Protesters at the news gates: An experimental study of journalists’ news judgment of protest events

Media attention is a key political resource for protesters. This implies that journalists are a crucial audience to which protesters seek to appeal. We study to what extent features of protest, of journalists, and of news organizations affect journalists’ news judgment. We exposed 78 Spanish journalists to vignettes of asylum seeker protests. Four features were systematically manipulated: protesters’ worthiness, unity, numbers, and commitment (WUNC). The experiments scrutinize the extent to which journalists consider a protest newsworthy (presence) and the likelihood that a protest is featured on a newspaper’s front page (prominence). Our results show that in terms of media presence, high turnout is key. Highly unified protesters, in contrast, are considered less newsworthy. Regarding prominence, strongly committed demonstrators more easily make it to the frontpage. Individual characteristics of journalists have no direct effect on news judgment. Journalists’ editorial status and ideological (outlet) placement only moderate the effect of some of the protest features, although in terms of front-page placement a more potent adversary versus ally effect is distinguished.

Issues that mobilize Europe. The role of key policy issues for voter turnout in the 2019 European Parliament election

In light of the unexpectedly high turnout in the 2019 European Parliament election, we explore how major transnational policy issues mobilize voters in European electoral contests. Based on the analysis of two data sets, the Eurobarometer post-election survey and the RECONNECT panel survey, we make three important observations. First, European citizens show a higher tendency to participate in European Parliament elections when they attribute greater importance to the issues ‘climate change and environment’, ‘economy and growth’, and ‘immigration’. Second, having a more extreme opinion on the issue of ‘European integration’ increases people's likelihood to vote in European elections. Third, the mobilizing effect of personal issue importance is enhanced by the systemic salience that the respective policy issue has during the election campaign. These findings show the relevance of issue mobilization in European Parliament elections as well as its context-dependent nature.

Different Class Citizens: Understanding the Relationship between Socio-economic Inequality and Voting Abstention

In most established democracies the turnout gap along class lines has increased substantially since the 1980s. Political participation has become a question of resources: income, property, formal education, secure employment and overall social status determine citizens’ engagement in political decision-making. Using a mixed methods approach, our case-study shows that this also applies to Vienna – an overall rich city with a long tradition of social reform policies, often credited with the highest quality of life in the world. Although Vienna still has a relatively high turnout by international standards, political participation is very unevenly distributed once socio-economic resources are taken into account. Thereby and throughout life, class shapes people’s experiences with and as part of democracy. These experiences in turn have long-term effects on their trust in the political system and on their political self-efficacy. Our findings first and foremost contribute to the ongoing debate on democracy’s social imbalance and show that its consequences already apply on the regional level. The study additionally highlights the usefulness of mixed methods approaches when we aim at a better understanding of the class-based turnout gap.

Asymmetric Partisan Voter Turnout Games

Since Downs proposed that the act of voting is irrational in 1957, myriad models have been proposed to explain voting and account for observed turnout patterns. We propose a model in which partisans consider both the instrumental and expressive benefits of their vote when deciding whether or not to abstain in an election, introducing an asymmetry that most other models do not consider. Allowing learning processes within our electorate, we analyze what evolutionarily stable strategies are rationalizable under various conditions. Upon varying electorate size, the partisan split of the electorate, and the degree to which an electorate takes underdog considerations into account in its payoff structure, we find that different equilibria arise. Our model predicts comparative statics that are consistent with voter behavior, specifically affirming a “size effect,” in which turnout decreases as electorate size increases. Furthermore, relaxing some of our preliminary assumptions eliminates some of the discrepancies between the predictions of our model and empirical voter behavior. In particular, our work demonstrates that misperceptions about the partisan split of an electorate may account for high turnout behavior .

Introduction

Free and fair elections, on the basis of universal suffrage, are a relatively recent achievement, their development deeply controversial, and how ordinary people voted in the past, as opposed to who they elected, has become an important object of scholarly research of late. France represents an excellent case study for exploring the history of voting on account of the long, uneven, and contested process of experimentation that was undertaken there. The sovereignty of the people, enunciated in 1789, was expressed in the frequent election of numerous representatives, at local as well as national level, while an enduring tradition of direct democracy also encouraged the use of referendums. France became an influential electoral laboratory as a result and much was demanded of its citizens as they learned to vote in some challenging circumstances. Their ensuing apprenticeship seemed to have been completed in the twentieth century, with the belated advent of a female franchise and consistently high turnout in all elections, but declining participation over the last few decades has raised serious doubts. This fascinating subject is tackled here on a thematic basis, highlighting candidatures and campaigning, as well as who could vote, how they did so and to what extent, beginning in the Ancien Régime and ending in the present day.

Conclusion

Since the turn of the twenty-first century, electoral turnout has been in general decline, not least in France, where the process of electoral acculturation has been called into question by plummeting levels of participation in legislative and municipal elections. Presidential polls are still attracting huge numbers, but in 2017 over four million voters spoiled their papers in the second round. These disturbing trends require some explanation, and they have been ascribed to disillusionment with the democratic process and a growing belief that casting a ballot achieves rather little. However, while the habit of voting is being lost, this apparent crisis of citizenship must be set in perspective, because this study has demonstrated that high turnout was not automatically generated by a mass franchise in the past. Moreover, recent research has revealed that those who never vote, or fail to register to do so, have remained in a small minority. Instead, increasing numbers are voting intermittently, choosing to exercise their right not to vote, an expression of vitality perhaps, compared to the somewhat mechanical behaviour of their predecessors. The same might be said of blank voting or annotating the ballot paper, while alternative forms of political engagement have been encouraged by the Internet. Above all, the development of women’s apprenticeship in voting has benefited from gender parity in candidatures and the number of females in elected office has increased enormously. In short, learning to vote remains a work in progress.

