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Recent elections around the globe have seen politicians increasingly adopt anti-corruption rhetoric, yet little is known about the conditions under which such appeals are effective. While existing literature has focused on the factors that mitigate electoral sanctions for corrupt politicians, it has often overlooked the relevance of anti-corruption efforts. This paper investigates the impact of anti-corruption promises on electoral support and perceived effectiveness in cleaning up government. Using an unforced conjoint experiment in corruption-prone Paraguay, I vary candidate profiles with different anti-corruption platforms, genders, and disciplinary records. The results reveal that anti-corruption appeals significantly influence electoral support. Concrete anti-corruption promises with specific policies are more persuasive, indicating citizens prefer substance over vague rhetoric. Surprisingly, a clean disciplinary record does not substantively enhance a candidate’s anticorruption appeal, and male candidates appear to benefit more from adopting anticorruption platforms. These findings illuminate under what conditions anti-corruption platforms are more effective. They highlight the importance of specific policy stands and reveal that having a history of corruption surprisingly does not damage the credibility of anticorruption advocates.
Past research indicates that support for conservatism increases when individuals perceive threat to their group’s social status – i.e., prestige and respect. However, the causal link between status threat and increased electoral support for conservative candidates has not been established. Most prior studies rely on observational data, and it remains unclear how the effect of status threat on candidate support varies depending on the specific conservative policies adopted by candidates. Additionally, previous research has not fully addressed whether and how these effects are constrained by voters’ party loyalty. This article investigates these questions by conducting a joint experiment combining vignette and conjoint designs. White Americans were randomly exposed to status threat communication, and then choose between different hypothetical candidates with varying degrees of conservatism on various issues. The results show large effects of candidates’ issue positions and partisanship, but very little effect of status threat.
Does democratic satisfaction drive voter turnout, or does voting increase satisfaction with democracy? This paper explores the satisfaction-participation nexus in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), where democratic dissatisfaction is prominent. It tests preregistered hypotheses using a five-wave panel survey from the Czech 2023 presidential election and a pooled dataset from five CEE countries. Unlike previous studies from Western Europe, it finds evidence for both mechanisms: pre-election satisfaction correlates with participation, but, simultaneously, voters experience a stronger election-related increase in satisfaction than abstainers. Further analyses reveal that the strong increases in satisfaction are driven by election winners and begin already during the election campaign. Our findings highlight the specificities of the satisfaction-participation link and elections’ legitimizing effects in newer democracies.
Presidential primary elections arguably represent the most dynamic campaigns in American politics. Television advertising is a key aspect of strategy that candidates can marshal throughout the campaign. We develop a methodology for measuring the impact of advertising in primary elections that accounts for endogeneity and apply it to the 2000 through 2016 elections. We find that advertisements—both positive and negative—improve the favorability and the vote share of the candidate running the ads. We find that negative advertising is more effective than positive advertising, but that only high polling candidates lose support when attacked.
This article investigates how Black voters choose candidates in majority-Black congressional districts. Partisanship often drives Black vote choice, but the lack of competition in general elections reduces its relevance and highlights the importance of primary elections. Racial cues are also referenced in literature, but the electoral setting reduces the relevance of race. Majority-Black congressional districts are racially homogeneous, and all emerging candidates are Black. Race cannot be used to distinguish between candidates. Congressional primary elections are also considered low-information environments, and voters have limited knowledge about the emerging candidates. In these settings, Black voters turn to cues to choose candidates. Since partisan and racial cues are not viable options, I argue that Black voters seek cues that signal group consensus. I highlight the role of endorsements and public opinion data. I utilize a mixed methodological approach incorporating a randomized survey experiment and focus group discussions with Black primary voters. Results from both methods suggest consensus cues are essential. Experimental results found no significant difference between racial and partisan endorsements, but they found a positive and significant effect for high polling. Focus group respondents had sincere preferences but were willing to abandon them if they differed from the group consensus. They also pointed to the importance of the media. I conducted an exploratory analysis of my experimental results, and I found that those with higher levels of media attention are more likely to rely on consensus cues. These results provide important insight into Black vote choice in majority-Black congressional districts.
