Pre-election polling and third party candidates

I analyze voters’ incentives in responding to pre-election polls with a third party candidate. Third party supporters normally have an incentive to vote strategically in the election by voting for one of the major candidates. But these voters would vote third party if the third party candidate is doing surprisingly well in the polls. Because voters are more likely to vote third party if the third party candidate is doing well in polls, voters who like the third party candidate best have an incentive to claim they will vote third party in the polls so that more voters will ultimately vote third party in the election. The differing incentives faced during polls and elections accounts for why third party candidates do better in polls than in elections.     

Radical-Party Politics in Illinois, 1880–1924*

Sufficient impressionistic evidence exists in the previous literature to warrant a detailed consideration of the voting behavior of working-class and minority groups in relation to radical third parties. The present paper is concerned with analyzing some of the sources of support for radical third parties in Illinois from 1880 to 1924. We find that a coalition between a rural proletariat and the urban working class appeared to be a potentially viable source of support for the Socialist Party of America, since the groups involved were both numerically large and potentially crucial in determining the outcome of any election. Yet the Socialists were never able to capture more than a very modest fraction of the total vote, and even among their potential backers, the electoral enthusiasm for the Socialists was fractionalized and unstable.     

Working-Class Authoritarianism und Die Wahl Rechtspopulistischer Parteien

May the often stated over-representation of workers in the electorates of right-wing populist parties in Western Europe be explained by the so-called “working-class authoritarianism”-thesis by S.M. Lipset? Following this thesis, there are specific socialisation and deprivation experiences in the social situation of the working-class, favouring the development of authoritarian traits and making class-members more susceptible to authoritarian parties. On the basis of the European Social Survey of 2002 the thesis is tested empirically by using the Goldthorpe class scheme and two measures of authoritarianism. It is shown that workers are more inclined to vote for right-wing populist parties and have higher levels of authoritarianism. Furthermore, persons with high levels of authoritarianism are more likely to vote for such parties. The authors conclude that disproportionately high shares of votes for right-wing populist parties from the working-class are, indeed, mediated by authoritarianism. In addition to this, class affiliation has an independent effect on voting behaviour. Finally, it is found that authoritarianism has an even stronger impact on the vote for right-wing populist parties in the service class and the class of routine non-manual workers, though being less frequent there.     

Proportional representation in variable-size legislatures

This paper examines a method to achieve proportional representation (PR) for parties in a legislature that allows the size of the legislature to vary as a function of voting results. The legislature's base consists of one elected candidate from each voting district. Seats are then added to underrepresented parties to approximate their nationwide vote proportions. Additions are governed by rules designed to honor the single-member district concept, to keep the increase manageable, and to satisfy other desirable criteria.These rules work well in the two-party case although they limit the extent to which true PR is achieved. When there are three or more parties, it is necessary to relax the rules if reasonable moves toward PR are to occur.     

Strategic, sincere, and heuristic voting under four election rules: an experimental study

We report on laboratory experiments on voting. In a setting where subjects have single-peaked preferences, we find that the rational choice theory provides very good predictions of actual individual behavior in one-round and approval voting elections but fares poorly in explaining vote choice under two-round elections. We conclude that voters behave strategically as far as strategic computations are not too demanding, in which case they rely on simple heuristics (under two-round voting) or they just vote sincerely (under single transferable vote).     

More than ideology: perceived unfairness differentiates supporters of a new anti-austerity party from supporters of traditional left-wing parties / Más que ideología: la injusticia percibida diferencia a los simpatizantes de un nuevo partido antiausteridad de los simpatizantes de los partidos tradicionales de izquierda

After the outbreak of the economic crisis in 2008, anti-austerity parties in South Europe have gained prominence and dramatically transformed the political landscape. In Spain, the emergence of PODEMOS, a left-wing, anti-austerity party, has jeopardized the traditional two-party system. However, little is known about the psychological reasons that prompted more than one million Spaniards to vote for a newly created party in its first elections. To fill this gap the present study examines why people intend to vote for PODEMOS as opposed to traditional left-wing parties. We found that in addition to conventional predictors of voting behaviour (ideological orientation and party identification), perceived unfairness — a key variable within the collective action theory — critically influenced the preference for PODEMOS as opposed to traditional left-wing parties. A qualitative analysis of the reasons that participants reported in an open question yielded similar results. These findings suggest that supporting an anti-austerity party might be considered a collective action aimed at promoting social change.     

