Influence Vote Choice Research Articles

Political Effects of Exposure to Evidence about Racial Discrimination

ABSTRACT Evidence of discrimination against African Americans, based on high-quality field experiments, has become clearer, easier to communicate, and harder to counterargue. In two experimental studies, we use this development to empirically evaluate two effects of evidence about discrimination. First, we test whether exposure to this evidence about discrimination against African Americans influences Whites’ belief in discrimination and racial resentment, contributing to the scholarship on interventions to reduce prejudice. Second, we provide an experimental test to further explore observational studies showing that denial or downplaying of discrimination against African Americans influences vote choice in recent elections.

Place-based resentment in an egalitarian welfare state

A divide between people in rural areas and in cities contributes to the current wave of populist backlash and the realignment of party systems across Western democracies. Does place-based resentment also exist and influence vote choice in an egalitarian welfare state, and if so, what is its basis? Building on the literature of place resentment and social identities, we examine place-based resentment in the Norwegian context. Employing original survey data, we measure rural-urban resentment by comparing the difference in an individual's in-group and out-group sentiment. We find that rural voters are more resentful of urbanites. Despite extensive redistributive public policies, a sense of unfair resource distribution spurs greater rural resentment than a cultural grievance. In response to current debates in the American and West European scholarship, our findings illustrate that rural resentment can develop in contexts where rural voters are not economically marginalized. Rural resentment also explains voting for the center-left agrarian party. Our work demonstrates the importance of place-based social identities in explaining rural political backlash in advanced democracies. Moreover, rural backlash does not always strengthen the populist right.

Election symbols and vote choice: evidence from India

Abstract A large literature has shown that ballot order and ballot structure can influence vote choice. We focus on another behavioral cue for voting, the symbols that are assigned to candidates in many democracies. We take advantage of a naturally occurring experiment in India, where independent candidates can choose from a list of free symbols and conflicting choices are resolved by a drawing of lots. We find that winning the draw has a substantial positive effect on vote share. We also find some evidence that candidates attempt to choose their symbols strategically, for instance choosing household goods common in their constituencies.

The effect of crime on South Africans’ voting behaviour

ABSTRACT What effect does crime have on South Africans' electoral behaviour? Do crime victims and citizens who fear crime enter or exit the electoral arena? If they do vote, do they sanction the ruling African National Congress (ANC)? We use two rounds of Afrobarometer data to provide answers. We corroborate earlier findings that crime victimisation does not appear to shape electoral behaviour. Further, we find that sociotropic perceptions of crime do influence vote choice, although not always in the predicted direction. We explore who tend to be South African crime victims to cast light on these results. We find that opposition parties, specifically the Democratic Alliance (DA), have benefitted electorally from citizens' crime perceptions. We contend that the party's significant focus on crime help account for their ownership of the issue. Lastly, relative to other government performance evaluations, crime does matter, and its salience and importance have increased over time.

Electoral Messiah or Party Label? Quantifying and Investigating Leader-Party Relationships in German Federal Elections 1998–2021

While the personalization of politics thesis has received support when exploring the supply side of politics and the media's coverage of elections and campaigns, the unmediated impact of leaders on vote choice (demand-side behavioral personalization) is debated. Most scholars agree that leaders can and do influence the vote, but the extent, circumstances, and pathways for this to occur, notably distinct from voter assessments of the party, remains contested. Using data from the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) and the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES), we explore demand-side behavioral personalization in German Federal elections between 1998–2021, with a particular focus on the 2021 contest, where leadership was arguably an especially salient feature of the campaign. We offer a quantification of the phenomenon – first in the form of a vote-leader/party favorite alignment index and second by separating the impact of leader and party popularity on the vote in the 2021 contest, including provision for temporal and reciprocal dynamics. In doing so, we comprehensively examine leader-inclined voting while testing whether the 2021 contest represented a “Crossroads” contest on this dimension. Our results show leaders directly influenced vote choice in 2021, support for leader-inclined voting. Nevertheless, we find little evidence that 2021 marked a “Crossroads,” with few voters aligning their vote solely with their favorite leader, a pattern detected in all German elections between 1998 and 2021. Conspicuously, substantially more voters report aligning their vote with their favorite party. Further, our analysis illustrates that the association between leader popularity and the vote mostly trails the impact of party popularity’s connection with the vote. These results align more with the leaders minimalist school of demand-side behavioral personalization.

