scholarly journals Testing Models of Distributive Politics using Exit Polls to Measure Voters’ Preferences and Partisanship

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 845-875 ◽  
Author(s):  
Valentino Larcinese ◽  
James M. Snyder ◽  
Cecilia Testa
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Federal Spending ◽  
Us States ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Strategic Manipulation ◽  
Swing Voters

This article tests several hypotheses about distributive politics by studying the distribution of federal spending across US states over the period 1978–2002. It improves on previous work by using survey data to measure the share of voters in each state that are Democrats, Republicans and Independents, or liberals, conservatives and moderates. No evidence is found that the allocation of federal spending to the states is distorted by strategic manipulation to win electoral support. States with many swing voters are not advantaged compared to states with more loyal voters, and ‘battleground states’ are not advantaged compared to other states. Spending appears to have little or no effect on voters’ choices, while partisanship and ideology have large effects.

When Formulas Go Political: The Curious Case of Japan's Financial Index

2017 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 407-425 ◽  
Author(s):  
TAYLOR C. MCMICHAEL
Keyword(s):  
Economic Indicators ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Significant Determinant ◽  
Intergovernmental Transfers ◽  
General Account ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Financial Index ◽  
Geographically Targeted

AbstractScholars of distributive politics in Japan have shifted from large items in the general account budget to more geographically targeted spending known as intergovernmental transfers. However, a portion of the funds sent to prefectural governments are ostensibly determined by the apolitical ‘financial index’. However, even though the financial index is included in most studies of intergovernmental transfers, only slight attention focuses on the financial index and its determination. Using prefectural level data on intergovernmental transfers, economic indicators and electoral support for the LDP, this research shows that the LDP possesses strong incentives to manipulate the index and that politics is a significant determinant of the financial index.

Bypassing the Enemy: Distributive Politics, Credit Claiming, and Nonstate Organizations in Brazil

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 304-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
Natália S. Bueno
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Government Spending ◽  
Central Government ◽  
Regression Discontinuity ◽  
Distributive Politics ◽  
Regression Discontinuity Design ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Credit Claiming ◽  
Original Survey

How do incumbents prevent the opposition from claiming credit for government programs? The received scholarly wisdom is that central government authorities favor copartisans in lower tiers of government to reward allies and punish opponents. Yet this depiction ignores the range of strategies available to incumbents at the center. I argue that another effective strategy is to channel resources through nonstate organizations, thus bypassing the opposition and reducing “credit hijacking.” Using a regression-discontinuity design with data from Brazil, I show that mayors from the president’s party receive more resources, but that the election of an opposition mayor induces the central government to shift resources to nonstate organizations that operate in the locality. Original survey data, fieldwork, and data on organizations’ leaders support the claim that opposition mayors do not hijack credit from government spending through nonstate organizations.

scholarly journals A Clustering Approach for Characterizing Voter Types: An Application to High-Dimensional Ballot and Survey Data

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Shiro Kuriwaki
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Clustering Algorithm ◽  
High Dimensional ◽  
Palm Beach County ◽  
Spatial Voting ◽  
Clustering Approach ◽  
Swing Voters ◽  
State And Local ◽  
Spatial Voting Model

Large-scale ballot and survey data hold the potential to uncover the prevalence of swing voters and strong partisans in the electorate. However, existing approaches either employ exploratory analyses that fail to fully leverage the information available in high-dimensional data, or impose a one-dimensional spatial voting model. I derive a clustering algorithm which better captures the probabilistic way in which theories of political behavior conceptualize the swing voter. Building from the canonical finite mixture model, I tailor the model to vote data, for example by allowing uncontested races. I apply this algorithm to actual ballots in the Florida 2000 election and a multi-state survey in 2018. In Palm Beach County, I find that up to 60 percent of voters were straight ticket voters; in the 2018 survey, even higher. The remaining groups of the electorate were likely to cross the party line and split their ticket, but not monolithically: swing voters were more likely to swing for state and local candidates and popular incumbents.

scholarly journals Everything to everyone? Not when you are internally divided

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (6) ◽  
pp. 783-794 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roni Lehrer ◽  
Nick Lin
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Critical Condition ◽  
Political Competition ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
Two Stage ◽  
Present Evidence ◽  
Electoral Support

Despite the normative importance of a clear party stance to political competition and representation, research has discovered that parties and candidates tend to employ the “broad-appeal” strategy to becloud their true policy intentions in order to expand their electoral support. Empirical work by Somer-Topcu demonstrates evidence that being ambiguous indeed helps political parties gain votes in elections since equivocal messages make voters underestimate the preference divergence between themselves and parties. In this article, we ask under what conditions would the “broad-appeal” strategy fail to work? We then propose internal unity of political parties as a critical condition for this strategy to work effectively. If a party is internally divided, conflict within the party accentuates the true policy intentions of the party and then counterbalances the discounting effect of being ambiguous on voters’ perceptions. Using survey data from the German Internet Panel, we show that voters underestimate policy distances to ambiguous parties only if they perceive them as internally united. Using a two-stage estimator, we also present evidence that the underestimation of policy distances affects voters’ vote choices.

