Influence Vote Choice Research Articles

Behavioural primes in the voting booth: Further evidence of priming effects in popular votes and elections

Why do electoral laws prohibit political advertisement right where voters cast their ballots? Apparently, it is assumed that the deliberate and intentional decision of voters can be swayed at the last minute, thereby compromising free and fair elections. While traditional approaches to electoral behaviour typically fail to recognise such influences, evidence from behavioural psychology suggests that subtle primes can indeed automatically trigger individual action. This paper therefore argues that voting, too, is subject to unsuspected primes. In particular, we analyse whether the innocuous environmental setting of the polling place can influence vote choice. Whether priming effects extend to political behaviour presents a puzzle that is yet not sufficiently investigated. On the one hand, two recent studies do show such behavioural priming effects for the USA. On the other hand, however, there is a serious debate about behavioural priming in general questioning the replicability of earlier studies. Against this background, our paper presents the first replication outside the USA of previous findings, and furthermore extends behavioural priming to other instances. Specifically, we address three questions. First, can behavioural priming of vote choice be replicated or are findings specific to the context of the USA? Second, does behavioural priming of vote choice also occur in elections in multi-party systems? And third, how do ambiguous primes affect decisions in votes, in which the prime does not correspond directly to favouring one choice over another? Using precinct level data from two federal city-states of Germany, Hamburg and Berlin, we find that results of popular votes and elections do, in fact, differ depending on the polling place being situated in a school. Our findings are not only relevant to the theoretical conception of vote choice and contribute to psychological accounts of political behaviour, but they also have practical implications for the design of electoral institutions.

Favoritism or Animosity? Examining How SNS Network Homogeneity Influences Vote Choice via Affective Mechanisms

Favoritism or Animosity? Examining How SNS Network Homogeneity Influences Vote Choice via Affective Mechanisms

Behavioural Priming in Popular Votes and Elections

Why do electoral laws prohibit political advertisement right where voters cast their ballots? Apparently, it is assumed that the deliberate and intentional decision of voters can be swayed at the last minute, thereby compromising free and fair elections. While traditional approaches to electoral behaviour typically fail to recognise such influences, evidence from behavioural psychology suggests that subtle primes can indeed automatically trigger individual action. This paper therefore argues that voting, too, is subject to unsuspected primes. In particular, we analyse whether the innocuous environmental setting of the polling place can influence vote choice. Whether priming effects extend to political behaviour presents a puzzle that is yet not sufficiently investigated. On the one hand, two recent studies do show such behavioural priming effects for the USA. On the other hand, however, there is a serious debate about behavioural priming in general questioning the replicability of earlier studies. Against this background, our paper presents the first replication outside the USA of previous findings, and furthermore extends behavioural priming to other instances. Specifically, we address three questions. First, can behavioural priming of vote choice be replicated or are findings specific to the context of the USA? Second, does behavioural priming of vote choice also occur in elections in multi-party systems? And third, how do ambiguous primes affect decisions in votes, in which the prime does not correspond directly to favouring one choice over another? Using precinct level data from two federal city-states of Germany, Hamburg and Berlin, we find that results of popular votes and elections do, in fact, differ depending on the polling place being situated in a school. Our findings are not only relevant to the theoretical conception of vote choice and contribute to psychological accounts of political behaviour, but they also have practical implications for the design of electoral institutions.

The Effects of Populist Emotive Appeals Within Direct-Democratic Campaigning

A substantial body of literature has shown that emotive appeals affect citizens' voting behavior. This study addresses the question of whether emotive appeals can affect citizens during homogeneous, intense, and emotive campaigning. We conduct an experiment that manipulates the emotive contents of populist campaign communication during two Swiss direct-democratic campaigns: a proposed ban on minaret construction and a proposed ban on arms exports. The results are mixed, but show the importance of campaign concept accessibility in one's cognition. Although the emotive contents of populist campaign communication advocating the arms exports initiative enhance attention, for the remaining scenarios, campaign accessibility triggers attention regardless of the emotive argumentation contents. Emotive contents tend to influence vote choice for either advocacy campaign, if the campaign is cognitively accessible to the subject. These nuanced results highlight the complexity of the interaction of campaign accessibility and emotive campaigns.

