A Two-Stage Theory of Discussant Influence on Vote Choice in Multiparty Systems

Schmitt‐Beck, Rüdiger; Partheymüller, Julia

doi:10.1017/s0007123414000301

Cited by 15 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 79 publications

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“…Austria is an ideal case to study our hypotheses empirically: It is characterized by a multiparty context, in which changes in party preferences during the electoral campaign are more likely to occur, as citizens can switch to a different party in the same ideological camp (see Schmitt-Beck & Partheymüller, 2016 for empirical evidence on Germany). The Austrian electoral system further encourages interpersonal party contact as voters cast party votes, but they may also indicate their preferred candidate on the respective party list.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

Johann

Königslöw

Kritzinger

et al. 2017

Political Communication

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An increasing number of citizens change and adapt their party preferences during the electoral campaign. We analyze which short-term factors explain intra-campaign changes in voting preferences, focusing on the visibility and tone of news media reporting and party canvassing. Our analyses rely on an integrative data approach, linking data from media content analysis to public opinion data. This enables us to investigate the relative impact of news media reporting as well as party communication. Inherently, we overcome previously identified methodological problems in the study of communication effects on voting behavior. Our findings reveal that campaigns matter: Especially interpersonal party canvassing increases voters’ likelihood to change their voting preferences in favor of the respective party, whereas media effects are limited to quality news outlets and depend on individual voters’ party ambivalence.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

Johann

Königslöw

Kritzinger

et al. 2017

Political Communication

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“…4 This forcedly leads us to analyze an influence mechanism in a dyadic fashion. Though other studies apply this strategy (see Schmitt-Beck and Partheymüller, 2016;Mancosu, 2017), we must stress that previous research demonstrated that influence is also moderated by the general consensus toward the switching within the broader social network (see Bello and Rolfe, 2014). In other words, our coefficients could be biased by the so-called 'autoregressive influence' (Huckfeldt et al, 2004), which usually plays a role in convincing ego to switch vote choices.…”

Section: Data Methods and Modelsmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…The first set of models aims at testing Hypothesis 1, while the second tests whether different intimacy levels are more likely to change respondents' ideas in different family regimes (Hypothesis 2 and Hypothesis 3). We employ first-difference models, a widely used technique to test whether changes in an individual characteristic from t 0 to t 1 are likely to be affected by exogenous individual/social characteristics in t 0 (see Jackman and Vavreck, 2010;Bello and Rolfe, 2014;Schmitt-Beck and Partheymüller, 2016;Mancosu and Vezzoni, 2017). In our model, the dependent variable is a dichotomous variable that is equal to 1 if the respondent changed his or her vote intention from the pre-to the post-election wave.…”

Section: Modelsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In particular, it has been shown that political disagreement with others can lead individuals to change their minds. The effect of disagreement on opinion change has been shown to be relevant in many Western democracies, including the UK (Bello and Rolfe, 2014), the US (Huckfeldt et al, 2004), Italy (Mancosu and Vezzoni, 2017) and Germany (Schmitt-Beck and Partheymüller, 2016;Mancosu, 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Political disagreement and vote volatility: the role of familism across different European countries

Mancosu

Hopmann²

2019

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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Interpersonal influence shapes political behavior and attitudes. So far, however, little efforts have been devoted to testing this mechanism comparatively in Europe. This paper aims at explaining differences in influence patterns in three European countries (Italy, Germany, and the UK). Based on works in demography, we argue that in Mediterranean cultures (characterized by high degrees of familism), people are more prone to be affected by attitudes and behaviors of their relatives with respect to other strong ties (e.g., spouses), while in continental, northern Europe, and the UK, this effect is less important. We test this argument using longitudinal data. Consistent with expectations, results show that the influence of relatives in familistic contexts is stronger than in non-familistic ones. At the same time, the spouse effect (namely, the effect of an intimate, non-relative discussant) is particularly strong in non-familistic contexts (and vice versa). In sum, we demonstrate that public opinion studies can be strengthened by theories developed in other social sciences, such as demography.

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“…In Germany, the score is highly significant in 1 out of 4 elections in all cases. For detailed information, see Beck and Partheymüller, 2016;Vassil et al, 2016). Several studies showed that, with the increasing number of choices in people's minds, people will delay their decisions (Greenleaf and Lehmann 1995).…”

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confidence: 99%

Issue cross-pressures and electoral behavior in Western Europe

He¹

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When citizens' positions on some issues lead them to support one party while their policy preferences on other issues push them toward another party, how will these kinds of voters behave in elections? Since their issue positions lead them to inconsistent parties, compared to citizens whose positions on most issues generally point to the same party, will they rely less on individual issues and more on other cues such as political performance in order to make a decision? Will they have less motivation to go out to vote? Will they switch their voting choices more often between different elections? And will they even delay their voting decisions until the very last polling day? These are the central questions of this research. Elections have long been considered by political scientists as a key element of representative democracy, through which political power is justified by competition for the people's vote. Consequently, without insight into how citizens arrive at their decisions in elections, we cannot fully understand the functioning of democracies. The 'funnel of causality' model developed by the Michigan school is the cornerstone in studying how people vote. It describes a chain of variables that contributes to the vote of a particular political candidate or party , such as long-term factors including socioeconomic backgrounds, historical patterns, and groups' loyalties; and short-term factors such as issues, candidates, political and economic situations, government performance and campaign events. At the entrance of the funnel are the citizens' sociological characteristics that influence the subsequent element: party identification. Party identification, in turn, determines citizens' evaluation of candidates, issue proposals, government performance, etc. The output of this funnel represents citizens' eventual voting choices. As we can see, long-term factors, especially partisanship, are expected to affect the short-term variables and therefore moderate the effects of the short-term variables on voters' decision making. Thus the 'funnel of causality' model clearly puts the importance of longterm factors ahead of short-term factors which affect electoral behavior. Party identification, a psychological attachment to a particular party, in the United States and social cleavages, as politically dividing lines in a society, in most Western 1-Introduction political science. In this dissertation I will answer the following main research question: Do issue cross-pressures influence citizens' different kinds of electoral behavior, and, if so, how? 1.1 Issue cross-pressures: A by-product of the rise of issue orientation To answer the question about the influence of issue cross-pressures on electoral behavior, we should first explore the background of the emergence of issue cross-pressures. The occurrence of issue cross-pressures stems from the decline of partisan politics and the rise of importance of citizens' orientation on specific issues in arriving at their vote choices. Party identification and social cleavage ha...

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A Two-Stage Theory of Discussant Influence on Vote Choice in Multiparty Systems

Cited by 15 publications

References 79 publications

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

Intra-Campaign Changes in Voting Preferences: The Impact of Media and Party Communication

Political disagreement and vote volatility: the role of familism across different European countries

Issue cross-pressures and electoral behavior in Western Europe

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