Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2025-01-31DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102895
James Breckwoldt
{"title":"Who cares about the culture war? Evidence from a vote choice conjoint experiment","authors":"James Breckwoldt","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102895","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102895","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Despite their recent prominence, it is unclear how electorally important new culture war topics (such as statues, LGBT+ representation in popular culture, diversity training, transgender athletes, curriculum diversity and university free speech) are for voters, particularly cross-pressured ones. To address this, this study conducts an original vote choice conjoint experiment in the United Kingdom to test the extent to which people base their vote on these new culture war issues when they are included in a policy platform alongside long-standing economic and non-economic issues. I find that culture war issues are consistently important for those with more conservative cultural beliefs, whilst those with right-traditionalist and, to a lesser extent, left-traditionalist values prioritize them when cross-pressured. These results highlight the political dynamics of contemporary culture wars and vote choice in multi-dimensional elections, as well as the value of studying political beliefs relative to each other.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"94 ","pages":"Article 102895"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143151451","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2025-01-24DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102896
Ankita Barthwal, Francesca R. Jensenius
{"title":"Motivations for partisan attachment in the developing world","authors":"Ankita Barthwal, Francesca R. Jensenius","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102896","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2025.102896","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>In developing countries, partisanship is pervasive, but its motivations remain largely unexplored. Whereas non-programmatic party–voter linkages dominate the political discourse in these contexts, we posit that such linkages are probably not the sole motivating factor behind partisanship. Drawing on interviews and an original survey from India – a context rife with non-programmatic exchanges – we find that partisans generally attribute their loyalty to parties’ ideological positions and policy platforms. This finding is reinforced by a priming experiment in which respondents made to reflect on parties’ ideologies and policies were more likely to self-report as partisans. Priming non-programmatic party–voter linkages in the form of community-based favoritism produces no discernible effect. Exploring differences between those attributing their own partisan loyalty to more programmatic or more non-programmatic motivations, we find the former group to be more consistent in their voting patterns and more likely to report negative partisanship, though both groups express similar levels of affective partisan attachment. Our findings underscore the need for more nuanced theorizing of partisanship and its effects in the developing world.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"94 ","pages":"Article 102896"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2025-01-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143151452","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-01DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102862
Jared Abbott , Fred DeVeaux
{"title":"Do working-class candidates activate class-based voting?","authors":"Jared Abbott , Fred DeVeaux","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102862","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102862","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>After steadily leaving the Democratic Party, working-class voters are increasingly seen as pivotal in US elections. What type of candidates should parties nominate to win over working-class voters? Parties often nominate candidates based on characteristics they think will appeal to certain groups of voters. These typically include campaign messages, such as policy positions or rhetoric, but can also include descriptive characteristics. In this paper we use a conjoint experiment to test whether candidates’ class background can activate class-based voting. Overall, we find that a candidate’s occupation has a substantial effect on voter perceptions: working-class respondents are 6.4 percentage points more likely to prefer a candidate with a working-class occupation over one with an upper-class occupation. This effect is not driven by inferences that respondents make about candidates’ policy positions or group-based rhetoric. Instead, we find that working-class voters perceive working-class candidates as more understanding of their problems. Our results suggest that candidates’ class background is an underappreciated yet effective mechanism for activating class-based voting.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 102862"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143169768","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2024-12-01DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102875
Dean Dulay , Seulki Lee
{"title":"Corrigendum to “Sorry not Sorry: Presentational strategies and the electoral punishment of corruption” [Elect. Stud. 92 (2024): 102867]","authors":"Dean Dulay , Seulki Lee","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102875","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102875","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 102875"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-12-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"143169766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2024-11-22DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102881
Ralph Scott , Melanie Jones
{"title":"Does disability affect support for political parties?","authors":"Ralph Scott , Melanie Jones","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102881","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102881","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>While it is well-established that disability reduces the probability of electoral turnout, far less is known about the relationship between disability and support for particular political parties. Using nationally representative longitudinal data from Understanding Society we explore the relationship between disability and party support in England and Wales along left-right and protest dimensions. Consistent with our hypotheses, analysis of cross-sectional data suggests that, after accounting for demographic characteristics, disabled people are significantly less likely to support parties to the right and more likely to support protest parties. In contrast, however, after accounting for time invariant individual unobserved heterogeneity using panel data methods, we find no evidence of a relationship between disability and left-right party support, and far less evidence of a relationship with protest parties. We discuss and attempt to reconcile these findings.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 102881"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-11-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142702500","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2024-10-31DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102879
Matthew Wilson , David Andersen
{"title":"Economic growth, largest-party vote shares, and electoral authoritarianism","authors":"Matthew Wilson , David Andersen","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102879","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102879","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Cross-national research on electoral authoritarianism has a limited understanding of the role of economic growth in bolstering ruling parties due to its focus on hegemonic or dominant-party regimes, which bases conclusions on ruling party success and eschews comparisons with other regimes. This paper demonstrates the importance of growth-induced election gains in electoral authoritarian regimes by comparing the impacts of growth on largest-party vote shares across all regimes. Examining legislative and executive elections for a sample of roughly 130 countries between 1945 and 2020, we show that growth consistently increases largest-party vote shares and that this relationship is stronger in less democratic regimes. The results highlight economic performance as an important channel through which parties in autocracies can legitimate their authority and consolidate control over future elections. We conclude by discussing several ways that growth supports increased electoral dominance by a ruling party.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 102879"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142560990","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2024-10-22DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102872
Cornelius Erfort
{"title":"Targeting voters online: How parties’ campaigns differ","authors":"Cornelius Erfort","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102872","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102872","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>How do parties target campaign ads online? Despite the growing importance of digital campaigns, only a few recent studies have analyzed whom parties are targeting. Do parties aim to persuade or mobilize voters? This paper analyzes how parties target and how they differ in their use of targeting using a new and comprehensive dataset, matching data from the Facebook Ad Library with EES survey responses. The dataset contains over 100,000 Facebook and Instagram ads from 148 parties for the 2019 European Parliament elections. The results show that smaller and niche parties have targeting strategies more narrowly focused on their supporters, whereas larger parties target a broader audience. My findings have important implications for research on voter targeting and the ongoing debate about the regulation of campaigns online.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 102872"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-22","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142526136","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Electoral StudiesPub Date : 2024-10-16DOI: 10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102878
Gonzalo Contreras , Mauricio Morales
{"title":"Masking turnout inequality. Invalid voting and class bias when compulsory voting is reinstated","authors":"Gonzalo Contreras , Mauricio Morales","doi":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102878","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102878","url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Compulsory voting increases turnout. However, this does not imply that CV reduces the socioeconomic gap among voters. While conventional accounts argue that CV corrects turnout inequality, some literature challenges such effect because CV also increases invalid voting. We evaluate the empirical merits of these theories turning to the case of Chile. We compare the results of the Constitutional referendums in 2020 –with voluntary voting– and 2022 –under mandatory rules. We report the transition to CV (1) boosted turnout; (2) reduced the class-biased turnout; (3) increased invalid voting, yet wasn't socioeconomically biased in all municipalities; (4) invalid voting inequality emerged when dividing municipalities into those within and outside the Metropolitan Region. These findings hold for the 2021 –with VV– and 2023 constitutional representative elections –under CV. Our results show that CV raised participation and reduced class-biased turnout, but it doesn't automatically correct inequalities, as it produces heterogeneous effects over invalid voting.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":48188,"journal":{"name":"Electoral Studies","volume":"92 ","pages":"Article 102878"},"PeriodicalIF":2.9,"publicationDate":"2024-10-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"142441588","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}