Voting Cues Research Articles

Coping with complexity: Ballot position effects in the Finnish open-list proportional representation system

Many studies show that the order of candidates’ names on the ballot has an effect on voting. Less informed and indifferent voters may simplify the voting process by using the ballot position of candidates as a voting cue. By studying six parliamentary elections in Finland, this study first demonstrates that the relationship between ballot position and preference votes follows a reversed J-shaped curve. Candidates listed early on the ballot win the most preference votes, while candidates listed near the end have an advantage over those listed in the middle. Furthermore, the ballot position effect grows stronger with the complexity of the electoral environment. The ballot position effect increases as the number of candidates on the party list increases, the candidates-to-seats ratio increases and the number of incumbents on the list decreases.

Political Parties' Rhetoric Signaling of Sustainable Development

AbstractThis study analyzes how frequently political parties in Austria, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and Switzerland referred to the concept of sustainable development in their manifestos for national elections from 1976 to 2011. Has the frequency of reference to the concept grown over time? Does an increase in frequency still allow for a clear demarcation between political parties representing different ideologies? These two research questions guide our empirical analysis, which strives to integrate sustainability research with comparative politics. Using automated content analysis, we demonstrate that all political parties – irrespective of their placement on the ideology scale – have made increasing rhetoric use of sustainable development over time. Our findings indicate that sustainable development does not serve as a dimension for competition among political parties. Since all political parties send the same rhetoric signals, voters must rely on alternative voting cues than a parties' rhetorical reference to the concept of sustainable development. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment

Subpartisan Cues and Ideological Distinctions: The Effect of the Tea Party Label on Voter Perceptions of Congressional Candidates*

Objective We aim to fill a gap in the voter heuristic literature by estimating the impact of subparty cues—labels that connect candidates to an intraparty faction—on perceptions of candidates’ ideological positions. We argue that the Tea Party label acts as a subpartisan cue, and should affect perceptions of both Republicans and their Democratic opponents. Methods We measure ideological perceptions using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), and measure Tea Party “saliency” based on how often candidates were linked with the Tea Party in news media. Using probit regression, we estimate the impact of Tea Party saliency on ideological perceptions of candidates. Results We find that Republican candidates often associated with the Tea Party are more likely to be perceived as conservative or very conservative, even when we control for candidate and voter ideology, while their Democratic opponents are perceived to be more moderate. Conclusion The results suggest that extremizing cues like the Tea Party label can have a moderating effect on opponents. These findings shed new light on the role and interaction of party-related voting cues, and have important implications for elections, campaigns, and voter opinion and behavior.

Political Knowledge and the Use of Candidate Race as a Voting Cue

Do White voters use candidate race as a voting cue in biracial electoral contests? We argue that the answer to this question depends on the level of political knowledge and information that voters have rather than on their attitudes toward minorities. Our analyses of precinct- and individual-level data show that White voters who are likely to be informed about candidates vote less often for the Democratic party when the candidate is Black, whereas vote choices of White voters who are unlikely to be informed about candidates are unaffected by candidate race.

The Dilemma of Direct Democracy

The dilemma of direct democracy is that voters may not always be able to make welfare-improving decisions. Lupia’s seminal work has led us to believe that voters can substitute voting cues for substantive policy knowledge. Lupia, however, emphasized that cues were valuable under certain conditions and not others. In what follows, we present three main findings regarding voters and what they know about California’s Proposition 7. First, much like Lupia reported, we show voters who are able to recall endorsements for or against a ballot measure vote similarly to people who recall certain basic facts about the initiative. We show, second, that voters whose stated policy preferences would otherwise suggest they would favor the “no” position cast their ballots with far less error than do people who favor the “yes” position. One thing this suggests is that many voters may employ a “defensive no” strategy when faced with complex policy choices on the ballot. Our third result is a bit surprising: we find that better-informed voters, whether this information is derived from factual knowledge of the initiative or from knowledge of well-publicized voting cues, are no more likely to make reasoned decisions than those who are, by our measure, uninformed. This suggests that existing theories of voter choice, especially in direct democracy, may be inadequate. We conclude with some preliminary policy recommendations that could help improve the information environment for initiatives and referenda by providing key information on the ballot.

