‘The personal touch’: Campaign personalisation in Britain

2021 ◽  
pp. 136914812110446
Author(s):  
Joshua Townsley ◽  
Siim Trumm ◽  
Caitlin Milazzo
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
National Party ◽  
Individual Level

Parliamentary candidates face choices about the extent to which they personalise their election campaigns. They must strike a balance between promoting their party’s message and their own personal appeal, and they must decide how much effort to invest in developing personalised campaign activities. These decisions determine the nature of the campaigns that candidates run, and therefore, voters’ experience during elections. In this article, we use individual-level survey data from the British Representation Study to explore the extent to which candidates personalise their election campaigns in terms of messaging focus and activities. We find that candidates who live in the area they seek to represent, and those who are more positive about their electoral chances, run more personalised campaigns, in terms of focus and activities. Incumbents’ campaigns, meanwhile, are more personalised in their focus only, while candidates who have held national party office tend to use a greater range of personalised campaign activities.

Does policy motivation drive party activism? A study of party activists in three Asian democracies

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882090802
Author(s):  
Sejin Koo
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Local Community ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Data Set ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Party Activist ◽  
Party Activists ◽  
Party Characteristics ◽  
Positive Effect ◽  
Policy Motivation

Studies of party activism highlight that party activists are driven by various motivations and that these affect their level of activism. However, it remains unclear whether policy-motivated activists are more engaged in party activities than those motivated by other incentives and whether the motivation–activism link varies with party characteristics. This article investigates these questions by focusing on political actors linking parties and voters in the local community. I use a party activist survey data set collected during recent national election campaigns in three Asian young democracies: Taiwan, Korea, and Mongolia. The results demonstrated the prominence of policy motivation as an impetus for activists’ intraparty commitment. I also found that the positive effect of policy motivation is especially robust in small parties, while it is muted in large parties and that party membership increases the probability of intraparty commitment, challenging the widely held belief that formal membership is pointless in Asian parties.

The Power of Polls?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason Roy ◽  
Shane P. Singh ◽  
Patrick Fournier
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Experimental Design ◽  
The United States ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
Public Opinion Polls ◽  
Opinion Polls

Public opinion polls have become increasingly prominent during elections, but how they affect voting behaviour remains uncertain. In this work, we estimate the effects of poll exposure using an experimental design in which we randomly assign the availability of polls to participants in simulated election campaigns. We draw upon results from ten independent experiments conducted across six countries on four continents (Argentina, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States) to examine how polls affect the amount of information individuals seek and the votes that they cast. We further assess how poll effects differ according to individual-level factors, such as partisanship and political sophistication, and the content included in polls and how it is presented. Our work provides a comprehensive assessment of the power of polls and the implications for poll reporting in contemporary elections.

scholarly journals Do Unto Others? Individual-Level Mechanisms of Political Altruism

2019 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 430-443
Author(s):  
Marco Giugni ◽  
Maria T. Grasso
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Asylum Seekers ◽  
Social Groups ◽  
Altruistic Behavior ◽  
Unemployed People ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Social Structural ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Refugees And Asylum Seekers

Starting from a definition of altruism as situations in which a given actor sustains harm while another actor gains benefits, we compare the behaviors of respondents in relation to the members of three main groups of beneficiaries—refugees and asylum seekers, unemployed people, and people with disabilities—through the analysis of original survey data collected in eight European countries ( N ~ 16,000) in the TransSOL project. We investigate in particular the reasons why people act on behalf of each of these three groups without being a member of any of them or having close ties with any individuals in these groups. These respondents are compared with respondents who are members of these groups and/or have close ties with people within them so as to isolate the factors underlying individual-level altruistic behavior. Our results show that political altruism emerges out of a complex combination of factors and is not simply reducible to social structural positions, subjective feelings of attachment or resources, but is the result of the interaction of these influences and that these vary when looking at support for different social groups.

scholarly journals Referenda as commitment devices – an experimental approach

2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 205316802094341
Author(s):  
Florian Justwan ◽  
Sarah K. Fisher ◽  
Ashley Kerr ◽  
Jeffrey D. Berejikian
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Majority Vote ◽  
Territorial Dispute ◽  
Political Event ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
International Court ◽  
Original Survey ◽  
Commitment Devices

This research note evaluates the claim that referenda can serve as useful commitment devices in international negotiations. More specifically, we relied on individual-level survey data to test the claim that governments can successfully “tie their hands” to policy choices by calling referenda on political issues. Our empirical analysis relied on original survey data collected in April 2019 in Belize. In so doing, we took advantage of an unusual political event. On 8 May (shortly after our survey), Belizean citizens participated in a countrywide plebiscite. During this vote, they decided to send their country’s territorial dispute with Guatemala for adjudication to the International Court of Justice. From a research perspective, this event allowed us to assess the effect of disregarded referendum results in a highly salient political environment. Our experimental analysis suggested that individuals do reprimand their governments for failing to implement a majority vote (a) even if this choice precipitates a person’s favored substantive outcome, and (b) irrespective of an individual’s preferred party.

