Personality and Turnout: Results from the Finnish Longitudinal Studies

Scholars in the field of electoral participation have for long been aware that turnout is strongly connected to sociopsychological variables such as religiosity, party identification, political interest and sense of political efficacy. The impact of personality characteristics has remained largely unexplored until recently. Based on the Jyväskylä Longitudinal Study of Personality and Social Development (JYLS, original N = 369), this article analyses the links between individuals' personality traits and their propensity to vote at ages 36, 42 and 50. The personality traits are measured by using the five‐factor model of personality consisting of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness to experience. The results show both extraversion and agreeableness to be positively associated with electoral participation, but the findings are not consistent at all ages. Finally, the analysis suggests that the effect of extraversion varies depending on the level of education. Whereas well‐educated people are more prone to be habitual voters regardless of their level of extraversion, among less‐educated respondents it has a more sizeable effect.     

Personality traits,political attitudes and vote choice: Evidence from the United States

Past studies have documented the significant relationships between personality traits and voter turnout, but we know less about whether personality traits influence individual vote choices. This study examines whether such attitudinal factors as party identification, feeling thermometers toward the candidates, policy preferences and executive approval mediate the effects of personality traits on vote choice in the United States. Using data from ANES 2012, this study finds no direct relationship between personality traits and vote choice. More importantly, the results reveal that through previously mentioned attitudinal factors, higher levels of extraversion, conscientiousness and emotional stability indirectly decrease the probability of voting for Obama, whereas a higher level of openness to experience indirectly increases the probability of voting for Obama. Nevertheless, agreeableness only exerts an indirect, positive influence on vote choice via executive approval. Overall, this study provides insight into the relationship between personality traits and vote choice and makes up for the insufficiency in the study of personality and voting behavior.     

Do we need warm leaders? Exploratory study of the role of voter evaluations of leaders’ traits on turnout in seven European countries

Previous research on leader effects has focused exclusively on the impact of voters’ evaluations of leaders on vote choice, disregarding possible effects on the prior step of deciding whether or not to turn out to vote. In line with the personalisation of politics thesis, leaders have a higher impact among dealigned voters. Previous studies have demonstrated that leader effects are stronger among voters who voice their dealignment – namely party switchers. However, the potential impact of leaders among those who exited (i.e., who have abstained) is still unstudied. Could leaders have a mobilisation effect and therefore trigger turnout decisions? What characteristics of party leaders are more relevant in this regard? This article is the first comparative study to examine how the evaluation of party leaders’ traits influences voter turnout in general elections. The work incorporates data from election studies across seven countries with different social contexts (Portugal, Spain, Ireland, Germany, United Kingdom, Italy and Hungary). Characteristics of leaders were grouped into two dimensions – competence and warmth – in accordance with the stereotype content model and relevant studies on leaders’ traits evaluation. Multiple binary logistic regression models were performed to analyse the predictive power of competence and warmth on turnout, controlling for sociodemographic, political ideology variables and voters’ past political behaviour. Results reinforce the personalisation of politics theory, showing the utmost relevance of warmth personality traits of leaders in voter turnout decisions. Competence personality traits were found to be relevant only in some situations. Interaction effects were also demonstrated between warmth evaluations and identifying with a right-wing party as well as past political behaviour with both warmth and competence.     

Personality and Political Participation: The Mediation Hypothesis

Recent analyses have demonstrated that personality affects political behavior. According to the mediation hypothesis, the effect of personality on political participation is mediated by classical predictors, such as political interest, internal efficacy, political discussion, or the sense that voting is a civic duty. This paper outlines various paths that link personality traits to two participatory activities: voter turnout in European Parliament elections and participation in protest actions. The hypotheses are tested with data from a large, nationally representative, face-to-face survey of the Spanish population conducted before and after the 2009 European Parliament elections using log-linear path models that are well suited to study indirect relationships. The results clearly confirm that the effects of personality traits on voter turnout and protest participation are sizeable but indirect. They are mediated by attitudinal predictors.     

