Theory Of Voting Research Articles

The meaning and use of subjective perceptions in studies of economic voting

In this essay, we discuss the usefulness and meaning of empirical models of economic voting that rely on measures of individual economic perceptions. The effort is motivated by the recent reappearance of a long-standing critique of the use of economic perceptions data in individual level economic voting studies, with a consequent call for the use of aggregate data, which suggests that variation in perceptions must reflect noise or error because there can be only one “real” state of the national economy applicable to all respondents in any national survey. We show, however, that this critique (and its corresponding prescriptions for how to specify empirical models of economic voting) is based on a misunderstanding about (1) the theoretical concepts called for by the leading theories of economic voting (and that we should be trying to measure), (2) the nature of the economy that individuals can actually observe (it is a distribution of possible states, not a point) and, consequently, (3) the interpretation of correlations between individual economic perceptions and electoral support.

What Moves Political Ideology? An Economic Analysis of Electoral Volatility in France Since 1889

The theory of economic voting has extensively explored the influence of national economic conditions on votes for the incumbent party during elections. Such literature has never, however, explored the potential effects of economy on other types of voting swings in the sense of change in votes for non-governing parties. This is owed to the limitations of the theory of economic voting, which we attempt to remedy by suggesting a more comprehensive theoretical framework based on ideological voting. From an empirical point of view, investigating the total electoral volatility appears an appropriate means to test the determinants of the votes for all parties. Using time-series data on 46 democratic elections held in France from 1889 to 2011, we provide evidence that the total electoral volatility has been determined by specific economic determinants that differ from the ones influencing the vote share of the incumbent. Another finding is that the voters’ punishment of the incumbent at the heart of the theory of economic voting explains only a marginal part of total electoral volatility.

How to Explain Electoral Turnout at the Individual Level

In the last two decades, turnout research has disintegrated into a plethora of studies which focus on partial aspects of turnout. The overall idea of why people vote has been lost. Despite extensive research on turnout, we know relatively little about why people vote. The aim of this text is to present and critically discuss basic theories that explain voter turnout at the individual level. Overall, six theories are presented: the theory of socio-economic status and resources, the theory of civic orientations, the theory of mobilization and involvement in society, the theory of rational choice, the theory of valence politics, and the theory of habitual voting. These theories are discussed mainly from three aspects: (1) the causal mechanisms explaining why people vote; (2) the extent to which each theory links the decision to participate in an election with the decision about which party or candidate to vote for, as well as the sequence of these decisions; and (3) the timing of voters’ decisions to participate in an election. The author argues that because of the heterogeneity of voters and the nature of the decision whether or not to vote, it is necessary to understand individual theories not as competitive, but rather as complementary.

The Policy Origins of Congressional Approval

It is widely presumed that political support is contingent on satisfaction with the policy decisions made by political authorities. Yet, there is little evidence that support for the nation’s chief legislative branch is a function of its policy outputs. This research shows that Congress’ approval ratings are linked to the degree important legislation deviates from the public’s ideological mood. The results of an error-correction model show that these policy origins of support are as important as other determinants of approval such as partisan conflict and the economy. The effect of policy divergence from public opinion is also accentuated during periods of unified government when there might be a normative expectation that shared partisan control should translate into policy success. The findings substantiate conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between congressional approval and policy, spatial theories of voting, and models of the electoral behavior of congressional members.

Social Mood, Stock Market Performance, and U.S. Presidential Elections

We analyze all U.S. presidential election bids. We find a positive, significant relationship between the incumbent’s vote margin and the prior net percentage change in the stock market. This relationship does not extend to the incumbent’s party when the incumbent does not run for reelection. We find no significant relationships between the incumbent’s vote margin and inflation or unemployment. Gross domestic product (GDP) is a significant predictor of the incumbent’s popular vote margin in simple regression but is rendered insignificant when combined with the stock market in multiple regression. Hypotheses of economic voting fail to account for the findings. The results are consistent with socionomic voting theory, which includes the hypotheses that (a) social mood as reflected by the stock market is a more powerful regulator of reelection outcomes than economic variables such as GDP, inflation, and unemployment; and (b) voters unconsciously credit or blame the leader for their mood.

