Ideological Voting Research Articles

On the same space? Measuring the ideology of voters and political elites

On the same space? Measuring the ideology of voters and political elites

Affective Polarization in the 2022 South Korean Presidential Election: Causes and Consequences

In this study, we analyzed the factors that intensified affective polarization among voters during the 2022 South Korean presidential election. We also examined this polarization's effect on their political attitudes, including their satisfaction with democracy, perception of the fairness of elections, and trust in political institutions. We found that the greater the perceived ideological differences between the two parties the People Power Party (PPP) and the Democratic Party ― (DP)―and the more extreme the voter's ideology, the more affective polarization increased. We also found that affective polarization intensified with increasing ideological extremity among all age cohorts except those in their forties. Finally, in contrast to DP supporters, PPP supporters' political attitudes became more negative as their affective polarization increased because the opposing party, the DP, was the governing party. This suggests that affective polarization may polarize support for democratic norms and trust in the political institutions that underpin democracy, depending on one's partisan allegiances.

Agree to agree: correcting acquiescence bias in the case of fully unbalanced scales with application to UK measurements of political beliefs

AbstractA methodologically important area in political science is measuring the ideology of voters. This task can be difficult, and researchers often rely on ‘off the shelf’ datasets. Many of these datasets contain unbalanced Likert scales, which risk acquiescence bias. This paper proposes a strategy for dealing with this issue. I first demonstrate using two comparable datasets from the UK how unbalanced scales produce distorted distributions and can affect regression results. Then, building on past research that utilises factor analysis to eliminate the influence of acquiescence bias, I demonstrate how researchers can utilise a person intercept confirmatory factor analysis model to obtain factor scores corrected for acquiescence in the case of fully unbalanced scales. I conclude with practical recommendations for researchers and survey designers moving forward.

Scale matters: unravelling the impact of Likert scales on political self-placement

Worldwide, Likert scales are used to measure ideology of both public opinion and individual voters, with the utilization of a self-assessment numerical scale as the most widely accepted tool, despite the multifaceted nature of the concept. However, in contrast to this prevailing consensus, there is a lack of agreement regarding what particular scale should be used and about the benefits of the different scales. This paper seeks to provide insights into these questions by analysing Spanish public opinion ideology as measured by CIS surveys. In 1976, the Centre for Sociological Research (CIS), a leading public body for studies of Spanish society, defined the ideological self-placement scale as being from 1 to 10. Since then, a myriad of different scales has been applied by CIS in more than 1400 surveys (over 3.5 million interviews). In total, we identify 20 scales in studies with available microdata, with the number rising to 28 when all the CIS studies carried out are included. This research identifies which scale is used in each study and analyses whether this has an effect on the estimation of the ideological distribution of the population. After studying, from an empirical perspective, the relationship structures between the different scales, we conclude that the scale used does have an effect. We finish the paper by offering clear guidelines on how questionnaires related to ideology should be asked.

Polarização e ideologia: explorando a natureza contextual do compromisso democrático

ABSTRACT Introduction: Political polarization stands as a pivotal topic in contemporary Political Science. Existing literature indicates that ideological extremism, prevalent in polarized environments, fosters the erosion of democratic norms by political elites. This phenomenon has primarily been explored through the examination of isolated cases or limited comparisons among a handful of highly polarized countries. This article investigates the role of “guardians of democracy”, questioning whether specific ideological groups maintain their commitment to democratic principles even amidst profound polarization. Materials and methods: Our analysis draws on public opinion data from 57 countries, encompassing over 77,000 respondents, sourced from the most recent wave of the World Values Survey (2017-2020). We explore the interaction between contextual and individual factors, investigating the impact of national-level polarization on individuals with varying ideological orientations and how the government's dominant ideology shapes individual responses to political polarization. Results: There is a negative relationship between polarization and democratic legitimacy. However, the impact varies depending on the ideology of the voters and their alignment with the ideology of the ruling party. Discussion: Our analysis suggests that the interaction between contextual factors (polarization and government ideology) and individual factors (voter ideology) creates scenarios that foster different profiles of guardians of democracy. However, none of these scenarios involved right-wing individuals presenting themselves as such.

