Voter Mobilization Research Articles

Political contexts and new electorates: The case of women in Norway

AbstractExtension of voting rights is basic to political representation, but getting the newly eligible to the polls is also essential to representative politics. What are the factors that contribute to the mobilization of new voters? Study of the entry of women in electoral politics remains limited due to lack of appropriate data. However, in the case of Norway, as in several other countries, separate records were kept on women's eligibility and voting turnout. This paper examines how social factors may condition the influence of a major determinant of women's turnout, political party competition, in parliamentary elections immediately following their enfranchisement in the case of Norway. The study is conducted at the commune level and uses spatial tools of analysis. It takes place across (a) regions with different socio‐cultural and political attributes, (b) different franchise extensions to women by socioeconomic status, and (c) genders. Findings suggest that social context, that is, women's location in different socio‐cultural/political settings and socio‐economic status may condition the effects of political party competition on women's turnout.

Gerindra Party's Legislative Election Campaign Communication Plan

The Gerindra Party's communication tactics during parliamentary elections are examined in this article. It emphasizes how the party has adjusted to the changing media environment by combining digital strategies on sites like Facebook and Twitter with more conventional techniques like town hall meetings. The study points to a knowledge gap regarding the creation and consumption of political messaging in Indonesia's ever-changing digital landscape. The study attempts to evaluate the efficacy of these tactics through a combination of media content analysis, interviews, and documentary reviews. The findings show that, despite difficulties with crisis management, Gerindra's strategy was effective in attracting a varied electorate. Political parties that are adjusting to internet communication and voter mobilization may find this study useful.

All (economic) politics is local: Voting responses to localized price shocks during the great recession

AbstractThe connection between individual and macroeconomic conditions and voting behavior is well‐established. We contribute to the less resolved “spatial gap” in the literature that centers on how the localized economic conditions of where voters live influence their likelihood to vote. We test how space mediates the tension between voter mobilization and withdrawal in the face of economic shocks. We consider a scenario, the Great Recession, where economic shocks were quite localized and sudden, and compile an extensive dataset of all registered voters in the four‐county Tampa metropolitan area between 2006 and 2015. Using sales prices and property characteristics from the tax assessor rolls, we estimate a neighborhood‐level shock to housing values induced by the Great Recession. Results show that when we do not account for local neighborhood variation, the Great Recession is associated with a significant decrease in voter turnout. However, when we account for localized economic shocks, we find that residents in neighborhoods with negative price shocks were more likely to vote after the Recession, especially in non‐local elections. In addition, the propensity to vote increases with the size of the negative price shock. There is some evidence that variation at the neighborhood level matters more than voter‐level heterogeneity. The positive voting response is most profound in predominantly Black neighborhoods, and, to a lesser extent, in predominantly Hispanic and the lowest income neighborhoods. Increases in the propensity to vote are robust to models controlling for baseline economic vulnerabilities, such as localized unemployment, the weakness of the local housing market and exposure to sectors hit hardest by the Recession. The results indicate that dramatic and sudden changes in localized economic conditions can drive voting behavior, and in ways that are distinct from macroeconomic drivers. In addition, the housing asset channel appears to be a powerful one, which can induce significant voting responses at the national level apart from other localized economic drivers, especially among homeowners.

Under Which Conditions Do Populist Governments Use Unpolitics in EU Decision-Making

Until recently, we knew very little about the role of populist governments in EU decision-making. The “crucial case” of refugee distribution within the EU demonstrated that their behaviour was ruled by unpolitics: they rejected formal and informal rules of decision-making if these were not conducive to their preferred outcome, they rejected traditional means of ensuring compromises, and they rejected solutions to perpetuate crises. However, to what extent is unpolitics a phenomenon unique to migration—an area prone to (nativist) populist capture? This thematic issue compares the behaviour of populist governments in the Council of the EU across different policy areas. The goal is to better understand under which conditions unpolitics is more likely to manifest in EU decision-making. We argue that unpolitics is intrinsically linked to vote-seeking strategies, where populist governments use EU decision-making to mobilise domestic audiences. Hence, unpolitics is more prone to “high gain” and “low risk” issues, since they can be more easily politicised. Unpolitics is also more likely to manifest in venues that act as a tribune, where populist actors can directly speak to domestic audiences. Finally, since unpolitics relies on the mobilisation of voters, it is essentially a two-level game largely determined by domestic political and socioeconomic conditions. Overall, we see that, although the EU institutions have proved relatively resilient, unpolitics is gradually unsettling and hollowing out norms, institutions, and discourses.

