Taking cues from the government: heuristic versus systematic processing in a constitutional referendum

Abstract

One of the main criticisms of direct democracy is that it places excessive demands on voters. Are citizens competent enough to vote directly on policy issues? When stakes are high, do citizens mainly follow elites’ signals or do they decide in line with their issue preferences? This article addresses these questions in a multi-method setting by combining observational and experimental data from an original three-wave panel survey conducted during the 2016 Italian constitutional referendum. In particular, Finite Mixture Models are employed to model voters’ heterogeneous strategies of information processing. Findings show that heuristic voting based on government evaluation prevails over policy-related voting. More specifically, less politically sophisticated and partisan voters relied on government assessment as a heuristic, while sophisticated and independent voters based their decisions mostly on their assessment of the reform. Implications for the question of citizens’ competence in direct democracy are discussed.     

Lessons from International Multi-Option Referendum Experiences

Referendums are regularly criticised for reducing complex policy decisions to two maximally opposed options. This reduces opportunities for voter expression and can polarise debates. Alternative referendum designs which present more than two ballot options can offer innovative opportunities, but also raise new challenges. We can benefit by learning from previous experiences with multi-option referendum voting. Discussions of such experiences are rare and have often focussed on a limited number of cases. This article provides an overview of over 100 multi-option referendum experiences around the world. It discusses the topics on which they were held and the ballot options that were offered. It then analyses the variety in ballot design in terms of questions posed and voting methods applied. Drawing on the experiences of multi-option referendums, the article concludes with lessons that can be learned in relation to initiating and designing these referendums.     

Do voters have a cue? Television advertisements as a source of information in citizen–initiated referendum campaigns

Abstract. In this article we examine the scope for campaign effects in citizen–initiated referendum (CIR) elections. Given the context of CIR elections, television effects can be seen to be even bigger and more important than in candidate elections. We use survey data on information demands made upon voters in CIR campaigns, and the information sources they use, in order to gauge the relative importance of various sources that voters rely upon in making voting decisions. We then examine the relative importance of television advertising as a source of information in CIR campaigns. We find that voters report using many sources of information, with few voters relying exclusively upon television advertisements. Rather than telling voters which way to vote, television campaigns may simply raise awareness of CIRs and so encourage voters to seek cues elsewhere, in particular from ballot guides where cues are more readily discerned.     

Do referendum results change norm perceptions and personal opinions?

Referendums are often seen as a means to legitimize the outcome as the new norm and increase acceptance of the outcome. Do referendums actually have these effects? More precisely, do voters recognize the referendum result as the new norm? And do voters go as far as to change their own minds in accord with the referendum result? We explore these questions using a panel survey that we conducted in Ireland before and after the abortion referendum that was held on May 25, 2018. We find that, after the referendum, voters updated their norm perceptions in the direction of the referendum result. However, we find inconsistent evidence that the referendum convinced voters to change their personal opinions about abortion. The findings provide insights on the power and the limit of referendums in increasing policy agreement among voters.     

Voter Learning in State Primary Elections

When voters learn about candidates' issue positions during election campaigns, does it affect how they vote? This basic question about voters remains unanswered in part because of a methodological obstacle: learning candidates' issue positions may influence not only voters' vote choice but also their issue positions. To surmount this obstacle, we attempt to answer this question by examining statewide primary elections, which are arguably less vulnerable to this reverse causation problem because they lack partisan cues and are of much lower salience than presidential elections. Using both existing polling data and our own panel Internet surveys, we find that voters learn about the ideologies of candidates during statewide primary campaigns and that this learning affects their voting decisions in senate and gubernatorial primaries. We fail to find similar results for down‐ballot primaries, raising questions about voters' ability to make informed judgments for these types of elections.     

Coping with lengthy ballots

Given voters' limited cognitive abilities, the learning environments voters face may have implications for how voters learn and make decisions. One prominent feature of American elections is the variation in the length of the ballot across jurisdictions and elections. This paper explores the consequences of lengthy ballots on the ability of voters to learn about candidates. Using an experimental design and a dynamic information board (Lau and Redlawsk, 2006), subjects participate in a mock election where they are asked to gather information about a single election or multiple elections. The results indicate that while voters compare more information as ballot length increases, they spend significantly less time learning about individual pieces of candidate information.     

Dual ballot effects on French presidential vote choice

Relatively little is known about how voters behave under dual ballot voting systems. Do voters follow different decision rules at each ballot? Do they weigh relevant considerations differently on the second ballot, as compared to the first ballot? Does political sophistication condition the way people vote on the first and second ballots? Using survey data from five French presidential elections, we examine these questions and find that voters in France do indeed treat first and second ballots differently. More precisely, we find that both partisanship and ideology matter more on the second ballot. Demographics, socioeconomic status, and political issues, on the other hand, weigh more heavily in the first round. Political sophistication, for its part, does not condition nor reinforce these effects.     