Estimating the defense spending vote

Systematic evidence linking defense spending preferences to electoral choice has evaded scholars. This is surprising, given the relative importance of defense spending in terms of the overall budget, as well as the popular conception that increases in defense spending must be offset by decreases in social spending. I develop a theory that identifies the conditions where, when, and for whom defense spending preferences influence vote choice. I then introduce a new method that isolates the defense spending vote with a series of survey-specific models that account for factors unique to the particular situation in that country. I find that—contrary to conventional wisdom—defense spending preferences consistently influence vote choice. This presents an opportunity for right-wing parties and those that emphasize military buildups to attract votes, especially during times of heightened international tensions. These results highlight a strong connection between voters' preferences and electoral support in terms of national security issues, and speak to a number of important literatures including the constraining effects of public opinion on foreign policy and democratic representation.

Balancing act? Testing a theory of split-party U.S. Senate delegations

Why do some states elect split-party U.S. Senate delegations? Fiorina (1992) suggests that his own “balancing” theory might account for the emergence of such opposite–party pairs of Senators. Due primarily to data limitations, previous empirical assessments of whether balancing can appropriately explain the emergence of mixed delegations in the Senate have been limited to aggregate-level analysis. This paper builds on previous scholarship by offering the first individual-level examination of whether balancing theory can appropriately explain divided Senate delegations. We find that individual-level balancing is limited and that when controlling for individual and contextual factors thought to influence vote choice, there is no discernible evidence that voters are considering the makeup of their state's overall Senate delegation when choosing between Senate candidates on offer. Ultimately, our results suggest that candidate-centered campaigns, heterogeneous electorates, and idiosyncratic electoral forces are better explanations for split-party Senate delegations than is any type of strategic, non-proximate voting on the part of citizens.

Do Muslim voters prefer Muslim candidates? Co-religiosity and voting behaviour in India

Does candidate religion influence vote choice? And if so, under what conditions does religion matter? In this contribution we provide the first systematic analysis of the impact of candidate religion on voting behaviour in an ethnically divided democracy: Uttar Pradesh, North India. The results from a series of conditional logit models shows that Muslims are more likely to vote for Muslim candidates, but only when those candidates have a realistic chance of winning – there is thus a strong strategic element to their vote calculus. Moreover, there is no evidence that Hindus discriminate against Muslim candidates, or that parties face an electoral penalty for fielding a Muslim candidate.

Attitudes toward Mormons and Voter Behavior in the 2012 Presidential Election

AbstractPrior to the 2012 presidential election, some commentators speculated that Mitt Romney's status as a devout and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would undermine his presidential aspirations. Using the 2012 American National Election Survey, this study examines the relationship between attitudes toward Mormons and voter behavior in the United States in that election year. It finds that attitudes toward Mormons had a statistically-significant effect on turnout — though these effects differed according to party identification. It additionally finds that these attitudes influenced vote choice. In both cases, the substantive effects were small, indicating that anti-Mormon feelings did play a role in the 2012 presidential election, but they did not determine the final outcome.

The Candidate Effect: Does the Local Candidate Matter?

This paper considers how the quality of the local candidate affects vote choice. Specifically, we address three questions: Does the quality of the local candidate influence vote choice? What impact do individual-level differences have on the relationship between vote choice and local candidates? Finally, what is the potential magnitude of candidate effects in terms of change in vote support? To answer these questions, we analyze data gathered from an online voting experiment. Our findings suggest that a local candidate can influence vote choice significantly, but that such effects are tempered by political awareness and partisanship.

Gender Stereotypes, Information Search, and Voting Behavior in Political Campaigns

It is still unclear exactly how gender influences vote choice. Using an information processing perspective, we argue that instead of directly influencing vote choice, candidate gender guides the amounts and types of information that voters search for during a campaign, and that effects of gender on vote choice ultimately come from differences in information search influenced by candidate gender. Using two unique experimental datasets, we test the effects of candidate gender on vote choice and information search. We find that subjects change their search based on a candidate’s gender, seeking out more competence-related information about female candidates than they do for male candidates, as well as more information related to “compassion issues.” We also find that evaluations of candidates’ traits and issue positions are important predictors of subjects’ vote choice.