Strategic Voting in India: Its Extent and Determinants in the 2004 General Election

Asian Survey ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 49 (4) ◽  
pp. 609-624 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jungug Choi
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Nationwide Survey ◽  
Strategic Voting ◽  
General Election ◽  
Individual Level

This study explores the issue of "strategic voting" in India by using individual-level, nationwide survey data from the 2004 general election. It finds that Indian voters are more "strategic" than "expressive" if their preferred party is unlikely to win a given parliamentary seat. Furthermore, the variables of being Muslim and education are found not to be statistically significant determinants of strategic voting.

scholarly journals Comment on Apiors, E.K.; Suzuki, A. Mobile Money, Individuals’ Payments, Remittances, and Investments: Evidence from the Ashanti Region, Ghana. Sustainability 2018, 10, 1409

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (8) ◽  
pp. 2784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leo Van Hove
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Financial Status ◽  
Mobile Money ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Ashanti Region ◽  
Primary Individual

Using primary, individual-level survey data for Ghana, Apiors and Suzuki find, among other things, that mobile money use is not dependent on financial status and that mobile money users save more. This note argues that both conclusions have validity issues.

scholarly journals ‘The enemy within’: Campaign attention and motivated reasoning in voter perceptions of intra-party conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 135406882090640
Author(s):  
Carolina Plescia ◽  
Sylvia Kritzinger ◽  
Jakob-Moritz Eberl
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Election Campaign ◽  
Election Campaigns ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Party Strategies ◽  
Voter Perceptions ◽  
Broad Interest ◽  
Over Time

In spite of broad interest in internal party dynamics, with previous literature relatedly demonstrating that voters are not oblivious to party infighting, very little attention has been paid to the antecedents of voter perceptions of intra-party conflict. This article addresses this research deficit with the support of empirical evidence gathered over the course of the 2017 Austrian national election campaign. The study examines variations in perceived intra-party conflict over time, both across parties and within the same party. We find that although voter perceptions largely mirror actual distinctions in intra-party fighting, conspicuous individual-level variations can also be identified owing to attention to the election campaign and motivated reasoning in information processing. These results have important consequences for our understanding of voter perceptions of intra-party conflict and the role of election campaigns, with potential implications for party strategies during election campaigns.

Democracy and Quality of Life in Asian Societies

2011 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 343-357
Author(s):  
SHINYA SASAOKA ◽  
KATSUNORI SEKI
Keyword(s):  
Quality Of Life ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Hierarchical Modeling ◽  
Causal Effect ◽  
Political Regime ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Satisfaction With Democracy ◽  
Country Level ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractThis article examines whether democracy affects quality of life. Scholars have conducted surveys to investigate whether democracy is likely to lead to good quality of life. There are two contested views to the relationship: some suggest that democracy has a positive causal effect on quality of life, whereas others contend that democracy does not play such a role. Previous findings are supported by cross-national statistical analysis with aggregated survey data. However, aggregated survey data may cause ecological fallacy. Also, in order to ascertain the extant research, it would be beneficial to test the hypothesis by incorporating both individual- and country-level variables. Therefore, this paper applied hierarchical modeling to investigate the regularity. Both individual-level perception of democracy and country-level political regime data were incorporated in our empirical model. Our findings suggest that individual-level satisfaction with democracy has positive causal effect on one's quality of life, whereas the country-level characteristic of the political regime has no effect.

Policy Mood and Political Sophistication: Why Everybody Moves Mood

2008 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-454 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER K. ENNS ◽  
PAUL M. KELLSTEDT
Keyword(s):  
Public Opinion ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
General Social Survey ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Political Sophistication ◽  
Social Survey ◽  
Political Issues ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Opinion Change

This article presents evidence that both micro (individual level) and macro (aggregate level) theories of public opinion overstate the importance of political sophistication for opinion change. It is argued that even the least politically sophisticated segment of society receives messages about the economy and uses this information to update attitudes about political issues. To test this hypothesis, the authors have used General Social Survey data to construct a 31-item measure of policy mood, disaggregated by political sophistication, that spans from 1972 to 2004. They found that all the subgroups generally changed opinion at the same time, in the same direction, and to about the same extent. Furthermore, they show that groups at different sophistication levels change opinions for predominantly the same reasons.

See No Evil: Heterogeneity in Public Perceptions of Corruption

2011 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-25 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuliya V. Tverdova
Keyword(s):  
Survey Data ◽  
Public Perceptions ◽  
System Level ◽  
Economic Conditions ◽  
Individual Level ◽  
Previous Election ◽  
The Government ◽  
Situation Économique ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
People’S Perceptions

Abstract.This paper investigates how people form perceptions about corruption. By combining survey data with system-level indicators in 30 countries, the author first explores the relationship between elite and mass evaluations of corruption. Furthermore, the author tests a series of hypotheses pertaining to how individual-level factors, such as political allegiances, personal economic conditions and education may influence people's perceptions. The findings reveal that mass assessments of corruption track closely those of the elites. In addition, more economically fortunate individuals and those who supported the government in the previous election tend to be less critical of corruption. The effect of education is contingent on a country's level of corruption. Specifically, more educated citizens in “cleaner” countries do not see as much corruption as their less educated counterparts. However, this difference is substantively modest.Résumé.Cet article étudie la façon dont le public établit sa perception de la corruption. En utilisant conjointement les informations données par les enquêtes d'opinion et par les indicateurs de pointage de 30 pays, l'auteur va d'abord explorer les évaluations de la corruption des élites et celles de la masse populaire. De plus, l'auteur va tester une série d'hypothèses concernant la façon dont la perception du public est influencée par des facteurs personnels, l'appartenance politique par exemple, ou par la situation économique personnelle ou l'éducation. Les résultats révèlent que les jugements de la masse sur la corruption suivent de près ceux des élites. De plus, les individus plus fortunés ou ceux qui ont voté pour le gouvernement aux dernières élections ont tendance à se montrer moins critiques au sujet de la corruption. L'effet de l'éducation est aléatoire quant au niveau de corruption d' un pays. En particulier, dans les pays considérés comme les plus « propres », les citoyens plus éduqués constatent moins la corruption que ceux qui sont moins éduqués. La différence cependant est extrêmement modeste.

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