Prägen Persönlichkeitseigenschaften Einstellungen zu Parteien?

Since the sixties the influence of personality traits on intentions to vote (for different political parties) and on the voting decision itself has scarcely been investigated. It seems very promising to take up this tradition again. This paper summarizes the author’s most important findings of the last ten years of research in this area. The results of several studies indicate that attitudes towards specific parties (and voting intentions) are correlated with personality traits in a characteristic way and with a remarkable degree of diachronical stability. In this context the variables “Openness”, “Conscientiousness” and “Agreeableness”, known from the “Five-Factor Model” (or Big-Five Model) of personality traits, are of great importance. Since 1989 similar covariations also appeared repeatedly for “Affinity to a Stable Cognitive Frame of Orientation”, a more specific personality characteristic. Theoretically, strong direct correlations of “big” personality traits with much more “specific” attitudes (towards political parties) or voting intentions are not necessarily to be expected. For this reason the studies also dealt with — and supplied evidence for — intervening processes. Theoretically, these analyses were based on Fishbein’s attitude model and on Byrne’s attraction paradigm.     

Second and third party punishment under costly monitoring

In a laboratory experiment we study how costly punishment behavior of second and third parties in a social dilemma situation is affected by monitoring costs. Subjects have to pay a fee over and above punishment costs if they wish to condition punishments on previous play, which is equivalent to a binary choice between the acquisition of perfect information on the target subject’s behavior and no information at all. When monitoring is costly both second and third party punishment is weaker and less discriminate and hence generates weaker incentives for cooperation than when monitoring is free. There are subtle differences between second and third parties: The presence of monitoring costs leads subjects to withhold sanctioning more often as second parties than as third parties, and to punish indiscriminately more often as third parties than as second parties. The results contribute to the understanding of peer-enforcement of cooperation in social dilemmas and whether there is a common motivational structure underpinning second and third party punishment.     

Age cohort voting effects in the breakdown of single-party rule

This article examines age cohort voting differentiation in the breakdown of the Leninist regimes in terms of the effects of rapid social change. The strong relationship found between age and conservative voting and the disproportionate vote of youth for all types of change-oriented parties in the “first” competitive elections (1989/1990) in Belarus, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, and Moscow is a product of cohort–period interaction with youth at the vanguard of social change. Taken together, a dramatic period effect (the rapid introduction of economic and political change), the skewing of younger groups in favor of more rapid social change, the generational socialization of the aged under communist values, and a greater investment of the elderly in the status quo explain age cohort voting in the breakdown of Leninism.     

General Feelings Toward Unions and Employers as Predictors of Union Voting Intent

The union voting intention literature shows that many nonunion employees who indicate that they think unions are instrumental in increasing wages, benefits, and working conditions would vote against forming a union. Although American workers have often been characterized as pragmatic with regard to their support for unions, the “disconnect” between union beliefs and union voting intentions just described suggests that more subtle forces are at work. In this paper, it is shown empirically that union instrumentality is a limited predictor of union voting intentions for a recent national cross-section of workers. Rather, more general feelings toward unions and employers are primary. These accounted for a large portion of the variance in union voting intentions, with general feelings towards unions by far the most critical predictor. A concluding section discusses whether the results may reflect changes in union power and changes in employee views of unions. Areas for future research are discussed.     