The Effect of Interviewer Gender on the Survey Response

We examined the existence of gender-of-interviewer effects in two local-area surveys in which male and female interviewers were randomly assigned to interview male and female respondents. Small but consistent gender-of-interviewer effects arose on questions related to the women's movement, women's issues, and gender equality, demonstrating that, as expected, respondents were more likely to provide feminist answers to female interviewers. Gender-of-interviewer effects were somewhat more pronounced and consistent on controversial political topics: the women's movement (feminists and political activism) and their policy agenda. There was mixed evidence on whether respondents were equally susceptible to gender-of-interviewer effects. In one of the surveys, gender-of-interviewer effects were more pronounced among less well-educated and younger respondents than among respondents who were better educated or older. This effect was not replicated in the second survey.     

Party and Gender Stereotypes in Campaign Attacks

Research on negative campaigning has largely overlooked the role of stereotypes. In this study, we argue that the gender and partisan stereotypes associated with traits and policy issues interact with a candidate’s gender and partisanship to shape the effectiveness of campaign attacks. We draw on expectancy-violation theory to argue that candidates may be evaluated more harshly when attacks suggest the candidate has violated stereotypic assumptions about their group. Thus, attacks on a candidate’s “home turf,” or those traits or issues traditionally associated with their party or gender, may be more effective in reducing support for the attacked candidate. We use two survey experiments to examine the effects of stereotype-based attacks—a Trait Attack Study and an Issue Attack Study. The results suggest that female candidates are particularly vulnerable to trait based attacks that challenge stereotypically feminine strengths. Both male and female candidates proved vulnerable to attacks on policy issues stereotypically associated with their party and gender, but the negative effects of all forms of stereotype-based attacks were especially large for democratic women. Our results offer new insights into the use of stereotypes in negative campaigning and their consequences for the electoral fortunes of political candidates.     

Does E-Voting matter for turnout,and to whom?

Empirical evidence suggests that e-voting has no measurable effects on turnout. However, existing studies did (or could) not look at e-voting effects on the individual level. We innovate by analyzing whether and to what extent the availability of e-voting fosters turnout among specific groups of citizens, and how this influences the equality of participation. To that end, we estimate Bayesian multi-level models on a unique set of official data on citizens’ participation covering 30 ballots between 2008 and 2016 in Geneva, Switzerland, which has the most far-reaching experience with e-voting worldwide. Despite the fact that e-voting was added to an easy-to-use form of postal voting, we find that offering e-voting has increased turnout among abstainers and occasional voters. By contrast, the effects of e-voting availability on the equality of participation are mixed with respect to the age cohorts and gender.     

News vs. Entertainment: How Increasing Media Choice Widens Gaps in Political Knowledge and Turnout

Despite dramatic increases in available political information through cable television and the Internet, political knowledge and turnout have not changed noticeably. To explain this seeming paradox, I argue that greater media choice makes it easier for people to find their preferred content. People who like news take advantage of abundant political information to become more knowledgeable and more likely to turn out. In contrast, people who prefer entertainment abandon the news and become less likely to learn about politics and go to the polls. To test this proposition, I develop a measure of people's media content preference and include it in a representative opinion survey of 2,358 U.S. residents. Results show that content preference indeed becomes a better predictor of political knowledge and turnout as media choice increases. Cable TV and the Internet increase gaps in knowledge and turnout between people who prefer news and people who prefer entertainment.     

Gender Stereotypes,Information Search,and Voting Behavior in Political Campaigns

It is still unclear exactly how gender influences vote choice. Using an information processing perspective, we argue that instead of directly influencing vote choice, candidate gender guides the amounts and types of information that voters search for during a campaign, and that effects of gender on vote choice ultimately come from differences in information search influenced by candidate gender. Using two unique experimental datasets, we test the effects of candidate gender on vote choice and information search. We find that subjects change their search based on a candidate’s gender, seeking out more competence-related information about female candidates than they do for male candidates, as well as more information related to “compassion issues.” We also find that evaluations of candidates’ traits and issue positions are important predictors of subjects’ vote choice.     