Domestic terrorism, incumbency, and legislative vote shares

A small number of studies have examined the effect terrorism has on political ideology and vote choice cross-nationally. However, scholars yet to understand how terrorist attack type influences vote choice based on the political ideology of incumbent governments. Thus, we examine the effect domestic and transnational terrorist attacks have on vote choice in legislative elections while accounting for the ideology of the incumbent government. In examining 56 democracies from 1975 – 2014 from various regions and levels of development, we find that domestic attacks, and not transnational, significantly effect both right and left party votes shares when the incumbent party in government is of a similar ideology. We attribute these results to the perception of instability that accompanies domestic attacks and the effects it has on voters’ evaluations of political parties. These findings have important implications for understanding how terrorism influences electoral behavior.

Precarious work and challenger parties: how precarity influenced vote choice in the 2018 Italian election

AbstractAcross Western European democracies, the last 20 years have seen a growth of precarious employment and the rise of challenger parties. Both trends are especially marked in Italy, where occupational insecurity has become the norm and over half of the electorate has turned to a challenger party. In this article, I investigate the relationship between these two phenomena, addressing the question of whether and how precarity in the labor market influenced vote choice in the 2018 general election. First, I provide descriptive evidence that the Italian labor market shifted from dualism to generalized precarization. Second, I empirically investigate the relationship between precarity and voting in this context. The results show that the perception of precarity, not formal employment status, influenced voting behavior: it fostered participation, increased support for the Five Star Movement, and decreased support for the Democratic Party. These findings challenge core assumptions in the literature, first and foremost about precarious workers' low turnout rate, difficult mobilization, and consequent political irrelevance. They indicate that the electoral weight of precarious workers has increased, and their representation can be electorally beneficial.

Strategic Alignment in Times of Crisis: Voting at the Dawn of a Global Pandemic

Natural disasters are likely to increase in the near future. How does the emergence of such events influence voting behavior? While the literature has focused on the electoral repercussions after disaster has already struck, we investigate whether imminent disaster influences vote choice. We study the effect of the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic on electoral choice in a setting that allows for causal identification: the local elections in Germany’s southern state Bavaria in March 2020, where, at the time of the elections, only an as-if random sample of localities had recorded cases of COVID-19. We find that initial local outbreaks favored the political party governing at the state level and hurt the far right. These findings are most likely driven by a ‘strategic alignment’ mechanism, whereby voters choose the party or candidate they believe is best placed to help them through the crisis.

Do voters prefer educated candidates? How candidate education influences vote choice in congressional elections

Previous research shows that democracies are more likely to produce educated politicians, but is this because voters prefer educated representatives or because of other features of the democratic process? Education may serve as a signal of candidate quality to voters or it may simply be associated with other factors, such as access to campaign funds, that help candidates win elections. We address this puzzle by analyzing head-to-head matches between candidates in US House elections from 2002 to 2012 along with a conjoint experiment. We find evidence that candidates with higher levels of education win more votes than candidates with lower levels of education, even after we account for standard indicators of candidate quality and campaign spending. This education premium not only garners more votes, but it also translates into higher probabilities of winning. The experimental results and sensitivity analyses show that it is unlikely that these results are explained by a hidden confound. The experiment also illuminates that the education premium flows from perceptions of candidate qualification and ability to pursue respondent interests.

Hispanics’ Perceptions of Candidates & Voting in the 2018 Texas Senate Election

ABSTRACT This study examines Hispanic voters’ use of campaign information to form beliefs about candidates, evaluate them, and make voting decisions. Accordingly, we test a model of Hispanic voting using survey data (N = 424) collected during the 2018 Texas senate election and featuring Anglo Democrat, Beto O’Rourke, and Hispanic Republican, Ted Cruz. Although pathways leading to voter support differed for the two candidates, results suggest that exposure to political communication guides voter perception of candidate attributes, such as the candidate’s ethnic identity, which in turn can influence vote choice. Taken together, findings highlight the contribution of campaign communication to Hispanic voters’ candidate preference and voting behaviour.