LITTLE WHITE LIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE MODELS CORRELATED RESPONSE ERRORS IN A PANEL STUDY OF VOTING

One interpretation for the common survey finding that the backgroundcharacteristics of vote overreporters resemble those of actualvoters is that misreporters usually vote. This hypothesis—thatmisreporters regularly voted in earlier elections—is testedwith data from the 1972–74–76 Michigan ElectionPanel. It receives no support: the 1972 and 1974 validated turnoutof the 1976 misreporters was very low. Moreover, misreportingwas a fairly stable respondent characteristic: misreportingabout an election in one interview was correlated with misreportingabout the remaining elections in each of the other two interviews.A comparison of regressions predicting turnout using the validatedreports versus the self-reports shows that the respondent errorscan distort conclusions about the correlates of voting. Forexample, controlling for three other variables, education wasrelated to self-reported voting but not to validated voting.Here, as well as in surveys of other socially desirable or undesirableissues, respondent self-reports may bias survey data in favorof commonsense models of the world.     

STOCK OWNERSHIP AND CONGRESSIONAL ELECTIONS: THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF THE MUTUAL FUND REVOLUTION

We find that higher stock ownership rates are linked to an upward shift in the Republican share of the House popular vote since the late 1980s, consistent with theories that property interests affect voting. To proxy for discontinuous stock ownership rates, we use equity mutual fund costs, which have fallen, are negatively correlated with stock ownership rates and the Republican vote share in the long run, and help explain short‐run changes along with midterm elections, economic conditions, and presidential popularity. Findings suggest that the major parties’ shares of the House popular vote will fluctuate around 50% until other factors trigger a political realignment. (JEL D72, G11)     

Voting and Social Inclusion in Sweden

Three decades ago, Sweden extended municipal and provincial voting privileges to non‐citizen residents arguing that it would increase political influence, interest and self‐esteem among foreign citizens. The aim of this paper is to explore the act of voting as a measure of social inclusion by comparing voting propensities of immigrants (people born outside Sweden), their descendants (born in Sweden) and native Swedish citizens (those who have citizenship through jus sanguine) while controlling for a range of socio‐economic, demographic characteristics, contextual factors and a set of “hard” and “soft” social inclusion related variables. In particular we focus on the impact of citizenship acquisition ‐‐ does the symbolic act of attaining citizenship result in increased voting participation on the part of Swedish residents who are not citizens by birth. We use the Swedish 2006 electoral survey matched to registry data from Statistics Sweden to assess the correlates of voting by Swedish‐born and immigrant residents. Using instrumental variable regressions we estimate the impact of citizenship acquisition. We find that acquisition of citizenship makes a real difference to the probability of voting. Immigrants who naturalise are in general far more likely to vote than those who do not.     

Voting rights for alien residents--who wants it?

Foreign nationals permanently domiciled in Sweden have been entitled since 1975 to vote and to municipal and county council elections. This article examines some of the major issues associated with international migration and disenfranchisement of migrants created by a contradiction between economic and political rationale. The alien population of Sweden remained small for a long time, but during the 1960s it rose 1st to 300,000 and later to 400,000 persons. Since 1970, aliens have constituted roughly 5% of the total national population of 8.3 million. Surveys following the 3 elections held in Sweden so far have shown immigrants to be quite well informed concerning election procedures and the parties. In contrast to single males, women with children tend to be highly stable, because of favorable social security for women, particularly for women with children. Participation elections among women (55%) is higher than among men (49%), and married women (58%) are usually the highest participants. Class-voting is still rather strong in Sweden; the percentage difference in preference for Socialist parties between working-class and middle-class was as high 55% in 1960. Long term trends in the distribution of party-preference among immigrants are determined to a large extent by the policy on immigration regulation and political asylum for refugees and exiles. Another selectivity is due to the differential remigration rate. A 1976 study showed that although local franchise of immigrants is now the law of the land, some Swedes are still against the granting of voting rights and electability to immigrants. On the whole, there is clearly a psychological environment conducive, at least in Stockholm, to the task of putting local franchise reform into real practice.     

Probabilistic voting and platform selection in multi-party elections

The literature on stochastic voting to date has focused almost exclusively on models with only two candidates (or parties). This paper studies multiparty competition with stochastic voting. We look at two different models in which candidates aim to maximize their expected vote, as well as a model where the objective of candidates is rank minimization. The equilibria of these models are derived and characterized. We show that the properties of the equilibria are quite different from those derived in deterministic models. Furthermore, the analysis shows that deterministic voting models are not robust since the introduction of even a minute level of uncertainty leads to a drastic change in predictions. Consequently, we argue that the deterministic model provides a misleading benchmark. Stochastic models provide a much richer framework, and the nature of the uncertainty in voter choice is a key determinant of the qualtitative properties of the equilibria.The authors thank Martin Osborne and Maurice Salles for useful comments and suggestions. The first author would also like to thank the Bankard Fund for financial support.     

