The Winning Party Platform: Voter Perceptions of Party Positions and Voting in Urban Africa

2021 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-193
Author(s):  
Eun Kyung Kim ◽  
Hye-Sung Kim
Keyword(s):  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Party Platforms ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Voter Perceptions ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Moderate Policy

Previous literature suggests that some African parties employ non-valence positional issues in their party platforms and that this practice is more prevalent in some countries than in others; however, no quantitative research has analysed the electoral effects of non-valenced campaigns. How do African voters perceive parties’ policy positions? Who uses party platforms to choose candidates? Using data from an original survey experiment conducted in Nairobi, we examine voter perceptions of party platforms and their behaviour in the 2017 Kenyan presidential elections. We find that the opposition party’s clearer messaging helps average voters recognise and characterise the party, compared to the incumbent’s moderate policy stance. Moreover, while both parties’ policy positions positively affect voting, non-partisan voters are more likely to support a candidate advocating moderate policies. This implies an incumbency advantage: incumbents’ broad-appeal strategies help maximise their votes, whereas opposition parties have limited strategy options.

Agree or disagree

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zeynep Somer-Topcu
Keyword(s):  
Leadership Change ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Parliamentary Democracies ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Leadership Changes ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The One ◽  
Party Policy Positions

Political party leaders are among the most influential actors in parliamentary democracies, and a change in party leadership is an important event for a party organization. Yet, we do not know how these leadership changes affect voter perceptions about party policy positions. On the one hand, we may expect party leadership changes to renew attention to the party, educate voters about its policy positions, and hence reduce disagreement among voters about party positions. On the other hand, rival parties may use a leadership change as an opportunity to defame the party, its leadership, and policies, and hence, increase voter confusion about the party’s policies. Using data from seven Western European democracies, I show that leadership changes help parties reduce voter disagreement about party policy positions. This effect is stronger if the new leader shifts the party’s policy positions.

Medicare for All, Some, or None? Testing the Effects of Ambiguity in the Context of the 2020 Presidential Election

2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-213
Author(s):  
Elizabeth N. Simas
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Election ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Negative Effects ◽  
Donald Trump ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Original Survey

ABSTRACTPolitical scientists have long contemplated whether candidates are better off taking more ambiguous policy positions. Taking advantage of a lack of clarity in Senator Kamala Harris’s healthcare position, I use an original survey experiment to apply these theories to the case of the 2020 presidential election. I find that ambiguity offers Harris little to no advantage over two of her leading Democratic primary opponents and, among certain subjects, harms her relative to Senator Elizabeth Warren. I also find negative effects on Harris’s favorability relative to President Donald Trump. These results have interesting implications for both the 2020 election and the broader study of candidate rhetoric because they illustrate potential downsides to avoiding clear issue statements.

Electoral Demand, Party Competition, and Family Policy: The Politics of a New Policy Field

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hanna Schwander
Keyword(s):  
Family Policy ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Policy Position ◽  
Family Policies ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Party Positions ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Voter Groups ◽  
Southern European Countries

This chapter studies the effect of changing electoral demand and party competition on parties’ family policy orientation in two continental and two southern European countries. Changes in the electoral landscapes represent a necessary but not sufficient condition that provides parties with an incentive to reform their family policy position. As the electoral relevance of the core constituency of both center-right and center-left parties is declining, both center-left and center-right parties are prompted to use progressive family policies to attract new voter groups. Yet, the chapter shows that the strategic configuration of parties influences the extent to which center-right parties modernize their family policy positions. The arguments are tested using data on attitudes toward gender roles and family policy from the European and World Values Survey and a new database on party positions on family policy in two continental and two southern European countries in the last two decades.

