Opinion Polls,Coalition Signals and Strategic Voting: Evidence from a Survey Experiment

Recent studies find that defection from one's most preferred party to some other party is as common under proportional representation (PR) as it is in plurality systems. It is less elaborated how election‐specific contextual factors affect strategic vote choice under PR. This study looks at the impact of two potentially important contextual factors: parties’ coalition signals about cooperation with other parties (referred to as ‘pre‐electoral coalitions’) and polling information, which vary from one election to the next. The focus is strategic voting for smaller parties at risk of falling below an electoral threshold. The hypothesis is that parties that are included in well‐defined coalitions will benefit from strategic ‘insurance’ votes if the polls show that they have support slightly below the threshold. However, smaller parties that do not belong to a coalition would be less likely to benefit from insurance votes. Extensive survey experiments with randomized coalition signals and polls give support to the idea that a voter's tendency to cast an insurance vote depends on whether the polls show support below or above the threshold and whether the party is included in a coalition or not.     

Strategic Voting in a U.S. Senate Election

Due to the strength of its two-party system, the opportunity for voters to strategically defect in favor of third party or independent candidates is rare in high profile American elections. Indeed, it has been almost a century since a third party candidate finished better than one of the major party presidential nominees—in 1912 Bull Moose Progressive Teddy Roosevelt finished ahead of Republican William H. Taft. In this study we examine strategic voting in a U.S. Senate election where the independent candidate also finished above one of the major party nominees. In the 2010 Florida Senate contest the sitting Governor Charlie Crist shed his Republican label in order to compete in the general election since he was certain to lose in the GOP primary to Marco Rubio, the eventual winner. Crist finished second by taking a substantial share of votes away from the third place candidate, Democrat Kendrick Meek. Because this type of contest seldom occurs, in American politics there is scant empirical research on strategic voting under these conditions. We employ an unobtrusive survey of a large sample of registered Floridians in order to assess the likelihood of strategic voting among respondents who preferred the Democrat Kendrick Meek. For voters who sincerely preferred the Democrat, a significant portion defected in favor of the Independent Charlie Crist if they expected him to finish ahead of Meek. Additionally, we find that after a major news story broke, in which former President Bill Clinton allegedly advised Meek to drop out of the race so that Crist might win, respondents surveyed after this event were more likely to vote strategically in favor of Crist. Our study clearly demonstrates the importance of political context. Under the appropriate conditions, we find a high likelihood of strategic voting.     

The Gender Gap in Norwegian Voting Behaviour*

In the period 1957-81 women in Norway voted less frequently for the socialist parties than did men. In most recent years this pattern has changed so that women are now more likely than men to support the socialist bloc. This shift has been especially strong among the younger and the more educated women. In the younger age group the polarization by gender is also very striking; women have moved to the left and men to the right. While changing demographic patterns partially explain the gender gap in voting behaviour, differences in values must also be taken into account. The most consistent finding is that stronger religious feelings among women make them more likely to vote for the Christian People's party. Values that suggest a greater emphasis on human interactions, less emphasis on material goods, and a concern with peace, increase female support for the socialist parties.     

Fear in the Voting Booth: The 2004 Presidential Election

Every presidential election offers interesting questions for analysis, but some elections are more puzzling than others. The election of 2004 involves two linked and countervailing puzzles. The first is: How did President George W. Bush manage to win at all, avoiding the fates of George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter? The other is: Why didn’t he win by a more substantial margin than in his first election, as all reelected presidents since Eisenhower were able to do? On the one hand, in the wake of September 11, the president had approval ratings around 90% and the threat of terrorism remained a substantial concern through Election Day. This would seem to afford Bush an overwhelming advantage. On the other hand, the public’s views of the state of the economy and of the course of the war in Iraq were negative. We think that the juxtaposition of these questions will help to explain the outcome of the election and of the pattern of the results. Moreover, by unpacking our explanation of the vote into three policy-related issue components—economic retrospective evaluations, domestic policy views, and foreign policy views—we examine the way these preferences contributed to the electorate’s voting decisions.     

Forecasting the Vote: A Theoretical Comparison of Election Markets and Public Opinion Polls

Michael E. Sobel 421 Fayerweather Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY 10027 e-mail: mes105{at}columbia.edu The dominant methodology for short-term forecasting of electoraloutcomes uses trial-heat polls, where respondents report theircurrent electoral preferences (not their election-day predictions).Election markets, where self-selected participants trade sharesof candidates at prices predictive of election-day results,provide an alternative method that often produces more accurateforecasts. Consequently, increasing attention is being paidto this methodology. However, it is poorly understood and lackstheoretical justification. Surprisingly, the rationale for forecastingusing trial-heat polls has not been completely developed either.We develop the justification for using both election marketsand public opinion polls to forecast electoral outcomes, givingconditions under which each method performs ideally. For theideal case, we prove (under the reasonable assumption that marketparticipants are aware of the poll results) that the mean squareprediction error for the market forecast is smaller than thatof any forecast based on one or more polls. The case in whichthe assumptions supporting each method fail is also considered.It is often reasonable to expect that the best case resultshold approximately, in which case the market forecast shouldalso beat any poll-based forecast. We also compare the biasand variance of market and poll-based forecasts; our resultssuggest the utility of using the series of market prices tostudy the course of campaigns.     

