Cross-national election surveys: A French pre-test

In common with scholars in other leading democracies, election researchers of France and the United States rely heavily on a survey research methodology; but their respective national election surveys do not pose many of the same questions, and the dominant research paradigms in each country offer opposing explanatory models of vote choice. Herein are reported preliminary results from a joint effort of US and French researchers, which seeks to include numerous cross-national items in the French National Election Study (for 1995). The following American National Election Study (ANES)-type items receive attention: candidate feeling thermometers, job approval ratings, economic evaluations, seven-point proximity measures on social issues and party identification. Inclusion of these measures in French surveys may allow an important cross-nation extension of voting models thought to be peculiar to one political culture, such as the US.     

How to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters: Disaggregating data from voting advice applications versus modeling survey responses

Valid and reliable estimates of the policy preferences of political parties' supporters are essential for the study of political representation. However, such estimates are not directly available from standard surveys of public opinion, which are typically representative by design only at the national level and rarely ask questions about public support for specific policies. In this article, we explore the possibility to use data from voting advice applications (VAA) to estimate the policy preferences of party supporters. To do that, first, we identify 10 questions on preferences towards issues of public policy that were asked around the same time and with similar wording in traditional surveys of public opinion and in VAAs fielded in Germany and in the Netherlands. Then we compare the VAA data disaggregated by political affiliation of the respondents to the survey data adjusted via multilevel regression modeling with poststratification (MRP). We find strong positive correlations between the estimates derived from both methods, especially after weighting the VAA data. Yet, point estimates are not always very close, and the match is sensitive to the treatment of neutral and ‘don't know’ answers. Overall, our results bode well for the validity of using VAA data in empirical research on political representation.     

Individual level dynamics of PTV change across the electoral cycle

Propensity-to-vote (PTV) scores are ever more commonly used in electoral research as a measure of electoral utilities. Yet a growing literature employs them as dependent variable in the voting equation in place of the lower information granted by vote recall questions. However, this choice can be seen as problematic because of the very structure of election survey research. To the extent that voters' PTVs are measured in post-election surveys (as it is often the case) these are likely to result endogenously produced by actual voting behavior in the past election – thus partly undermining the validity of the PTV question which, ideally, should not be related to any specific election. In this paper, we try to disentangle the relationship between short-term political attitudes (leader evaluations, issue proximity, economic assessments) and voters' changing patterns of propensities to vote in both an electoral and a non-electoral context. The latter scenario serves as a means to rule out the potentially contaminating effect of voting choices on voters' PTVs. The data comes from two panel surveys of Italian voters conducted by ITANES in occasion of the 2006 general election, and in 2011 (that is, in a non-electoral year) respectively.     

Does survey mode matter for studying electoral behaviour? Evidence from the 2009 German Longitudinal Election Study

Online surveys are becoming increasingly popular in the social sciences, particularly in electoral research. However, several studies have shown that participants who take part in online surveys differ significantly from those in other surveys. Still, since electoral research aims primarily at explaining voting behaviour (i.e., looks at slopes and intercepts in statistical model output), online surveys are deemed to be useful tools if models based on this data source arrive at similar conclusions than models based e.g. on random-sample face-to-face or telephone surveys. This paper analyses these relationships by comparing models of voting behaviour based on data from various survey modes with different sample selections conducted by the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) 2009. The results indicate that the data quality of the different survey types is comparable; online surveys are thus useful for electoral research.     

Policy signals and strategic voting for minor parties: Evidence from Germany

How does executive power-sharing in multiparty democracies influence voter decision-making? The current scholarship has identified two strategies that voters use to target coalitions and that involve voting for a minor party: Coalition insurance voting and compensatory voting. Yet these strategies are not differentiated conceptually, and empirically, are observationally equivalent. By foregrounding the role of policy signals in strategic voting for minor parties, the present study disentangles these strategies at the theoretical and empirical levels. It also proposes a new, hybrid, strategy. To do so, it uses data on the 2013 and 2017 German federal elections from campaign-period surveys, polls and an original dataset of the candidates’ tweets about policy issues. The results show evidence of policy-driven voters using a hybrid strategy in 2013 and a compensatory strategy in 2017. There is no evidence of coalition insurance voting in these elections.     