Policy Impact and Voter Mobilization: Evidence from Farmers’ Trade War Experiences

How does the extent of policy benefits—not simply their presence—affect political engagement? While fundamental to understanding the electoral implications of economic policymaking, addressing this question is challenging due to the difficulty of measuring individual voters’ policy outcomes. We examine a natural experiment embedded in President Trump’s Market Facilitation Program (MFP), which aided a core Republican constituency: farmers harmed by his 2018 trade war. Due to idiosyncrasies of program design, the MFP undercompensated some farmers for their trade war losses—and significantly overcompensated others—based solely on their 2018 crop portfolios. Analyzing over 165,000 affected voters, we show that improved compensation outcomes had negligible impacts on Republican farmers’ midterm turnout and campaign contributions, even though such variation in benefits significantly affected farmers’ propensity to view the intervention as helpful. This null result is important—our estimates suggest that even highly salient variation in policy outcomes may have limited mobilizing capacity.

Voter mobilization with public cultural spending in small communities: evidence from Austria

Voter mobilization with public cultural spending in small communities: evidence from Austria

Examining the objectives of ethnic parties: A comprehensive analysis of the dynamics of ethnic party competition beyond the constraints of the outbidding model

AbstractThis study scrutinises the core assumptions of Donald Horowitz's outbidding model, which defines ethnic party competition as a rivalry between extremist groups focussed solely on ethnic politics, deeming other socio‐economic issues insufficient for voter mobilisation and electoral success (Horowitz, 1985). Through a comprehensive analysis of ethnic parties in Iraqi Kurdistan, this study demonstrates how these parties extend their focus beyond ethnic concerns to include broader administrative matters, such as social and economic issues within the local governance framework. Utilising content analysis of Kurdish newspapers and a comparative perspective, this study challenges the prevailing notion of ethnic outbidding, revealing the multifaceted strategies employed by Kurdish parties.

Political Parties: Builders and Destroyers of Ghana’s Drive to Democratic Consolidation

Despite a very checkered political history, Ghana’s Fourth Republic has so far performed relatively better, surviving through eight election cycles. Though political parties are objects of massive supports in Ghana’s drive to democratic consolidation, nevertheless, questions have been raised about the ways in which parties operate in practice. Through the use of concurrent mixed methods design, the study examined the view that Ghanaian political parties are not agents of democracy due to some irresponsible and self-interested actions they usually pursue. The study found that Ghana has made significant progress towards democratic consolidation partly because political parties actively perform the functions of voter mobilization and forming the government. However, despite the strong support for multiparty democracy from Ghanaians, their hopes and expectations have proved illusionary due to persistent poverty and socio-economic inequalities. This has the potential to disempower the poor majority and make democracy the property of few wealthy politicians. Additionally, policy discontinuity and the activities of political vigilantism championed by political parties were identified as notable threats to Ghana’s democratic gains. The study recommended that both the intrinsic and instrumentalist approaches to politics are critical for democratic consolidation and maturity in Ghana.