Catholic Partisanship and the Presidential Vote in 2012: Testing Alternative Theories

AbstractCatholics have long been an important force in American electoral politics. Once a vital and loyal component of the New Deal Democratic coalition, Catholics in recent decades have shifted their political loyalties away from the Democratic Party to more of a partisan equilibrium. Indeed, by 2012, the White Catholic vote had become predominantly Republican, even in a year in which a Democrat was re-elected to the White House, and on balance party identification among these voters showed a slight Republican edge. Only the growing contingent of Latino Catholics kept the national vote of the entire religious community closely balanced. Despite widespread agreement among scholars that the partisan behavior of Catholics has changed, there is much less consensus on the nature of that change, its permanence, and its causes. We review the historic patterns of Catholic partisanship and voting behavior, discuss three major perspectives on electoral change among Catholics, and test these perspectives with data drawn from the 2012 National Survey of Religion and Politics, with a rich battery of religious measures. We find that socioeconomic factors, religious perspectives, and issue preferences among Catholics all influence partisanship and vote choice, reducing any true “distinctiveness” of the “Catholic vote.”

Economics and Elections Revisited

The economics and elections connection has been heavily investigated, although mostly through single-country studies. The first comparative, survey-based research on economic voting, by Lewis–Beck, found serious effects. Subsequently, other comparative scholars have explored this terrain. The most recent, and most ambitious, examinations are by Duch and Stevenson and by van der Brug et al. These impressive efforts arrive at opposing conclusions about the importance of economic voting. We carry out another major examination, with an eye to reconciling these differences. A carefully specified model of vote choice is estimated on a balanced survey pool ( N > 40,000) from 10 Western European nations. Special pains are taken with issues of economic measurement, estimation, and endogeneity. The finding is that economic perceptions are formed from economic reality, and importantly influence vote choice. Besides enhancing our understanding of comparative political behavior, the strong result speaks to the functioning of government accountability in advanced democracies.

Revisiting clientelism: A network analysis of problem-solving networks in Argentina

Clientelism is a problem-solving network where brokers solve voter problems by providing material and non-material resources in exchange of political support.The literature emphasis on political networks ignores the existence of non-political networks, such as money lending, childcare, and counseling, that also contribute to solve voter problems. This paper uses original data collected by the author in Villa Angel, a densely populated working-class neighborhood located on the outskirts of Buenos Aires City, to show that a broker's central position in non-political networks explains his or her ability to influence vote choice. Consequently, to understand the effects that problem-solving networks have on political behavior, researchers and policy makers have to pay attention to the overlap and relationships between political and non-political networks.

Short-term factors versus long-term values: Explaining the 2009 election results

This paper examines the way three types of factors influence eastern and western German voters in order to assess the similarities and differences in electoral behavior across the former East-West divide. First, to what extend does the performance of parties and the regime influence party support in the East and the West? Second, how do candidate perceptions affect party support? Third, to what degree do ideological values influence vote choice? The results suggest that even 20 years after unification, voters in the East and the West still follow a partially different logic. While candidate evaluations broadly influence party support similarly, negative performance assessments lead west German voters to support the opposition, whereas eastern Germans tend to either “exit” the electoral arena or support the Linke party. Moreover, ideological values have no affect on party choice in the West, whereas they strongly influence the choice of Die Linke in the East. Theoretically, the results reflect the different East-West experiences, illustrating that voters in newer democracies may base their party choice on a different rationale than voters in more mature democracies.

Sleeping Giant: Fact or Fairytale?

Do attitudes towards European integration influence vote choice in national elections — a phenomenon I refer to as European Union (EU) issue voting? Evidence concerning EU issue voting is thus far mixed. Some scholars conclude that an electoral connection exists between European and national politics, whereas others claim that European integration has had very few observable effects on national elections. A resolution emerges when the conditional nature of EU issue voting is acknowledged. Specifically, EU issue voting is more likely to occur in elections in which both the extent of partisan conflict over European integration and the degree of EU issue salience among voters are high. Using a conditional logit model, I illustrate the conditional nature of EU issue voting by comparing UK, Danish, Dutch and German elections between 1992 and 2002.