Associative issue ownership in a highly fragmented multiparty context: The Netherlands (2021)

Associative issue ownership (AIO) has proven its value in describing issue competition and explaining voting behavior. Yet, it is unclear whether and to what extent AIO also differentiates parties and influences vote choice in highly fragmented, multiparty systems. In such a context, parties must differentiate from many electoral competitors, which makes AIO worth pursuing. At the same time, obtaining unequivocal ownership may be a very difficult endeavor in the face of so many rivals. This paper aims to assess these questions empirically by employing the Dutch Parliamentary Election Study 2021 on a system with 17 elected parties (ENPP = 8). At the aggregate level, we find unequivocal issue ownership for 4 of the 14 issues under study. AIO of most other issues is contested, either by parties with very similar policy positions (within-block competition) or by parties with opposing positions (between-block competition). A final set of issues remain unclaimed. At the individual level, perceptions of issue ownership explain the composition of voters’ party consideration sets (pre-elections) and their actual vote choice (post-elections). These impacts are stronger when voters associate the party with an issue they find important. We conclude that AIO perceptions are an important factor to consider when studying party dynamics and voting behavior in a context of highly fragmented multipartyism.

An Analysis of the Group Bases of British Politics: 1983–2019

Abstract In this paper, we address two questions: (i) what were the group bases of the British electoral coalitions? And (ii) how have these group bases of support changed in the past decades? We determine which social group memberships significantly influence vote choice by using British Election Study data. We then incorporate demographic data to measure how many votes each social group contributed at each general election from 1983 to 2019. We find that the Labour Party has been obtaining fewer votes from union members and manual labourers, primarily due to shrinking group size and declining turnout. Yet, it is attracting more support from university graduates and ethnic minorities—groups growing in relative size. The Conservatives attract more votes from whites, homeowners and Anglicans. These groups are shrinking as a share of the population, but turn out at rates higher than the national average. Overall, our analysis reveals the changing cleavage structures in British politics.

Can we learn from 2012? Priming and abortion’s influence on voting decisions

With abortion regaining attention in national media due to recent court cases and legislation, this study assesses evidence of the potential impact of abortion on voting behavior when the issue becomes especially salient in the campaign information environment. The study utilizes two-wave panel data from the 2010–2012 Cooperative Congressional Study and compares the effect of lagged abortion attitudes on vote choice in the Missouri and Indiana U.S. Senate elections in 2012 to other electoral contests where abortion was less salient. The findings suggest abortion influenced vote choice through the process of learning and priming after abortion unexpectedly became salient due to comments from Republican candidates that revealed extreme conservative positions on the issue. While substantial research suggests that voters often learn and then follow the issue preferences of their preferred party’s candidates, these results point to conditions where the information environment can serve a potentially more normatively desirable role of informing and activating the electorate’s pre-existing preferences.

Predicting Vote Choice and Election Outcomes from Ballot Wording: The Role of Processing Fluency in Low Information Direct Democracy Elections

ABSTRACT Two laboratory studies (N = 240) were designed to explain and predict how people make decisions in low-information political environments. Guided by feelings-as-information theory, it was argued that when direct democracy ballot issues do not receive any campaign expenditures and are not about moral/civic issues, voters are likely to encounter these ballots for the first time in the voting booth. And when this is the case, how these ballots are written should affect vote choice. In support of study hypotheses, it was found that the difficulty of the words on the ballot affected people’s processing fluency, defined as the ease with which people processed the information presented. In turn, self-reports of processing fluency influenced vote choice. Specifically, easier texts were more likely to be supported and difficult texts were more likely to be opposed or abstained from voting on. As hypothesized, this relationship was mediated through self-reports of processing fluency. Additionally, to demonstrate the external validity of this process, it was found that the voting results obtained in the two laboratory studies replicated real-world election results 86% of the time. These results offer communicative and psychological insight into how communication affects information processing, and how these processing experiences inform political decisions of consequence to everyday life.

Policy Preferences Influence Vote Choice When A New Party Emerges: Evidence from the 2017 French Presidential Election

A common explanation for electoral victories is that the winning candidate adopted issue positions that appealed to voters, implying that citizens’ choices are based on policy preferences. However, it is not straightforward to determine the causal direction between citizens’ issue preferences and their party choice. An alternative possibility, strongly supported by prior research, is that voters adopt the positions of the parties they vote for to rationalize their votes. The 2017 French presidential election offers a unique opportunity to address that question, as it saw the victory of a candidate who was not backed by one of the established parties. Using panel data, we show that policy preferences measured prior to Macron’s emergence as a candidate led voters with a particular bundle of preferences to support him. We conclude that policy preferences clearly do matter to vote choice and that this effect is most visible when a new party emerges.

