Vote Choice Research Articles

Whitewashing Women Voters: Intersectionality and Partisan Vote Choice in the 2020 US Presidential Election

Whitewashing Women Voters: Intersectionality and Partisan Vote Choice in the 2020 US Presidential Election

West Lothians in the European Parliament? Diverging Vote Choices in Cases of Differentiated Integration

West Lothians in the European Parliament? Diverging Vote Choices in Cases of Differentiated Integration

Two terms of endearment? Incumbent-party performance in US presidential elections

Abstract Presidential elections are arguably the most consequential recurring political event in the United States. Understanding the factors that determine their outcomes, therefore, is of substantial importance. One proposed factor pertains to presidential candidates' incumbency status, yet its nature is complex and difficult to study with observational data. In particular, the individual-level mechanisms underlying incumbency effects remain unclear. This study proposes many citizens generally believe that, ceteris paribus, presidents should be afforded two terms. Crucially, such a norm implies that incumbency status possesses an inherent effect, operating independent of other mechanisms that may stem from incumbency. A large, pre-registered survey experiment was therefore employed to isolate the effect of incumbency status on presidential vote choice. The experiment finds strong evidence that one-term incumbent candidates have an inherent advantage against their non-incumbent opponents. The results also clarify that the two-term disadvantage present in observational data is not inherent, and is perhaps better understood simply as the absence of the one-term advantage. The study thus points toward a micro-foundational mechanism underlying incumbent-party performance in presidential elections. Finally, analyses of panel data explore which voters may be systematically inclined to vote based upon the incumbency status of presidential candidates.

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.

Cost misperception and voting for public goods

AbstractPublic good provision is often determined through referendums by voters, who weigh benefits against costs. However, perceptions of benefits and costs may be incorrect, which could in turn lead to voter error and misallocation of public goods. Using real‐world referendums, we evaluate voter perceptions of the private costs of providing public goods by conducting three exit polls of New England voters and an online survey of California voters. By comparing cost perceptions to actual tax incidence, we find pervasive evidence that voters misperceive costs. Fewer than 20% of voters in our samples reported perceived costs within 25% of estimated actual costs. These findings are unsurprising given the ubiquity of opaque language explaining the financial consequences of public good referendums. In addition, our analysis suggests that actual costs have no statistical bearing on voter choice, but at least in the New England sample, voter approval is affected by perceived costs. Thus, a substantial proportion of voters are making decisions based in part on inaccurate costs, which in some cases lead to people voting against their preferences and potential misallocation of public funds. Further, researchers who match voter approval with estimated actual cost are unlikely to obtain accurate cost responsiveness or valuation estimates.

Anonymous voting using distributed ledger-assisted secure multi-party computation

High voter turnout in elections and referendums is desirable to ensure a robust democracy. Secure electronic voting is a vision for the future of elections and referendums. Such a system can counteract factors hindering strong voter turnout such as the requirement of physical presence during limited hours at polling stations. However, this vision brings transparency and confidentiality requirements that render the design of such solutions challenging. Specifically, the counting implementation must support reproducibility, and the choice of individual voters must remain confidential. In this paper, we propose and evaluate a novel referendum protocol that ensures transparency, confidentiality, and integrity, in trustless networks. The protocol is built by combining secure multi-party computation and distributed ledger technology, e.g., a Blockchain. The persistence and immutability of the protocol communication allow verifiability of the referendum outcome by any participant. Voters therefore do not need to trust third parties. We provide a formal description and conduct a thorough security evaluation of our proposal.

A tale of two cities: spillover effects of electoral shocks in non-democratic regimes

ABSTRACT Electoral shocks have spillover effects in democracies, as they can change citizens’ political attitudes and political behaviour across national borders. Yet, electoral shocks also exist in non-democratic regimes. Do electoral shocks likewise lead to spillover within a non-democratic regime? To explore this question, I build on Lohmann’s idea of information cascade and study the spillover of the 2019 Hong Kong local election, in which the opposition won a landslide victory. Using a survey fielded in Macau during this event, I find liberalizing effects among middle-class citizens: after the electoral shock, their democratic commitment increases while their perceived electoral fairness decreases. Conversely, lower-class citizens experience backlash effects as they assess the electoral system more positively and briefly consider democracy as less important. However, these changes in political attitudes do not translate into changes in expressed vote choice and other types of political participation. Regarding the mechanism of the attitudinal change, I suggest such polarized reactions are related to the different information consumption among the two classes. I discuss how these findings contribute to the literature on non-democratic regimes, electoral shocks, and class politics.