Black Voters, Black Candidates, and Social Issues: Does Party Identification Matter?*

Objective. Much is known about voting behavior generally; less is known about voting behavior of African Americans in particular due in part to the overwhelming support of black voters for Democratic candidates. However, some argue that black conservatism on social issues could lead to more Republican voting.Methods. We test this question with a set of data on black voting behavior in a 2004 congressional race where two black candidates ran against each other. We thus hold race of candidate constant and look at the influence of social issues and party identification on black vote choice.Results. We find evidence to suggest that evangelicalism and support for the war in Iraq is related to being Republican, but that Democratic Party identification plays the dominant role in black voter decision making.Conclusions. Black conservatism on at least certain social issues is real and has the potential to influence vote choice, but the influence of Democratic Party allegiance is still a very powerful cue for black voters.

Direct Democracy and the Selection of Representative Institutions: Voter Support for Apportionment Initiatives, 1924–62

AbstractIf voters had the opportunity to choose the characteristics of their representative institutions directly, how would they do so? Voters in several states selected the base of their state legislative apportionment through the initiative process prior to the reapportionment revolution of the 1960s, which provides a unique opportunity to answer this question. This study examines 13 such initiatives in four states between 1924 and 1962. Four factors are hypothesized to influence vote choice on these initiatives: urban-rural conflict, partisanship, race, and economic self-interest. Through regression analysis of the county-level vote in these elections I find that economic self-interest consistently influences voter support for apportionment initiatives while these other factors influence it only occasionally. This finding suggests that distributive politics drive voters' evaluation of representative institutions and that the influence of other political factors depends on the historical and local context of an initiative.

Anti-Immigrant Sentiment, Policy Preferences and Populist Party Voting in Australia

Immigration has become a highly salient political issue in many of the world's affluent democracies. Yet, the electoral dynamics of anti-immigrant sentiment remain barely understood. We distinguish two dimensions of concern about immigrants: material threat and cultural threat, and hold that the influence of both on the right-wing populist party vote is critically mediated by policy preferences to restrict immigration and to isolate Australia from foreign influence. The result is a path model of voting that allows material and cultural threat to influence policy preferences about how to deal with the ‘immigrant problem’, and allows both threat and policy preferences to affect voting for the far-right One Nation party in Australia. Our results confirm that popular concern about immigrants is multi-dimensional and that its two dimensions have different sources. We also demonstrate that anti-immigrant sentiment works indirectly through policy orientations to influence vote choice. Feelings about immigrants, in other words, have an electoral effect only when there is a good fit between the policy stances of voters and the policies promoted by the parties on offer.

Does Running with a Woman Help? Evidence from U.S. Gubernatorial Elections

A higher percentage of women consistently run as candidates and serve as the lieutenant governor when running on the same ticket with the governor than for any other state elective office. In this article, we provide the first examination of how running with a woman affects vote choice. We conclude that running-mate sex does influence vote choice in gubernatorial elections, even when we take into account a wide range of individual-level and electoral characteristics that are related to voter preference. Further, voter preference for tickets containing women running mates is not consistent, but rather depends upon certain electoral circumstances. Our findings have implications for assessing how voters respond to women candidates and how gender plays into strategic calculations in state-level politics.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 American Political Science Association Meeting. This research was funded by a grant from the Dean of Arts and Sciences, Union College. We thank Mark Anderson, Alla Abramov, Rhobie Langwig, and Nish Patel for assistance with data collection and Jeff Koch and the anonymous reviewers for valuable feedback on the project. Special thanks go to Bruce Connolly, Courtney Seymour, and David Gerhan of Schaffer Library, Union College, for locating data that was especially difficult to find.

News matters: Influences on the vote in the Danish 2000 euro referendum campaign

Abstract. This study investigates how the information environment in the Danish 2000 euro referendum campaign served to crystallize opinion on the issue within the context of a number of other hypothesized influences on the vote, based on previous studies of referendum voting. Our data include a nationally representative two‐wave panel survey and a content analysis of news coverage during the referendum campaign. We develop a weighted measure of exposure to news on public and private television channels, that takes into account the volume and tone of the coverage towards the YES and NO campaigns, and using this we find that exposure to public television news significantly influences vote choice when controlling for other predictors. We also find varied levels of support for hypotheses concerning the influence of other key variables such as ideology, economic evaluations, government approval and issue‐specific contextual variables. The findings emphasize the importance of considering the information environment during referendum campaigns.