SINGLE-PARTY INCUMBENCY ADVANTAGE IN VIETNAM: A CONJOINT SURVEY ANALYSIS OF PUBLIC ELECTORAL SUPPORT

2020 ◽  
Vol 20 (1) ◽  
pp. 25-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edmund Malesky ◽  
Paul Schuler
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Development ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Relative Importance ◽  
Survey Analysis ◽  
Incumbency Advantage ◽  
Policy Positions ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Large Numbers ◽  
Incumbent Party ◽  
Ruling Party

AbstractWhy do voters in single-party regimes express support for the ruling party in such large numbers? Scholars offer three sets of explanations: 1) Support is manipulated by regime leaders or falsified by frightened voters; 2) Support is due to genuine popularity or “performance legitimacy”; 3) The incumbent party holds an extreme incumbency advantage due to voters’ certainty about their candidates’ policy positions or access to state resources. Despite the impressive theoretical development in this literature, these arguments have not been subjected to a research design capable of examining the relative importance of each of these factors. We use a unique survey experiment on nearly 42,000 Vietnamese citizens over three years that reduces the threat of preference falsification and allows us to isolate voter's true preferences as much as possible. While we find some evidence for all three explanations, we find substantial support for incumbency bias. An important subset of Vietnamese voters—those inclined to vote for non-party candidates—sincerely favor the party under conditions of uncertainty about the candidates’ policy stances or experience in the legislature.

Party–Group Ambivalence and Voter Loyalty: Results From Three Experiments

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 132-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gregory Shufeldt
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Amazon Mechanical Turk ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Party Loyalty ◽  
Three Samples ◽  
Group Identities ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Party Group

Renewed emphasis on the group-based nature of political parties makes understanding the relationship between partisan and group identities essential. How do citizens respond to the internal disconnect between their partisan identity and their other politically salient identities? In addition, do differences in the group-based nature of each party lead to asymmetric effects of party–group ambivalence? Using data from an original survey experiment across three samples—the 2012 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, the 2012 Convention Delegate Study, and a 2015 sample from Amazon Mechanical Turk—I find that party–group ambivalence diminishes party loyalty, making respondents less likely to vote for, contribute to, or volunteer for their political party’s candidate. Moreover, the strength of this impact is consistently larger among Republican identifiers than Democratic identifiers. These results suggest that party asymmetry in party coalitions may have an impact on party loyalty.

Interculturalism and the Acceptance of Minority Groups

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maykel Verkuyten ◽  
Kumar Yogeeswaran
Keyword(s):  
Minority Groups ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Social Psychological ◽  
Negative Attitudes ◽  
Positive Attitudes ◽  
Social Psychological Research ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Situational Effect

Abstract. Multiculturalism has been criticized and rejected by an increasing number of politicians, and social psychological research has shown that it can lead to outgroup stereotyping, essentialist thinking, and negative attitudes. Interculturalism has been proposed as an alternative diversity ideology, but there is almost no systematic empirical evidence about the impact of interculturalism on the acceptance of migrants and minority groups. Using data from a survey experiment conducted in the Netherlands, we examined the situational effect of promoting interculturalism on acceptance. The results show that for liberals, but not for conservatives, interculturalism leads to more positive attitudes toward immigrant-origin groups and increased willingness to engage in contact, relative to multiculturalism.

Evolution of top management’s understanding of product quality in Eastern Europe since the end of communism

2017 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 82-100
Author(s):  
Svetoslav Georgiev ◽  
Emil Georgiev
Keyword(s):  
Eastern Europe ◽  
Product Quality ◽  
Quantitative Research ◽  
Business Performance ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Senior Managers ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Doing Business ◽  
Using Data ◽  
The Impact

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to analyse the evolution of top management’s understanding of product quality in Bulgaria since the end of communism. The study examines three specific areas: top management’s understanding of the term “quality”; top management’s understanding of the relationship between quality and business performance; and top management’s understanding of the impact of job position on quality. Design/methodology/approach The paper relies on a quantitative research approach by using data from a survey of 186 companies in Bulgaria. Findings The paper suggests that senior managers in Bulgaria continue to base their understanding of “quality” on a single approach (*a characteristic of the communist era), with the product-based and the user-based approaches currently being the two most common ones. At the same time, surprisingly enough, this study claims that senior management in Bulgaria is currently well aware of the importance of quality as a dimension of firm’s competitiveness, and is also highly conscious of its roles’ impact on product quality. Research limitations/implications The results of this study are exclusively based on the case of Bulgaria and must be treated with caution in the case of other former communist states from the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) region. Practical implications This paper has relevance for both managers and companies doing business in Eastern Europe. Originality/value This is the first paper to provide detailed analysis of the evolution of the understanding of “product quality” in CEE since the end of communism. Moreover, this paper applies, for the first time, Garvin’s five approaches to defining quality within a practical context.

