Past Voting Research Articles

A World Outside the Classroom: Understanding Faculty Perspectives on Electoral Engagement in the Classroom

Colleges and universities serve as vital bridges between the state and citizens, providing fertile ground for nurturing democratic participation among students through the cultivation of civic knowledge, skills, and attitudes collectively known as electoral engagement. However, faculty members, responsible for implementing such initiatives, may not always view electoral engagement as essential to their curriculum. This study explores faculty motivations and reservations regarding electoral engagement in classrooms. Leveraging a novel data set of faculty responses, the research reveals at least two important findings. First, faculty members express greater interest when supported by colleagues, department chairs, and students within their institutions. Second, faculty confidence and past voting behavior influence their interest in electoral engagement initiatives. The article concludes with a brief exploration of how these insights can empower faculty nationwide to effectively nurture students as active contributors to our democratic process.

"I always feel like somebody's watching me"

The practice of political micro-targeting (PMT) – tailoring messages for voters based on their personal data – has increased over the past two decades, particularly in the U.S. Studies of PMT have to date concentrated largely on its effects on voters, or its implications for democracy more broadly. Less attention has been given to answering basic descriptive questions about how people perceive, feel and care about this new mode of political communication. This paper fills that gap by reporting findings from an online survey (weighted to be nationally representative on age, gender, ethnicity, region and past vote) that measured public attitudes toward PMT during the 2020 U.S. Presidential campaign. Specifically, we measure voter orientations toward PMT in four key dimensions – awareness, aversion, knowledge, and acceptability at the aggregate level – and explore how these vary according to a range of individual characteristics. Key findings are that public understanding and acceptance of PMT may be higher than current studies indicate, particularly among certain sectors of the population. Such insights are important for academic research to cognize and also policy-makers, as they move toward greater regulation of voter targeting.

“I shall not poison my child with your human experiment”: Investigating predictors of parents’ hesitancy about vaccinating younger children (

BackgroundSince the approval of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines for younger children (those under the age of 12), uptake has been low. Despite widespread vaccination among older children and adults, these trends may undermine public health efforts to manage future waves of SARS-CoV-2 or spill over into other childhood vaccines. The objectives of this study were to understand parents’ intentions to vaccinate their children (under age 12) against SARS-CoV-2, and to explore reasons for and against SARS-CoV-2 vaccination. MethodsA representative sample of parents of school-aged children (ages 3–11 years) from Canada’s four largest provinces were invited in June 2021 to complete a survey on the impact of COVID-19 on schooling. The survey included specific questions on parents’ intentions to vaccinate their child(ren) against SARS-CoV-2. Multinomial regression models were run to estimate associations between demographic factors, political affiliation and voting, concerns about individual / family health and vaccination intention. ResultsA total of 74.0 % of parents (n = 288) intended to vaccinate their children with the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine, 18.3 % (n = 71) did not intend to vaccinate and 7.7 % (n = 30) were unsure. The strongest predictor of parental hesitancy was whether a parent had themselves been vaccinated. Other factors including past voting behaviour, dissatisfaction with the government’s response to the pandemic, and relatively less concern about contracting SARS-CoV-2 were also correlated with hesitancy. Parents of older children were more likely to indicate plans to vaccinate their child(ren). Analysis of the reasons for hesitancy showed parents are concerned about the safety and side effects of the vaccine, as well as with processes of testing and approval. InterpretationA considerable proportion of Canadian parents of younger school-aged children (ages 3–11) were unsure and/or hesitant about vaccinating their children against SARS-CoV-2. As well, a much larger proportion who are not necessarily hesitant have also not had their children vaccinated. Given the evolving nature of SARS-CoV-2, including the continued emergence of new variants, reaching younger children will be important for population health. Health providers should continue to work with government institutions to ensure clear communication regarding the safety, efficacy, and importance of child vaccines for reaching public health goals.

