Getting things straight: The effects of ballot design and electoral structure on voter participation

This paper considers the implications of the straight-party voting option (STVO) on participation in judicial elections. Voters using straight-party options (by definition) do not vote for candidates in nonpartisan elections. Consequently, ballot roll-off in these elections is more likely to occur when people are given the chance to vote the party ticket and complete the voting process quickly. This is the case because nonpartisan judicial elections are considerably less salient than statewide and federal partisan elections. This article separates out the effects of the institutional structure of the election on political participation with the effects of ballot design. We find that in nonpartisan elections, the straight-party option decreases voter participation since voters who utilize the straight-ticket option may erroneously believe that they have voted for these nonpartisan offices, or simply ignore them. However, in nonpartisan elections without straight-ticket voting, participation is increased compared to nonpartisan elections with straight-ticket voting. Additionally, both forms of nonpartisan elections have less participation than partisan elections, all of which have the straight-ticket option. Thus, voter participation is affected not only by the type of election, but the type of voting rules in the election.     

How campaigns promote the legitimacy of elections

Why do people see elections as fair or unfair? In prior accounts, evaluations of the election depend on people's candidate preferences, where supporters of the winning candidate tend to call the election fair while those on the losing side feel it was unfair. I argue that perceptions of election fairness reflect not just the election outcome, but also the campaign process. Using a set of multilevel models and data from the 1996–2004 American National Election Studies, I explore the consequences of campaign experiences in shaping people's evaluations of the fairness of a presidential election. I find that as campaign competition increases, people are less likely to translate their feelings about the candidates into their evaluations of the election. Rather than alienating citizens, competitive campaigns mitigate the effects of prior preferences in a way that promotes the legitimacy of elections.     

Heterogeneity and the calculus of turnout: Undecided respondents and the campaign dynamics of civic duty

Accounts of turnout often maintain that citizens participate in elections because the expressive, instrumental and normative benefits associated with the act of voting outweigh the respective costs. Although the impact of those benefits has been empirically assessed in many studies, we know little about when and for whom this impact is stronger. To this end, this paper examines 1) how the effect of those benefits and particularly that of civic duty increases over the election campaign and 2) whether this increase can be attributed to voter heterogeneity. Survey respondents who have not yet decided how they are going to vote will be increasingly swayed to cast a vote on the basis of their civic duty and not other predictors of turnout. The empirical hypotheses are being tested by utilising recent rolling cross-section election studies from Britain. The results suggest that the influence of civic duty on turnout is stable for decided but increases for undecided voters the closer the election day looms.     

US voter registration reform

Voter registration in the United States changed after the 2000 election with a requirement that states adopt statewide voter registries. However, these registries vary in design in practice, with some states having state managed “top–down” registries and other states having more decentralized “bottom–up” registries. I compare the effect of moving to a top–down registry with the adoption of Election Day registration – where voters can register to vote the day of the election – on voters saying that they are not registered because of election management problems or not voting because of a voter registration issue. EDR had a pronounced effect on reducing voter registration problems but the adoption of new voter registries had minimal effect on the same problems.     

How Much Is Too Much? Media Attention and Popular Support for an Insurgent Party

It is commonly observed that parties and candidates tend to receive coverage in the news media and attention in proportion to their electoral support. Although this norm serves to ensure that coverage is balanced or fair, news values often produce a different pattern of coverage in the television news media. This article considers the dynamic relationship between coverage in the news media and popular support for an insurgent party - the Reform party - in the 1993 Canadian election campaign. The analysis shows that coverage of Reform in the news media underwent an important change during the campaign that appears to have occurred before any change in popular support. While this change in attention to Reform was critical for Reform's ability to mobilize its potential electoral support, it also provides empirical support for the argument that there is an underlying equilibrium between the amount of coverage a party receives and its political support. Data for this analysis come from a campaign wave survey of vote intentions as part of the 1993 Canadian Election Study and a television content analysis of campaign news. The analysis applies an error-correction approach, which assumes an underlying equilibrium relationship, to model media access and vote intentions. The article thus expands the current applications of the error-correction technique while offering substantively important evidence of the political impacts of media decisions for the electoral support of new parties.     