Can governments use Get Out The Vote letters to solve Europe’s turnout crisis? Evidence from a field experiment

Declining levels of turnout are a problem in European elections. Are Get Out The Vote campaigns the solution to the problem? While many studies have investigated such campaigns in the US, little is known about their effect in Europe. The article presents a field experiment in which encouragement to vote in an upcoming Danish election is delivered to more than 60,000 first-time voters using direct personal letters. Eight different letters are designed, based on the calculus of voting and prospect theory. The sample is randomly divided into treatment groups or the control group. Using validated turnout, small positive effects of receiving a letter on turnout are found, with little difference across letters. The letters mostly mobilised voters with a low propensity to vote and thus increased equality in participation. In sum, while letters have some effect, they are not likely to be a panacea for solving Europe’s turnout challenges.     

The Politics of Participation: Mobilization and Turnout over Time

Recent studies have argued that mobilization is not only an important determinant of individual participation, but that it can explain the mystery of declining voter turnout in the United States over the past 40 years. We identify and evaluate three possible ways in which mobilization might have affected levels of turnout over time: (a) aggregate rates of mobilization may have declined, (b) the effectiveness of mobilization contacts may have declined, and (c) the targeting of mobilization may have changed. The first two theories have been well articulated in the literature; the third has not. We find no evidence of a decline in mobilizing activity, nor do we find that mobilizing techniques have become less effective. Although we find that campaigns are more likely to target habitual voters in recent years, this pattern of behavior can only explain a small amount of the overall decline in turnout.     

Gender Differences in Assessments of Party Leaders

Is there a relationship between party leader gender and voters' assessments? The answer is ‘yes’ according to theses on gender identity and stereotyping. A voter survey during the 2011 Danish general election allows for a comprehensive analysis of a less likely case with four male and four female party leaders. Female party leaders are assessed more positively by female voters than male voters both in regard to general party leader sympathy and assessment of specific characteristics, whereas it is not the case that male party leaders are assessed more positively by male voters than female voters. The impact of gender does not increase with age; in fact, the opposite is the case among men since younger male voters have less sympathy for female party leaders. Furthermore, there is no support for the expectation that voters with more education or with higher levels of political interest and knowledge are more positive towards party leaders of their own gender than voters with less education. Also, the relationship between gender and voter assessment is not stronger prior to an election campaign than immediately after an election. Hence, in sum, gender identity does not seem to require a higher level of political sophistication, nor does it decrease with higher levels of information.     

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.     

Confident and cautious candidates: Explaining under-representation of women in Danish municipal politics

Why are women under-represented even in democratic and egalitarian countries? Previous research considers either demand-side or supply-side explanations. We integrate both perspectives in a least-likely case for the under-representation of women, namely the municipal councils in Denmark. The data stems from a candidate choice conjoint experiment, a survey among potential candidates, and data on the actual pool of nominated candidates. On the voter demand-side, we show that there is no pro-male bias in general or in combination with other candidate traits nor that traits evaluated positively by voters appear more frequently among actual male candidates. On the supply-side, we find that women are less likely to be interested in running for political office. This is primarily because women assess their own political qualifications significantly lower than men. The under-supply of female candidates seem to drive the disparity suggesting that we should focus more on supply-side factors to overcome the gender imbalance.     

Strategic campaigning, closeness, and voter mobilization in U.S. Presidential elections

The scholarly literature on voter mobilization is ambivalent regarding the effects of closeness on turnout. Economic analyses of turnout (i.e. the classic calculus of voting) contend that as elections become closer, voters perceive their participation as more valuable because there is a greater chance that they will cast the deciding vote. Other work argues that voters do not take closeness into account because the probability that their vote uniquely changes the outcome of an election is quite small even in close elections. Still, this second perspective maintains that closeness may increase turnout because elites distribute campaign resources to places where election results could be affected by mobilizing additional supporters. While the latter perspective is theoretically well-developed, empirical support for the notion that elite activity (rather than citizen perceptions) connects closeness and turnout is limited. Using improved measures of closeness and campaign activities, we test for citizen perception and elite mobilization effects on turnout in the context of U.S. Presidential elections. Results show that while closeness has no direct effect on turnout, elites indeed target campaign activities on close states and the asymmetric distribution of resources across states results in higher turnout in battleground states.     