We theoretically and experimentally study voter behavior in a setting characterized by plurality rule and mandatory voting. Voters choose from three options. We are interested in the occurrence of strategic voting in an environment where Condorcet cycles may occur and focus on how information about the preference distribution affects strategic behavior. We also vary the relative importance of the second preferred option. Quantal response equilibrium analysis is used to analyze the game and derive predictions. Our results indeed show that strategic voting arises. Its extent depends on (i) information availability; (ii) the relative importance of the intermediate candidate; (iii) the electorate’s relative support for one’s preferred candidate; (iv) the relative position of the plurality-supported candidate in one’s preference ordering. Our results show that information serves as a coordination device where strategic voting does not harm the plurality-preferred candidate’s chances of winning.
Welfare-enhancing policies such as congestion pricing are argued to improve efficiency in situations with externalities. Unfamiliarity and lack of any personal experience with such policies, however, can hinder their implementation; particularly the ex-ante uncertainties of incidences of gains and losses as well as debates regarding equity concerns and how to recycle revenues often stymies implementation. This paper employs a laboratory experiment with heterogeneous users to investigate the effectiveness and acceptability of a toll in a six-player-two-route congestion game. To measure acceptability and how it is affected by experience with the toll, we conduct referenda before, during, and after subjects experience a congestion problem and a toll. The experiment employs a design that varies two treatments: the rate of revenue reallocation and the level of information before the final vote. After an experiential learning phase, congestion pricing is found to curb congestion effectively, and although some subjects do not vote in their monetary self-interest initially, the majority does so after experiencing the congestion pricing policy. Data on worldviews and beliefs are collected and matched to voting behavior to examine the evolution of how experience determines acceptability. Some worldviews and beliefs can predict voting behavior and the timing of when an individual finds a toll (un)acceptable.
Brazilians in the United States voted overwhelmingly for right-wing populist Jair Bolsonaro in 2022. What role did religion play? Based on exit polling, focus groups, and observation of local Brazilian churches, this article explores how Christianity drives support for right-wing populism among Brazilian migrants to the Boston area. Christians, and especially evangelicals, are significantly more likely to vote for Bolsonaro, and the priests and pastors of Brazilian migrant churches are particularly willing to discuss parties and candidates. Yet neither clergy endorsements nor political conversations at church explain this religious effect. I argue that indirect influence within congregations, which reinforces a conservative worldview in non-overtly political ways, helps explain why most observant evangelicals favor Bolsonaro. Migrants potentially influence the voting behavior of friends and family in Brazil, including via transnational religious communities, so their political attitudes can help bolster authoritarian populism in the homeland, as also seen in India and Turkey.
Turnout buying is a mainstay of machine politics. Despite strong theory that selective incentives should spur turnout, meta-analyses of empirical studies show no effect, thus making machine politics seem irrational and unsustainable. I argue that the apparent failure of turnout buying is an artefact of common measurement decisions in experimental and observational research that lump together turnout buying, abstention buying, and vote-choice buying. Data generated using these compound measures include countervailing and null effects that drive estimates of the effects of each strategy toward zero. I show that machines have incentives to diversify their strategies enough to make compound measures substantially underestimate the impact of turnout buying. I propose simple alternative measurement approaches and show how they perform using new survey data and a constituency-level analysis of machine strategy in Mexico. Findings close the gap between theory and facts and reaffirm the rationality of machine politics.