Passive innmeldte: Om hjemmesitterne ved sametingsvalg

The 2017 Sámi parliamentary elections saw an increase in turnout (measured in percent) for the first time since 2005. Although voter registration had increased, the number of votes increased even more. However, considering that one must register in the electoral roll to vote, 30 percent non-voters is a significant proportion. In this chapter, we use the voter survey to describe the non-voters. Regarding institutional factors, the analyses confirm the findings in Owren’s chapter: Although most of the electorate did not find it difficult to vote in the Sámi parliamentary elections, the exception was non-voters living in municipalities where only advance voting is allowed. Regarding individual factors, political resources matter. People with less education were especially overrepresented among the non-voters. Motivation is also important, and the non-voters were naturally less interested in politics in general and Sámi politics in particular. Those who joined the electoral roll to influence Sámi politics were seldom non-voters. On the other hand, those who signed up to express their Sámi identity were almost equally represented among the voters and non-voters. Although an instrumental motive for registration leads to high turnout, an expressive motive does not hinder electoral participation. We also find that non-voters to a lesser extent felt that their voice mattered or that there were political alternatives that represented their views. On the other hand, voters and non-voters did not differ substantially regarding perceived political differences between the parties and lists.

Experience of Remote Holding of a Meeting of a SSC in a Medical University During an Unfavorable Epidemiological Situation

This paper examines some aspects of the student scientific clubs (SSC) of the departments of a medical university during an unfavorable epidemiological situation caused by a new coronavirus infection. Variants of conducting SSC using various electronic educational environments and computer programs are considered. The many years of experience in holding meetings of the SSC at the Department of Operative Surgery with Topographic Anatomy (OS&TA) of VSMU named after N.N. Burdenko are summarized. The relevance of this work is due to the forced transition, due to the unfavorable epidemiological situation, to distance learning, many teachers and lecturers of higher education began to pay attention to various aspects of the educational process, including the issues of conducting classes, lecturing, solving emerging technical problems. However, so far little attention has been paid to the issues of holding student scientific circles of departments of various universities, including medical ones. The purpose of the work is an attempt to evaluate the holding of the first in the history of the Department of OS&TA, a remote meeting of the SSC on a number of parameters, among which the leading ones were general satisfaction with the meet-ing, its relevance, identification of positive and negative aspects. The objects of the study were 138 students of 2–6 courses of medical, 3–6 courses of pediatric and 2–4 courses of dental faculties. The stages of the research were: studying the distribution of respondents depending on the faculty and course, indicating their age; study of the total attendance at meetings of the SSC over the past 5 years, depending on the month; identifying the reasons for the high attendance of students to the first remote meeting in the history of the department; determination of the overall satisfaction of students with the meeting, as well as the main positive and negative aspects. It was found that the students were generally satisfied with the meeting. The desire to gain additional knowledge on the subject during the period of distance learning led to a high turnout of students, which, at the same time, «revealed» a number of negative aspects. The main one was the impossibility of simultaneous connection of more than 100 participants in the basic tariff of the «Zoom» program. In general, based on the data obtained, one can judge the success of the remote meeting of the SSC of the departments of a medical university. However, with a large number of participants, it is more expedient to use an alternative electronic environment or program, which could be, for example, the Webinar system.

Which Citizens Do Elected Officials Target With Distributive Spending? A Survey Experiment on U.S. Municipal Officials

Research is mixed as to whether politicians target swing voters or core supporters with distributive spending and whether citizens’ turnout affects this strategy. I use a novel data set and research design to examine this—a survey experiment on elected municipal officials. Respondents indicated which of two neighborhoods to target with a local project. I find that local officials, on average, target swing neighborhoods over core ones because they believe that swing voters are more likely than core voters to electorally punish politicians for targeting other groups. Yet, a large proportion still target core voters but not for reasons consistent with extant theory. Officials generally target high turnout neighborhoods over low turnout ones but under certain conditions are also willing to target lower turnout citizens. These findings point to the need for ongoing work to identify the conditions under which officials will target core or swing voters.

Turnout

Voters’ turnout is always a crucial aspect in our explanation of election outcomes. A high turnout is often said to give legitimacy to the democratic system. Moreover, turnout usually has distributive effects: parties’ vote shares depend on the levels of turnout registered in a given election. My chapter has the following four aims. First of all, it offers a broad picture of electoral participation in Spain by comparing its level with data in other established democracies. Second, I examine the evolution of turnout in Spain and include information on the different types of elections that take place in the country. The third part of the chapter is devoted to studying the determinants of turnout at the aggregate (electoral district) level. Finally, I analyse what sources of variation in turnout exist at the individual level by taking into account the effect of three main groups of explanatory factors: sociodemographic, attitudinal, and economic.