What are the current preoccupations of economic voting research?

The papers in this volume remind us of the enormous amount of research that has been conducted to date on the economic voting thesis. The sheer volume of findings reported in this theme issue alone is impressive and richly diverse. But what are the core preoccupations that presently fuel this line of investigation? The contributors to this volume include several of the major players in the field. This provides a convenient opportunity to take a snapshot of where the current priorities lie. In all, we see at least two main trajectories, both of which appear to be well on their way to delivering a variety of informative insights.     

Does anybody notice? How policy positions of coalition parties are perceived by voters

Does governing in coalitions affect how coalition parties’ policy positions are perceived by voters? In this article, the authors seek to understand the relationship between parties’ participation in coalition governments and their perception by voters. Policy positions are an important instrument through which parties compete for the support of voters. However, it is unclear to what extent voters can correctly perceive the positions of parties when they govern together with other coalition partners. It is argued here that because of the blurred lines of responsibility in multiparty cabinets, it is difficult for voters to correctly perceive the positions of coalition parties. What is more, it is expected that the internal functioning of coalition cabinets affects the extent to which coalition parties struggle to get their message out to voters. It is hypothesized in the article that intra‐cabinet conflict is negatively related to misperception. To test their theoretical expectations, the authors combine data on the left‐right policy positions of political parties from the Comparative Manifestos Project with data on how these positions are perceived by voters gathered from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems from 1996 to 2011. The findings shed light on the relationship between party competition and coalition governments, and its implications for political representation.     

Citizen forecasting: Can UK voters see the future?

The leading approaches to election forecasting have been statistical models, prediction markets, or vote intention polls. This paper explores a different, little used approach - citizen forecasting - a method never yet tried for the case of the United Kingdom. Citizen forecasting simply asks voters in a scientific pre-election survey who they think will win. This aggregated (averaged) result is then assessed for its accuracy in forecasting the overall election outcome. This assessment is carried out on UK general elections from 1951 to 2005, and then applied to 2010. We find, among other things, that generally speaking the majority of the electorate can foretell the winner in advance.     

A perfect match? The impact of statement selection on voting advice applications' ability to match voters and parties

This study examines how statement selection systematically affects the output of voting advice applications (VAAs). Does the statement selection influence how often voters are matched with parties that ‘should be’ close to them? Our benchmark is a classic account of issue voting, the proximity left–right model. We analyze the Belgian VAA Do the Vote Test and find that the output resembles the left–right model. When more left–right statements are included, more left-wing voters get the advice to vote for left-wing parties and the same is true on the right, while simultaneously advantaging parties with more extreme positions on this dimension. We also analyze issue saliency and find that parties are disadvantaged when more statements about salient issues are included. These findings imply tough choices for VAA builders.     

Why are the highly educated more sympathetic towards welfare recipients?

Stigmatising stereotypes about welfare recipients play a crucial role in building public support for welfare retrenchment. Existing literature finds that the highly educated are more sympathetic towards welfare recipients. This is surprising given the economic advantage associated with educational attainment. Furthermore, educational attainment has increased even as sympathy for welfare recipients has declined. I address these puzzles using three decades of British survey data and find that it is the socially liberal attitudes rather than the economic advantage associated with higher education that explains why this group is sympathetic towards welfare recipients. These findings reveal an educational cleavage in stereotypes about welfare recipients, which is based on non-economic concerns, and has implications for support for welfare retrenchment and policies such as increased conditionality. This cleavage is weaker in more highly educated regions, implying that there are diminishing returns from increasing educational attainment in terms of sympathetic attitudes towards welfare recipients.     

Scope conditions of economic voting: The Danish exception?