Les élections municipales de 2021 à la Ville de Québec ont été marquées par une forte compétition entre cinq candidats et une saillance des enjeux concernant la construction d'un tramway et d'un troisième lien autoroutier entre Québec et sa Rive-Sud. Ainsi, cette élection représente un contexte idéal pour étudier le comportement électoral au niveau local et plus spécifiquement le vote sur enjeu qui a été très peu étudié dans le contexte municipal. Nous soutenons que ces deux enjeux ont acquis une valeur symbolique et ont été exploités comme enjeu de brèche par le candidat à la mairie Jean-François Gosselin. À l'aide d'une analyse multivariée, nous testons la relation entre l'appui aux deux projets de transport et l'intention de vote. Nos résultats montrent que les attitudes des électeurs envers ces deux enjeux sont fortement corrélées avec leur choix de vote et suggèrent une continuité entre le comportement électoral municipal, provincial et fédéral, du moins lorsqu'il est question de vote sur les enjeux.
Despite voters' distaste for corruption, corrupt politicians frequently get reelected. This Element provides a framework for understanding when corrupt politicians are reelected. One unexplored source of electoral accountability is court rulings on candidate malfeasance, which are increasingly determining politicians' electoral prospects. The findings suggest that (1) low-income voters – in contrast to higher-income voters – are responsive to such rulings. Unlike earlier studies, we explore multiple trade-offs voters weigh when confronting corrupt candidates, including the candidate's party, policy positions, and personal attributes. The results also surprisingly show (2) low-income voters, like higher-income voters, weigh corruption allegations and policy positions similarly, and are slightly more responsive to candidate attributes. Moreover, irrespective of voter income, (3) party labels insulate candidates from corruption, and (4) candidate attributes like gender have little effect. The results have implications for when voters punish corrupt politicians, the success of anti-corruption campaigns, and the design and legitimacy of electoral institutions.
In June 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs ruling overturned Roe v. Wade, reversing the nearly 50-year-old landmark decision that affirmed a woman’s constitutional right to abortion. Several months later, voters turned out in record numbers for the 2022 midterms, though a widely predicted “Red Wave” vote did not materialize. There has since been speculation that overturning Roe v. Wade played a crucial role in the midterms, generating a “Blue Tsunami” or “Roevember” driven largely by young, pro-choice women voting out of self-interest. We posit instead that group empathy was the key motivational mechanism in the link between opposition to Dobbs and voter mobilization in that election. Analyzing data from an original national survey, we find that opposition to overturning Roe v. Wade did not directly affect one’s likelihood to vote unless one is empathic toward groups in distress. Such opposition was actually demobilizing for those low in empathy. The findings indicate group empathy serves as a catalyst for people to act on their opposition to policies that harm disadvantaged groups, in this case women as a marginalized political minority losing their constitutional right to bodily autonomy and access to reproductive care.
Across the world, political parties are incorporating social movement strategies and frames. In this study, we pivot from the dominant focus on party characteristics to analyze drivers of support for movement parties in six European countries. We report results from a choice-based conjoint survey experiment showing that contrary to previous research, movement party voters favor neither candidates who are institutional outsiders nor those who actively participate in protests. Candidate policy positions are the most important driver of the vote for movement parties. Movement party voters, additionally, prefer candidates who either display anti-elitist sentiments or who want to ensure the smooth running of the current political system. These insights invite renewed attention to movement parties as an electoral vehicle whose voters prioritize decisive policy change.
Opposition in autocracies often uses negativism against the regime to frame its principal message. This study is the first to experimentally evaluate the effectiveness of a negative campaign on a regime candidate’s vote share. For the field experiment conducted during the 2013 Moscow mayoral election, we published a newspaper criticizing the incumbent mayor. We distributed approximately 130,000 copies near the entrances of 20 stations on four randomly selected metro lines one month prior to the election. We found that the incumbent’s vote share was 1.7 percentage points lower at the voting stations where the newspaper was distributed. These votes go to other candidates who address issues raised by the negative campaign. Anti-regime campaigning does not suppress turnout or increase disapproval voting.