Election Frequency and Voter Turnout

In recent decades, liberal democracies have considerably expanded the scope for citizen participation, calling their citizens to vote in a growing number of popular votes. This research investigates the effects of the rising election frequency on electoral participation. It expands on the voting calculus and theorizes which, when, and how past votes affect current voter turnout. We argue that all election types contribute to a common factor of election frequency, whose high values depress turnout and reduce the effectiveness of party mobilization even in the most important elections. We find support for the new theory using an original database of all significant elections and referendums held in 22 European democracies between 1939 and 2019, two natural experiments, and survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems. Our findings shed light on contemporary participation trends and have major implications for democratic citizenship and democratic institutional engineering.

FIFTH PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS IN BULGARIA

The article discusses the prerequisites and results of the fifth elections to the People’s Assembly called during the two year period and held on April 2, 2023 It analyses the dispositions of the electorate in view of the Eurobarometer polls data and the election results. The past vote, despite some changes in the party structure of the People’s Assembly, testified once again to the deep disappointment of the weary Bulgarian voter in the entire political class. At the same time, it has recreated the stalemate in Parliament. The leaders of the warring majority camps (GERB-SDS vs «We Continue the changes» – «Democratic Bulgaria») already fear of being branded as the culprits of a new failure leading to appointment of one more temporary technocratic government by the president and the next snap elections. Such a prospect does not bode well for them, while their coalition is potential of seriously damaging their reputation. In such circumstances, the fighting forces are trying to find a magic formula for formation of a coalition cabinet. The near future will show whether the instinct of self-preservation will work or selfish party interests will prevail followed by déjà vu. However, in any development no change in the general anti-Russian vector of Bulgarian foreign policy is expected.

A Leader Who Sees the World as I Do: Voters Prefer Candidates Whose Statements Reveal Matching Social‐Psychological Attitudes

Politicians are increasingly able to communicate their values, attitudes, and concerns directly to voters. Yet little is known about which of these signals resonate with voters and why. We employ a discrete choice experiment to investigate whether and which social‐psychological attitudes predict how adult British voters respond to corresponding attitudinal signals communicated by candidates in hypothetical social media posts. For all attitudes studied, covering social feelings (trust, collective nostalgia), social perceptions (nationalism, populist sentiment), and social commitments (national identification, authoritarianism, egalitarianism), we find that participants are much more likely to vote for candidates who signal proximity to their own attitudinal position and less likely for candidates who signal opposing views. The strongest effects were observed for national identification, authoritarianism, and egalitarianism, indicating the importance of commitment to a shared group and to particular principles for distributing power and resources within and between groups. We further demonstrate that social‐psychological attitudes are not acting as mere proxies for participants' past votes or left–right ideology. Our results extend adaptive followership theory to incorporate preferences concerning intragroup coordination and intergroup hierarchy, while highlighting the social‐psychological dynamics of political communication that may transcend the concerns of particular election cycles.

COVID‐19 Vaccination Acceptance: A Case of Interplay Between Political and Health Dimensions

Vaccines are essential for the eradication of diseases. Yet for many reasons, individuals do not embrace them completely. In the COVID‐19 pandemic and with the possibility of the Brazilian population's immunization against the disease, both political and health‐related dimensions might have had a role in individual COVID‐19 vaccination acceptance. In two studies (n = 974), we tested the hypothesis that participants' vaccination acceptance is related to their past vote in the 2018 Brazilian presidential election (being or not being a Jair Bolsonaro voter) and their different levels of perceived vulnerability to disease (PVD). We further tested whether Bolsonaro's opposition or ambiguous messages towards vaccination (vs. control) increased vaccination rejection among those who have (vs. have not) voted for him and who are low (vs. high) in PVD. Results show that Bolsonaro (vs. non‐Bolsonaro) voters accepted less vaccination, with higher rejection rates when participants expressed low (vs. high) PVD. Also, when primed either with Bolsonaro's opposed or ambiguous messages towards COVID‐19 vaccination, such participants accepted less vaccines (vs. participants primed with neutral information). These findings are the first to show that the COVID‐19 vaccine acceptance is related to their past vote and leadership influence but also different levels of perceived vulnerability to disease.

