Elections and the Mobilization of Popular Support

Ginsberg, Benjamin; Weissberg, Robert

doi:10.2307/2110668

Cited by 88 publications

(50 citation statements)

References 12 publications

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“…Further, our results provide needed clarification regarding the determinants of post-election change in comparative candidate evaluations. As noted earlier, a host of methodological approaches have been applied to this deceptively complex empirical domain, yielding various results (Bass & Thomas, 1980;Cigler & Getter, 1977;Ginsberg & Weissberg, 1978;Granberg & Nanneman, 1986;Nimmo & Savage, 1976;Stricker, 1964;Thomsen, 1938;Zippel, 1980). By controlling for a variety of potentially dissonance-inducing factors, the present study offers a more concise and comprehensive picture of changeincomparativecandidateevaluations.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Cognitive Dissonance and Post‐Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections

Beasley

Joslyn

2001

Political Psychology

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Data from the National Election Studies were examined in an effort to isolate cognitive dissonance of two kinds: dissonance arising from a behavioral commitment in the form of voting, and dissonance arising from inconsistencies associated with having supported the losing candidate. Feeling thermometer ratings of the two principal presidential candidates obtained before and immediately after six elections (1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, and 1996) were analyzed. Regression estimates supported a dissonance reduction explanation of observed attitude changes. Voters, as compared to nonvoters, tended to increase the evaluative distance between candidates after an election, whereas supporters of the losing candidate were more likely than supporters of the winning candidate to decrease such evaluative distances. An additional examination of voters yielded results consistent with dissonance theory: After the election, respondents reporting favorable evaluations of both candidates (a difficult choice) tended to spread comparative candidate evaluations compared to respondents who were favorable toward only one candidate (an easy choice). The results both support and cast doubt on prior studies.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 77%

Cognitive Dissonance and Post‐Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections

Beasley

Joslyn

2001

Political Psychology

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“…This literature is somewhat older, dating back to at least Ginsberg and Weissberg's (1978) classic study. Considering the 1968 and 1972 elections in the U.S., Ginsberg and Weissberg detected both a "participation effect," which resulted from simply participating in the election, and a "winner effect," which resulted from having one's favored candidate win, on perceptions of legitimacy.…”

Section: Previous Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

Partisanship and Voter Confidence, 2000-2012

Sances

Stewart

2014

SSRN Journal

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To what degree is voter confidence in election procedures driven by satisfaction with the outcome of an election, as opposed to trust in government or objective features of the polling place, such as voting technology? Using approximately 30 national surveys over the past decade, we find a consistent relationship between voting for the winner and confidence in election administration. This confidence varies as a function of question wording and electoral context. Respondents are more confident in the quality of the vote count locally than nationally. They are responsive to electoral results at the state and national levels in forming their judgements. And, rather than being influenced by different types of voting technology, respondents lose confidence by virtue of change itself.Keywords: Voter confidence, legitimacy, public opinion, winner effect, election administration (2008), ruled that Indiana's interest in assuring the public of the integrity of the election process partially justified the passage of a photo identification requirement in order to vote. 1As the improvement of voter confidence has been promoted as a goal of election reform, and as scholars have begun probing voter confidence through survey research, questions have arisen about whether expressions of confidence in these surveys are a product of voters' direct experience of voting, or whether they are a product of something else, such as the causally prior belief about the trustworthiness of government more generally. More troubling for democracy, there is also the possibility that expressions of confidence in how ballots are counted are no more than reflections of whether one's preferred candidate won or lost the election: if my preferred candidate won, then I think the election was conducted fairly. To the extent this is true, it not only calls into question the usefulness of confidence questions for guiding policy makers, but it also suggests that contentious disputes over election outcomes will be inescapable in an increasingly polarized society, no matter what administrative reforms are put in place.1 Gronke and Hicks (2009) contains a comprehensive review of recent studies that examine voter confidence as a dependent variable, as well as a summary of recent policy debates that center around the concept of voter confidence. 3Our purpose in this paper is to explore this last possibility, by combining data from a number of survey research projects. Specifically, we focus on asking: to what degree is voter confidence driven by a respondent's satisfaction with the outcome of an election, as opposed to more general trust in government or objective features of the polling place, such as voting technology? While all the data will be observational, we are able to exploit several features of the data that help support a causal interpretation of our results, such as the dynamic nature of the data and the unpredictability of certain election results.We find there is indeed a consistent relationship between voting for the winning candidate A...

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“…Most studies have focused on individual-level factors for understanding external efficacy (Clarke and Acock 1989;Finkel 1985Finkel , 1987Ginsberg and Weissberg 1978;Hayes and Bean 1993;Hougland and Christenson 1983;Soss 1999;Stenner-Day and Fischle 1992). We acknowledge their explanatory power, but also consider how contextual or system-level factors, beyond the scope of the individual, may contribute to citizen belief in government responsiveness.…”

Section: External Efficacy and Descriptive Representationmentioning

confidence: 99%

More is Better: The Influence of Collective Female Descriptive Representation on External Efficacy

Atkeson¹,

Carrillo²

2007

Pol Gender

135

118

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This study tests the hypothesis that collective descriptive representation has important benefits for strengthening and legitimizing democratic society. Specifically, we test whether increased proportions of collective female descriptive representation in the statehouse and the presence of a female state executive are important to female citizens' attitudes toward government responsiveness, or external efficacy. We hypothesize that an increase in female collective descriptive representation in the legislative and state executive branches of government will increase female citizens' external efficacy but will be unimportant to males. We pooled American National Election Studies (ANES) data from 1988 to 1998 and used ordered probit techniques to test the hypothesis. In addition to our main independent variable of interest, our model includes state political culture, dyadic descriptive representation, dyadic substantive representation, sociodemographics, political participation, strength of partisanship, and electoral dummy variables as controls. Our results confirm that higher levels of collective female descriptive representation promote higher values of external efficacy for female citizens, suggesting that collective female descriptive representation has important benefits to a democratic society. E xternal political efficacy is the individual perception that governmental authorities and institutions are responsive to citizen influence

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Elections and the Mobilization of Popular Support

Cited by 88 publications

References 12 publications

Cognitive Dissonance and Post‐Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections

Cognitive Dissonance and Post‐Decision Attitude Change in Six Presidential Elections

Partisanship and Voter Confidence, 2000-2012

More is Better: The Influence of Collective Female Descriptive Representation on External Efficacy

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