Educating the Least Informed: Group Endorsements in a Grassroots Campaign

Theories of low‐information rationality claim that uninformed voters can compensate for their lack of political knowledge by employing heuristics, such as interest group endorsements, to make voting decisions as if they were fully informed. Critics of low‐information rationality contend that politically unaware voters are unlikely to use group endorsements effectively as a heuristic since they are unlikely to know the political relevance of interest groups. We address this debate by entertaining the possibility that contextual information coupled with a source cue may enhance the effectiveness of group endorsements as a heuristic. We test competing expectations with a field experiment conducted during the 2006 election in two highly competitive Pennsylvania statehouse races where a well‐known liberal interest group endorsed Democratic candidates and canvassed both core supporters and Republicans believed to be likeminded. Our results reveal that Republicans used the endorsement as a negative voting cue and that the group's endorsement helped some Republicans compensate for their lack of awareness about politics.

Urban Politics in the State Arena

We seek to explain how states govern big cities. Political scientists' accounts of urban politics either fail to treat the state systematically or place state hostility at the center of such an account. Accounts by historians, by contrast, offer tools political scientists can use to theorize urban politics in the state arena. We use those tools, and we find that cities can manage the legislative process. This power starts with bill introduction and carries through to the vote on the floor. This ability results from a central feature of American state politics: on bills about big cities, state legislators now and in the past find their primary voting cues in the unity of local delegations. The city delegation, then, has tremendous power to manage the state's involvement in city affairs. In many respects, ours is an account of a special kind of divided government, with two institutional arenas where urban government is carried out.

When Voters Make Laws

Three challenges affect the use of initiatives and referendums concerning bonds to fund local infrastructure. First, public officials can often make take-it-or-leave-it offers to voters, conferring substantial power on the agenda setters and not necessarily leading to policy that the voters prefer. Second, initiatives are subject to sequential-elimination agendas that can result in suboptimal policy. This problem is compounded in local direct democracy by the presence of multiple jurisdictions and an aggregate limit on bond capacity, leading to a “race to the polls.” Third, in some but not all cases, voters can be faced with an information environment that precludes making reasoned decisions at the polls. The authors assess several case studies to determine whether trustworthy voting cues are available to voters in elections on infrastructure bonds.

Does Ethnicity Trump Party? Competing Vote Cues and Latino Voting Behavior

It is well known that voters prefer candidates of their own race or ethnicity, but in general this preference does not have to compete with partisanship. In other words, most voters are given consistent voting cues from both race or ethnicity and partisanship. But in rare cases the partisanship of minority candidates is out of sync with those of most voters of their shared race or ethnicity, e.g., a Republican Mexican-American or a Democratic Cuban-American. In such instances, will Latino voters choose to support their co-ethnic? Or will they instead vote for the candidate of their political party? This paper examines the attitudes and behaviors of Latino voters faced with such a choice in a recent Central California Congressional election. In this instance, partisan group identification cues predominated over ethnic group identification cues, and most Latinos chose to support the Democratic Anglo candidate.

A Tale of Three Variables: Exploring the Impact of Alternative Measures of Presidential Approval On Congressional Voting

This study explores the impact of three distinct measures of public approval on congressional voting. Specifically, we test for the relative impact of a president's national approval, his partisan approval, and his district- (or state-) level approval on congressional support, measured at the level of individual members of Congress. Though we remain consistent with other arguments that hold presidential approval is likely to act as a background variable rather than a determinant of congressional voting, we maintain that theoretically more meaningful relationships between public opinion and congressional voting can be developed. Specifically, we argue that a more relevant test can be made which includes opinion measured closest to where that opinion is likely to matter to members, namely among electoral copartisans and district-level constituencies. We estimate various models (bivariate and integrated multivariate), and find strong support for our hypotheses that, to the extent members of Congress use public approval as a voting cue, they do in fact pay far more attention to partisan and constituency interests than they do to national opinion.