How Weighting by Past Vote Can Improve Estimates of Voting Intentions

Polling error for the 2020 US election was the highest in 40 years and no mode of surveying was unambiguously more accurate. This occurred amid several recent polling failures in other countries. Online panels, as the dominant method now used by pollsters to survey voters, are well-positioned to help reduce the level of bias in pre-election polls. Here, we present a case for those pollsters using online panels for pre-election polling to (re)consider using past vote choice (i.e., whom respondents voted for in the previous election) as a weighting variable capable of reducing bias in their election forecasts under the right circumstances. Our data are from an Australian pre-election poll, conducted on a probability-based online panel one month prior to the 2019 Australian federal election. Three different measures of recalled vote choice for the 2016 election were used in weighting the forecast of the 2019 election outcome. These were (1) a short-term measure of recall for the 2016 vote choice obtained three months after the 2016 election, (2) a long-term measure obtained from the same panelists three years after the 2016 election and (3) a hybrid measure with a random half of panelists allocated their short-term past vote measure for 2016 and the remainder their long-term measure. We then examined the impacts on the bias and variance of the resulting estimates of the 2019 voting intentions. Using the short-term measure of the 2016 recalled vote choice in our weighting significantly reduced the bias of the resulting 2019 voting intentions forecast, with an acceptable impact on variance, and produced less biased estimates than when using either of the other two past vote measures. The short-term recall measure also generally resulted in better estimates than a weighting approach that did not include any past vote adjustment. Implications for panel providers are discussed.

Avoiding fallout from terrorist attacks: The role of local politics and governments

Even though violent attacks resulting in civilian fatalities can be seen as constituting failure on the part of the incumbent party to provide security to citizens, governments are not always punished electorally. Rather, at times, they appear to gain votes following terrorist attacks. Here we argue that political parties that can take advantage of their local presence to frame and communicate their narrative in response to terrorism, can better manage to avoid blame and even to emerge victorious in times of violent conflict. The AKP in Turkey is one such important example. Our statistical analyses of municipality-level aggregate election results show that the party not only maintained national incumbency, but even strengthened its predominance in the political system in the face of growing security threats. In municipalities where AKP controlled the local government and hence municipal resources, the party did not lose votes following terrorist attacks. This finding remains even when we consider past voting, regional variations, competitive districts, and ethnicity. Our argument that incumbents can avoid punishment through their capacity to reach out to voters at the local level is also supported by individual-level survey data and the comparison with neighboring municipalities. As such, we highlight how local government control can be consequential for national politics, including periods when security dominates the national agenda.

Artificial intelligence and the secret ballot

In this paper, we argue that because of the advent of Artificial Intelligence, the secret ballot is now much less effective at protecting voters from voting related instances of social ostracism and social punishment. If one has access to vast amounts of data about specific electors, then it is possible, at least with respect to a significant subset of electors, to infer with high levels of accuracy how they voted in a past election. Since the accuracy levels of Artificial Intelligence are so high, the practical consequences of someone inferring one’s vote are identical to the practical consequences of having one’s vote revealed directly under an open voting regime. Therefore, if one thinks that the secret ballot is at least partly justified because it protects electors against voting related social ostracism and social punishment, one should be morally troubled by how Artificial Intelligence today can be used to infer individual electors’ past voting behaviour.

Sources of Government Approval During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Threat or Electoral Predispositions?

Rally-round-the-flag events are short-term boosts of government approval during crises, and the COVID-19 pandemic produced such an effect in many countries. But why did some people join the rally while others didn’t? Using public opinion data from Costa Rica, this paper tests two hypotheses: first, that threat increases government approval at the outbreak of the pandemic; second, that electoral predispositions shape approval. Results indicate that COVID-19 contagions, as a measure of the threat, are not associated with approval, while past voting patterns are. Positive assessments of the economy and the relief measures also predict higher support for the government. In brief, Costa Rica's rally-round-the-flag event did not overcome the partisan divisions or the ordinary drivers of approval.