Software for exact integration of polynomials over polyhedra

We are interested in the fast computation of the exact value of integrals of polynomial functions over convex polyhedra. We present speed-ups and extensions of the algorithms presented in previous work by some of the authors. We provide a new software implementation and benchmark computations. The computation of integrals of polynomials over polyhedral regions has many applications; here we demonstrate our algorithmic tools solving a challenge from combinatorial voting theory.

On Derivatives Markets and Social Welfare: A Theory of Empty Voting and Hidden Ownership

In the past twenty-five years, derivatives markets have grown exponentially. Large, modern derivatives markets increasingly enable investors to hold economic interests in corporations without owning voting rights, and vice versa. This leads to both empty voters — investors whose voting rights in a corporation exceed their economic interests — and hidden owners — investors whose economic interests exceed their voting rights. We present formal models that show how, when financial markets are opaque, empty voting and hidden ownership can render financial markets unpredictable, unstable, and inefficient. By contrast, we show that when financial markets are transparent, empty voting and hidden ownership have dramatically different effects: they follow predictable patterns, encourage stable outcomes, and promote efficiency. Our analysis lends insight into the operation of securities markets in general and derivatives markets in particular. It also provides a new justification for a robust mandatory disclosure regime and facilitates analysis of proposed substantive securities regulations.

Economy, Ideology, and the Elephant in the Room: A Research Note on the Elections of the Great Recession in Europe

The electoral performance of incumbent in legislative elections in Europe since the beginning of the Great Recession has been described in two contrasting ways. For some, it has been characterized by an anti-leftist wave, signalling a change in voters fundamental preferences against leftist and policies. For others, ideology has had little to do with recent events: instead, voters have simply punished incumbents for bad performances and rewarded them for good ones, as a simple retrospective voting theory would suggest. Looking at the electoral performance of Prime Ministers' from January 2008 until today, the paper shows that results are, instead, most compatible with a luxury parties hypothesis: under conditions of low or negative growth, leftist incumbents have done significantly worse than rightist ones, while, for those countries where growth resumed, leftist incumbents have done significantly better. Furthermore, the paper suggests that part of the continued decline in the electoral performance of incumbents in many countries observed until today is fundamentally a Eurozone phenomenon: voters in those countries seem to be turning their dissatisfaction with the protracted financial, currency, and political crisis in the Eurozone to the target more at hand - i.e., national governments - punishing them increasingly and above and beyond what developments in the domestic economic would justify.

Can Candidates Activate or Deactivate the Economic Vote? Evidence from Two Mexican Elections

Do electoral campaigns affect the strength of the economic vote? Against the conventional expectation that candidates have little influence over when and to what extent economic voting occurs, I argue that political communications systematically condition voters’ willingness to hold candidates responsible for past economic performance. I test this priming-based approach against extant economic voting theory using data from Mexico’s 2000 and 2006 presidential elections, in which economic messages were absent and dominant respectively. The results show that candidates, by choosing to emphasize or deemphasize economic issues in their televised campaign ads, can activate and even deactivate economic considerations in the minds of voters. By bringing the priming approach to economic voting theory, I highlight the importance of communication strategy and demonstrate the power of campaigns to overcome structural conditions thought to hamstring electoral candidates

Modelling Ordinal Electoral Systems: The Uniqueness of South Australian Legislative Elections

Understanding the relationship between voting methods and electoral outcomes is one of the central challenges of electoral systems research. In the case of ordinal voting systems, theory and empirical models directly conflict as to whether particular ordinal voting methods significantly affect electoral outcomes. This conflict is partially due to the lack of a model that can simulate real legislative elections reliably enough to empirically test theoretical claims. In this research note, the authors argue that South Australian lower house elections constitute a unique legislative case where sufficient data are publicly available to generate such a model. They then describe the new model and critically examine its accuracy and limitations. They conclude that their model is sufficiently robust to form a basis for future research into the impact of ordinal voting systems on outcomes in legislative elections.