Old Voters, New Voters, and the Personal Vote: Using Redistricting to Measure the Incumbency Advantage

We provide new estimates of the size of the personal vote in U.S. House elections from 1872 to 1990. We take advantage of the natural experiment that attends decennial redistricting: every ten years, most incumbents are given new districts that contain a combination of old and new territory. By contrasting an incombent's vote in the new part of the district with his or her vote in the old part of the district, we can estimate the magnitude of the personal vote-the vote that the incumbent receives because he or she represented the voters in the past. Our estimates confirm prior work that shows that a large fraction of the incumbency advantage owes to the personal vote, as opposed to challenger quality. Unlike past research, we are able to estimate the relationship between district partisanship and the personal vote. We find a significant interaction which shows that incumbents develop larger personal votes in areas where they are electorally most vulnerable. here is no doubt that incumbents today have a substantial advantage over nonincumbents in U.S. House elections. The overall size of this advantage has been fairly well established, as has the fact that incumbents' electoral strength has increased dramatically over the postwar period. Measured in terms of vote share, the overall incumbency advantage grew from a modest 1-3 percentage point edge in the 1940s and early 1950s to a 7-10 percentage point edge in the 1980s and early 1990s.1 There is much less agreement about the sources of the incumbency advantage and the causes of its growth. Congressional scholars have identified a variety of factors that may be responsible, which can be grouped into three broad categories. The first, and the focus of this paper, is electoral advantage that stems from a legislator's homestyle. Members of the House are reputedly very responsive to their constituents; in turn, their constituents reward them with their votes. Mayhew (1974b), Fenno (1974), and others detail the sorts of activities that legislators do to build a widely known and respected name, including casework, frequent visits to the district, position-taking on issues, and securing federal benefits. A second source of the incumbency advantage is candidate quality. Incumbents may win because they are the best candidates running, and they do noticeably worse when they face state legislators and other experienced challengers. Finally, incumbency may simply act as a voting cue, a label which voters rely on because party has become less relevant. Assessing the importance of these different factors has significant implications for our normative evaluations of the modern congress and our understanding

The Law and Economics of 'Informed Voter' Ballot Notations

Given their limited attention to political matters, most people vote on the basis of certain voting cues, such as incumbency or party affiliation. They hope that such shortcuts will allow them to vote in the same way that they would if they had full information about the candidates and their positions. In other words, they search for cues that will allow them to vote competently even with limited information. This article analyzes whether the ballot could be used to provide voters with information about candidates' positions on certain issues. Some interest groups, most notably those supporting term limits, have advocated ballot notations that would inform voters, via a notation on the ballot, about the candidates' positions on particular issues. Considering ballot notations in their best light, we discover that they could serve two salutary objectives. First, they could provide voters with relevant information, giving the electorate a better sense of the candidates' ideology. Second, ballot notations could empower a broader number of political participants, allowing entities other than candidates, political parties, and the media to shape the campaign agenda. Grassroots groups with intense preferences on an issue or set of issues could use the ballot to focus candidates' attention on their agenda. Accordingly, these groups would have a greater ability to influence the public agenda, in the same way that the prospect of an endorsement by a minor party can influence the policies supported by the candidates of the major parties. The Article then focuses on substantial problems that have become apparent through experience with the term limits notations. Finally, the Article concludes by analyzing potential solutions to the problems of informed voter ballot notations. Given the possibility of improved voter competence, these solutions--to allow the content of ballot notations to be determined by a periodic public opinion poll or to allow each candidate space on the ballot to communicate with voters--are worthy of consideration.

