The Effect of Social Conformity on Collective Voting Behavior

This article investigates the effect of social conformity onvoting behavior. Past research shows that many people vote toconform with the social norm that voting is a civic duty. Thehypothesis here is that when conformity motivates people tovote, it also stimulates conformist behavior among some voterswhen they decide which party to vote for. This produces a distinctiverelationship between voter turnout and the distribution of votesamong parties—a relationship not anticipated by rationalchoice theory. I test a mathematical model of this behaviorwith linear and nonlinear regression analyses of state-leveldata for presidential elections in the United States from 1904to 1996, longitudinal data on parliamentary elections in WesternEurope over most of the twentieth century, and cross-sectionaldata for recent elections in Western Europe, Eastern Europe,and Russia. The results generally validate the model.     

Reprecincting and Voting Behavior

Despite the expansion of convenience voting across the American states, millions of voters continue to cast ballots at their local precincts on Election Day. We argue that those registered voters who are reassigned to a different Election Day polling place prior to an election are less likely to turn out to vote than those assigned to vote at the same precinct location, as a new precinct location incurs both search and transportation costs on reassigned voters. Utilizing voter file data and precinct shape files from Manatee County, Florida, from before and after the 2014 General Election, we demonstrate that the redrawing of precinct boundaries and the designation of Election Day polling places is not a purely technical matter for local election administrators, but may affect voter turnout of some registered voters more than others. Controlling for a host of demographic, partisan, vote history, and geospatial factors, we find significantly lower turnout among registered voters who were reassigned to a new Election Day precinct compared to those who were not, an effect not equally offset by those voters turning to other available modes of voting (either early in-person or absentee). All else equal, we find that registered Hispanic voters were significantly more likely to abstain from voting as a result of being reassigned than any other racial group.     

Mobilization Around New Convenience Voting Methods: A Field Experiment to Encourage Voting by Mail with a Downloadable Ballot and Early Voting

Political Behavior - Election reform has allowed citizens in many states to choose among convenience voting methods. We report on a field experiment that tests messages derived from theories about...     

Policy‐Induced Risk and Responsive Participation: The Effect of a Son's Conscription Risk on the Voting Behavior of His Parents

When do government policies induce responsive political participation? This study tests two hypotheses in the context of military draft policies. First, policy‐induced risk motivates political participation. Second, contextual‐level moderators, such as local events that make risk particularly salient, may intensify the effect of risk on participation. I use the random assignment of induction priority in the Vietnam draft lotteries to measure the effect of a son's draft risk on the voter turnout of his parents in the 1972 presidential election. I find higher rates of turnout among parents of men with “losing” draft lottery numbers. Among parents from towns with at least one prior war casualty, I find a 7 to 9 percentage point effect of a son's draft risk on his parents’ turnout. The local casualty contextual‐level moderator is theorized to operate through the mechanism of an availability heuristic, whereby parents from towns with casualties could more readily imagine the adverse consequences of draft risk.     

Conceptualizing Usage in Voting Behavior for Political Marketing: An Application of Consumer Behavior

Political marketing has borrowed and adapted many terms from mainstream marketing, such as image management (segmentation, targeting, and positioning) and consumer (voter). In marketing, the terms “user” and “usage” have been established, yet their application to political marketing is less clear. This paper analyzes the feasibility and usefulness of usage in the political context. Drawing from the literature on usage, a model is developed and applied to four voting environments: Britain, Australia, Russia, and Belarus. One critical factor that emerges is the concept of choice, whereby the voter may chose to indicate their preference for one party yet be forced to use a different party as chosen by collective choice. Another issue is the potential for habitual voting behavior to limit decision making. It is concluded that usage needs to be contextualized specifically for political marketing.     

The Contextual Causes of Issue and Party Voting in American Presidential Elections

This paper analyzes the influence of the two most commonly examined causes of presidential vote choice, policy preferences and party identification. The focus is on change across elections in order to assess how the effects of issues and partisanship respond to the larger political context in which voters make their decisions. In contrast to party centric views of politics, I find little direct responsiveness to party issue contrast and substantial influence of candidate issue contrast. Further, I find that leading hypotheses for the “resurgence in partisanship” are not consistent with some important facts suggesting that the explanation remains elusive.     

White Voters and African American Candidates for Congress

The vast majority of African American officeholders are elected from jurisdictions with sizable numbers of African Americans. The most common explanation for this phenomenon locates the cause among white voters who are reluctant to vote for black candidates, which thereby limits the electoral prospects of black candidates in white constituencies. This study analyzes exit poll data from the 1996 and 1998 House elections in order to test the notion that white voters are averse to black candidates. Despite theoretical expectations that predict the existence of white voter discrimination against African American candidates, remarkably little is apparent. Thus, other explanations for patterns of African American officeholding in the United States need to be pursued.     

Sophisticated Behavior under Majoritarian and Non-Majoritarian Voting Procedures

This study addresses the issue of sincere and sophisticated voting under majoritarian and non-majoritarian voting procedures. By conducting experimental voting games, we compared a common majoritarian procedure, Plurality Voting (PV) with a non-majoritarian procedure, Sequential Voting by Veto (SVV). We focused on two different aspects of the subject: the likelihood of sophisticated voting under each one of the voting procedures and the conditions that foster sincere and sophisticated voting under these procedures. The results highlighted the significant differences between majoritarian and non-majoritarian voting procedures as a key factor in determining the tendency of voters to use sincere or sophisticated voting. Clearly, the sincere model was dominant in SVV games while sophisticated voting dominated the PV games. The extent of sophisticated voting ran counter to the group size, a tendency that was stronger under SVV than under PV. By demonstrating the advantages of the minority principle, when voters are small in number, we hope to encourage the development of a solution that will enable the use of SVV in general elections.     