Beyond economic insecurity and cultural backlash: Economic nationalism and the rise of the far right

Far‐right parties gain in electoral support across the globe. Studies describe this phenomenon either as a cultural backlash or as a reaction to growing economic inequality. The economic inequality perspective suggests that the transforming workforce in post‐industrial societies gives rise to economic insecurity among those who feel left behind. In contrast, the cultural backlash thesis argues that the increasing support for far‐right parties represents a rejection of values such as cosmopolitanism and multiculturalism. More recent scholarship sought to show how economic and cultural factors combined increase the support for the far right. Most of these studies investigate public opinion polls, voting behaviour, and voters´ socio‐economic contexts. This paper reviews these studies and argues that the way in which far‐right political parties construct an interconnection of economic and cultural ideas in discourse is largely neglected in the existing body of literature. The paper concludes that the concept of economic nationalism captures how these two components are intertwined; economic nationalist discourse in far‐right political manifestos and speeches provides a more complete comprehension how public opinion is being shaped. This contribution offers a starting point for future studies to examine how cultural values, such as nationalism, reconstruct and influence articulation of economic policy.     

AN EXPRESSIVE VOTING THEORY OF STRIKES

Union members may vote for a strike even if they do not expect to thereby increase their wages. For under majority voting any one member's vote for a strike is unlikely to be decisive. A union member who obtains a non-infinitesimal emotional benefit from the act of voting for a strike may therefore vote in its favor. This hypothesis can explain the existence of strikes and the conditions which make strikes especially likely.     

Estimating the effects of activists in two-party and multi-party systems: comparing the United States and Israel

This article presents an electoral model where activist groups contribute resources to their favored parties. These resources are then used by the party candidates to enhance the electoral perception of their quality or valence. We construct an empirical model of the United States presidential election of 2008 and employ the electoral perception of the character traits of the two candidates. We use a simulation technique to determine the local Nash equilibrium, under vote share maximization, of this model. The result shows that the unique vote-maximizing equilibrium is one where the two candidates adopt convergent positions, close to the electoral center. This result conflicts with the estimated positions of the candidates in opposed quadrants of the policy space. The difference between estimated positions and equilibrium positions allows us to estimate the influence of activist groups on the candidates. We compare this estimation with that of Israel for the election of 1996, and show that vote maximization leads low valence parties to position themselves far from the electoral origin. We argue that these low valence parties in Israel will be dependent on support of radical activist groups, resulting in a degree of political fragmentation.     

The effect of voting procedures on union representation elections: The multi-union case

Public choice theorists have shown that choice of voting procedures may affect the outcome when more than two alternatives are on a ballot. The run-off election and the two-part ballot are two alternatives used in representation elections involving more than one union. A comparison of these alternatives under various voting strategies shows that the run-off election used by the NLRB results in fewer union wins if workers vote sincerely or if they engage in strategic behavior. The run-off procedure results in more union wins if workers seek to avoid their least-favored option or if they follow a second-best strategy.     

Rocking the Vote: Using Personalized Messages to Motivate Voting among Young Adults

We examined a nationwide effort to encourage young adults to vote in the 1996 U.S. presidential election. During the year before the election, individuals were given the chance to sign and self-address one of two kinds of postcards pledging to vote; these cards were mailed back to the individuals within 2 weeks prior to the election. It is important to note that some individuals completed pledge cards that prompted them to provide their own reason for voting by completing the sentence, "I will vote because ______," whereas other individuals completed pledge cards that did not contain this sentence prompt. We conducted a large-scale survey of individuals who filled out pledge cards and determined that receiving a pledge card with the sentence prompt had a positive influence on voting. Moreover, this effect was found above and beyond demographic and psychological predictors of voting. Implications of these findings are discussed.