Increasing Voter Participation Through Health Care–Based Voter Registration

Young people and historically marginalized racial and ethnic groups are poorly represented in the democratic process. Addressing voting inequities can make policy more responsive to the needs of these communities. To assess whether leveraging health care settings as venues for voter registration and mobilization is useful, particularly for historically underrepresented populations in elections. In 2020, nonpartisan nonprofit Vot-ER partnered with health care professionals and institutions to register people to vote. This cross-sectional study analyzed the demographics and voting behavior of people mobilized to register to vote in health care settings, including hospitals, community health centers, and medical schools across the US. The age and racial and ethnic identity data of individuals engaged through Vot-ER were compared to 2 national surveys of US adults, including the 2020 Cooperative Election Study (CES) and the 2020 American National Election Study (ANES). Health care-based voter registration. The main outcomes were age composition, racial and ethnic composition, and voting history. Of the 12 441 voters contacted in health care settings, 41.9% were aged 18 to 29 years, 15.9% were identified as African American, 9.6% as Asian, 12.7% as Hispanic, and 60.4% as White. This distribution was significantly more diverse than the racial and ethnic distribution of the ANES (N = 5447) and CES (N = 39 014) samples, of which 72.5% and 71.19% self-identified as White, respectively. Voter turnout among health care-based contacts increased from 61.0% in 2016 to 79.8% in 2020, a turnout gain (18.8-percentage point gain) that was 7.7 percentage points higher than that of the ANES sample (11.1-percentage point gain). Demographically, the age distribution of voters contacted in health care settings was significantly different from the ANES and CES samples, with approximately double the proportion of young voters aged 18 to 29 years. This cross-sectional study suggests that health care-based voter mobilization reaches a distinctly younger and more racially and ethnically diverse population relative to those who reported contact from political campaigns. This analysis of the largest health care-based voter mobilization effort points to the unique impact that medical professionals may have on voter registration and turnout in the 2024 US elections. In the long term, health equity initiatives should prioritize expanding voting access to address the upstream determinants of health in historically marginalized communities.

Analisis Komunikasi Politik dalam Kampanye Pemilu: Pendekatan Kualitatif terhadap Strategi dan Dampaknya di Media Sosial

This study aims to analyze political communication in election campaigns using a qualitative approach, focusing on the strategies employed and their impact on social media. In the context of the growing use of social media as a primary platform for political campaigns, this research examines how politicians and campaign teams utilize social media to convey political messages, build images, and influence public opinion. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with political campaign practitioners and content analysis from various social media platforms. The findings indicate that effective communication strategies on social media involve engaging content, active interaction with the audience, and message adaptation according to the platform's characteristics. Additionally, the impact of these strategies is observed in increased political participation, changes in public perception, and voter mobilization. These findings provide valuable insights for political practitioners and communication researchers regarding the dynamics of political communication in the digital era.

Human or Not?: An Experiment With Chatbot Manipulations to Test Machine Heuristics and Political Self-Concepts

Chatbots have a growing role to play in political discourse, including in political campaigns, voter mobilization ventures, and dissemination of political news, though chatbots in the political domain are relatively understudied. While testing the machine heuristics and political self-concepts frameworks, we carried out a 2 × 2 experiment where both perceived conversational partner (i.e., bot, human) and topic (i.e., political, casual) were manipulated ( N = 126). During the experiment, participants exchanged chat messages with trained research confederates for 30 min. In support of the machine heuristics and political self-concepts frameworks, participants assigned to human partners reported more positive relationships and higher political interest. Through moderation analysis, liking the partner was found to differ between the perceived partner conditions, with perceived political knowledge varying more in the human conditions. Thus, the experimental findings add nuance to interpersonal (i.e., impression management and social identity theory) and human-computer interaction theories (i.e., machine heuristics and Computers Are Social Actors), and have broader implications for online political interactions and for decisionmakers of online political discourse spaces.

Bound by Borders: Voter Mobilization Through Social Networks

Abstract A vast and growing quantitative literature considers how social networks shape political mobilization but the degree to which turnout decisions are strategic remains ambiguous. Unlike previous studies, we establish personal links between voters and candidates and exploit discontinuous incentives to mobilize across district boundaries to estimate causal effects. Considering three types of networks – families, co-workers, and immigrant communities – we show that a group member's candidacy acts as a mobilizational impulse propagating through the group's network. In family networks, some of this impulse is non-strategic, surviving past district boundaries. However, the bulk of family mobilization is bound by the candidate's district boundary, as is the entirety of the mobilizational effects in the other networks.