Politicians in Television

ABSTRACT

Television viewers, journalists and social influence analysts often use the term “television character” or “media-savvy person” when referring to people (also to politicians) who draw the viewers' attention and interest (Reeves, Naas, 2000). The purpose of the research presented herein is to answer two questions: (1) what are the differences in social perception of five main personality dimensions (“the Big Five”: agreeableness, conscientiousness, extraversion, neuroticism, and openness to experience [intellect]) of media-savvy politicians and those considered to belong to the non-media-savvy type; and (2) how traits attributed to media-savvy and media-un-savvy politicians remain connected with the viewers' political self-identification. A hundred journalism students, using an adjective list for “the Big Five” diagnosis (five dimensions of personality), were to identify their political beliefs as right wing, mixed, or left wing and to describe a politician they considered to be the most media-savvy and the least media-savvy person. Results indicate that media-avvy politicians are perceived to be more extrovert (dynamic), more open to experience, and more conscientious than their media-un-savvy counterparts; participants' (viewers') political beliefs reflect the importance of openness and conciliation in perception of media-savvy and non-media-savvy politicians.     

Timing the habit: Voter registration and turnout

Does registration timing impact whether an individual becomes a habitual voter? We argue that those registering in near proximity to a presidential election are more likely to vote in the upcoming election compared to those who register at other times during an election cycle because they seek an immediate return on their investment, but they are less likely to become habituated to vote in subsequent mid-term and primary elections. We suggest that this is because last-minute registrants, many of whom were registered through voter registration drives, were not focused on long-term electoral payoffs. Leveraging Florida's statewide voter files, we use logistic regression and propensity score weighting with county fixed-effects to evaluate if the timing of voter registration has significant short- and long-term turnout effects in high- and low-salience elections, controlling for party registration and an array of demographic factors. We find that the timing of registration does affect turnout, as last-minute registrants are not equally likely to vote in ensuing elections.     

Women on the Battleground: Does Gender Condition the Use of Negative Campaigning?

This article presents the findings of an explorative study examining to what extent and under which conditions gender influences the use of negative campaigning in Western Europe. It advances existing research in two ways. First, it is one of the few empirical examinations to date exploring gender differences in negative campaigning outside the US context. Second, it brings to bear novel data on this topic from British, Dutch and German parliamentary election campaigns between 1980 and 2006. In essence, this study explores whether we can find gender effects on the use of negative campaigning in Western Europe. These effects are less likely to be found in these three Western European countries than in the United States, because we expect smaller candidate effects in parliamentary systems than in presidential systems. The analysis suggests that female party leaders are significantly more likely to “go negative”. However, this difference between male and female party leaders is entirely due to the inclusion of Margaret Thatcher in the analysis. Without her, the difference disappears.     

Disagreement and the Avoidance of Political Discussion: Aggregate Relationships and Differences across Personality Traits

Social networks play a prominent role in the explanation of many political phenomena. Using data from a nationally representative survey of registered voters conducted around the 2008 U.S. presidential election, we document three findings. First, we show that during this period, people discussed politics as frequently as (or more frequently than) other topics such as family, work, sports, and entertainment with frequent discussion partners. Second, the frequency with which a topic is discussed is strongly and positively associated with reported agreement on that topic among these same discussion partners. Supplementary experimental evidence suggests this correlation arises because people avoid discussing politics when they anticipate disagreement. Third, we show that Big Five personality traits affect how frequently people discuss a variety of topics, including politics. Some of these traits also alter the relationship between agreement and frequency of discussion in theoretically expected ways. This suggests that certain personality types are more likely to be exposed to divergent political information, and that not everyone is equally likely to experience cross‐cutting discourse, even in heterogeneous networks.