The Law and Economics of "Informed Voter" Ballot Notations

Given their limited attention to political matters, most people vote on the basis of certain voting cues, such as incumbency or party affiliation. They hope that such shortcuts will allow them to vote in the same way that they would if they had full information about the candidates and their positions. In other words, they search for cues that will allow them to vote competently even with limited information. This article analyzes whether the ballot could be used to provide voters with information about candidates' positions on certain issues. Some interest groups, most notably those supporting term limits, have advocated ballot notations that would inform voters, via a notation on the ballot, about the candidates' positions on particular issues. Considering ballot notations in their best light, we discover that they could serve two salutary objectives. First, they could provide voters with relevant information, giving the electorate a better sense of the candidates' ideology. Second, ballot notations could empower a broader number of political participants, allowing entities other than candidates, political parties, and the media to shape the campaign agenda. Grassroots groups with intense preferences on an issue or set of issues could use the ballot to focus candidates' attention on their agenda. Accordingly, these groups would have a greater ability to influence the public agenda, in the same way that the prospect of an endorsement by a minor party can influence the policies supported by the candidates of the major parties. The Article then focuses on substantial problems that have become apparent through experience with the term limits notations. Finally, the Article concludes by analyzing potential solutions to the problems of informed voter ballot notations. Given the possibility of improved voter competence, these solutions--to allow the content of ballot notations to be determined by a periodic public opinion poll or to allow each candidate space on the ballot to communicate with voters--are worthy of consideration.

Might Women Now Have the Edge? Open-Seat House Primaries

Abstract I present two arguments for hypothesizing that women might now have an edge over men in open-seat primaries. First, female candidates might be advantaged by a greater salience of women's issues to proponents than opponents of those issues. Second, female candidates might be advantaged by a greater desire for descriptive representation among women than among men. However, evidence from the 1992 and 1994 primaries is able to confirm that women consistently had a substantial advantage over men only in races with a high ratio of men to women contesting for the nomination. Women had little or no advantage in races with relatively equal numbers of men and women competing. That evidence suggests (a) that the sex of a candidate can be a relevant voting cue for significant blocs of voters (at least when it is highlighted by having a lone woman face several men), but (b) the pro-women and pro-men blocs tend to be fairly evenly balanced.

Money and the Party Vote in State House Elections

The research presented here is designed to answer some of the questions that remain regarding the impact of campaign expenditures on state legislative elections. Analysis of data from 12 states indicates that there is a significant relationship between campaign expenditures and the party vote in state house elections. The effect of expenditures conforms to the principle of diminishing marginal returns. The relationship, in several states, attains a level that make expenditures among the most important factors in state house races. Finally, the analysis uncovers both interstate and partisan differences in the importance of expenditures, a finding that opens up a whole new set of research questions. Because of low levels of voter information and interest, the lack of grassroots party organizations, the increased use of new and expensive campaign technology, and the increasing amount of money being spent to win legislative seats, it is reasonable to assume that campaign expenditures are an integral part of state legislative elections. Money buys access to voters. State legislative candidates who have money to spend are better able to affect the vote choice than are candidates for more visible offices (i.e., those that attract greater media attention) because they are not competing with conflicting information sources other than their opponent. The probable absence of free media time means that a candidate will get only the exposure that he or she pays for. Because voters are relatively poorly informed, they are unlikely to have as many predispositions in state legislative races as in more salient races, making it easier for candidates with money to influence their vote. The erosion of the political party as a voting cue and as an organization means that candidates have a better opportunity to reach more voters, but only if they have the finances to build

Presidential Coattails and Open Seats

Recent examinations of the coattail effect report conflicting evidence regarding the contemporary force of presidential coattails. This study contends that the failure to consider possible situational variance in coattail voting has contributed to this ambiguity. Interpreted from the perspective of cognitive theories of decision making, coattail voting can be seen as the behavioral consequence of citizens' reliance on a specific cognitive efficiency mechanism, heuristic processing of source cues. This interpretation suggests that coattail voting should be most prominent when House voters are relatively unfamiliar with the congressional nominees, or do not possess alternative voting cues. District-level aggregate data are examined for the 1976-1988 elections, and results support hypotheses suggested by the heuristic model. Specifically, the impact of presidential coattails on congressional margins is shown to vary substantially, with the coattail effect exhibiting the greatest prominence in open-seat congressional districts.