In country after country, economic voting analysts have found that voters react sociotropically rather than egotropically. However, in a series of papers Nannestad and Paldam have found the exact opposite result for Danish voters – a result which challenges the scope conditions of economic voting. Changing only a few minor aspects of Nannestad and Paldam’s design, including the introduction of a standard sociotropic item in their models, though, reproduces the standard result: strong sociotropic and weak egotropic effects. The challenging results thus seem to be methodological artefacts; a finding that strengthens confidence in the generalizability of the basic mechanism of economic voting. Voters are not necessarily altruists, however. Sociotropic voting may be driven by both egoistic and altruistic considerations.     

Mystifying but not misleading: when does political ambiguity not confuse voters?

The purpose of political campaigns in democracies is to provide voters with information that allows them to make “correct” choices, that is, vote for the party/candidate whose proposed policy or “position” is closest to their ideal position. In a world where political talk is often ambiguous and imprecise, it then becomes important to understand whether correct choices can still be made. In this paper we identify two elements of political culture that are key to answering this question: (i) whether or not political statements satisfy a so-called “grain of truth” assumption, and (ii) whether or not politicians make statements that are comparative, that is contain information about politicians’ own positions relative to that of their adversaries. The “grain of truth” assumption means that statements, even if vague, do not completely misrepresent the true positions of the parties. We find that only when political campaigning is comparative and has a grain of truth, will voters always make choices as if they were fully informed. Therefore, the imprecision of political statements should not be a problem as long as comparative campaigning is in place.     

Political brand experience and voting intention: Is there a relation?

The current study reveals that Indian voters' political brand experiences positively influence their engagement and trust in a political party. Voters' addiction to political parties mediates the relationship between their party engagement and voting intentions. Thus, political marketers should increase voters' party brand addiction for proper conversion of party engagement in the ballot box. Although voters' political brand trust directly influences their voting intentions, interestingly, their political brand addictions indirectly influence the relationship between brand trust and voting intentions. The findings advocate that political marketers should ensure positive political party experiences to ensure voters' engagement with the party. Positive party experiences increase voters' trust in the party further. Another critical input for political marketers is the role of political brand addiction, which the study findings corroborate. Political brand addiction develops a set of loyal voters for a party and guarantees those voters' support for the party.     

The new plenty; why are some post‐Soviet farms thriving?

In the 1990s, rural economies in many post‐Soviet countries suffered from a staggering decline in production and from outmigration. Over the last 10 to 15 years, some agricultural producers in the former Soviet Union have managed to reverse decline: they have updated production facilities, improved productivity, and increased production and exports. These trends are uneven, as some farmers in some countries are thriving, while others are on the brink of economic collapse. What are the conditions for recovery—for the “new plenty”? This article will argue that targeted and flexible public support to specific rural producers, combined with the recovery of demand in other post‐Soviet countries made rural recoveries possible. These findings suggest that conditions for recovery have materialized from within the post‐Soviet region, rather than being dependent on a transition toward particular type of “good” governance institutions and access to markets in the European Union.     

Red Europe versus no Europe? The impact of attitudes towards the EU and the economic crisis on radical-left voting

The 2014 European Parliament election saw a relatively large increase in the size of radical-left parties (RLPs), particularly in Western Europe. This article aims to provide new ways of thinking about the dynamics of radical-left voting by analysing the changing role of attitudes towards the European Union in explaining support for RLPs at European Parliament elections during the Great Recession. It is argued that the Europeanisation of economic issues during the financial crisis, together with the particular kind of Euroscepticism advocated by these parties, have enabled them to successfully attract a heterogeneous pool of voters. Using the 2009 and 2014 European Election Studies, it is shown that the effect of negative opinions about the EU on support for RLPs increased significantly during the crisis. In addition, support for RLPs also increased among voters with positive views of the EU who were nevertheless highly dissatisfied with the economic situation.     