Power to the people: Disidentification with the government and the support for populism

Populist attitudes have been shown to predict voting behavior. These attitudes consist of a belief that everyday citizens are better judges of what is best for their own country than politicians and that the political elites are corrupt. As such, a clear “us” (pure and good everyday citizens) and “them” (the evil political elite) rhetoric is present. In the present research, we propose that identification with the government may predict whether people would vote for, and whether they have voted in the past for, a populist party (either from the political left or the political right). The present research (N = 562), carried out among French citizens, showed that lower government identification related to past voting behavior, current voting intentions and likelihood to switch from a non-populist to a populist party. Identification with the government was also negatively associated to intention to abstain from voting. Moreover, government identification was a stronger predictor of these voting-related outcomes than the recently developed populist attitudes measures. Unexpectedly, national identification was a not a significant predictor of voting behavior. In conclusion, the present research suggests that the extent to which citizens identify and feel represented by the government should be considered on par with populist attitudes in understanding support for populist parties. Perceiving that the government does not represent everyday people may be sufficient to abandon support for mainstream (non-populist) political parties.

Disciplinary power in corporate governance: A Foucauldian analysis of the emergence and development of proxy advisors

Prior research in corporate governance has extensively investigated the mechanisms through which a variety of actors (financial analysts, investment managers, shareholder activists) monitor and discipline corporate executives. However, one recently emerged actor has received little attention so far: the proxy advisory firm. Mobilising Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, this study uses historical analysis to examine the role of proxy advisors in corporate governance. This article shows that proxy advisors actively contributed to developing and implementing disciplinary mechanisms. This involves (1) hierarchical observations of corporations and their executives on a global scale. These observations are made available to institutional investors on proxy advisors’ voting platforms which have Panopticon-like features; (2) normalisation of judgements through the provision of generic voting policies, generic voting recommendations and corporate governance ratings prepared by proxy advisors and delivered to many institutional investors; (3) ritualised examination of the performance of corporations and of their executives during the annual general meeting, including record-keeping of all past voting results.

The Wrong Side of History

Is it appropriate to hold politicians accountable for their past votes, their past actions, and their past opinions, even if they are not reflective of them today? In this work of philosophical short story fiction, Senator McCoy is 130 years old and is considered a "national treasure" for his nearly century of public service. Shortly before his retirement he is confronted by a member of an extremist organization (that supports eugenics) who have found evidence of a paper he published in college where he supports abortion. Given the modern political climate where every person is needed to build society, this information would forever stain his legacy. Senator McCoy hires a "fixer" to find and destroy the source material and preserve his legacy. However, things go wrong and the would-be blackmailer crashes the Senators party in an attempt to expose him. The Senator is nearly killed, but is finally able to enjoy an untarnished retirement legacy free from the truth of his past.

Lessons Learned From Three Months of Pharmaceutical-Care Digital-Education at the University of Basel, Switzerland

An acceptable degree of digital literacy has always been present among the pharmacy teaching staff in Basel, with PowerPoint being the main vehicle to present teaching materials in front of full or half classes. Because cell phones became inseparable from students over the past years, mobile voting (movo.ch) or e-quizzes (mentimeter.com) have been regularly used to hold the attention of all students during collective teaching. Moreover, e-assessment on iPad® with the software BeAxi (www.k2prime.com) was introduced in 2012 and is currently used for all evaluations and exams. Suddenly over the night of March 16, 2020, our university, as all universities around the world, had to transfer all courses to an online format and to empower lecturers to teach from their home. This paper offers one perspective for how this digitial experiment unfolded at the University of Basel in Basel, Switzerland.