Friends and Neighbors Voting in Judicial Retention Elections: a Research Note Comparing Trial and Appellate Court Elections

T HIS brief article reports the variations in the friends and neighbors effect when judicial retention elections for major trial courts are compared with judicial retention elections for appellate courts. Previous work on major trial court retention elections (Aspin and Hall 1987) reported that while voters in the home county of the judge were more likely to vote than were the voters in the rest of the district, there was no home county advantage in affirmative votes. Standing in sharp contrast to the trial court pattern is the clear home county advantage reported herein for appellate court retention elections. This home county advantage is similar in magnitude to that recently reported for statewide partisan elections (Rice and Macht 1987); however, in contrast to the reported patterns for partisan elections, the home county advantage for appellate court retention elections is related to population. The friends and neighbors effect is a calculated promotion of local interest. Voters support a candidate not primarily for what he stands for or because of his capacities, but because of where he lives (Key 1949: 37). Key labeled the appeal-back the home-town boyirrelevant, but he noted that in the absence of traditional voting cues, such an appeal based on boosterism can exert no little influence over an electorate (Key 1949: 41). Judicial retention elections became a part of the judicial selection process with the development of the system of merit selection. This merit selection process and the use of retention plebiscites were two efforts aimed at taking politics out of judicial selection. The merit selection process was seen as a practical compromise between those who sought an independent judiciary and those whose goal was judicial accountability. The merit selection process was designed first to get quality judges into office and then to ensure they would be able to serve for long periods of time. Although the judges would be insulated from political influences and removal from the

The Friends and Neighbors Effect in Judicial Retention Elections

HIS is a study of judicial retention elections for major trial court judges. Judicial retention elections differ from the more traditional partisan or nonpartisan elections in several respects. The absence of traditional voting cues including party labels, candidate appeals, incumbency, campaigns, and relatively fewer issues makes these plebiscites a most interesting topic for examination. One of the few traditional voting cues present in judicial retention elections is the cue of and neighbors, which has received little scholarly attention (Key 1949; Dubois 1979; Griffin and Horan 1982). This article will rectify this oversight by empirically examining the and effect in judicial retention elections. It is said that all politics are local politics. We found it surprising therefore, that one of the voting cues which has received very little attention is and neighbors. Voting on the basis of friends and neighbors is a Babbit-like calculated promotion of local interest. The candidate garners support (votes) not primarily for what he stands for or because of his capacities, but because of where he lives (Key 1949: 37). Studying the oneparty politics of the South, where many of the traditional voting cues were absent, Key called that appeal back the home-town boy irrelevant, but he was careful to point out that in the absence of traditional voting cues, such an appeal based on boosterism can exert no little influence over an electorate (Key 1949: 41). Trial court personnel were chosen as the subjects of this study because 90 percent of all court business of this nation takes place in the state trial courts. A very small percentage of cases are appealed and reviewed by higher courts.

Adolescents' Willingness to Vote for a Woman for President:

During the past two decades there has been an increase in the number of women who campaign for and attain political office. This clearly has the potential to influence attitudes toward women in politics. In particular, it has the potential to influence the attitudes of adolescents, who, according to socialization theory, are especially affected by role models. In this study we used a quasiexperimental design to examine adolescents' attitudes toward female political candidates. We found that the junior and senior high school students we surveyed did not, as a group, use candidate sex as a voting cue. However, females were more willing than males and blacks were more willing than whites to vote for the female candidate.

The roll-off effect in judicial retention elections

Because of the absence of powerful traditional voting cues and the unusual nature and format of uncontested judicial retention elections, a large number of voters deliberately fail to cost ballots in retention elections. Filling a void in the study of retention elections, this study empirically examines the voter roll-off in 1,864 retention elections for major trial court judges for the period 1964–1984. The mean roll-off for these elections was 36.2%. Voter roll-off was found to be positively related to district size and number of counties in a judicial district. These trial court retention elections exhibit mixed relationships for different types of elections. Although in presidential and nonpresidential elections there is clear surge and decline in voter turnout, there is no corresponding surge and decline in roll-off. However, close retention elections have less roll-off than nonclose elections.