The role of the political context in voting indecision

A substantive portion of the electorate declares in pre-electoral surveys that they are undecided. However, little has been done in trying to understand who these voters are and how they finally decide their vote. In this article, we try to advance the literature by disentangling the circumstances under which voters are more likely to be undecided. While the traditional approach to the study of electoral indecision has been to characterize which individual traits make voters more likely to be undecided, this article provides consistent evidence showing that key elements of the political context may also affect electoral indecision. Using long-term harmonized data from Spanish pre-electoral surveys over 30 years, we find that voting indecision is influenced by two different types of contextual factors. First, there are some political contexts that reduce voters' cognitive costs when deciding their vote, i.e. the level of electoral competitiveness and the number of parties competing in the elections. Second, there are other political contexts that increase voters' social or expressive costs, i.e. the level of government popularity, since costs of expressing preference for the party in government increases when its public image is undermined.     

The political consequences of uninformed voters

Americans fail to meet the democratic ideal of an informed electorate, and the consequences of this political ignorance are a topic of significant scholarly debate. In two independent settings, we experimentally test the effect of political information on citizens' attitudes toward the major parties in the U.S. When uninformed citizens receive political information, they systematically shift their political preferences away from the Republican Party and toward the Democrats. A lack of knowledge on the policy positions of the parties significantly hinders the ability of low-socioeconomic-status citizens to translate their preferences into partisan opinions and vote choices. As a result, American public opinion—and potentially election results and public policy as a result—is significantly different from the counterfactual world in which all voters are informed.     

Young Voters at the 2005 British General Election

Pronounced declines in the number of young (non‐) voters casting their ballots in 1997 and 2001 has raised the question: are we witnessing a generational disengagement with electoral politics? It is generally understood that voter turnout is strongly related to closeness of electoral competition. This research report examines the results of the 2005 election in the context of the debate on declining youth turnout at general elections. Did a closer competition in 2005 encourage young voters back to the polls?     

The undecided voters and the economy: Campaign heterogeneity in the 2005 British general election

Research and conventional wisdom suggest that undecided voters are especially prone to campaign persuasion. Little has been done, however, in the way of uncovering the decision pathways followed by these voters. In this paper we seek to assess the undecided voters’ alleged campaign susceptibility and, most importantly, to explore which campaign considerations inform their final voting decisions. Our central finding is that their behaviour is driven to a larger extent by economic performance and less by leadership or other valence evaluations. This finding has important implications for parties’ campaign strategies in an era where the ranks of undecided voters are steadily expanding from one election to the other.     

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.     

参议院选举后的日本政党政治

日本第22届参议院选举后，由于民主党与国民新党组成的执政联盟丧失了在参议院的多数席位，“扭曲国会”再次出现，致使日本政党政治的局面曼趋复杂。综合运用计量分析和实证描述方法，通过权力、制度、选民3个层面，以政权运营的状况、选举的非代表性缺陷、选民偏好和舆论影响为视角对参议院选举后的日本政党政治进行全面分析，将有助于深刻理解当前日本政党政治的生态环境及其发展路径。     

Finnish parties’ positions in 2007: A matter of equilibrium or voters’ projection?

According to the Finnish National Election Studies (FNES) the positions of Finnish parties in the years 2003 and 2007 were almost identical. In FNES, party placement is based on the voters’ perceptions and therefore it is assumed that either the voters have correctly guessed the positions of the parties or they have been wrong in their judgments. In the first case, the Finnish parties are likely to have reached a state of equilibrium where no party has an incentive for unilaterally changing its optimal position. On the other hand, if the voters are incorrect, it is likely that they have projected their own positions to the parties. The results reject the equilibrium hypothesis and confirm the projection hypothesis.     

Information,perceptions, and electoral behaviour of young voters: A randomised controlled experiment

The way people absorb and process politically relevant information is central to their subsequent political behaviour (in terms of turnout and vote choice). Nonetheless, little is known about how young voters – who might be more impressionable than more experienced voters – respond to the provision of such information. In this article, we design a between-subject randomised controlled trial that exposes a sample of university students to positive, neutral or negative information about central government performance before the 2017 Portuguese local elections. We find that young voters update their perceptions more when exposed to negative news. This negativity bias is stronger for first-time voters. We also find that negative information significantly affects turnout of initially undecided young voters. Our results imply that sensitivity to information is heterogeneous and that some young voters may be prone to manipulation through the provision of negative news.