Bordering and crisis narratives to illiberal ends

Abstract This paper draws lessons from security and populism studies to theorize how radical right-wing populism (RRWP) utilizes borders as a symbolic resource in crisis narratives to clearly frame an “Us” and a threatening “Them”. By analyzing the Hungarian Orbán regime’s evolving rhetoric on borders, the paper illustrates how populists employ crisis narratives not to mitigate, but exacerbate ontological insecurities, and thereby facilitate de-democratization by (re)shaping voter attitudes (cf. Homolar & Scholz 2019; Steele & Homolar 2019). The paper suggests that populists-in-power rely on crisis and bordering narratives beyond voter mobilization: such narratives are in fact designed to legitimize and affirm illiberal practices that undermine liberal democracy itself, and contribute to regime building. Border crises, and crisis politics, hence become a template for the manipulation of individuals’ security-of-being, and thereby a tool in the politics of reassurance and control at the broader, societal level.

A meta-analysis of voter mobilization tactics by electoral salience

After hundreds of field experiments assessing their effectiveness, voter mobilization tactics are often considered “settled science.” In this research note, we posit that this assumption is incorrect, due to inconsistent and insufficient attention to electoral salience in the literature. Researchers often conduct mobilization field experiments in low-salience elections due to limited resources and the need for adequate statistical power. However, practitioners often apply these findings in high-salience contexts. Theory suggests that effects of mobilization tactics will attenuate in high-salience elections due to heightened attention. We present refined meta-analytic estimates of common mobilization tactics in U.S. elections—canvassing, phone calls, direct mail, and SMS messages—based on electoral salience. Results show that effects of tactics attenuate 33%–76% from low- to high-salience contexts. We translate all findings into intent-to-treat (ITT) estimates to highlight the impact of declining contact rates. Finally, we identify significant gaps in the research and offer solutions.

Identity, Political Culture, and Democracy Naivety in Indonesia

Since the transition of Indonesia from the authoritarian New Order era to the more democratic Reformation Order in 1998, significant changes have occurred in leadership recruitment at the national and regional levels. There have also been substantial transition in the pattern of voter mobilization, specifically the increasing prevalence of identity politics. This study showed that each region had a different approach to incorporating identity in electoral politics. Even with the Indonesian multicultural nature and a diversity of identities, every region has unique political cultures, and acknowledges the significance of identity-related issues for achieving electoral success. Also, there was a tendency for inconsistent and double-standard positioning of identities, which biased the stance on identity and lacked neutrality. Moreover, Indonesian democracy was still perceived as naive, with identities remaining a primary electoral tool.

Athletes and activism, and the NBA: through the lens of added value theory

This research study took an in-depth look at how the National Basketball Association (NBA) and its athletes influenced voter turnout for the 2020 presidential election. The NBA worked with athletes and communities to create a space for Black voters to cast their ballot in a safe and efficient manner in the 2020 presidential election. Value Added Theory (VAT) assisted in understanding how events in 2020 surrounding the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, influenced the NBA as an organisation and NBA athletes to mobilise and use their influence and platform to increase voter turnout in urban areas across the U.S. This study applied a mixed methods methodology in which researchers interviewed a representative from three voting rights organisations who were dedicated to mobilising Black voters during the 2020 presidential election. A content analysis methodology was also used to gather voter turnout data for U.S. counties with NBA teams to compare voter turnout from 2016 to 2020. This methodology helped to produce context for how athlete activism influenced the 2020 election. Results show that NBA athletes and the NBA as a league, had a notable impact on voter turnout in the 2020 election through the use of social media, donations, access, mobilisation of Black voters, and combating voter suppression. This paper illustrates how athletes and an organisation, worked together to make structural and effective change within their communities, by leveraging their resources and influential platform.