Multi-scale tensor voting for feature extraction from unstructured point clouds

Identifying sharp features in a 3D model is essential for shape analysis, matching and a wide range of geometry processing applications. This paper presents a new method based on the tensor voting theory to extract sharp features from an unstructured point cloud which may contain random noise, outliers and artifacts. Our method first takes the voting tensors at every point using the corresponding neighborhoods and computes the feature weight to infer the local structure via eigenvalue analysis of the tensor. The optimal scale for a point is automatically determined by observing the feature weight variation in order to deal with both a noisy smooth region and a sharp edge. We finally extract the points at sharp features using adaptive thresholding of the feature weight and the feature completion process. The multi-scale tensor voting of a given point set improves noise sensitivity and scale dependency of an input model. We demonstrate the strength of the proposed method in terms of efficiency and robustness by comparing it with other feature detection algorithms.

Missing Links in Party-System Polarization: How Institutions and Voters Matter

This article aims to understand the determinants of party-system polarization by moving beyond the (almost exclusive) emphasis placed in the literature on the role of the electoral system and the number of parties. We propose a larger menu of explanatory variables that includes both institutional and voters-related factors. Regarding the institutional factors, we highlight the consequences of expectations of coalition formations as well as office-related elections (e.g., Presidential ones) on party-system convergence in legislative elections. For the voters-related factors, we address the importance of specific characteristics of the electorate following insights from the spatial theory of voting. To test our hypotheses, we use survey data covering 33 nations and 67 elections. While hypotheses derived from electoral systems and number of parties find little empirical support, the new variables that we consider involving institutions and voters matter significantly.

Social Mood, Stock Market Performance and U.S. Presidential Elections: A Socionomic Perspective on Voting Results

We analyze all U.S. presidential election bids. We find a positive, significant relationship between the incumbent’s vote margin and the prior net percentage change in the stock market. This relationship does not extend to the incumbent’s party when the incumbent does not run for re-election. We find no significant relationships between the incumbent’s vote margin and inflation or unemployment. GDP is a significant predictor of the incumbent’s popular vote margin in simple regression but is rendered insignificant when combined with the stock market in multiple regression. Hypotheses of economic voting fail to account for the findings. The results are consistent with socionomic voting theory, which includes the hypotheses that (1) social mood as reflected by the stock market is a more powerful regulator of re-election outcomes than economic variables such as GDP, inflation and unemployment and (2) voters unconsciously credit or blame the leader for their mood.

Economic voting in multi-tiered polities

This paper assesses whether economic voting plays any role in a parliamentary, decentralized polity. Decentralization is argued to blur lines of responsibility and confuse voters about whom to blame for poor economic performance at the national and regional levels. National and Regional Economic Voting (NEV and REV, respectively) are tested in Catalonia (Spain). The initial empirical test suggests that only NEV takes place in this region. Four hypotheses are considered to explain REV’s absence: blame-shifting, blinding nationalism, coalition government, and misinformation regarding Policy Responsibility Distribution across tiers of government. Using reasonable counterfactuals and Bayesian techniques, the first three hypotheses are dismissed, whereas the last is confirmed. The results emphasize the informational requirements behind the economic voting theory.

More than wishful thinking: Causes and consequences of voters’ electoral expectations about parties and coalitions

Accurate expectations about the outcome of elections play a central role in psychological and economic theories of voting. In the paper, three questions about voters’ expectations are investigated. First, we identify and test several factors that influence the overall accuracy or quality of voters’ expectations. Second, the phenomenon of “wishful thinking” is tested and confirmed for expectations about the electoral performance of individual parties and coalitions. Finally, two mechanisms how expectations might influence voting behavior are identified and tested. Based on surveys from Austria and Germany, the results suggest that voters not only rely on expectations to avoid casting “wasted” votes for parties without electoral chances, but that they are able to engage in fairly sophisticated strategic coalition voting.