scholarly journals Partisan Ambivalence and Electoral Decision Making

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-28
Author(s):  
Stephen C. Craig ◽  
Paulina Cossette ◽  
Michael Martinez
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
American Politics ◽  
Political Campaigns ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Campaign Ads ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Negative Feelings ◽  
Democrats And Republicans ◽  
High Degree

American politics today is driven largely by deep divisions between Democrats and Republicans. That said, there are many people who view the opposition in an overwhelmingly negative light – but who simultaneously possess a mix of positive and negative feelings toward their own party. This paper is a response to prior research (e.g., Lavine, Johnson, and Steenbergen 2012) indicating that such ambivalence increases the probability that voters will engage in "deliberative" (or "effortful") rather than "heuristic" thinking when responding to the choices presented to them in political campaigns. We extend the logic of this argument to a hypothetical race for Congress, using data from a survey experiment to determine whether a high degree of ambivalence toward one's party makes voters more responsive to a negative attack against the candidate of that party. In fact, we find little evidence that partisan ambivalence promotes a deliberative response to negative campaign ads.

Intervening in Anti-Immigrant Sentiments: The Causal Effects of Factual Information on Attitudes toward Immigration

2021 ◽  
Vol 697 (1) ◽  
pp. 174-191
Author(s):  
Maria Abascal ◽  
Tiffany J. Huang ◽  
Van C. Tran
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Policy Preferences ◽  
Social Cognitions ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Factual Information ◽  
Change Policy ◽  
Nationally Representative ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Contrast Information ◽  
Attitudes Toward Immigration

If preferences on immigration policy respond to facts, widespread misinformation poses an obstacle to consensus. Does factual information about immigration indeed affect policy preferences? Are beliefs about immigration’s societal impact the mechanism through which factual information affects support for increased immigration? To address these questions, we conducted an original survey experiment, in which we presented a nationally representative sample of 2,049 Americans living in the United States with facts about immigrants’ English acquisition and immigrants’ impact on crime, jobs, and taxes—four domains with common misperceptions. Three of these factual domains (immigration’s impact on crime, jobs, and taxes) raise overall support for increased immigration. These facts also affect beliefs that are directly relevant to that information. Moreover, those beliefs mediate the effect of factual information on support for increased immigration. By contrast, information about English acquisition affects neither policy preferences nor beliefs about immigration’s impact. Facts can leverage social cognitions to change policy preferences.

Rejecting Ethnic Pandering in Urban Africa: A Survey Experiment on Voter Preferences in Nairobi, Kenya

2021 ◽  
pp. 106591292110405
Author(s):  
Hye-Sung Kim ◽  
Jeremy Horowitz
Keyword(s):  
Urban Areas ◽  
Political Mobilization ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Effective Strategy ◽  
Voter Preferences ◽  
Electoral Support ◽  
Urban Africa ◽  
Using Data ◽  
Vignette Experiment

Ethnic pandering, in which candidates promise to cater to the interests of coethnic voters, is presumed to be an effective strategy for increasing electoral support in Africa’s emerging multiethnic democracies. However, ethnic political mobilization may be disdained by citizens for its divisive and polarizing effects, particularly in urban areas. As a result, pandering may fall on deaf ears among Africa’s urban voters. This study examines how voters in Kenya’s capital city, Nairobi, respond to ethnic pandering using data from a vignette experiment conducted in 2015 and a replication study implemented in 2016. Results show that respondents are more supportive of candidates who make ethnically inclusive rather than targeted appeals, regardless of whether the candidate is identified as a coethnic. We propose that the results are driven by a broad distaste among urban voters for parochial politics, rather than by strategic calculations related to candidate viability.

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