Compulsory voting, economic conditions and turnout: explaining the outcome of constitutional referendums

Referendums were historically and theoretically justified as a people’s veto. Do voters use them as such or are referendums merely second-order votes? This article aims to answer this question through a comparative study of all constitutional referendums around the world between 1980 and 2022 using a VP-Function model. The results indicate that the support for constitutional referendums follows a pattern in which compulsory voting, economic conditions and voter mobilisation are important. Contrary to findings in more generic studies of referendums, there is no indication of a ‘honeymoon’ period for constitutional referendums. Also, in contrast to other studies, the presence of emotive words and what may appear as ‘leading questions’ favour higher support, though this is not present in countries with compulsory voting. The results contribute to the study of referendums and to the wider debate about voters’ preferences by showing that political factors are more important than structural factors.

Competing external demoi and differential enfranchisement: The case of the 2022 Hungarian election

This analysis of the 2022 Hungarian parliamentary election highlights the phenomenon of competing external demoi, a situation that emerges when an incumbent government differentially enfranchises and mobilizes different external national communities for electoral purposes, thus triggering a competing mobilization of external voters by non-incumbent political actors. Hungarian parliamentary elections have increasingly become battlegrounds between the ethnic Hungarians living in countries neighboring Hungary, who have access to non-resident Hungarian citizenship and the right the vote in Hungarian elections by mail; and Hungarian emigrants in Western Europe who must vote in person at home or at embassies. These differences in voting access and the highly partisan mobilization of these two external demoi came to a head during the 2022 parliamentary election. This article seeks to explain the development of two different sets of external enfranchisement policies within a single case, a variation that is undertheorized in the literature, and uncovers the causes and consequences of the unique structure of external partisan polarization that emerged in the 2022 election. It argues that we must look at Hungary’s competitive authoritarian regime type in the context of “divided nationhood” and the relationship between incumbent hegemony and opposition mobilization in different types of external communities to explain this outcome.

Explaining the Surge of the Populist Radical Right: A Time-Series Analysis of the Effects of Immigration and the Economy in Norway

Populist radical right parties have become major forces in most Western democracies. Previous research has provided conflicting evidence on whether their electoral support can be explained by two structural developments: economic decline and increased immigration. Using time-series regression and almost 30 years of aggregated monthly polling data, we perform a novel test of the effects of economic decline and immigration on aggregate support for the Norwegian Progress Party. We find that the most beneficial time-periods for this party seem to be those of rising immigration and a booming economy. However, our findings also suggest that the effect of rising immigration is halted when the party holds government office. Thus, voter mobilization based on anti-immigration messages may represent a challenge for the Norwegian Progress Party and potentially other such parties going forward as they may become victims of their own success.

Reconceptualizing Cross-Cutting Political Expression on Social Media: A Case Study of Facebook Comments During the 2016 Brexit Referendum

ABSTRACT Political communication research has long sought to understand the effects of cross-cutting exposure on political participation. Here, we argue for a paradigm shift that acknowledges the agency of citizens as producers of cross-cutting expression on social media. We define cross-cutting expression as political communication through speech or behavior within a counter-attitudinal space. After explicating our conceptualization of cross-cutting expression, we empirically explore: its extent, its relationship to political arguments, and its implications for digital campaigning during the 2016 Brexit Referendum. Our dataset, comprising 2,198,741 comments from 344,884 users, is built from Facebook comments to three public campaign pages active during the Brexit referendum: StrongerIn, VoteLeave, and LeaveEU. We utilize reactions data to sort partisans into “Remain” and “Brexit” camps and, thereafter, chart users’ commenting flows across the three pages. We estimate 29% of comments to be cross-cutting, and we find strong correlations between cross-cutting expression and reasoned political arguments. Then, to better understand how cross-cutting expression may influence political participation on social media, we topic model the dataset to identify the political themes discussed during the Brexit debate on Facebook. Our findings suggest that political Facebook pages are not echo chambers, that cross-cutting expression correlates with reasoned political arguments, and that cross-cutting expression may influence the online voter mobilization potential of political Facebook pages.