Referendum Campaigns,Framing and Uncertainty

Research on campaign dynamics and voting behaviour in direct democracy suggests that referendum campaigns can be seen as processes of learning. This finding stems from two assumptions: (1) information has mediating effects – the more voters know about the issue at stake, the stronger the effect of issue preferences in their decision-making; (2) campaign volatility and framing effects are linked to weak campaigning and voters’ lack of information. The aim of this article is to suggest the limitations of this approach and discuss the effects of framing in referendum campaigning. It is argued that campaign volatility as well as framing effects are not always related to voter ignorance and information-weak campaigns but rather to qualitative shifts in the underlying value interpretation linked to referendum proposals. These shifts are possible no matter how well-informed voters are. The expectancy-value model, commonly used in psychological research, is used to make sense of framing effects in volatile as well as stable referendum campaigns.     

Does campaign spending help voters learn about ballot measures?

What happens when a ballot measure becomes an orphan and there are no campaign expenditures for or against the measure? California's Proposition 91 provides one example of such a scenario and offers a rare opportunity to study what voters learn about a ballot measure in the absence of a campaign. Using an election survey, I assess what voters exiting the polling booth learned about Proposition 91 and compare it to what they learned about several other measures on the same ballot. My results suggest that even without a campaign, a large majority of voters still know a fact about Proposition 91. I also find that campaigns can greatly increase knowledge of the facts they choose to emphasize.     

Social Identity and Electoral Accountability

In a laboratory experiment, we explore the effects of group identities on the principal‐agent relationship between voters and representatives. In an adverse selection framework with observable effort, voters can choose to condition their reelection choices on representatives' effort alone, beliefs about representatives' competence, or both of those jointly. We show that inducing social identities increases the weight of representatives' effort in voters' reelection decisions. Further, when voters and representatives share a social identity, representatives tend to invest less effort and their effort is independent of their competence. In contrast, “out‐group” representatives compensate for lower competence with higher effort and reduce effort when voters are likely to perceive them as competent. Voters often adopt laxer retention standards for representatives who are fellow group members and are responsive to evidence of other‐regardingness from out‐group representatives, but some voters actively resist treating representatives with shared identity more favorably and “overcorrect” as a consequence.     

Referendums on Membership and European Integration 1972–2015

There are many myths about referendums. The most common one is that voters are inherently sceptical and tend to vote no when given the opportunity. This article analyses some of the commonly held ‘truths’ about referendums on EU matters. Based on a statistical analysis of all forty‐three EU‐related referendums since 1972, it shows that governments tend to lose referendums if they have been in office for a long time, that emotive words on the ballot paper are correlated with a high yes vote and that a high turnout is correlated with a vote against European integration, but campaign spending is inconsequential. Based solely on statistical evidence from the previous forty‐three referendums, the opponents of EU membership will win the Brexit referendum.     

Risk Attitudes and Independence Vote Choice

In this article, we examine the impact of risk attitudes on vote choice in the context of a salient referendum with high levels of uncertainty about the consequences of the ballot proposal. Using data from a pre- and post-referendum panel survey conducted in the context of the 2014 independence referendum in Scotland, and a specific battery to measure attitudes to risk, we determine how these attitudes operate in such political contexts. We reach two main conclusions. First, risk attitudes have a direct effect on vote choice, even after controlling for alternative explanations of vote choice such as party identification and leaders’ evaluations. In the aggregate, the effect of risk attitudes on the vote choice contributes to the status quo bias found in referendums. Second, we find that information moderates the effect of risk attitudes on vote choice. Voters who are politically knowledgeable have a greater capacity to predict the consequences of political outcomes and, therefore, they are less affected by their risk attitudes when making their ballot choices.

     

Information and direct democracy: What voters learn about ballot measures and how it affects their votes

Limited research has evaluated what voters know about the initiatives and referendums that regularly appear on their ballots. Analyzing survey data covering nine ballot measures in three U.S. states, I explore what voters know about measures that would implement policies ranging from approving same-sex marriage to requiring identification to vote. My results show a great deal of variation across both ballot measures and type of knowledge. Specifically, I find that knowledge of endorsements and status quo policies is similar to their knowledge of civics. Policy specific facts, however, lag far behind. My results also show that voters tend to know more about moral issues. Increased campaign spending also helps voters learn about relevant endorsements, though not facts. When comparing the efficacy of facts versus endorsements, knowledge of an endorsement has a measurable decision-improving impact on voters’ choices while knowing a fact only rarely does.     