The Ideological Mapping of American Legislatures

The development and elaboration of the spatial theory of voting has contributed greatly to the study of legislative decision making and elections. Statistical models that estimate the spatial locations of individual decision-makers have made a key contribution to this success. Spatial models have been estimated for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, U.S. presidents, a large number of non-U.S. legislatures, and supranational organizations. Yet one potentially fruitful laboratory for testing spatial theories, the individual U.S. states, has remained relatively unexploited, for two reasons. First, state legislative roll call data have not yet been systematically collected for all states over time. Second, because ideal point models are based on latent scales, comparisons of ideal points across states or even between chambers within a state are difficult. This article reports substantial progress on both fronts. First, we have obtained the roll call voting data for all state legislatures from the mid-1990s onward. Second, we exploit a recurring survey of state legislative candidates to allow comparisons across time, chambers, and states as well as with the U.S. Congress. The resulting mapping of America's state legislatures has great potential to address numerous questions not only about state politics and policymaking, but also about legislative politics in general.

On the Relationship Among Partisan Effects, Electoral Probability, and Economic Uncertainty

The literature on the political economy of finance suggests that government partisanship affects financial risk. Systematic risk should increase (decrease) as the chances of a Democrat (Republican) winning an election improve. At the same time, however, economic voting theories highlight that financial risk should affect vote intentions, and thus parties’ electoral prospects. We address this endogeneity problem, which has bedeviled previous work on partisanship and financial markets, by using positive Democratic campaign events as an instrument for the electoral probabilities of the Democratic presidential candidate, Barack Obama, during the 2008 presidential election. We find that a 1-percentage point increase in the probability of the Democratic candidate winning can raise systematic risk on the U.S. stock market by 0.096 percentage points (according to IV estimates). An unadjusted OLS estimation finds a 0.061-percentage points increase on average. The corrected estimates are considerably higher than estimates that do not account for reverse causality. In monetary terms, the difference approximates an average market value of about $4 billion. Thus, there exists a strong reversal effect in which economic uncertainty reduces the probability that the Democratic candidate will win an upcoming election.

Information and Ideological Structure in Spatial Voting

This article aims at unifying the theory of spatial voting and the theory that is variously called conceptualization, information, or sophistication. Following Downs's early insights on uncertainty as well as recent developments in both literatures, I argue that it is of critical importance that spatial voting models explicitly incorporate information effects. For this purpose, I develop a heteroskedastic probit model that allows for the specification of information heterogeneity. This model is applied to the Taiwan Election and Democratization Study's 2004 post-presidential election survey data. In 2004, Taiwan’s political landscape was dominantly defined by the Green vs. Blue ideological cleavage, and the candidates were perceived as taking divergent positions. This article investigates the effects of information and activism on the spatial structure and their implications on candidates' strategies. My findings confirm the existence of these effects on voter uncertainty in the framework of spatial analysis.

Which Buck Stops Here? Accountability for Policy Positions and Policy Outcomes in Congress

What do constituents hold their representatives accountable for? Previous work outlines two distinct but often conflated theories of accountability: democratic theory suggests that voters respond to the policy positions representatives take; retrospective voting theories suggest that they respond to the outcomes of these policies. Using new survey data, this article demonstrates that perceived congruence with their senators’ policy positions influences voters’ decisions much more than do perceptions of peace and prosperity. This finding holds when correcting for endogeneity using instrumental variables analysis, when considering members of the majority and minority parties separately, and when looking at specific policy areas. Replicating previous studies of retrospective voting suggests that they overstated the importance of policy outcomes for congressional elections due to omitted variable bias. The buck that stops with Members of Congress is for the positions they take, not for the policy outcomes the...

The Efron dice voting system

About 50 years ago, Efron noted some counterintuitive properties of the long-term behavior of contests involving dice. For instance, consider the 6-sided dice whose sides are labeled (4,4,4,4,0,0), (3,3,3,3,3,3), (6,6,2,2,2,2), and (5,5,5,1,1,1). Each die has a 2/3 probability of rolling a higher number than the next one in the list and the last has the same 2/3 probability of rolling a higher number than the first. The non-transitivity of games involving non-identical dice was popularized by Gardner (Sci Am, 223:110–114, 1970). Although Gardner and other authors have observed that non-transitive dice serve to illustrate the complexities of the theory of voting, it does not seem that much attention has been paid to the corresponding voting system. Our purpose in this article is to present this voting system and compare its properties with those of other voting systems. One of the most interesting properties is the fact that cancellation with respect to the Efron dice voting system can replace cancellation with respect to pairwise preferences in Young’s characterization of the social choice function associated with the Borda Count.