Same Considerations,Different Decisions: Motivations for Split‐ticket Voting among Swedish Feminist Initiative Supporters

This article explores why supporters of small, non‐established parties choose to vote for different parties in the elections to the European Parliament (EP) and elections to the national parliament. It uses individual‐level data with open‐ended questions from an online survey on supporters of Feminist Initiative (Fi) – a comparatively small and new Swedish feminist party – to map voters’ own motivations for split‐ticket voting in the 2014 elections. Contrary to expectations based on second‐order election theory, it is found that voters ticket‐split in both directions: there are those voting for Fi in the EP election but not in the national election, and those voting for Fi in the national election but not in the EP election. These voters take the same types of considerations into account but nevertheless end up making opposite voting decisions. Voters clearly distinguish between the two levels – for example, by prioritizing different issues.     

The Kramer problem: Micro-macro resolution with a Danish pool

In a seminal paper, Kramer (1983) posed his “problem” for the study of economic voting with election surveys: the items administered can measure neither individual nor national economic wellbeing accurately. Instead these items of economic perception are laden with erroneous judgment and partisan bias. Thus, the investigation of economics and elections should not be a survey research enterprise. Here we show, through varied analyses in an extensive, well-gathered Danish election pool, that these fears are unfounded. The presence of strong sociotropic voting effects from surveys can be established, and reconciled with the observed effects of national fluctuations in the macro economy. Indeed, the micro- and macro- processes mirror each other, so resolving the Kramer problem.     

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.     

Nonexpert beliefs about the macroeconomic consequences of economic and noneconomic events

Economists assume that individuals think about the economy like economists, which is especially important in all rational expectations and economic voting models. Despite contrasting evidence, there has been little research on actual nonexpert macroeconomic beliefs. In this paper, I present the results of a survey among students designed to find out whether they distinguish macroeconomically relevant from irrelevant events. I find that even people with some economic background tend to overestimate the effects of noneconomic events. This bias is a function of gender, economic training, and the preferred means of mass communication.     

Anchoring political preferences: The structural bases of stable electoral decisions and political attitudes in Britain

Abstract. The paper applies a structural perspective to the analysis of political preferences. Examining two British surveys, the 1987 cross–section of the electorate and a panel survey that covers the 1983 and 1987 elections, the research explores the bases of persistent voting for the same party, location on left–right scales, and the probability of holding the same policy views on a host of different issues over time. A set of structural variables rests at the heart of the paper's theory: discussion networks, patterns of interactions with members of political parties, social class networks, and location in the social structure. Several hypotheses guide the analysis: The effects of the structural variables on the probability of casting a ballot for the same political party in any one election and in adjacent elections will remain, even after controlling for party identification; political party socialization; location on left–right scales; positions taken on any and all political issues; age, and past levels of electoral stability. The effects of structural variables on left–right position will remain, even after controlling for locations on alternative left–right scales. Finally, reinforcing attitudinal context provides the only consistent determinant of stable policy positions, after controlling for a host of alternative explanations including level of education; age; interest in politics, and a general propensity to offer stable answers to political questions.     

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.     

Multiple meanings? The link between partisanship and definitions of voter fraud

Research on public perceptions of voter fraud often relies on items that gauge the frequency of noncitizen voting, double voting, and posing as someone else. Few studies explore the underlying sentiments that structure the concept of voter fraud and its meaning to people. Further, no study has examined whether these dominant survey items fully capture the ways in which people understand and articulate their views about voter fraud. We use original surveys with open-ended questions to explore public perceptions of voter fraud. With a combination of in-depth content analysis and text analysis, we find that individuals think of voter fraud as consisting of a wide array of actions being undertaken by a diverse set of actors. We also find substantial differences in the ways that Democrats and Republicans think about this issue. Our study provides important contributions to a growing literature on election administration and public opinion toward voter fraud.     

Performance voting and knowledge of cabinet composition

Nearly every empirical study of outcome oriented retrospective voting assumes, though almost always implicitly, that a) every voter knows the composition of the incumbent government, or b) that voters who may not know who is in government do not cast retrospective votes. In this short essay we provide evidence that these assumptions are quite unlikely to hold and discuss how not taking this possibility into account has influenced our understanding of the retrospective voting mechanism and the conditioning effect of political sophistication on the economic vote. In so doing, we advocate for the inclusion of questions regarding cabinet composition in electoral surveys.     

Changing Horses in Wartime? The 2004 Presidential Election

The literature makes clear that foreign policy affects voting, but it does not lead to clear expectations as to how a war will affect voting. Will views about the advisability of the war predominate? Or will the indirect effect through the incumbent’s image be more important? Will a war crowd out other potential issues, particularly domestic ones? This paper addresses these questions through a series of focused analyses of NES survey data. We find that an increase in strong Republican partisans clinched the election for President Bush. The Iraq War was not a direct vote gainer for the President, but the larger War on Terrorism burnished his image as a leader, at least long enough to win the election. Likewise, the cultural war allowed President Bush to retain some of the votes that he might otherwise have lost due to the unpopularity of the Iraq War.     