Evidence on voter preferences from unrestricted choice referendums

From 1939 to 1968 Florida used a unique referendum system to set property tax rates for public school operating expenditures at the median millage rate selected by voters. These referendums revealed the entire distribution of voter preferences, which is not possible in the standard up or down referendum. We are the first to use the Florida referendum data. The form of the ballot played an important role in how people voted. Voting machine elections were much more likely than paper ballots to result in rejections of the recommendations of school boards, and produced much greater dispersion of expressed preferences.     

Taking Cues on Europe? Voter competence and party endorsements in referendums on European integration

Abstract.  One of the criticisms often levelled against direct democracy is that citizens lack sufficient knowledge to vote directly on policy issues. The 'No' votes in the French and Dutch referendums on the Constitutional Treaty have highlighted the importance of examining voter competence in referendums. This article proposes a theoretical framework for evaluating competence in EU referendums. It suggests that competent voting in EU referendums is based on issue-specific preferences and requires political information. Since most voters have little detailed knowledge of European integration, they rely on heuristics and cues when deciding how to vote. The important question is how much and which type of information voters require to make competent choices. This article examines whether and under what conditions the use of party endorsements as information cues can enhance competent voting in EU referendums. These theoretical questions are examined in an analysis of the 1994 Norwegian referendum on EU membership.     

The Impact of Petition Signing on Voter Turnout

Generally speaking, campaign-related contact motivates voters. One form of such contact not much explored in the voter mobilization literature is the petitioning for ballot initiatives that occurs with considerable frequency in about half the states and even more localities. Using newly-available data that allow us to match individual petition signers with their subsequent election behavior, we explore the role of having had a hand in a ballot measure’s qualifying stage in propelling individual voters to the polls. Specifically, we perform multivariate analysis on a random sample of 1,000 registered Arkansas voters, 1,100 registered Florida voters, and all 71,119 registered voters in Gainesville, Florida to measure the influence of petition-signing in spurring voter turnout. We find marginal effects in the statewide samples, but substantial and significant turnout effects in the Gainesville municipal election—an off-cycle, low-profile election. Furthermore, the effect of petition-signing—across all of our samples—is strongest among irregular, as compared to habitual, voters. These findings are in keeping with recent campaign mobilization experimental research and comport with previous findings on the “educative effects” of ballot measures on voter turnout.     

Valence,Elections, and Legislative Institutions

To the degree that voters care about competence, expertise, and other valence characteristics of their representatives and political parties care about winning elections, parties have an incentive to signal that their legislators have such characteristics. We construct a model of parties, motivated by both reelection and by policy, that attempt to signal individual incumbents' valences to voters through the assignment of these members to positions of authority. The model illustrates how electorally motivated party leaders will have an incentive to promote less competent incumbents than they would if voters did not make inferences from promotion decisions. We derive the model's empirical implications and test them with original data on the careers of Chilean senators serving between 1998 and 2013. In support of the model's insights, we find that promotion to a leadership position is an effective signal to voters only if the promoted incumbent has extreme views relative to the party.     

The Political Environment and Ballot Proposition Awareness

Studies that examine whether voters make informed decisions on direct legislation and whether direct legislation enhances civic engagement presume a basic awareness of ballot propositions, yet little is known about why some ballot propositions are more widely known than others. Despite the fact that research on awareness of ballot propositions and political awareness focus on individual factors, the political environment plays a vital role. This study seeks to advance our understanding of environmental factors in explaining awareness of ballot propositions. Using data on California ballot elections between the years 1956 and 2000, I find that the political environment has a substantial effect on voter awareness. Specifically, I find that the electoral cycle, media coverage, campaign spending, voter fatigue, the number of days before an election, and issues that concern morality, civil liberties, and civil rights contribute to ballot proposition awareness.     

Voting on Europe: The Potential Pitfalls of a British Referendum

As Britain prepares for a possible referendum on continued membership of the European Union, it is essential that more careful thought is paid to the dynamics of referendums. Polling data reveal the existence of a substantial knowledge deficit in the UK and other parts of the EU: large numbers of voters simply do not understand the EU. There is also reason to question the conventional view that voters can correct for such a deficit by using cues from opinion leaders and the media. The experience of recent referendums in other EU member states suggests that many voters will take part in the proposed British referendum without independent and informed knowledge of the issues at stake, that many will have been swayed by partisan elite opinion, and that many will decide on the basis of their views about domestic politics rather than their views about Europe.     

Voting in the 1997 Scottish and Welsh devolution referendums: Information, interests and opinions

Abstract. The rarity of referendums in the United Kingdom makes them unusual events for voters, parties and students of voting behaviour. The 1997 devolution referendums in Scotland and Wales were highly significant since they led to major constitutional changes. In the novel circumstances of a referendum, political parties and the media played an important role in providing voters with information to guide their voting decisions. Longstanding identities and opinions relating to the pros and cons of the issue involved and attitudes towards the government influenced voting. Reassuringly, opinions about the effects of devolution were highly influential.