Do Women Vote Less Correctly? The Effect of Gender on Ideological Proximity Voting and Correct Voting

This article examines a fundamental aspect of democracy: the relationship between the policy positions of candidates and the choices of voters. Researchers have suggested three criteria—proximity, direction, and discounting—by which voters might judge candidates' policy positions. More than 50 peer-reviewed articles, employing data from more than 20 countries, have attempted to adjudicate among these theories. We explain why existing data and methods are insufficient to estimate the prevalence of these criteria in the electorate. We then formally derive an exhaustive set of critical tests: situations in which the criteria predict different vote choices. Finally, through survey experiments concerning health care policy, we administer the tests to a nationally representative sample. We find that proximity voting is about twice as common as discounting and four times as common as directional voting. Furthermore, discounting is most prevalent among ideological centrists and nonpartisans, who make sophisticated judgments that help align policy with their preferences. These findings demonstrate the promise of combining formal theory and experiments to answer previously intractable questions about democracy.

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Issue Scales, Information Cues, and the Proximity and Directional Models of Voter Choice

Political Research Quarterly ◽

10.1177/1065912918760729 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 71 (4) ◽

pp. 772-787 ◽

Cited By ~ 7

Author(s):

Jonathan Kropko ◽

Kevin K. Banda

Keyword(s):

Optimal Strategies ◽

Democratic Politics ◽

Voter Behavior ◽

Survey Experiment ◽

Information Cues ◽

Voter Choice ◽

Proximity Voting ◽

The Way

One of the most important questions in the study of democratic politics centers on how citizens consider issues and candidate positions when choosing whom to support in an election. The proximity and directional theories make fundamentally different predictions about voter behavior and imply different optimal strategies for candidates, but a longstanding literature to empirically adjudicate between the theories has yielded mixed results. We use a survey experiment to show that the way that candidates’ issue positions are described can cue citizens to choose a candidate that is preferred under the expectations of either the proximity or the directional theory. We find that directional voting is more likely when the issue scale is understood to represent degrees of intensity with which either the liberal or the conservative side of the issue is expressed and that proximity voting is more likely when an issue scale is understood to be a range of policies.

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Emergence of free will and consciousness in humans: implications for doctor-patient interactions

Postgraduate Medical Journal ◽

10.1136/postgradmedj-2018-135634 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 94 (1112) ◽

pp. 354-356

Author(s):

Philip D Welsby

Keyword(s):

Free Will ◽

Personal Responsibility ◽

Self Awareness ◽

Voting Systems ◽

Patient Interactions ◽

Will Self ◽

Human Brains ◽

Correct Voting ◽

The Brain

Human brains have about 100 billion neurons each with about 1000 dendritic connections with other neurons giving a total of 100 000 billion deterministic dendritic switches. Various voting systems that the brain may use can produce conflicting results from identical inputs without any indication as to which one or ones would be correct. Voting systems cannot deliver unequivocal results in any other than the simplest situations. It is hypothesised that these conflicting results provide an indeterminacy that underlies free will, self-awareness, awareness of others, consciousness and personal responsibility, all of which can influence doctor-patient interactions.

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No Evidence on Directional vs. Proximity Voting

Political Analysis ◽

10.1093/oxfordjournals.pan.a029803 ◽

1999 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 21-33 ◽

Cited By ~ 84

Author(s):

Jeffrey B. Lewis ◽

Gary King

Keyword(s):

Rational Choice ◽

Political Behavior ◽

Decision Processes ◽

Statistical Assumption ◽

Statistical Assumptions ◽

Growing Body ◽

Empirical Tests ◽

Proximity Voting

The directional and proximity models offer dramatically different theories for how voters make decisions and fundamentally divergent views of the supposed microfoundations on which vast bodies of literature in theoretical rational choice and empirical political behavior have been built. We demonstrate here that the empirical tests in the large and growing body of literature on this subject amount to theoretical debates about which statistical assumption is right. The key statistical assumptions have not been empirically tested and, indeed, turn out to be effectively untestable with existing methods and data. Unfortunately, these assumptions are also crucial since changing them leads to different conclusions about voter decision processes.

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Proximity voting in the 2010 U.S. House elections

Electoral Studies ◽

10.1016/j.electstud.2013.02.005 ◽

2013 ◽

Vol 32 (4) ◽

pp. 708-717 ◽

Cited By ~ 21

Author(s):

Elizabeth N. Simas

Keyword(s):

Proximity Voting

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Correct Voting in Direct Legislation

Swiss Political Science Review ◽

10.1111/spsr.12000 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 18 (4) ◽

pp. 399-427 ◽

Cited By ~ 13

Author(s):

Thomas Milic

Keyword(s):

Direct Legislation ◽

Correct Voting

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Social Networks and Correct Voting

The Journal of Politics ◽

10.1017/s0022381612000461 ◽

2012 ◽

Vol 74 (3) ◽

pp. 751-764 ◽

Cited By ~ 59

Author(s):

Anand Edward Sokhey ◽

Scott D. McClurg

Keyword(s):

Social Networks ◽

Correct Voting

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Correct Voting and Post-Election Regret

Political Science and Politics ◽

10.1017/s1049096516001372 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 49 (04) ◽

pp. 761-765 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

André Blais ◽

Anja Kilibarda

Keyword(s):

Consumer Behavior ◽

Political Science ◽

Political Behavior ◽

Political Information ◽

Individual Choice ◽

National Elections ◽

Organizational Science ◽

Correct Voting ◽

The Relationship

ABSTRACTRegret is a basic affect associated with individual choice. While much research in organizational science and consumer behavior has assessed the precedents and consequents of regret, little attention has been paid to regret in political science. The present study assesses the relationship between one of the most democratically consequential forms of political behavior—voting—and feelings of regret. We examine the extent to which citizens regret how they voted after doing so and the factors that might lead one individual to be more regretful than another. Relying on surveys in five different countries after 11 regional and national elections, we find not only that political information leads to a decrease in post-election regret, but also that having voted correctly, or having voted in accordance with one’s underlying preferences regardless of information, similarly mitigates regret. The effect of correct voting on regret is greater among the least informed.

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