The Effect of Interviewer Gender on the Survey Response

We examined the existence of gender-of-interviewer effects in two local-area surveys in which male and female interviewers were randomly assigned to interview male and female respondents. Small but consistent gender-of-interviewer effects arose on questions related to the women's movement, women's issues, and gender equality, demonstrating that, as expected, respondents were more likely to provide feminist answers to female interviewers. Gender-of-interviewer effects were somewhat more pronounced and consistent on controversial political topics: the women's movement (feminists and political activism) and their policy agenda. There was mixed evidence on whether respondents were equally susceptible to gender-of-interviewer effects. In one of the surveys, gender-of-interviewer effects were more pronounced among less well-educated and younger respondents than among respondents who were better educated or older. This effect was not replicated in the second survey.     

Not all campaign panels are created equal: Exploring how the number and timing of panel waves affect findings concerning the time of voting decision

This paper addresses the impact of the number and timing of panel waves in campaign panel surveys on findings concerning the prevalence of early, campaign, and late deciding as well as on the determinants of the time of voting decision. Using data from a seven-wave online campaign panel survey conducted during the 2009 German federal election, we demonstrate that the number and timing of panel waves affect results concerning the time of voting decision considerably. Whereas the number and timing of panel waves strongly affect the marginal distribution of decider types they do not impinge heavily upon the determinants of the time of voting decision.     

A retrospective on retrospective voting

This paper critically reviews the extensive literature on retrospective voting in response to economic conditions. Each of the major types of analyses which have been performed — time-series analyses of national vote totals, presidential popularity, and cross-sectional analyses of individual survey responses — has raised several interesting and important questions. The answers that have been obtained, however, are only partial and limited, as each of these approaches entails serious problems of estimation and interpretation. Further progress in this area, we argue, requires explicit treatment of conceptual and statistical issues that have hindered previous research: the dynamic formulation of expectations and preferences, the incidence of policy (and nonpolicy) effects across the population, and notions of incumbency and political responsibility.     

Direct democracy and regional integration: Citizens' perceptions of treaty implications and the Irish reversal on Lisbon

Analyses of voting in European Union referendums typically distinguish between ‘second‐order’ effects and the impact of substantive ‘issues’. In order to explain change in referendum outcome, two types of substantive issues are distinguished in this article. Focusing on Irish voting in the Lisbon Treaty referendums and using data from post‐referendum surveys, it is found that perceptions of treaty implications outperform underlying attitudes to EU integration in predicting vote choice at both referendums, and perceptions of treaty implications are strong predictors of vote change between the referendums. The findings have broadly positive implications for normative assessments of the usefulness of direct democracy as a tool for legitimising regional integration advance.     

Using self-prophecy to combat vote overreporting on public opinion surveys

Survey researchers have long struggled with respondents who, due to the pressure to adhere to socially desirable norms, erroneously claim to have voted in a previous election. In this paper, we develop a new approach to reducing the overreporting of voting in surveys by leveraging psychological theories that show people have a tendency to follow through on an action once they have predicted their behavior (e.g. Sherman, 1980). Using a survey experiment through the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we find that an overwhelming majority of respondents will agree to take an honesty pledge regarding their future vote report. Having pledged their honesty, they then overreport their vote at far lower rates than other survey participants. The observed effects are additive, since previously developed methods of reducing overreporting were present across all conditions. These findings have important implications for studies endeavoring to understand voting behavior and social desirability pressures.     

Quadratic voting in the wild: real people,real votes

Since their introduction in 1932, Likert and other continuous, independent rating scales have become the de facto toolset for survey research. Scholars have raised significant reliability and validity problems with these types of scales, and alternative methods for capturing perceptions and preferences have gained traction within specific domains. In this paper, we evaluate a new, broadly applicable approach to opinion measurement based on quadratic voting (QV), a method in which respondents express preferences by ‘buying’ votes for options using a fixed budget from which they pay quadratic prices for votes. Comparable QV-based and Likert-based survey instruments designed by Collective Decision Engines LLC were evaluated experimentally by assigning potential respondents randomly to one or the other method. Using a host of metrics, including respondent engagement and process-based metrics, we provide some initial evidence that the QV-based instrument provides a clearer measure of the preferences of the most intensely motivated respondents than the Likert-based instrument does. We consider the implications for survey satisficing, a key threat to the continued value of survey research, and discuss the mechanisms by which QV differentiates itself from Likert-based scales, thus establishing QV as a promising alternative survey tool for political and commercial research. We also explore key design issues within QV-based surveys to extend these promising results.