Sophisticated voting in the 1980 presidential election

Survey research on the 1980 presidential election does not support the contention that sophisticated voting is employed by voters to avoid their least preferred alternative. Complete preference orderings for Anderson, Carter, and Reagan are inferred from survey responses for a sample of voters. Data analysis focuses on reported vote for preference groups which rank Anderson first, comparing those who voted for Anderson to those who voted for their second choice. Results show that sophisticated voters appear to have voted on the basis of positive aspects of their second most preferred candidate rather than in avoidance of negative aspects of their least preferred candidate.     

Anticandidate voting in the 1984 presidential election

Data from a national survey conducted in 1984 form the basis for a new analysis of anticandidate voting in presidential elections, i.e., voting focused more on a candidate one opposes than on a candidate one prefers. Anticandidate voting is viewed as the end product of a process whereby voters attempt to reduce discomfort that cross-pressures generate within their decision frameworks. In 1984, nearly a third of all likely voters said they were primarily motivated by a desire to voteagainst one of the two presidential candidates, a rate of anticandidate voting similar to that observed in the Johnson-Goldwater election of 1964 but well below that of the 1980 Reagan-Carter election. However, factors related to anticandidate voting in the past were not consistently linked to anticandidate voting in 1984. We conclude that the presence of Ronald Reagan exerted such a strong influence on the 1984 campaign that processes that would normally be observable, such as anticandidate voting, were overridden.     

Transnational absentee voting in the 2006 Mexican presidential election: The roots of participation

In many of the major migrant-sending countries of the developing world, governments have extended political rights to expatriates, often including the right to vote via absentee ballot. Little is known about the factors that shape transnational electoral participation, however. Using official records provided by the Mexican Federal Electoral Institute, we model the incidence of expatriate ballot solicitations prior to the 2006 presidential election in Mexico. Based on a series of event count regression analyses conducted at the level of U.S. metropolitan statistical areas, we find that transnational involvement in the election depended not only on socioeconomic factors but also on the concentration of Mexican civic associations within the local community, the presence of Spanish-language media, and distance from the Mexican border. This suggests that the roots of immigrant transnational participation include factors familiar to social scientists as well as dynamics uniquely relevant to immigrant communities.     

Partisan schemas and economic voting: The federal budget deficit and the 1988 presidential election

This paper considers the issue of the budget deficit and its influence on the 1988 presidential election. Specifically, we are concerned with the role of partisan economic schemas, and the possibility that many voters might have supported the incumbent Republicansbecause of the deficit problem (reasoning that the GOP, regardless of the failures of the previous 8 years, was the best party to reduce government spending). We find that the deficit issue, despite its high salience, did not have an overwhelming impact on the 1988 race, but what effect it did have apparently favored the Republicans. We demonstrate that schematic voters concerned about the deficit were, indeed, more likely to support George Bush over Michael Dukakis. We conclude by discussing the importance and limits of partisan schemas in explaining economic voting.     

On expressive voting: Evidence from the 1988 U.S. presidential election

People turn out to cast their votes simply because they want to ``cheer'' or ``boo'' their favored or unfavored candidates. This expressive voting behavior is in marked contrast to the instrumental voting behavior, i.e., people vote because they perceive voting as a means of achieving a particular election outcome. In this paper we report an econometric study on voting behavior that uses data from the 1988 American National Election Study. The results reveal that the ``cheering'' and ``booing'' effects are statistically significant, and that they exert substantial influence on bothturnout and voter choice. We also obtain evidence against theproposition that people turn out to vote because they considerthemselves to be potentially decisive with regard to the electionoutcome.     

Brazilian politics and the presidential election

With far-right candidate Jair Bolsonaro leading in polls, Brazil may be poised for political upheaval in the October 2018 presidential election. However, it is unlikely that the elevation of the untested Bolsonaro to the presidency would yield quick solutions to Brazil's political, economic and social problems.     

Economic voting in a crisis: The Irish election of 2011

The paper explores a question raised by the 2011 Irish election, which saw an almost unprecedented decline in support for a major governing party after an economic collapse that necessitated an ECB/IMF ‘bailout’. This seems a classic case of ‘economic voting’ in which a government is punished for incompetent performance. How did the government lose this support: gradually, as successive economic indicators appeared negative, or dramatically, following major shocks? The evidence points to losses at two critical junctures. This is consistent with an interpretation of the link between economics and politics that allows for qualitative judgements by voters in assigning credit and blame for economic performance.     

Organized crime and the 1960 presidential election

It has been asserted that, based on a pre-election agreement promising them favorable federal treatment, the Chicago Mob (known as the “Outfit”) was responsible for John Kennedy’s election in 1960. An examination of these claims indicates that the sources generally lack credibility and their accounts are implausible. Additionally, there is no evidence Outfit controlled wards/suburbs around Chicago or members of Outfit influenced labor unions voted unusually heavily Democratic in the 1960 presidential election. Therefore, if anything the Outfit “double crossed” the Kennedys by not delivering the promised votes, as opposed to vice-versa. “Someone forgot to tell the horse.” – An old saying in horse racing.     

Cross-pressured economic voting in America: The 1984 election

Prior work on U.S. presidential elections has concluded consistently that voter evaluations of national economic conditions have had a greater impact on electoral outcomes than have perceptions of personal economic situations. Utilizing data from the 1984 National Election Study, we find confirmatory evidence for such a pattern. A more disaggreated examination of voters and their economic perceptions for that year, however, reveals some important refinements of earlier findings. Specifically, there is a sizable minority for whom personal economic conditions appear to matter more. Further, the role of noneconomic issue voting in distinguishing economic groups, a topic which has been largely ignored up to this point, is found to be quite pronounced — overriding, in several instances, the influence even of partisan and economic predispositions.     

Multi-dimensional economic voting in Spain: The 2008 election

Economic voting studies remain contentious in Spain. The notion is widely-held that there is no economic vote in that country, due to the pervasive and effacing influences of left-right ideology. Still, a growing number of investigations show a significant impact of economic evaluation on the vote choice in Spanish national elections. At least one possible exception here is the 2008 election, where the question has received no systematic treatment. In this study, we explore the impact of economic voting in that contest. We find, first, the presence of strong economic voting of the valence kind. Second, we find that two hitherto unstudied dimensions of economic voting – position and patrimony – have their own independent effect.     

Retrospective voting: An experimental study

This essay reports on some experiments designed to study two candidate electoral competition when voters are ‘retrospective’ voters. The experiments consist of a sequence of elections in which subjects play the part of both voters and candidates. In each election the incumbent adopts a policy position in a one-dimensional policy space, and voters are paid (on the basis of single peaked utility function over that space) for the position adopted by the incumbent. Neither voters nor candidates are informed of the voter utility functions, and the only information received by the voter is the payoff he has received from the present and previous incumbent administrations. Despite the severely limited information of candidates and voters, we find that, generally, candidates converge toward the median voter ideal point.     

Deducing preferences and choices in the 1980 presidential election

A rational-choice model of voting behavior provides a framework for statistically estimating the numbers of voters who had each of twelve possible strict and nonstrict preference orders for the three major candidates in the 1980 presidential election. These estimates, based upon explicit assumptions about voting behavior, lead to a number of deductions not obtained in previous studies that have defined rationality in terms of ‘issue voting’. Among other results, John Anderson is found to have both first-place and residual support far in excess of his popular-vote showing, from which it is inferred that he would have seriously challenged the major-party candidates under approval voting. Yet, there is not strong evidence that voter's preferences were single-peaked, with Anderson perceived as the candidate in the middle on a left-right ideological scale.