scholarly journals Trends in US Spatial Inequality: Concentrating Affluence and a Democratization of Poverty

2021 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 520-525
Author(s):  
Cecile Gaubert ◽  
Patrick Kline ◽  
Damián Vergara ◽  
Danny Yagan
Keyword(s):  
Income Inequality ◽  
Economic Analysis ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Current Population Survey ◽  
Population Survey ◽  
Spatial Inequality ◽  
Current Population Survey Data ◽  
Us States ◽  
Top Incomes ◽  
Per Capita

We use Bureau of Economic Analysis, census, and Current Population Survey data to study trends in income inequality across US states and counties from 1960-2019. Both states and counties have diverged in terms of per capita pretax incomes since the late1990s, with transfers serving to dampen this divergence. County incomes have been diverging since the late 1970s. These trends in mean income mask opposing patterns among top-and bottom-income quantiles. Top incomes have diverged markedly across states since the late 1970s. In contrast, bottom-income quantiles and poverty rates have converged across areas in recent decades.

scholarly journals Dissecting Electoral Support for the Far Right: A Comparison between Mature and Post-Communist European Democracies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Tobias Brils ◽  
Jasper Muis ◽  
Teodora Gaidytė
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Public Debates ◽  
Immigration Attitudes

Abstract This article investigates three explanations for electoral support for the far right – ‘cultural backlash’, ‘economic grievances’ and ‘protest voting’ – in a novel way. Our main contribution is that we contrast far-right voters with voters of centre-right parties, traditional left-wing parties and abstainers. Equally innovative is the comparison between mature and post-communist democracies. Using European Social Survey data (2014–16), we conclude that anti-immigration attitudes are most important in distinguishing far-right voters from all other groups. Yet, these differences are significantly smaller in Eastern Europe. Furthermore, far-right voters are not the so-called socioeconomic ‘losers of globalization’: this is only true when compared with centre-right voters. Concerning protest voting, distrust of supranational governance particularly enhances far-right voting. Overall, our study concludes that more fine-grained distinctions pay off and avoid misleading generalizations about ‘European far-right voters’ often presented in public debates.

Health Insurance as a Tool of Electoral Tactical Redistribution in Tamil Nadu, India

Asian Survey ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 55 (5) ◽  
pp. 991-1017
Author(s):  
Zubin Cyrus Shroff ◽  
Sanjay Kumar ◽  
Michael R. Reich
Keyword(s):  
Health Insurance ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Tamil Nadu ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
Political Analysis ◽  
Swing Voters ◽  
To Receive

We used individual level survey data to examine the distribution of health insurance and other welfare programs by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) government in Tamil Nadu. Core DMK supporters were more likely to receive welfare benefits than swing voters and opposition loyalists. Political analysis is important to understand motivations for establishing these programs.

Political Clientelism

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan C. Stokes
Keyword(s):  
Vote Buying ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Material Goods ◽  
Swing Voters ◽  
Political Clientelism

This article studies political clientelism. In the first section, the term clientelism can be defined as giving material goods in return for electoral support, where the criterion of distribution that the patron uses is simply: did you/will you support me? This section includes definitions of vote buying and patronage. The two waves of studies of clientelism and the link between clientelism and commitment are discussed in the subsequent sections. In the latter half of the article, the discussion tries to determine if clients are swing voters or core supporters, and looks at the causes and consequences of clientelism.

Narrowing the Gap: Explaining the Increasing Competitiveness of the Venezuelan Opposition

2014 ◽  
Vol 56 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yordan K. Kutiyski ◽  
André Krouwel
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Public Safety ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
Opinion Survey ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Public Opinion Survey ◽  
Electoral Support

AbstractThis article seeks to explain why electoral support for the Venezuelan opposition has increased substantially, using Venezuelan public opinion survey data from LAPOP and an opt-in sample collected through the online vote advice application Brújula Presidencial Venezuela. It analyzes why Venezuelans who had either voted for Chávez or abstained in 2006 defected and started to support the opposition in subsequent elections. It proposes several reasons: negative voter evaluations of the economy, concern for public safety, and dissatisfaction with Venezuelan democracy. While the finding that negative policy evaluations boost support for the opposition aligns with theoretical expectations, this study finds a strong relationship between having different evaluations of the quality of democracy and supporting Chávez, which shows that the advocacy of two competing visions of democracy by the incumbent and the opposition also affects voting patterns in Venezuela.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document