War,the Presidency,and Legislative Voting Behavior

An extraordinary body of scholarship suggests that war, perhaps more than any other contributor, is responsible for the emergence of a distinctly modern presidency. Central to this argument is a belief that members of Congress predictably and reliably line up behind the president during times of war. Few scholars, however, have actually subjected this argument to quantitative investigation. This article does so. Estimating ideal points for members of Congress at the start and end of the most significant wars in the past century, we find consistent—albeit not uniform—evidence of a wartime effect. The outbreaks of both world wars and the post‐9/11 era—though not the Korean or Vietnam wars—coincided with discernible changes in member voting behavior that better reflected the ideological leanings of the presidents then in office. In the aftermath of all these wars, meanwhile, members shifted away from the sitting president’s ideological orientation. These findings are not confined to any single subset of policies, are robust to a wide variety of modeling specifications, and run contrary to scholarship that emphasizes ideological consistency in members’ voting behavior.     

The Effect of Voting Technology on Voter Turnout: Do Computers Scare the Elderly?

In the aftermath of the Florida debacle in the 2000 Presidential election, there has been an emphasis on replacing voting equipment perceived as inferior (e.g., punch card ballots) with more technologically advanced voting methods. It is possible, however, that not all voters will be comfortable with high-tech voting devices. Elderly voters, for example, might be familiar with the old voting machines but apprehensive about computerized voting. If this is the case, the fear of new voting technology might cause the turnout of elderly voters to decrease. We test for this effect by analyzing the change in voter turnout across Georgia counties in the two most recent gubernatorial elections, as it relates to the share of the counties’ populations that is over the age of 65 years. Consistent with the hypothesis that computers scare the elderly, we find a significantly negative relationship between the change in voter turnout and the elderly share of the population. An additional 1% of the population that is elderly is associated with a 0.3–0.4% decrease in turnout. The hypothesis that elderly voters were apprehensive about the change in voting technology is also supported by the increase in absentee balloting.     

The Effect of Information Signals on Strategic Voting in Mock Mayoral Elections

While theoretical work on strategic voting emphasizes the importance of elite messages in persuading minor party supporters to abandon their first preference, few empirical studies have examined this relationship. I argue that while poll results certainly increase the likelihood of changing one’s vote, explicit information signals can increase this probability even more. Furthermore, these effects will be moderated by the presence of a counter message and the sponsor of the explicit information signal. These hypotheses are tested with data generated from two experiments. Electronic supplementary material  The online version of this article (doi:) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

The Calculus of Voting in Compulsory Voting Systems

Compulsory voting laws have consistently been demonstrated to boost electoral participation. Despite the widespread presence of compulsory voting and the significant impact these laws appear to have on voting behavior, surprisingly little effort has been devoted to analyzing how mandatory voting alters the decision-making calculus of individual voters in these systems. Moreover, studies that investigate the influence of compulsory voting laws on electoral participation generally treat these policies monolithically, with scant attention to the nuances that differentiate mandatory voting laws across systems and to their consequences for voting rates. Analyses that explicitly and empirically examine the effects of penalties and enforcement are surprisingly rare. This study aims to fill that void by adapting rational choice models of participation in elections for compulsory voting systems. I find that the level of penalties countries impose for non-compliance and the degree of penalty enforcement impact turnout rates. Voters in mandatory voting systems abstain least when both the penalties and the likelihood of enforcement are high, and abstain most when both meaningless.

Sources of Split-ticket Voting in the 1988 American Elections

Divided partisan control of the American national government is not a new phenomenon. Of the 41 presidents from Washington to Bush, 20 saw the House of Representatives under the control of the opposing party. While divided control of government is nothing new, however, its recent causes are. Before 1955, divided control was due to election reversals in the off year - easily interpretable in terms of negative retrospective judgements or switched policy choices on the part of the electorate. After 1955, on the other hand, four of the seven presidents were elected with a House of Representatives controlled by the opposing party. By analysing data collected during the 1988 national elections, we distinguish between congressional and presidential ticket-splitting and find their causes to be complex. It is caused, in part, by congressional incumbency and ballot formats, but wider social forces are also responsible for ticket-splitting.     

Federalist Institutions, Voting Behavior, and Party Systems in Spain

With the establishment of the 17 autonomous communities in Spainin the early 1980s, representation has been compounded. Thisarticles assesses the empirical implications of compounded representationin Spain by analyzing regional, national, and European electoraldata over time. Comparisons are also drawn across Spanish regions.In addition, the article discusses the effects of compoundedrepresentation on party systems and government formation inthe regions. Voting patterns vary depending on the level ofelection and also across regions. Party systems, subjectiveregional identity, and types of government in the regions arelinked as well. The evidence suggests that the federalizationof Spain has compounded representation by adding new layersof elections and representative institutions.     

Gender Stereotypes,Political Leadership,and Voting Behavior in Tunisia

Political Behavior - Although female political representation in the Arab world has nearly doubled in the last decade, little is known about how voters in the region view female politicians and...