Contextual effects, awareness, and voting behaviour: Does knowing about local politics increase contextual influence?

Abstract

Context is usually employed to explain voting behaviour, but the way in which it affects people remains obscure. Previous studies have stressed that awareness of the context might indirectly account for political environments’ influence. People aware of their context are expected to be more affected by the relative prevalence of party supporters in their place of residence compared with unaware citizens. By employing stacked logistic regression models (and using Italian National Election Studies data), it is shown that people aware of parties’ settlement in their municipalities are more likely to vote consistently with their surrounding political context.