Do politicians’ answers to voting advice applications reflect their sincere beliefs? Comparing publicly and confidentially stated ideological positions in a candidate-centred electoral context

Ilmarinen, Ville–Juhani; Isotalo, Veikko; Lönnqvist, Jan–Erik; Schoultz, Åsa von

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2022.102504

Cited by 9 publications

(6 citation statements)

References 49 publications

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“…Finland constitutes an interesting case for the current purposes. The country represents an established European multiparty democracy where 'new' cultural issues, such as LGBTQ rights and climate change, have become politically salient (Ilmarinen et al 2022). This means that the issues included are likely to be relevant to our respondents.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…We test these theoretical expectations with a pre-registered, statistically well-powered conjoint experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey conducted in Finland (n=2406). Finland represents an established European multiparty democracy in which identity-related issues have become salient in the political discourse in recent years (Ilmarinen et al, 2022). The conjoint experiment is particularly effective method for our purposes as it allows for exploring the tradeoffs that people make between different candidate attributes, such as their issue positions and anti-democratic stances (Bansak et al 2021).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Does Democratic Backsliding Depend on the Policy Issue? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Christensen¹,

Saikkonen²

2023

Preprint

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Recent studies have shown that citizens in established democracies are willing to make trade-offs between valued political goals and democratic principles. Yet we know rather little about the particular types of policy issues that are more likely to make citizens prioritize them over democratic norms. These questions are particularly important in European multiparty systems that have experienced significant party system realignments in recent years. Drawing on the literature on democratic backsliding and issue dimensions in multiparty democracies we hypothesize that identity-related policy issues are more likely to generate trade-offs between issue congruence and democratic principles. Our theoretical expectations are tested with evidence from a pre-registered conjoint experiment embedded in a nationally representative survey (n=2406) conducted in Finland, an established multiparty democracy where identity-related issues have become increasingly politically salient. We find strong evidence that citizens are willing to make substantial trade-offs between their favoured issue positions and democratic principles. However, contrary to our expectations, these effects are similar across all issue areas, and are not more pronounced over identity-related issues. Our results therefore do not support to the expectation that voters would be willing to overlook democratic principles only for particularly polarizing political issues. Instead, our results are in line with earlier literature that stresses instrumental benefit-seeking in political behaviour.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Does Democratic Backsliding Depend on the Policy Issue? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Christensen¹,

Saikkonen²

2023

Preprint

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“…Previous studies suggest that leftist/progressive individuals are more likely to let their political values guide how they place their financial assets (Gutsche and Ziegler, 2019; Hong and Kostovetsky, 2012; Hood et al, 2014). We therefore include a measure of left/right ideology (scale 0–10, 0 = furthest to the left, 10 = furthest to the right) and GAL-TAN: Green-Alternative-Libertarian and Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist (index based on factor scores adapted from Ilmarinen et al (2022), varies between −1.48 and 2.32) to probe the importance of both traditional socio-economic ideological cleavages and more recent cultural ideological differences. Finally, we include social trust (scale 0–4) since this has been argued to be an important predictor for political participation that also indicates what type of people that use political investorism (Bäck and Christensen, 2016; Kaase, 1999).…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Politics on the stock market? Political investorism as a form of political participation

Christensen

Brännlund

2023

International Political Science Review

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Political investorism involves the use of financial investments to promote political aims, but has, with some recent exceptions, received scarce attention from political scientists although there are valid theoretical reasons to consider this a new form of political participation. Here, we add new knowledge to this research agenda by examining empirically whether political investorism constitutes a distinct mode of political participation. Furthermore, we explore the characteristics of political investors and why they use political investorism. We examine these issues using an original survey from Finland ( n = 1065). Our results demonstrate that political investorism constitutes a distinct mode of participation that in particular appeals to young and well-educated women living in an urban setting. Finally, cultural ideological divisions (measured with GAL-TAN: Green-Alternative-Libertarian and Traditional-Authoritarian-Nationalist) mediate socio-demographic characteristics when explaining participation.

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“…VAAs thus provide information that is easily translated into the voting decision. In terms of accuracy, the candidate positions are provided by the candidates themselves and elected politicians have been found to stay true to the positions they took in the VAA (Fivaz et al, 2014;Ilmarinen et al, 2022). While VAAs have inherent weaknesses that could reduce accuracy (a point we will elaborate in conclusion), there is thus reason to believe that using VAA advice can lead to a more accurate understanding of the district candidates' positional congruence.…”

Section: Voters and Candidate Vaas: Experiences And Expectationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Candidates, voters, and voting advice applications

Tromborg

Albertsen

2023

Eur. Pol. Sci. Rev.

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Voters often face a complex information environment with many options when they vote in elections. Research on democratic representation has traditionally been skeptical about voters’ ability to navigate this complexity. However, voting advice applications (VAAs) offer voters a shortcut to compare their own preferences across numerous issues with those of a large number of political candidates. As VAAs become more prevalent, it is critical to understand whether and how voters use them when they vote. We analyze how VAA users process and use VAA information about their district candidates with original survey data from the 2019 Danish parliamentary election in collaboration with the administrators of one of the most widely used Danish VAAs. The results demonstrate that VAAs have substantively large effects on their users’ choices between parties and between candidates within parties.

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Do politicians’ answers to voting advice applications reflect their sincere beliefs? Comparing publicly and confidentially stated ideological positions in a candidate-centred electoral context

Cited by 9 publications

References 49 publications

Does Democratic Backsliding Depend on the Policy Issue? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Does Democratic Backsliding Depend on the Policy Issue? Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment

Politics on the stock market? Political investorism as a form of political participation

Candidates, voters, and voting advice applications

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