for legitimacy and projected changes in the regime of accumulation—if indeed the term accumulation is still adequate in a post-growth context.

Prawo do głosowania osób niewidomych, słabowidzących i ociemniałych – zagadnienia wybrane

The universal participation of citizens in elections is an independent constitutional value. Therefore, there is no doubt that if in practice there are barriers which prevent voters from casting a vote, it means that the electoral law system fail at guaranteeing the implementation of the constitutional principle of universality of elections to a satisfactory extent. In relation to persons with disabilities, these barriers are of various kind as a result of the many types of disabilities. They will be different for people with physical disabilities, different for people with intellectual disabilities, and different for people who are blind and partially sighted. It is the latter group of voters that the author has analysed in detail, highlighting the barriers they face and, on the other hand, drawing attention to the improvements foreseen in the Electoral Code and implementing acts that aim to eliminate these barriers.