Why does vote buying persist under the secret ballot? We argue initiating vote-buying transactions allows politicians to undermine voter confidence in the secret ballot, and thus to induce voter compliance. Our analysis consists of three parts. First, we present evidence from a survey experiment in Mexico that shows receiving material goods from a candidate diminishes voter confidence in ballot integrity. Next, we introduce an informational theory of vote buying that explains this phenomenon. Specifically, we develop a model of vote buying as a signaling game, in which a voter who is ex ante uncertain about a politician's capacity to monitor voter behavior learns new information from the politician's actions. Finally, we test the key insights from the model in a lab experiment. Our results suggest that, under certain conditions, offering material goods to voters is sufficient to erode their confidence in ballot secrecy, making vote buying effective.
This research note investigates how the voting behavior of middle-income citizens explains why right-wing parties tend to govern under majoritarian electoral rule. The growing literature that investigates the ideological effects of electoral systems has mostly focused on institutional explanations. However, whether the electoral rules overrepresent parties with some specific ideologies is also a matter of behavior. Building on Iversen and Soskice (2006), we test two arguments. First, middle-income groups are more likely to vote for the right under majoritarian rules because they fear the redistributive consequences of a victory of the left in these contexts. Second, middle-income earners particularly concerned with tax rates are particularly prone to vote differently across electoral systems. Combining survey evidence from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems and the New Zealand Election Study, we show that the voting behavior of middle-income citizens is indeed responsible for the predominance of the right under majoritarian systems.
We revisit Arunachalam and Watson's contention that a person's physical height may be used as instrument for income because it affects economic well-being solely by causing more conservative political preferences among people who are taller. To evaluate whether other early-life and genetic factors might serve as mechanisms connecting height and political preferences, we analyze a unique data source that includes political, economic, and demographic data on same-gender siblings. Models that include fixed effects for siblings provide a strong test of the Arunachalam and Watson thesis. We find that height is not a consistent predictor of political preferences once shared sibling characteristics are controlled in this way, raising doubt about whether height can in fact be used as an instrument for income.
Technological change often increases demand for high-skilled jobs, with low-skilled losers turning to the populist right in response. The political effects of technological change that increases demand for low-skilled workers are largely unknown. The growth of the salmon fish-farming industry in rural Norway improved the labor-market situation for low-skilled workers, and we find that support for the populist right-wing party increased in municipalities that benefitted from the industry growth. The electoral change is due to a right-wing shift on the economic, but not the cultural dimension. Our results support political economy frameworks that point to lower demand for state interventions after positive labor market shocks, but raise the question of in what contexts support for populism will decline.
Despite the salience of corruption in elections in Latin America and beyond, it remains unclear what makes certain candidates attractive to voters as solutions to address corruption. Building on studies about the effect of candidates’ professional affiliation on voting behavior, we hypothesize that police and military officers are perceived to be more competent to address corruption. We test our theoretical expectations through an online survey of Brazilian voters with an image-based factorial experiment that presents respondents with three randomly generated handbills, varying candidates’ professional affiliations and potential confounders, such as economic policy, insider versus outsider status, and demographic features. Our results demonstrate that candidates affiliated with the police or the military are perceived to be more effective at reducing corruption, all else equal. The effect of police or military professions on candidates’ perceived effectiveness to fight corruption varies according to respondents’ ideology and is particularly significant among conservative voters.
Municipal and state governments are often constitutionally bound to ask voters to approve new government debt through voting on bond referendums. Generally, politicians expect voters to balk at higher-cost bonds and be more willing to approve lower-cost bonds. However, there is minimal research on how the amount of a bond affects voter support. We implement a survey experiment that presents respondents with hypothetical ballots, in which the cost of proposed bonds, the number of bonds on the ballot, and the order in which they are presented, are all randomized. Our results suggest that support is not responsive to the amount of the bond, even when the cost is well outside what is typical and within the bounds of what the government can afford. In contrast, we find other aspects of the ballot matter significantly more for bond referendum approval. The more bonds on the ballot and being placed lower on the ballot both reduce support significantly.