Ballot Order Effects in Referendum Elections

Many political practitioners believe that voters are more likely to approve propositions listed at the top than the bottom of the ballot, and this belief influences election laws across the country. A large body of research has shown that ballot structure matters for candidate elections, potentially distorting democratic decisions, but there is little evidence for ballot propositions. This paper offers two different strategies for identifying the causal effect of ballot order in proposition elections, and applies the methods to data from California during 1958-2014 and Texas during 1986-2013. The main finding is the absence of evidence that being listed at the top compared to the bottom of the ballot has any effect on approval. Approval rates are lower when there are more propositions on the ballot.