One voter and two choices: The impact of electoral context on the 2011 UK referendum

There is a debate in the literature on referendum voting as to whether these occasions are opportunities for voters to express issue preferences in the absence of partisan politics or whether they simply serve as referendums on the current government. In part, this latter, second order account is assumed to be driven by the amount and content of media coverage, and hence information about the referendum, that is available to voters. In this paper, we address the second order question and demonstrate that holding elections concurrently both reduces the amount of media attention to the second order contest—the AV referendum in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where national elections were held—and moderates media priming, thereby affecting the salient cues in the decision making of voters in those contexts.     

The Australian constitutional referendum of 1999: evaluating explanations of republican voting

The Constitutional Referendum of November 1999 saw Australians reject a republic and vote to retain the British Monarch as Australian Head of State. Multivariate analyses of data from the Australian Constitutional Referendum Survey were employed to examine the impact of social background, political and social movement leadership, political knowledge and political trust on the referendum vote. Younger, secular, highly educated and Labor partisans, and those who evaluated republican political and social movement leaders positively, were more likely to vote for constitutional change. Republican voting was stronger also, among those more trusting of politicians. The Yes vote was associated positively with higher cognitive skills and greater voter knowledge of political and constitutional issues, highlighting the salience of political education processes for the outcome of referenda.     

The quality of referendum debate: The UK's electoral system referendum in the print media

This paper analyses the quality of debate surrounding the UK's 2011 electoral reform referendum as represented in the print media. It first considers how debate quality in the context of a referendum campaign may best be conceptualized. It then uses content analysis of media coverage to investigate three aspects of that debate: its quantity; the balance between Yes and No arguments; and the quality of reason-giving. It finds that the quantity of debate was comparable to other recent electoral reform referendums. Coverage was predominantly, but not overwhelmingly, hostile to change. The different indicators of the quality of reason-giving present a mixed picture. The paper concludes by considering how the analysis could be extended through further comparison with other cases.     

Urbanization and voter turnout in Korea: An update

In this paper we develop an econometric model to test whether alienation and/or mobilized voting explain urban-rural turnout in Korea. We find that a person's decision to vote is influenced by the act of mobilization and that it affects rural residents more strongly. But we do not find that the feeling of alienation affects a person's decision to vote. Thus, we find support for the mobilized voting hypothesis, but not for the alienation nonvoting hypothesis.     

Interests and information in referendum voting: An analysis of Swiss voters

Abstract. Referendums impose considerable informational demands on voters. Recent theoretical and empirical research has emphasized the different shortcuts and heuristics they may employ in deciding how to vote. Relying on a substantial series of votes at the national level in Switzerland, we provide empirical tests on how Swiss voters cope with the informational demands in referendum voting. We combine simple heuristics, like partisan cues and endorsements, with indicators of instrumental interests to explain citizens' choices in a series of votes.     

Packed primaries and empty caucuses: voter turnout in presidential nominations

In presidential nomination contests, the number of voters participating in selecting the presidential candidates varies considerably across states. In the same election year, turnout in presidential nomination contests ranges from less than 1 % of party supporters participating in some caucuses to record breaking turnout levels upwards of 50 % in primaries in other states. This variation is attributable, in part, to the electoral rules, which vary across states, years, and parties. In this paper, I provide a comprehensive examination of the extent to which party and state rules affect voter turnout in nomination contests from 1980 to 2012. Using the normal partisan support score as the voter turnout denominator, I find that primaries, open contests, and proportional representation rules result in higher levels of turnout. I also show that within the window of competitiveness, turnout is higher in states that hold contests later in the nomination season. Overall, my analysis provides insight into the institutional structures that influence the number of people who participate in the presidential nomination process and enhances understanding about the factors that affect voter turnout.     

Unemployment and voter turnout revisited: A brief note

This brief study revisits the issue of whether higher unemployment rates elicit an increase in the voter participation rate. Using a state-level panel dataset for all five of the Presidential election cycles of this century, it is hypothesized that, following Cebula (2008) and Burden and Wichowsky (2014), the higher the unemployment rate, the greater the degree to which eligible voters, whether unemployed or employed, show up at the polls, arguably because they are expressing the concerns and fears regarding prevailing economic policies and conditions and because by voting they are expressing the desire for changes to address those concerns and fears. The estimation implies that a one percentage point higher unemployment rate leads to a nearly 1.0% higher voter participation rate. This result is in principle compatible with and supportive of the hypothesis that higher unemployment rates motivate voters and the empirical finding of a positive voter turnout/unemployment rate association obtained in the studies by Cebula (2008) and Burden and Wichowsky (2014). Moreover, this finding is potentially important because it implies that elected officials are, to at least some degree, held accountable by the electorate for a weakly performing economy.     