President Perot or Fundamentals of Voting Theory Illustrated with the 1992 Election

Different voting systems can lead to different election outcomeseven when voter preferences are held constant. Using the 1992 election as anexample, it is shown how the outcome of every positional votesystem can be found. Similarly, every possible cumulative andapproval vote outcome is shown. Multiple vote systems, likeapproval and cumulative voting, have disturbing properties. Usingthe 1992 election as illustration, it is shown how a candidate whowins under every positional vote system, who wins every pairwisevote (i.e. is the Condorcet winner), and who has the most firstplace and least last place votes may nevertheless lose underapproval or cumulative voting. Similarly, it is shown how acandidate who loses under every positional system, who loses everypairwise vote (i.e. is the Condorcet loser), and who has the leastfirst place and most last place votes may nevertheless win underapproval or cumulative voting.     

The Accuracy of Recalled Previous Voting: Evidence from Norwegian Election Study Panels

Data on individual variations from one election to the next is fundamental in the study of political behaviour, and should, ideally, be collected through panel studies in which the same people are interviewed at two or more or elections. This method is, however, costly and time consuming, and most analyses of this type are therefore based on recall data, in which the voters report their choices in the current election and also in previous elections. The accuracy of recall data is discussed, based on data from the Norwegian Programme of Election Research in the period 1977–97. Analyses show that one must expect, using this type of data, that about one in four voters will give incorrect information about their voting behaviour at the previous election. Erroneous recall of previous voting can be explained by variations in the voters' affiliation to the parties. Whereas stable voters who remain with the same party normally report their voting correctly, erroneous recall varies around 40 percent for party changers and rises to 70 percent among previous non-voters. There is, however, no uniform underlying pattern in erroneous recall during different periods, which implies that it is difficult to predict exactly how erroneous recall will affect the accuracy of recall data in one particular election.     

Electoral Competitiveness and the Voting Decision Evidence from the Pooled Senate Election Study

Scholarship on congressional elections holds that competitive elections are different from noncompetitive elections. Specifically, some scholars argue that the level of competitiveness determines the criteria or the weight of various criteria for the voting decision. Using the 1988–1990–1992 Pooled Senate Election Study, this research finds that enhanced electoral competitiveness increases the importance of assessments of presidential performance on the voting decision. These effects are particularly large for voters with high levels of educational attainment. Contrary to previous research, in highly competitive elections the role of ideological considerations is smaller than in less competitive elections.     

The Voting Motivations of Conservative Parliamentarians in the Conservative Party Leadership Election of 2001

This article examines the voting motivations of Conservative parliamentarians in the final parliamentary ballot of the Conservative party leadership election of 2001. By constructing a data set of the voting behaviour of Conservative parliamentarians in the final parliamentary party ballot, this article seeks to test a series of hypotheses relating to the ideological disposition and political characteristics of the candidates vis-à-vis their electorate. The article examines how and why the eliminative parliamentary ballot ensured that the party membership was presented with a face-off between the europhile, Kenneth Clarke, and the eurosceptic, Iain Duncan Smith, and why the modernising and socially liberal Michael Portillo was rejected. It will demonstrate that while arguments based on ideological factors are valid, the political characteristics of age and career status were also significant motivational influences that contributed to the rejection of Portillo and the delaying of the modernisation of the Conservative party.     

Deep Interactions with MRP: Election Turnout and Voting Patterns Among Small Electoral Subgroups

Using multilevel regression and poststratification (MRP), we estimate voter turnout and vote choice within deeply interacted subgroups: subsets of the population that are defined by multiple demographic and geographic characteristics. This article lays out the models and statistical procedures we use, along with the steps required to fit the model for the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections. Though MRP is an increasingly popular method, we improve upon it in numerous ways: deeper levels of covariate interaction, allowing for nonlinearity and nonmonotonicity, accounting for unequal inclusion probabilities that are conveyed in survey weights, postestimation adjustments to turnout and voting levels, and informative multidimensional graphical displays as a form of model checking. We use a series of examples to demonstrate the flexibility of our method, including an illustration of turnout and vote choice as subgroups become increasingly detailed, and an analysis of both vote choice changes and turnout changes from 2004 to 2008.     

Effects of the Voting Rights Act in Texas: Perceptions of County Election Administrators

Texas county election administrators view the Voting RightsAct negatively, but acknowledge that the act affects their decisionsabout election administration. The VRA is also seen as costlyand not contributing to citizen participation; however, onlya small percentage of the survey sample reported on here wouldeliminate the VRA. Although there is hostility expressed aboutfederal government intrusion in local affairs, there is compliancewith the VRA by local election officials. The number of Texassubmissions and U.S. Attorney General objections to electionchanges is sizable when compared with other states covered bythe VRA. Federal objections to some election law changes haveresulted in the election of minority public officials. Texas'Section 5 objections are evidence of a history of voter discrimination.     

Region, Local Context, and Voting at the 1997 General Election in England

There has been considerable debate in recent work on voting patterns in Great Britain regarding the importance of regional effects: are these “real” or are they simply statistical artifacts of decision‐making processes at smaller spatial scales which are aggregated up to the regional scale if not incorporated directly into any modeling? Using a multilevel model design, this article reports on analyses of survey data for the 1997 general election in England which allows tests of whether regional variations are no more than aggregation effects. Individual voters are nested within households, neighborhoods, constituencies, and regions and when all of the smaller‐scale spatial levels are included in the model, the observed regional effects are statistically insignificant. At the 1997 general election, at least, regional variations within England in support for the three main parties—basically, a north‐south divide—are aggregation effects.