Late-deciding voters in presidential elections

Gopoian, J. David; Hadjiharalambous, Sissie

doi:10.1007/bf01541642

Cited by 43 publications

(66 citation statements)

References 15 publications

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“…One of the clearest findings in the campaign volatility literature is that voters who make their voting decisions in the final weeks or days before the elections are less partisan than voters who decided which party to vote for before the campaign began (Fournier et al, 2004;Gopoian & Hadjiharalambous, 1994;Irwin & van Holsteyn, 2008). Voters who visit VAA Web sites early in the campaign may therefore be less interested in a voting recommendation than voters using the tool closer to Election Day.…”

Section: User Types and Campaign Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Beyond Young, Highly Educated Males: A Typology of VAA Users

Pol¹,

Holleman

Kamoen

et al. 2014

Journal of Information Technology & Politics

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Voting Advice Applications (VAAs) are Web tools that are used to inform increasing numbers of voters during elections. This increasing usage indicates that VAAs fulfill voters' needs, but what these needs are is unknown. Previous research has shown that such tools are primarily used by young males and highly educated citizens. This suggests that VAAs are generally used by citizens who are already well-informed about politics and may not need the assistance of a VAA to make voting decisions. To analyze the functions that VAAs have for their users, this study utilizes unique user data from a popular Dutch VAA to identify different user types according to their cognitive characteristics and motivations. A latent class analysis (LCA) resulted in three distinct user types that vary in efficacy, vote certainty, and interest: doubters, checkers, and seekers. Each group uses the VAA for different reasons at different points in time. Seekers' use of VAAs increases as Election Day approaches; less efficacious and less certain voters are more likely to use the tool to become informed.

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Section: User Types and Campaign Dynamicsmentioning

confidence: 94%

Beyond Young, Highly Educated Males: A Typology of VAA Users

Pol¹,

Holleman

Kamoen

et al. 2014

Journal of Information Technology & Politics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As for the second, Chaffee (1996) and Fournier et al (2004) suggest that late deciders are more vulnerable to campaign events. Gopoian and Hadjiharalambous (1994) find that late deciders in the US are less predictable than decided voters and that they are also less influenced by the conventional factors that traditionally influence vote choice. Finally, Lavine (2001) and Kosmidis and Xezonakis (2010) find that the determinants of vote choice of decided and undecided voters significantly differ: while the former group are more likely to be affected by the candidate's personal traits, the latter take the economy more into consideration.…”

mentioning

confidence: 95%

The role of the political context in voting indecision

Orriols¹,

Martínez²

2014

Electoral Studies

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Article available under the terms of the CC-BY-NC-ND licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/) eprints@whiterose.ac.uk https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Reuse Unless indicated otherwise, fulltext items are protected by copyright with all rights reserved. The copyright exception in section 29 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 allows the making of a single copy solely for the purpose of non-commercial research or private study within the limits of fair dealing. The publisher or other rights-holder may allow further reproduction and re-use of this version -refer to the White Rose Research Online record for this item. Where records identify the publisher as the copyright holder, users can verify any specific terms of use on the publisher's website. TakedownIf you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing eprints@whiterose.ac.uk including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. This is a PDF file of an unedited manuscript that has been accepted for publication. As a service to our customers we are providing this early version of the manuscript. The manuscript will undergo copyediting, typesetting, and review of the resulting proof before it is published in its final form. Please note that during the production process errors may be discovered which could affect the content, and all legal disclaimers that apply to the journal pertain. Accepted Manuscript M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT HighlightsWe examine how context affects voters cognitive and social costs of declaring their vote intentionTo study it we pool all pre-electoral surveys in Spain since 1980 (135 context-level observations)Our results show that the number of parties and the electoral competitiveness increase voting indecisionResults also show that government s reputation influence indecision among incumbent partisans *Highlights (for review) M A N U S C R I P T A C C E P T E D ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT The role of the political context in voting indecisionA substantive portion of the electorate declares in pre-electoral surveys that they are undecided.However, little has been done in trying to understand who these voters are and how they finally decide their vote. In this article, we try to advance the literature by disentangling the circumstances under which voters are more likely to be undecided. While the traditional approach to the study of electoral indecision has been to characterize which individual traits make voters more likely to be undecided, this article provides consistent evidence showing that key elements of the political context may also affect electoral indecision. Using long-term harmonized data from Spanish pre-electoral surveys over thirty years, we find that voting indecision is influenced by two different types of contextual factors. First, there are some political contexts that reduce voters' cognitive costs when deciding their vote i.e. the level of electoral competitiveness and the number of par...

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“…Moreover, 'campaign-deciders' are more attentive and involved than 'lastminute' deciders (Chaffee & Choe, 1980;Whitney & Goldman, 1985;Bowen, 1994;Gopoian & Hadjiharalambous, 1994;Chaffee & Rimal, 1996).…”

Section: Communication and Timing Of Vote Decisionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campaign Mixed-Message Flows and Timing of Vote Decision

Nir¹,

Druckman²

2008

International Journal of Public Opinion Research

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The impact of a campaign on voters' decisions depends, in part, on when voters make their decisions. Voters who decide at the start of a campaign will be much less influenced by the campaign than those who decide at the end. But what explains when voters make their decisions? We address this question by focusing on two key factors: (a) the nature of the campaign information environment-that is, the extent to which it is one-sided or partial to one candidate as opposed to mixed with equally favorable information for both candidates, and (b) individual openness to persuasion-specifically, the extent to which individuals are ambivalent about the candidates. We find that mixed information delays the decisions of voters who are the most ambivalent, above and beyond voters' demographics, political knowledge, interest, and partisan strength. In short, timing of vote decisions depends on an interaction between the competitive nature of the campaign and individual susceptibility to persuasion.

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Late-deciding voters in presidential elections

Cited by 43 publications

References 15 publications

Beyond Young, Highly Educated Males: A Typology of VAA Users

Beyond Young, Highly Educated Males: A Typology of VAA Users

The role of the political context in voting indecision

Campaign Mixed-Message Flows and Timing of Vote Decision

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