scholarly journals If You Play in the Mud, You Get Dirty: The Appropriation of Amish Group Identity during a Negative Campaign

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 42-56
Author(s):  
Kyle C. Kopko ◽  
Steven M. Nolt ◽  
Berwood A. Yost ◽  
Jackie Redman

Using an original online experiment, we test whether the appropriation of Amish group identity influences voter behavior. We do not find that the appropriation of Amish group identity influences intended vote choice. However, there is evidence that associating the Amish with a candidate who was subjected to negative advertisements resulted in a reduction in approval rating for the Amish as a group. In addition, we find that the attitudes toward the Amish vary by respondent ideology and, consistent with the contact hypothesis, those individuals who interact regularly with the Amish reported more favorable ratings toward the Amish. The results raise important questions regarding the appropriation of a group's image in the course of a political campaign.

2015 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
George Hawley

AbstractPrior to the 2012 presidential election, some commentators speculated that Mitt Romney's status as a devout and active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would undermine his presidential aspirations. Using the 2012 American National Election Survey, this study examines the relationship between attitudes toward Mormons and voter behavior in the United States in that election year. It finds that attitudes toward Mormons had a statistically-significant effect on turnout — though these effects differed according to party identification. It additionally finds that these attitudes influenced vote choice. In both cases, the substantive effects were small, indicating that anti-Mormon feelings did play a role in the 2012 presidential election, but they did not determine the final outcome.


2013 ◽  
Vol 46 (03) ◽  
pp. 481-482 ◽  
Author(s):  
Helmut Norpoth ◽  
Thomas Gschwend

In the German national election this fall, based on the forecast of the Chancellor Model, the governing coalition will score a resounding victory. Chancellor Angela Merkel enjoys a high approval rating, which puts her at a 2-1 advantage over the challenger, Peer Steinbrück. Although Germany is not a presidential system, where voters elect the chief policymaker, chancellor support has proved to be a strong predictor of vote choice in German national elections. Our forecast model also includes long-term partisanship, which provides a broad base for the governing parties in this election, and length of tenure, which exacts a modest penalty after two terms of office. Since its premiere in 2002, the model has predicted the winner in each election. In a case of perhaps beginner's luck, the 2002 forecast scored a bull's-eye with 47.1%, the exact share of the governing parties; the forecast was posted three months before Election Day. No poll or other model, not even the Election-Day exit polls, came close to this performance; in fact, most people predicted a defeat for Schröder's red-green coalition (Norpoth and Gschwend 2003).


2021 ◽  
Vol 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annika Fredén

Compensational voting refers to when voters cast a vote for a more extreme party than they prefer, in order to push policies closer to an ideal point. This article develops the idea of compensational voting in regard to pre-electoral coalition signals and polling trends. The argument is that a significant share of voters consider the relative strength of the parties in their preferred pre-electoral coalition, and adjust their vote choice accordingly. This is elaborated by conducting a mixed logit model over eight Swedish general elections where parties were more or less clear about their intentions to collaborate with other parties. Combining unique data from parties’ election manifestos including negative and positive quotes about other parties with polling trends and voters’ approval rating of parties, the analysis lends support to the idea that this type of coalition-oriented compensational voting occurs.


2013 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 344-361 ◽  
Author(s):  
NAHOMI ICHINO ◽  
NOAH L. NATHAN

Theories of instrumental ethnic voting in new democracies propose that voters support co-ethnic politicians because they expect politicians to favor their co-ethnics once in office. But many goods that politicians deliver to voters are locally nonexcludable in rural areas, so the local presence of an ethnic group associated with a politician should affect a rural voter's assessment of how likely she is to benefit from that politician's election. Using geocoded polling-station–level election results alongside survey data from Ghana, we show that otherwise similar voters are less likely to vote for the party of their own ethnic group, and more likely to support a party associated with another group, when the local ethnic geography favors the other group. This result helps account for the imperfect correlation between ethnicity and vote choice in African democracies. More generally, this demonstrates how local community and geographic contexts can modify the information conveyed by ethnicity and influence voter behavior.


