Less is more: The paradox of choice in voting behavior

Cunow, Saul; Desposato, Scott; Janusz, Andrew; Sells, Cameron

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2020.102230

Cited by 32 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…We find strong evidence that party elites do provide Afro-Brazilian candidates with significantly worse identification numbers than whites. Evidence that Afro-Brazilians have less advantageous numbers is important, considering that voters use heuristics, such as candidate identification numbers, race, and gender to make voting decisions (Aguilar et al, 2015a, 2015b; Batista, 2020; Cunow et al, 2020).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race and Campaign Resources: Candidate Identification Numbers in Brazil

Janusz

Sells

2021

Journal of Politics in Latin America

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Party elites may hinder racial and ethnic minorities from winning public office by withholding resources. Prior studies have explored the distribution of money, media access, and party-list positions. In Brazil, party elites provide each candidate with a unique identification number. Voters must enter their preferred candidate’s identification number into an electronic voting machine to register their support. In this article, we replicate and extend Bueno and Dunning’s (2017) analysis of candidate identification numbers. They conclude that party elites do not provide white candidates with superior identification numbers than non-whites. We contend that assessing intraparty variation is theoretically and methodologically warranted. Using party fixed effects, we find that party elites provide non-white candidates with worse identification numbers than whites. We demonstrate that our findings are generalisable using data from other elections. Moreover, we show that party elites also withhold advantageous numbers from women and political novices.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Race and Campaign Resources: Candidate Identification Numbers in Brazil

Janusz

Sells

2021

Journal of Politics in Latin America

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“…Brazilian voters routinely have an abundance of candidates to choose from. Thousands of candidates typically run for congressional office (Cunow et al, 2021). Voters are entitled to cast a single ballot either for a political party or an individual candidate.…”

Section: Brazil’s Electoral System Political Parties and Campaign Res...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Political parties and campaign resource allocation: Gender gaps in Brazilian elections

Janusz¹,

Barreiro²,

Cintron

2021

Party Politics

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Political parties shape electoral outcomes by determining who stands for election and what campaign resources they have at their disposal. The introduction of gender quotas have led party leaders to nominate more women candidates, however, those women disproportionately lose. We contend that one of the reasons that women routinely lose is because party elites withhold the campaign resources necessary to mount an effective campaign. In this paper, we test this resource gatekeeping argument using data on the provision of campaign resources in Brazil. We analyze the distribution of three different types of party resources: candidate identification numbers, financial support, and television airtime. Our findings show that party elites provide female candidates less advantageous candidate identification numbers, less financial support, and less media access than they provide male candidates. Importantly, we do not find that gender gaps in campaign contributions are attributable to differences in candidate quality. This finding suggests that even when women are recruited to run for office, party elites may still undermine their electoral prospects.

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“…It is very well documented in the empirical literature that both an increasing amount of information and an increasing number of choices available can increase individuals' cost to make a choice which often leads to situations where individuals rather than making an informed choice they make no choice at all (see, e.g. Wilcox (1993) Cunow et al (2021), Marx and Turner (2019) besides others).…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Feddersen and Sandroni (2006), Martinelli (2006Martinelli ( , 2007, as well as empirical works, e.g. Hodler et al (2015) or Cunow et al (2021) which consider the costs of becoming informed in order to participate in political democratic processes.…”

Section: Literaturementioning

confidence: 99%