Party and policy in voter choice: A study of reinforcement

Much attention has been directed over the last two decades to determining the relative effect of party and policy concerns in voter choice. Concomitantly evidence has accumulated that these two variables reinforce each other. In this paper, examination of the last three presidential elections using commonality analysis indicates that policy reinforced partisanship tends to surpass the unique effect of partisanship; that the total policy effect is never much less than total partisan effect; and that most cross-pressure between party and policy occurs within the less sophisticated elements of the electorate. This research also indicates that in the past decade the political parties have become more harmonious with their identifiers on policy questions rather than less so as some have contended. Methodologically, there is support for examining the voter's decision making through use of sub-groups, commonality analysis, and multiple indicators of policy orientation.     

The median voter hypothesis: Regional disparities and redistribution in China

The paper is focused on regional redistribution of revenue of China and proposes to test two hypotheses. The first one is the positive relationship between inequality in the distribution of local fiscal situation and the central redistribution. The second one is a possible political channel of redistribution: the median voter hypothesis. Both hypotheses are confirmed empirically by the study. Therefore the median voter hypothesis is helpful for analyzing the redistribution to narrow the regional disparities of local expenditure among provinces, although there is no formal voting process on regional redistribution. In the process of decision-making in China, regional preference can be expressed sufficiently without voting actions. Thus Representative Democracy might not be a prerequisite for Median Voter Hypothesis in the case of China. The author wishes to thank Professors Emerson Niou and John P. Burn for their help in preparing this article, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments.     

Economic globalization and voter turnout in established democracies

This paper asks whether international economic integration negatively affects electoral turnout. The theoretical model builds on the premise that economic integration constrains the ability of national governments to shape outcomes. Citizens are conscious of such constraints and take them into account when considering the costs and benefits of casting a vote in national elections. The result is a lower inclination to vote under conditions of high economic integration. Consequently, aggregate turnout is lower the more internationally integrated a national economy is. Analysis of aggregate data for parliamentary elections in 23 OECD democracies over the period 1965–2006 robustly supports this hypothesis. The empirical estimates suggest economic globalization as a central cause of the general decline in turnout within established democracies.     

Boxholm tea party: Taxation and voter turnout in a mature democracy

The link between taxation and representation is generally considered foundational to the emergence of democratic governance. Nevertheless, the empirical relationship between taxation and the extent to which citizens actually exert representation by turning out to vote remains virtually unexplored. Using a panel of all Swedish municipalities from 1979 to 2018, I find that hikes in local tax rates are linked to increased municipal voter turnout. Accounting for a wide range of confounders, including turnout in concurrent parliamentary- and county elections, these results indicate an important untapped explanation for changes in turnout, while offering a rare explicit test of the taxation-representation argument drawn from a mature democracy.     

Electoral change and the floating voter: The reagan elections

This paper presents two perspectives on a fundamental issue of elections as mechanisms of democratic accountability. One is the interelection floating voter hypothesis, which implies that it is the least informed segment of the electorate that contributes most to electoral change. The second perspective is from V. O. Key's argument that vote switching is rooted in rational policy concerns. A direct test of Key's formulation of the problem on the Reagan election victories of 1980 and 1984 adds to the evidence supporting Key's perspective. The reasons why some voters hold firm to particular parties and candidates while others switch support is well explained by their different positions on matters of party, policies, and judgments of the candidates. Vote switching is not simply the by-product of an ill-informed segment of the electorate responding to its meager grasp of the short-term stimuli of a campaign. Vote switchers appear to judge the policies and the performance of an incumbent against their best estimates of these qualities in the competing candidate. The data are from the 1980 and 1984 CBS/New York Times exit polls.This is a revised version of a paper presented at the 1985 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans.     

Ideological proximity and voter turnout in multi-level systems: evidence from Spain

ABSTRACT

Does ideological proximity between the individual and political parties determine electoral participation in regional elections, as much as in national elections? Does the degree of self-rule of a region affect the interplay between ideological distance and turnout? This article addresses these questions and provides empirical evidence drawing upon individual-level and regional-level data from 53 regional elections and 4 national elections in Spain. Results indicate that citizens are more likely to vote when they perceive there is at least one congruent policy option among the party supply, and this happens at both regional and national levels. However, whether the closest party is in national government or whether it is a regionalist organization has a dissimilar impact on turnout in different tiers. This relationship between the type of party which is most ideologically proximate and electoral participation is partially affected by the degree of regional autonomy of the territory.     

Disproportionality and voter turnout in new and old democracies

A long-standing puzzle in electoral research is why the disproportionality of electoral systems has a negative effect on voter participation in established democracies, but not in new democracies. We propose a learning theory of electoral system’s effects, and test it in a cross-national analysis and by using Spain as a case study. Electoral disproportionality is unrelated to voter participation in early elections after democratization, but the relationship is increasingly visible as democracies grow older. The case study uncovers two mechanisms: small parties optimize their mobilization strategy only after the first democratic elections, and the difference in the turnout rates of small party supporters and large party supporters grows over time. Time is needed before the consequences of electoral systems are fully revealed. Importantly, the findings suggest that studies carried out just after an electoral system is created or reformed may provide downward biased estimates of their long-term consequences.