Not swinging together: Partisan defection in the age of political polarization

ABSTRACTTraditional studies of swing voters in American politics typically focus on general attributes of a monolithic group. More recent analyses of “partisan defection,” address the partisan direction of swing voting but often limit analysis to a single election or a single direction of defection. I seek to expand upon this research by examining multidirectional partisan defection across successive presidential elections. Using ANES and CCES 2012 and 2016 presidential election data, I test individual correlates of self-reported major party vote switching for presidential-candidates in both directions. Results suggest one the strongest correlates of defection has been underappreciated in recent defection studies: self-identified ideology. More conservative past Democratic voters and more liberal past Republican voters are more likely to defect than voters whose ideology is more consistent with their past voting patterns. The two groups of defectors are also vastly different from one another with Whites more likely to defect to Republicans and African Americans more likely to defect to Democrats. Less progressive racial attitudes and financial hardship are also both associated with increased odds of defecting from Democrats but decreased odds of defecting from Republicans. Finally, results show intra-defector group similarity across both elections, suggesting consistent partisan defection trends, irrespective of candidates. Overall, these results call for a reexamination of voter defection to consider distinct partisan directionality, secular trends in defection, and further exploration of the role of self-identified ideology.

Voter Registration Databases and MRP: Toward the Use of Large-Scale Databases in Public Opinion Research

Declining telephone response rates have forced several transformations in survey methodology, including cell phone supplements, nonprobability sampling, and increased reliance on model-based inferences. At the same time, advances in statistical methods and vast amounts of new data sources suggest that new methods can combat some of these problems. We focus on one type of data source—voter registration databases—and show how they can improve inferences from political surveys. These databases allow survey methodologists to leverage political variables, such as party registration and past voting behavior, at a large scale and free of overreporting bias or endogeneity between survey responses. We develop a general process to take advantage of this data, which is illustrated through an example where we use multilevel regression and poststratification to produce vote choice estimates for the 2012 presidential election, projecting those estimates to 195 million registered voters in a postelection context. Our inferences are stable and reasonable down to demographic subgroups within small geographies and even down to the county or congressional district level. They can be used to supplement exit polls, which have become increasingly problematic and are not available in all geographies. We discuss problems, limitations, and open areas of research.

Risky Politics? Associations Between Adolescent Risk Preference and Political Engagement.

This study examined associations among adolescent risk preference and political engagement using nationally representative Monitoring the Future data from high school seniors (N=109,574; modal age=18years) spanning 1976-2014. Greater risk preference was associated with greater past voting, donating to a campaign, writing government officials, boycotting, and protesting. Greater risk preference was also associated with higher future intentions to boycott and protest, but lower intentions to donate to or volunteer for a campaign. In general, associations between risk preference and political engagement became stronger with higher levels of political interest. Results highlight the importance of considering the adaptive role of adolescent risk preference and suggest that political engagement may be a constructive outlet for youth who pursue or are comfortable taking risks.

The Persistence of New Hampshire's Memory: The Hurst Exponent of Republican Voting in New Hampshire, 1828-2016

Using a technique first developed by Harold Edwin Hurst to measure the degree to which a river system “remembers” its own past, then later applied by Benoit Mandelbrot to financial information, the author measures the degree to which New Hampshire voters appear to remember past votes. The result finds that indeed New Hampshire voters do remember past results — but to a lesser degree than the Nile “remembers” previous floods.

Where does Right-Wing Populism Succeed Sub-Nationally? Explaining Regional Variation within France

AbstractWhile many scholars have studied how right-wing populist parties (RWPP) have recently increased their vote shares in national elections in many countries, fewer studies have assessed why some sub-national regions favor RWPP more than others. Addressing this gap in the literature, we analyze regional variation in voter support for one of Europe’s most successful RWPP, the Front National (FN) Party of France which recently made it to the second round of France’s 2017 presidential elections. Our research design examines electoral results across French regions between 1992 and 2017 through the lens of four case studies analyzing regions where the FN has been consistently popular, gained in popularity, declined in popularity, and been consistently unpopular. Comparing these diverse regional cases, our study concludes that regional unemployment, urban support, and to a lesser degree past voting behavior are significant demand-side factors behind regional voting for right wing populism.