Politologija ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 8-41
Author(s):  
Mažvydas Jastramskis

This article investigates voter behavior in the 2019 Lithuanian presidential elections. Even though they appear as first-order (citizens elect an executive that enjoys considerable powers), Lithuanian academic literature has rather neglected this topic in the recent decades. In this article, I employ data from a post-electoral survey conducted after the most recent presidential elections and investigate what kinds of voters and motives were hiding beneath the results of the first and second round in the 2019 presidential elections. Results show that the cleavages that are relevant in the Seimas elections (ethnic and evaluations of Soviet times) also influence the vote choice in the presidential elections. Analysis shows that a ideological cleavage related to social liberalism may becoming important in Lithuania. Lastly, there are signs of retrospective voting, as the voters that evaluate the economy better were more inclined to vote for the presidential candidate of the governing coalition. However, the overall effect is not strong.


2019 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 185-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Moyer-Gusé ◽  
Katherine R. Dale ◽  
Michelle Ortiz

Abstract. Recent extensions to the contact hypothesis reveal that different forms of contact, such as mediated intergroup contact, can reduce intergroup anxiety and improve attitudes toward the outgroup. This study draws on existing research to further consider the role of identification with an ingroup character within a narrative depicting intergroup contact between Muslim and non-Muslim Americans. Results reveal that identification with the non-Muslim (ingroup) model facilitated liking the Muslim (outgroup) model, which reduced prejudice toward Muslims more generally. Identification with the ingroup model also increased conversational self-efficacy and reduced anxiety about future intergroup interactions – both important aspects of improving intergroup relations.


2013 ◽  
Vol 221 (4) ◽  
pp. 223-231 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuuli Anna Mähönen ◽  
Katriina Ihalainen ◽  
Inga Jasinskaja-Lahti

This survey study focused on the attitudes of Russian-speaking minority youth (N = 132) toward other immigrant groups living in Finland. Along with testing the basic tenet of the contact hypothesis in a minority-minority context, the mediating effect of intergroup anxiety and the moderating effect of perceived social norms on the contact-attitude association were specified by taking into account the identity processes involved in intergroup interactions. The results indicated, first, that the experience of intergroup anxiety evoked by a negative intergroup encounter was reflected in negative outgroup attitudes only among the weakly identified. Second, negative contact experiences of minority adolescents were found not to be reflected in negative attitudes when their ethnic identification was attenuated, and when they perceived positive norms regarding intergroup attitudes.


2020 ◽  
Vol 51 (5) ◽  
pp. 354-359 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yavor Paunov ◽  
Michaela Wänke ◽  
Tobias Vogel

Abstract. Combining the strengths of defaults and transparency information is a potentially powerful way to induce policy compliance. Despite negative theoretical predictions, a recent line of research revealed that default nudges may become more effective if people are informed why they should exhibit the targeted behavior. Yet, it is an open empirical question whether the increase in compliance came from setting a default and consequently disclosing it, or the provided information was sufficient to deliver the effect on its own. Results from an online experiment indicate that both defaulting and transparency information exert a statistically independent effect on compliance, with highest compliance rates observed in the combined condition. Practical and theoretical implications are discussed.


Author(s):  
Matthias Hofer

Abstract. This was a study on the perceived enjoyment of different movie genres. In an online experiment, 176 students were randomly divided into two groups (n = 88) and asked to estimate how much they, their closest friends, and young people in general enjoyed either serious or light-hearted movies. These self–other differences in perceived enjoyment of serious or light-hearted movies were also assessed as a function of differing individual motivations underlying entertainment media consumption. The results showed a clear third-person effect for light-hearted movies and a first-person effect for serious movies. The third-person effect for light-hearted movies was moderated by level of hedonic motivation, as participants with high hedonic motivations did not perceive their own and others’ enjoyment of light-hearted films differently. However, eudaimonic motivations did not moderate first-person perceptions in the case of serious films.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document