After the Flood: Disasters, Ideological Voting and Electoral Choices in Chile

After the Flood: Disasters, Ideological Voting and Electoral Choices in Chile

Electoral systems and ideological voting

AbstractElectoral systems affect vote choice. While a vast literature studies this relationship by examining aggregate-level patterns and focussing on the interparty dimension of electoral rules, the convenience of analyzing this phenomenon by emphasizing the role played by the incentives to cultivate a personal vote generated by the system and matching voters with the party they vote for has been traditionally overlooked. In this article, we offer new evidence that documents the impact of the intraparty dimension of electoral systems on the levels of ideological voting registered in a democracy. Using spatial models of politics and employing data from the five waves of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we find that ideological voting in proportional representation systems is higher when lists are either closed or flexible. Moreover, the results suggest that this effect is slightly amplified in the case of high numbers of district-level candidates.

The Impact of Undecided Voters in Israeli Elections

This paper examines the impact of undecided voters in elections campaigns in Israel. The question asked here is if undecided voters can break the political dead-lock which became evident in four consecutive elections in just two years – between 2019 and 2021. The paper argues that the crucial role of undecided voters is the result of four main developments. The first is the multi-party parliamentary system, which allows the voters to swing between different parties and influence on handful of options to form coalition government. The parliamentary system emphasizes the excessive and crucial role of small parties to determine who will be in power – which means that they are in a position to impose their extreme ideology on the entire society. The second is that participation in elections is constantly declining, increasing the impact of motivated voters who follow the campaigns closely before making their final decision. The fact that this audience is persuaded by specific events and not by ideology or social identity allows to maximize the impact of their vote. The third is related to technological and cultural changes. Digital and social media have become popular among Israeli young people and first time voters, allowing them to promote new social and political behavior and bypass the censorship of traditional media and the traditional ideology of non-first time voters and the old political establishment.

Polarization, abstention, and the median voter theorem

The median voter theorem has long been the default model of voter behavior and candidate choice. While contemporary work on the distribution of political opinion has emphasized polarization and an increasing gap between the “left” and the “right” in democracies, the median voter theorem presents a model of anti-polarization: competing candidates move to the center of the ideological distribution to maximize vote share, regardless of the underlying ideological distribution of voters. These anti-polar results, however, largely depend on the “singled-peakedness” of voter preferences, an assumption that is rapidly losing relevance in the age of polarization. This article presents a model of voter choice that examines three potential mechanisms that can undermine this finding: a relative cost of voting that deters voters who are sufficiently indifferent to both candidates, ideologically motivated third-party alternatives that attract extreme voters, and a bimodal distribution of voter ideology. Under reasonable sets of conditions and empirically observed voter opinion distributions, these mechanisms can be sufficient to cause strategically minded candidates to fail to converge to the center, or to even become more polarized than their electorate.

Ideological voting for radical right parties in Europe

The aim of this research is to examine to what extent the electoral support for radical right parties (RRPs) is driven by ‘policy voting’ and to compare this support with that of centre-right parties. Using the European Election Study 2019, we focus on six party systems: Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, and the United Kingdom. Our analyses reveal that party preferences for RRPs are better explained by policy considerations than by other alternative explanations (e.g. by ‘globalization losers’ or ‘protest voting’). Additionally, the results show that although preferences for both party families are mainly rooted in ‘policy voting’, notable differences emerge when looking at the role of specific policy dimensions. Overall, these findings suggest that the support for RRPs cannot be understood fundamentally as a mere reaction against economic pauperization or political dissatisfaction but instead as an ideological decision based on rational choice models.

Estimating the locations of voters, politicians, policy outcomes, and status quos on a common scale

AbstractHow well are voters represented and what explains how well voters are represented? Answering these questions requires unpacking the mechanisms by which voters choose elected officials and elected officials implement policies. Though spatial theories of voting and legislative bargaining provide a broad framework for understanding these mechanisms, testing these theories involves a measurement problem where multiple political actors and outcomes must be located. We develop a technique for estimating policy outcomes, status quo locations, the ideology of elite political actors, and the ideology of voters, on a common scale. Using our new estimates, we demonstrate a similar level of incongruence for tax policies and spending policies. The incongruence arises for different reasons however—tax policies are over-responsive to the position of the median voter. Contrarily, spending policies are under-responsive and barely correlated with the position of the median voter. In examining the underlying mechanisms for policy change, we find that while the positions of elected officials over-respond to the median voter, the changing composition of state government has little immediate impact on policy. Instead, policy outcomes respond to long-term trends in the composition of government.

Political polarization, voting and democratic representativeness: Too much or too little?