Insurance Voting in the Centre: An Experimental Approach

Abstract Recent research suggests that to help their preferred coalition win an election, voters are willing to vote for a political party other than their preferred choice. In this field, voting for smaller parties under proportional representation is an under-studied feature. A crucial factor to estimate the chances for smaller parties is polls. In this study, we analyze the influence of opinion polls on switching vote choice to a smaller party when the party polls are at different levels. Building on an original survey experiment, we elaborate the potential differences in impact on insurance voting for a small party with looser or stronger association with a government alternative. The focus is the 2022 Swedish general election and the three smallest parties in parliament: the Green Party (center-left), the Christian Democrats (right), and the Liberals (center-right). The experiment had nine different conditions where each of these parties was placed at different levels of opinion: below, at, and above the parliamentary threshold, while holding all other factors constant. We find that poll-induced insurance voting is most prevalent for the party with the strongest preference for a government alternative (the Christian Democrats) and least prevalent for the party with a more issue-focused stance (the Greens).

Another sleeping giant? Environmental issue preferences in the 2019 European Parliament elections

Seminal works have highlighted a growing polarisation regarding the environment, with supporters advocating for immediate emissions reduction and others downplaying or even denying human-caused climate change. Despite this debate, little attention has been focused on how voters’ environmental preferences influence their electoral behaviour. Using the metaphor of the ‘sleeping giant’ from European Union politics literature, the article empirically explores how environmental issue preferences impact voting choices. Analysing stacked data from the 2019 European Election Study, the article examines the phenomenon of environmental issue voting by shifting the unit of analysis from individuals to party-voter dyads. Results reveal that environmental preferences moderately, yet significantly, affect vote choice. This effect is more pronounced among left-leaning voters and in countries where the environmental issue is more salient among the public. Our findings shed light on patterns of environmental preference and their role in European electoral competition.

“There Was Blood Coming Out of Her Eyes . . .”: Emotional-Affective Agenda Setting and Disgust in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election

This study tracks the affective agendas in the media’s portrayals of the nonverbal behavior of the 2016 presidential candidates, and then shows how these media portrayals are related to voters’ emotional valence. It also gauges the relationship of disgust to voting intention, comparing it with anger, fear, hope, and pride, as well as other established demographic predictors and party affiliation. Findings show that valence-based emotions as conveyed via candidates’ nonverbal behaviors are associated with viewers’ emotional valence; that is, emotional-affective agenda setting has occurred. It also demonstrates that disgust predicts vote choice as well or better than anger and fear.

Authoritarianism, Political Attitudes, and Vote Choice: A Longitudinal Analysis of the British Electorate

Authoritarianism, Political Attitudes, and Vote Choice: A Longitudinal Analysis of the British Electorate

The Size and Structure of the Gender Gap in Economic Evaluations

Gender gaps in partisanship, vote choice, and opinion are well documented in the American electorate. In 2016, men’s and women’s subjective economic evaluations—of their own circumstances and the broader economy—also diverged considerably. We investigate the size, structure, and explanations of this gap. Drawing on cross-sectional and panel data, we show that the gap widened to historic levels following Trump’s election, driven by increased optimism among white men and decline among women of color. Though partisan and objective economic differences across race-gendered groups contribute, they do not fully explain the widening divide. We hypothesize that Trump’s election altered Americans’ understanding of the socioeconomic hierarchy, producing new divides in subjective status perceptions. Gendered and racialized divides in subjective perceptions combined with partisanship and economic circumstances to re-open the gender gap in economic attitudes.

Let's talk populist? A survey experiment on effects of (non‐) populist discourse on vote choice

AbstractPopulism research has found much scholarly and public attention alike in recent years. Most research has focused on how populism can be defined, assessed or even measured. Even though there are emerging studies on populist messages, few of them have paid attention on causally identifying ways in which discourse can affect support for populist actors. This article positions itself within this gap and aims to answer which discursive elements make (non‐)populist messages appealing to varying groups of people. To answer this research question, I conducted a novel survey experiment on vote choice in Germany from December 2020 to January 2021 with N = 3325. Respondents were asked to choose between two candidate statements that displayed varying discursive elements. Thus, the experiment causally tested whether people‐centric rhetoric, blame attributive languages or populist style focusing on language complexity drive the populist vote. Results show that a neutral form of blame attribution, namely towards politicians, had the highest probability of driving vote choice, irrespective of respondents' underlying ideological preferences or populist attitudes. Simple language nearly always has a negative effect on vote choice, whereas people‐centrism adds a positive touch. These results show that there may be an increasing dissatisfaction with democracy that is voiced by blaming political elites for the malfunctioning of society.