Don't Count Your Chickens before They're Hatched: The 2013 Italian Parliamentary and Presidential Elections

The 2013 parliamentary and presidential contests were both outstanding elections, even by Italian standards. In the former case, this was because of very high volatility and the breakthrough of the 5-Star Movement (M5S), which resulted in a hung parliament and a stalemate in the formation of a new government. In the latter, for the first time in Italian history, the incumbent President of the Republic was re-elected for a second seven-year term of office. The result of these two events was Italy's first grand coalition government, led by Enrico Letta and supported by President Napolitano. While the significance of these elections is better assessed in combination with new government's capacity to achieve economic growth and restore confidence in Italian politics, the Italian party system still remains in a state of flux.     

Contextual Effects on Individual Voting Behavior: The Case of Taiwan

This study investigates the voting behavior of the Taiwanese electorate in two different levels of election by taking into account two aggregate-level effects, namely the political and economic contextual effects. Using both individual-level and aggregate-level data to study the 2008 legislative election and the 2012 presidential election in Taiwan, this paper not only confirms that the valence politics explanation outperforms other individual-level voting models in the legislative election and in other elections in Taiwan, but also demonstrates how the two contextual effects influence individual voting behavior. Specifically, the political contextual effect had influence on the individual electoral choice in both the 2008 legislative election and the 2012 presidential election, whereas economic contexts only affect voters’ decision when choosing a president. The multilevel analysis reveals that different individual-level voting models could provide partial explanation for voting behavior; however, the findings also show that we may overlook how contextual effects may affect the electoral choice.     

The broadcast media: A persuasive institution

At present, the broadcast media (radio and television) because of their pervasive presence in society are a “taken‐for‐granted” part of the social environment, as natural as the air one breathes. The persuasive power of the media is not so readily ascertained by all who watch and listen. Looking at the growth and spread of the media in three highly industrialized countries, namely Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States, each with its own particular broadcast system, one can see the variety of emphasis on commercial and public broadcasting. Since the media have more in common with interpersonal communication than they have differences, the public is constantly open to media messages, continuously processing as well as responding to information received via media sources. The persuasive effect of these broadcast media in terms of the latent function of commercial messages needs deep and careful analysis.     

What Voters Want From Political Campaign Communication

Implicit and explicit norms in broadcasting require that interviewees be treated in a fair and objective manner and given an equal chance to express themselves, regardless of interviewers' personal liking or preference. Nonverbal behavior of seven Israeli televison interviewers was investigated to discover whether they treated politicians from opposing camps and other interviewees in a differential or fair manner. Very brief clips (averaging 7 seconds) showing the interviewer alone were judged by American students who had no comprehension of speech content. In Study 1, all six interviewers were found to demonstrate differential nonverbal behavior toward interviewees, and four of them treated Labor versus Likud camp politicians in a differential manner. A range of individual differences in effect magnitudes of the differential behavior effects was found. Study 2 focused on two lengthy parallel interviews conducted by a prominent interviewer during the 1996 election campaign with the two candidates for prime minister. The interviewer's nonverbal behavior was found to be blatantly preferential in favor of one candidate. Study 3 examined micro behaviors contributing to the formation of global negative/positive impressions. Correlational analyses yielded several global (presumably universal) mediators: smiling, rhythmical beating hand movements, leaning forward, sarcasm, and attempts to regulate the interviewee. Each interviewer was found to demonstrate a unique personal style in which different nonverbal behaviors mediated the overall impression. The tentative conclusion is that more dominant and aggressive interviewers show more differential/preferential behavior. Social and ethical implications, as well as implications for nonverbal research, are discussed.     

A Watershed in White House Journalism: Explaining the Post-1968 Rise of Aggressive Presidential News

Presidential journalism is known to have grown substantially more aggressive through the 1970s and beyond, but a definitive explanation for this trend remains elusive. Some suggest that events surrounding Vietnam and Watergate transformed the professional norms of journalism. However, the trend could also be a more superficial and transitory response to other circumstantial factors that converged in the same time period, such as president-level characteristics (the prevalence of Republicans, Washington outsiders, and more vigorous news management efforts), the political environment (the rise of official discord), and the economic environment (a downturn in the business cycle). This study disentangles these various factors and assesses their relative success in explaining trends in journalistic conduct in the postwar era. Data are drawn from a large sample of presidential news conferences from 1953 through 2000, focusing on the aggressiveness of journalists' questions. The results strongly support the normative shift hypothesis, although economic factors have also been consequential. These results suggest a punctuated equilibrium model of journalistic change in relations between the White House press corps and the presidency.