This contribution evaluates the mediating role of different political contexts and levels of democratic consolidation on the effect of party system polarization on ideological vote and discusses how this relationship enhances democratic representativeness. The influence of party system polarization on ideological voting is analyzed in two areas: the voters' competence in identifying parties' ideological positions; and the voters’ tendency to vote for the most ideologically proximate party, which is one of the key features of the spatial theories of voting. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) from 1996 to 2019 and multilevel modelling techniques, the paper compares how those features vary across different types of countries, particularly older and newer democracies, and different regions of the world.

Ideological Vote and Electoral Performance of the Bolivian MAS, 2002–2014

ABSTRACTSince 2005, the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) has become a predominant party in the Bolivian party system. Despite its origin as a small, indigenous, and peasant-based party, the MAS has achieved an electoral performance unprecedented in Bolivian political history. What accounts for its electoral rise? Unlike available explanations based on sociostructural, institutional, or contextual factors, this article argues that ideological location decisions served as a signaling device that allowed the MAS to differentiate itself from its competitors. In so doing, the party managed to transcend the border of ethnic and regional cleavages, appealing to a broader electorate, which contributed decisively to its electoral success. Using data from public opinion surveys and based on statistical models, this article shows that ideology was pivotal in Bolivians’ decisions to vote for the MAS, particularly during the early period of its electoral takeoff.

Voto ideológico, ¿por qué los latinoamericanos votan por la izquierda o la derecha?

La discusión sobre las causas de los giros a la izquierda y a la derecha en América Latina es extensa y ha multiplicado los estudios electorales comparados en la región. Sin embargo, debido a que se les analiza de forma aislada, su contribución para entender por qué la gente vota por las opciones de uno u otro lado del espectro ideológico es reducida. En este trabajo examinamos el voto ideológico de los latinoamericanos entre 1996 y 2016, y encontramos que las posiciones a favor o en contra de Estados Unidos y la ideología de los votantes son los principales factores que lo explican, aunque también tienen importancia la clase social, la confianza en las instituciones políticas, la ideología del gobierno en funciones y el sexo del votante. La pertenencia indígena favorece el voto por las opciones de izquierda cuando previamente se ha politizado ese división. No obstante, existen variaciones nacionales muy grandes respecto a las tendencias regionales, lo que evidencia la heterogeneidad de la región.

The Changing Ideological Politics of U.S. State Firearms Regulation

Are the components of policy ideology in the American states fixed, or do they change over time? We document a change in the ideological loading and internal consistency of state firearms laws. While state policy liberalism has long correlated positively with restrictive gun regulation, this relationship strengthened over the 1986‐2016 period. Moreover, states' gun policy regimes have become more internally consistent since 1986, and newly salient issues, such as concealed‐carry laws and assault weapons bans, have been enfolded into the existing dimension of regulatory restrictiveness. This process also corresponds to a shift in the geographic bases of the Republican and Democratic Parties toward nonurban and urban areas, respectively. The changes in gun policy patterns across states reflect dynamic representation of voter ideology. The results suggest that certain modeling assumptions used to generate cardinal state policy ideology scores in prior research ought to be revised.Related ArticlesJoslyn, Mark R., and Donald P. Haider‐Markel. 2018. “Motivated Innumeracy: Estimating the Size of the Gun Owner Population and Its Consequences for Opposition to Gun Restrictions.” Politics & Policy 46 (6): 827‐850. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12276Smith‐Walter, Aaron, Holly L. Peterson, Michael D. Jones, and Ashley Nicole Reynolds Marshall. 2016. “Gun Stories: How Evidence Shapes Firearm Policy in the United States.” Politics & Policy 44 (6): 1053‐1088. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12187Tucker, Justin A., James W. Stoutenborough, and R. Matthew Beverlin. 2012. “Geographic Proximity in the Diffusion of Concealed Weapons Permit Laws.” Politics & Policy 40 (6): 1081‐1105. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1747-1346.2012.00399.x

Race, class, or both? Responses to candidate characteristics in Canada, the UK, and the US