Preference votes without preference? Institutional effects on preference voting: an experiment

A classical question of political science is to what extent electoral systems influence voting behaviour. Yet, many of these studies examine how different electoral systems affect the election results in terms of vote distribution across parties. Instead, we investigate how electoral rules affect intra party preference voting. Given the importance of the debate on the personalization of politics, insight into how electoral rules shape intra-party choice is a valuable contribution to the literature. In our study, we focus on the effect of two specific rules: the option to cast a list vote and on a single versus multiple preference votes. The results of experiments conducted in Belgium and the Netherlands show that electoral rules indeed influence voting behaviour with regard to intra party preference voting, although differences exist between the Netherlands and Belgium. Moreover, we find that the option to cast a list vote equally affects votes for the first candidate on the list, as well as lower positioned candidates. This suggests that preference votes might be less preferential than has often been assumed.     

Political polarization,voting and democratic representativeness: Too much or too little?

This contribution evaluates the mediating role of different political contexts and levels of democratic consolidation on the effect of party system polarization on ideological vote and discusses how this relationship enhances democratic representativeness. The influence of party system polarization on ideological voting is analyzed in two areas: the voters' competence in identifying parties' ideological positions; and the voters’ tendency to vote for the most ideologically proximate party, which is one of the key features of the spatial theories of voting. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) from 1996 to 2019 and multilevel modelling techniques, the paper compares how those features vary across different types of countries, particularly older and newer democracies, and different regions of the world.     

The Alma Mater effect: Does foreign education of political leaders influence UNGA voting?

Public Choice - We study whether national leaders’ foreign education influences their voting behavior at the United Nations General Assembly. We hypothesize that...     

Strategic voting in open primaries: evidence from?Rush?Limbaugh��s ��operation chaos��

Open primaries create the possibility of strategic crossover voting. On his March 3, 2008 program and subsequent broadcasts, radio personality Rush Limbaugh called on his listeners to extend the Democratic presidential contest by crossing over to vote for Sen. Hillary Clinton. Using voter registration data from North Carolina and election return data from Indiana, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania (states with open, semi-closed, and closed primaries, respectively), I find no evidence of a Limbaugh-motivated switch in political party registration or of a large or statistically significant Limbaugh-motivated increase in voting for Sen. Clinton.     

Public housing desegregation: What are the options?

Abstract

This paper examines policy and programmatic options for the desegregation of low‐income public housing. Desegregation is a strategy for relocating public housing residents or units to communities that offer a better quality of life. This paper considers the likelihood of achieving desegregation, given the factors that created segregation, by exploring the role of past and present policies and programs in producing segregation and the effects of efforts to ameliorate it.

The major finding is that public housing segregation is firmly entrenched in many major cities, and attempts to reverse it have produced marginal changes. Although the federal government has ceased to play a major role in perpetuating racial segregation, it has not taken a strong, consistent, and clear stand on desegregation policy. Some innovative desegregation programs with promising outcomes are currently under way, but it is unlikely that public housing segregation will be abated in the future.     

Ethnic minority voters in the UK 2015 general election: A breakthrough for the Conservative party?

It was widely reported that the 2015 UK general election represented a breakthrough election for the Conservative party among ethnic minority voters – specifically that their vote share among minorities increased, and overtook that of Labour for the first time among some groups. I show that analysis using more representative data yields markedly different results. Looking at (i) party preference from 2010 to 2015, and (ii) reported vote shares from a nationally representative probability survey, I show that the Conservatives increased their support among Hindus - but the Labour party gained in support elsewhere. This is due to movement away from the Liberal Democrats, 2010 minority supporters of the Liberal Democrats moved to supporting Labour rather than the Conservatives in 2015 at a ratio of 2:1. There is also considerable individual-level volatility in party support among ethnic minorities, which is masked by a high level of stability at the aggregate level.     

City government structure: are some institutions undersupplied?

City councilors have a vested interest in maintaining the local government structure that got them elected. This resistance to change may result in non-optimal supplies of particular local political institutions as cities and metropolitan areas experience changes in population and diversity. Using unique data from the State of Florida, we show that there is an undersupply of cities offering larger council sizes. Our evidence also suggests that there is no undersupply of cities with the mayor-council versus the council-manager form of government or cities with at-large versus district election methods.