Sexism and the Australian voter: how sexist attitudes influenced vote choice in the 2019 federal election

ABSTRACT While attitudes toward women and gender equality are increasingly salient in Australian politics, little is known about how sexist attitudes shape political behaviour. Using the Australian Election Study, I assess the extent hostile sexism is present among Australian citizens and influenced vote choice in the 2019 Federal election. First, I find that women are less likely than men to hold hostile sexist attitudes, but gender differences vary by party identification. Second, I show that hostile sexism is not significantly related to the likelihood of voting for the Labor or Liberal parties. Hostile sexist attitudes, however, significantly increase the likelihood of voting for the National party and significantly decrease the likelihood of voting for the Greens. Finally, I find no gender difference in the role of hostile sexism in explaining vote choice.

Risk aversion and strategic voting

Abstract Numerous studies investigate how personality traits and individual characteristics influence vote choice. However, the effect of risk attitudes on the proclivity to cast a strategic vote has not been tested yet. This article tests whether the likelihood of defecting from one’s preferred party is influenced by attitudes towards risk. I argue that the utility stemming from expressing a preference by opting for the favored party is a sure thing, whereas the utility stemming from an instrumental choice depends on some probabilities, and consequently that strategic voting is riskier than sincere voting. Using survey data from the United Kingdom and Canada, I find that risk-averse voters are less likely to vote strategically than risk-acceptant ones.

A New Tunnel Effect? The Impact of Stress on Vote Choice

The literature shows a link between stress and voter turnout, but does stress influence vote choice as well? What would explain such a relationship? Using a survey of Quebec (Canada) voters conducted during the 2017 municipal election (n = 1,130), we show that 1) there is a relationship between stress and vote choice, and 2) voters who consider road congestion to be an important issue and who report being stressed tend to vote for the party that has taken a stand in favor of highway projects and against public transit. While many studies show an association between road congestion and the psychological health of individuals, our research invites us to consider the political impacts of such a relationship.

Relative group discrimination and vote choice among Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Whites

ABSTRACT Scholars of Race, Ethnicity, and Politics (REP) have demonstrated that discrimination shapes the political behavior of Blacks, Latinos, Asians, and Whites. This scholarship, however, tends to focus on a single group or employ variables that make intergroup comparisons difficult. Using data from the 2016 Collaborative Multi-Racial Post-Election Survey, we examine individuals’ perceptions of the discrimination their racial or pan-ethnic group faces relative to other groups and the relationship between those perceptions and presidential vote choice. We argue that perceived relative group discrimination captures group-level perceptions of racial hierarchy in the United States, and present evidence that these perceptions significantly influenced vote choice in the 2016 presidential election. Whites who believe their racial group experiences more discrimination than other groups were significantly more likely to cast a vote for Donald Trump. This finding contradicts similar studies identifying White awareness of their dominance as a catalyst of pro-group behavior. Conversely, Latinos who expressed a greater sense of relative group discrimination were more likely to cast a vote for Hillary Clinton. We replicate these findings across multiple datasets and find that relative group discrimination is associated with partisanship among Blacks, Latinos, and Whites since at least 2012.

Surrogate-in-Chief: Did Bill Clinton’s Campaign Visits Help (or Hurt) Hillary Clinton in 2016?

Abstract In this article, we examine the role that campaign visits by spouses and surrogates play in modern presidential campaigns. Specifically, we analyze the strategy and effectiveness of Bill Clinton’s campaign visits in 2016. Given the former president’s widespread name recognition and reputation as a legendary campaigner, we argue that he represents an ideal test case for determining whether the spouse of a presidential or vice presidential candidate can influence vote choice, via campaign visits. Our analysis indicates that Bill Clinton was, in fact, very active on the campaign trail in 2016 – making nearly as many visits as Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. However, Bill Clinton mostly followed in Hillary Clinton’s footsteps on the campaign trail, giving him little opportunity to win over voters that she could not reach. His campaign visits also had no discernible effect on county-level voting, generally, in the 10 states to which he traveled. Yet, when we examine the effect of Clinton’s visits within states, we find that he had a positive and statistically significant effect on Democratic vote share in the battleground state of Florida. He had no such effect in the two states to which he traveled most often, however (North Carolina and Ohio). Overall, we find very limited evidence that campaign surrogates – and candidate spouses, specifically – can influence vote choice via their campaign visits. We discuss the implications of these findings for future research on the role of campaign surrogates, and their relevance to the 2020 presidential campaign.