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.     

Representation and voter participation

This paper presents results from a study of turnout in the 1994 European Parliament elections which inserted several new questions into the post–election Eurobarometer, including some open–ended questions. It distinguishes between circumstantial and voluntary abstention and shows how each type varies depending on the institutional arrangements for the election. Using both the subjective reasons given for abstention and a range of more objective measures of attitudes, it makes the case that conventional views as to the impact of Sunday–voting and the proportionality of the electoral system and as to the non–impact of attitudes to the European Union need to be modified. It concludes by identifying some practical institutional and political measures that could encourage higher levels of participation.     

Representation and voter participation

Abstract This paper presents results from a study of turnout in the 1994 European Parliament elections which inserted several new questions into the post–election Eurobarometer, including some open–ended questions. It distinguishes between circumstantial and voluntary abstention and shows how each type varies depending on the institutional arrangements for the election. Using both the subjective reasons given for abstention and a range of more objective measures of attitudes, it makes the case that conventional views as to the impact of Sunday–voting and the proportionality of the electoral system and as to the non–impact of attitudes to the European Union need to be modified. It concludes by identifying some practical institutional and political measures that could encourage higher levels of participation.     

Electoral contexts that impede voter coordination

An electorate can effectively coordinate on the viable parties in its district, or a relatively large proportion of its voters may “waste” their votes on parties that fail to obtain office. Avoiding wasted votes can be more or less difficult depending on several characteristics of the electoral context. Unfortunately, many of the features of electoral contexts hypothesized to cause vote wastage have been tested piecemeal on only a handful of (non-random) cases and/or with data inappropriately aggregated to the national, rather than the district, level. Based on results from 2007 districts in 183 lower chamber elections across 21 countries, we find evidence that new electoral rules, the entry of new parties, past electoral volatility, and high district magnitudes are all likely to make coordination a challenge, with entry by new parties having the largest, most consistent effect.     

Electoral participation

Among her publications are a number of articles and chapters on political participation and ethnic politics.     

Electoral context,habit-formation and voter turnout: A new analysis

Drawing on the concept of habitual voting (Plutzer, 2002), Franklin (2004) argues that the effects of electoral context on voter turnout will be largely limited to the cohorts who have experienced few elections in their lifetime. Those with more electoral experience would thus remain unaffected. Testing the above hypothesis is a way of a feasible indirect examination of the concept of habitual voting. Such tests have so far focused primarily on the impact of electoral competitiveness on turnout. I propose a new superior analysis of Franklin's hypothesis that, I claim, approaches the standards of a natural experiment. My test – focusing on the national election cycles as a contextual trait of the European Parliament elections – delivers new evidence supporting this hypothesis.     

The economic model of voter participation: A further test

The central hypothesis of the economic model of voter participation was put to an empirical test. It was found that the coefficient of population size, which represents the subjective probability of affecting election results, is negative and significant in municipal local elections, but insignificant in national Knesset elections. Therefore, this variable is unable to represent subjective probability in the latter case.It was suggested that the economic model is more relevant to local elections than to Knesset elections. The empirical results revealed that the regression coefficients of municipal elections that took place separately from Knesset elections fit the expected outcome of the economic model whereas when municipal elections were held simultaneously with the Knesset election this did not hold true.     

Corrupt political jurisdictions and voter participation

An FBI investigation of county purchasing activities in the mid 1980s resulted in the conviction of 55 of Mississippi's 410 county supervisors. Analyzing data from the state's 1987 county supervisor elections and hypothesizing that candidates' demands for votes increase as the gains from holding public office increase, we predict larger voter turnouts in the 26 of the state's 82 counties where supervisor corruption was exposed. Holding constant average voter turnout in the preceding U.S. presidential election and controlling for the competitiveness of supervisor races, we find that more Mississippians indeed voted in corrupt than in non-corrupt counties.     

The local roots of the participation gap: Inequality and voter turnout

It is generally accepted that the rich are more likely to participate in politics than the poor. It is also generally accepted that the probability than an individual will participate in elections is influenced by the gap between the rich and the poor. There is little agreement, however, about whether inequality across time and space increases or decreases participation. In this paper we examine the impact of inequality across space. We suggest that the impact of inequality depends crucially on whether it is defined in terms of variations between geographical units (‘segregation’) or within geographical units (‘heterogeneity’). Evidence to support this argument is drawn from multi-level British data. Heterogeneity has a mildly positive effect on participation but this effect seems to be outweighed by the negative impact of segregation. The effect of segregation, moreover, is most pronounced among the poorer sections of the population, indicating that geographical isolation among the poor ('ghettoization') leads to lower turnout among these groups.     

Electoral contexts that assist voter coordination: Ballot position effects in Poland

Hypothetically, in the open list PR system, all contestants, independently of their ballot position, have the same chance of winning a mandate. In practice, candidates placed at the top of the ballot enjoy a large surplus of votes. Their success can be explained by the primacy effect, in which the first ballot position acts as a focal point. The analysis of 6187 candidates running for the Polish Sejm in 2007 finds not only significant gains for top candidates, but that proximity to the upper end of the ballot likewise matters. It correspondingly discovers a weak benefit for candidates placed last on the list. Other sources of candidate advantage such as incumbency, capital city effect, age and gender are also investigated.     

Electoral participation in the Netherlands: Individual and contextual influences

Abstract Research into electoral participation has produced two traditions, one focusing mainly on individual level explanations while the second concentrates primarily on aggregate level explanations. By bringing these two research approaches together, we are not only able to explain individual electoral participation more thoroughly, but we also gain additional insight into the influence of aggregate level characteristics on individual behavior. We combine eight National Election Studies held in the Netherlands between 1971 and 1994 enabling us to study variation on the individual and the contextual (aggregate) level, including interactions between these two levels. Findings show that the addition of contextual characteristics form a significant improvement to an individual level model predicting electoral participation. Findings also confirm our expectation that the influence of individual characteristics such as education or political interest is dependent upon contextual characteristics describing for instance the salience of the election.