Embeddedness, Social Contagion, and Vote Choice in the 2022 U.S. Senate Elections

The growing availability of data from social media sites has allowed for in-depth studies on online political behavior. In particular, estimating whether belief in far-right conspiracy theories leads to better or worse electoral outcomes for the Republican parties has produced conflicting results. Borrowing from the literature on complex contagion, we turn to data extracted from Twitter to study the correlation between the network of contacts of Republican users and electoral outcomes in the November 2022 U.S. Senate elections. We find that the clustering coefficient of Republican supporters is significantly and positively associated with higher levels of support for GOP candidates in these races. However, the impact of embeddedness in social networks varies depending on whether candidates in these races were explicitly endorsed by former President Donald Trump.

Connecting Local Economic Decline to the Politics of Geographic Discontent: The Missing Link of Perceptions

AbstractLocal economic decline has been presented as an explanation for populism, political alienation and geographic polarisation. This approach risks underestimating the complexity of observing local economic decline. Using original survey questions in the British Election Study, we theorise five models to explain who is likely to perceive local economic decline, and why. Using linked objective data, we analyse the relationship of perceptions to existing economic indicators, finding correspondence but also substantial and systematic variation driven by partisanship and heuristics, such as declining personal circumstances. These findings suggest that researchers should not equate objectively measured decline with homogeneous or direct effects of the local economy on vote choice, populist leanings, and localised discontent. There is value in establishing how voters reason about economic decline to both explain their choices and the way they are likely to respond to remedial policy measures.

The N400 effect captures nuances in implicit political preferences

We conducted a study in San Antonio, Texas, in the weeks preceding the 2022 state Governor election to determine if implicit or explicit measures of political preference could predict voter behavior. We adapted an established event-related potential (ERP) paradigm showing political statements to participants one word at the time where the last word made the statement pro-Republican or pro-Democratic. Our sample of college students included decided and undecided voters, and was reflective of the demographic make-up of south-central Texas. Our implicit measures were an established authoritarianism scale and the N400 effect to the sentence-final word. The N400 is an ERP to any stimulus that engages semantic memory and has been shown to measure implicit disagreement with political statements. Explicit measures of political preference and authoritarianism were predictive of vote choice. The expected N400 effect was found for Democratic voters, with larger amplitude to pro-Republican than pro-Democratic statements. Surprisingly, decided Republican voters showed no difference in N400 responses to pro-Republican and pro-Democratic statements and there was no group difference in the N400 effect. In turn, the N400 was not predictive of voter behavior. We argue that the N400 effect reflected individual political preferences, but that ultimately voter behavior aligned with partisan identity.

Exploring the edges of clientelism: ideology, ethnicity, and partisanship in Belize

ABSTRACT Studies focusing on Belize reveal that clientelism is the glue that makes the party system stick. We explore whether ideology and ethnicity account for partisanship within that deeply clientelist setting. We use four AmericasBarometer survey waves by the Latin American Public Opinion Project (LAPOP) to study the individual-level correlates of partisan attachments with the People’s United Party (PUP) and United Democratic Party (UDP). Using binary and multinomial probit maximum likelihood estimators, we find that ethnicity correlates to partisanship with the PUP, and ideology correlates to partisanship with the UDP. The robustness checks, which focus on declared vote choices in previous national elections, corroborate our findings. The Belizean case shows how clientelist parties can develop alternative support sources and that these can vary substantially.

A generational shift: how partisan alignment and the rise of social issues have produced a generation of Democrats

ABSTRACT American political elites are today more neatly divided on a wider range of issues than at any other point in the postwar era. How have these trends affected the political socialization of American youth? We argue that two distinctive aspects of US polarization, namely ideological alignment and the emergence of non-economic issues, have formed the foundation of a generational shift in favor of the Democratic party. We find that Millennials and Gen Z display levels of ideological alignment across economic, civil rights, and moral domains that are equal to or greater than previous generations. Their liberal positions on moral and civil rights issues are not only strongly predictive of vote choice, but also tend to offset any conservative positions on economic issues – in contrast to the way previous generations resolved such ideological tensions. As such, the push for a non-economic political agenda – a popular strategy in the last few decades, especially among Republicans – might well benefit the Democrats electorally as older generations are replaced.

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.

Facing Voters: Gender Expression, Gender Stereotypes, and Vote Choice

Facing Voters: Gender Expression, Gender Stereotypes, and Vote Choice