ABSTRACT Research suggests that voters use identity markers to infer information about candidates for office. Yet politicians have various markers that often point in conflicting directions, and it is unclear how citizens respond to competing signals – especially outside of a few highly stigmatized groups in the US. Given the relevance of these issues for electoral behavior and patterns of representation, this article examines the impact of intersectional identities and less intensely stigmatized markers in Canada, the UK, and the US. It does so using a survey experiment that varies the race (white/East Asian) and class background (higher/lower) of a candidate for office. I then compare results across the cases, examining willingness to vote for the candidate as well as assumptions about his ideological proximity, relatability, and potential contributions. In doing so, I build from past research suggesting that voter ideology likely shapes reactions to candidates from disadvantaged backgrounds. Results suggest that marginalized identity markers have relatively widespread effects among leftists and (to a lesser extent) centrists, but that, outside of the Canadian left, class seems to matter more than race. Overlapping marginalized identities, in turn, had little impact, with the lower-class white and East-Asian profiles eliciting similar reactions.

Ideological Congruence and Social Media Text as Data

ABSTRACTEarlier studies on ideological congruence mostly rely on public opinion surveys to measure voter ideology, while politicians' ideology is measured by instruments such as roll call votes, expert surveys, and legislative texts. One crucial problem with such approaches is that the tools used to measure the elites' ideology are not identical to those used to measure the voters' ideology. The rapid growth of social media use offers a unique opportunity to directly examine the ideological overlap of elites and the electorate on a common platform using a common technique. This study examines over four million Twitter posts by legislative candidates from four major Turkish parties and their supporters between 2012 and 2016. After applying machine-learning algorithms to clean non-political content from the data, we employ Wordfish text scaling technique to extract the policy positions and compare the party positions to those of other parties and to those of their supporters.

Mapping Ideological Preferences in Brazilian Elections, 1994-2018: A Municipal-Level Study

This article investigates the electorally expressed ideology of Brazilian voters via ecological analysis at the municipal level between 1994 and 2018. Our purpose is to analyze the main conditioners of aggregated patterns of ideology measured at a high spatial resolution. We test four major explanations for the variation in ideology at the municipal level: the effect of incumbent alignments, social modernization, political pluralism, and social inclusion. We find that although the Brazilian electorate as a whole leans to the right, there has been a ‘gravitational effect’ exerted by presidential incumbents over local ideology, and during the PT years this was visible in municipal outcomes. However, the vast majority of municipalities tended to the right even during the period of PT national government. During the late Dilma Rousseff years there was a return to a more conservative vote-revealed ideology at the local level, with a sharper veer to the right in the 2016 municipal and 2018 federal elections under Michel Temer. Overall, when we examine local voting in PR elections, we observe that there was no durable electoral realignment in the period under study.

Racial or Spatial Voting? The Effects of Candidate Ethnicity and Ethnic Group Endorsements in Local Elections

AbstractWith the growth of Latino and Asian American populations, candidates frequently must appeal to diverse electorates. Strategies for doing so include emphasizing candidates’ racial/ethnic identity and securing endorsements from racial/ethnic groups. While many scholars focus on candidates’ racial/ethnic attributes, ethnic group endorsements are understudied. Whether such endorsements induce voters to choose ideologically similar candidates (spatial voting), or choose based on race/ethnicity (racial voting) is unclear. We address this question by examining elections in multiethnic local settings. Using original surveys and exit polls, we create comparable measures of candidate and voter ideology, and examine how race/ethnicity and ideology affect voters’ choices. We also embed experiments that manipulate ethnic group endorsements. We find that ideology influences voters’ choices, but that ethnic group endorsements weaken spatial voting. The latter effect among whites is driven by racial/ethnic stereotypes. These reactions explain why some candidates seek such endorsements and why others might prefer to avoid them.

Distributive Politics with Vote and Turnout Buying

The objective of this paper is to model the incumbent’s allocation of efforts that maximize his electoral chances in the presence of both vote buying (persuasion) and turnout buying (mobilization). The existing literature on distributive politics concludes that political candidates should concentrate their campaigning efforts either on safe districts or on swing districts. This paper shows that when candidates can use both persuasion and mobilization strategies, and the ideology of voters is unknown to the incumbent party, a third option should be taken into account. In fact, the optimal allocation of resources—rather than focusing on safe or swing districts—should target opposition strongholds, that is, the incumbent should try to sway voters in those districts in which the challenger is favored. The intuition for this result is simple. Since the incumbent does not know individual preferences (he only observes the distribution of preferences in the districts), all voters in a given district look identical to him. Hence, when approaching voters in a district to buy their vote, the incumbent always faces the risk of buying the vote of his supporters (who would have voted for him anyway).