The effect of social pressure from family and friends on turnout

Blais, André; Galais, Carol; Coulombe, Maxime

doi:10.1177/0265407518802463

Cited by 23 publications

(17 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…The model also controls for cohabitation status. There is a strong empirical link between cohabitation and contagious electoral behaviour between family members (Blais et al., 2019). In light of the rising divergence between political dispositions between voters based on their geographic distribution amongst areas of different levels of urbanisation (Smets and van Ham, 2013: 350), I also include a control indicating voters who reside in rural locations.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why vote when you cannot choose? EU intervention and political participation in times of constraint

Turnbull‐Dugarte

2020

European Union Politics

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This article analyses how economic intervention affects individuals’ political behaviour by assessing the impact of intervention on aggregate and individual turnout. The intervention of the European Union in a selection of member states is viewed as having negative consequences for democratic choice, reducing the ability of voters to select between distinct policy alternatives, resulting in the absence of the primary benefit of voting: choice. It is argued that when voters are faced with electoral choices without the ability to shape policy alternatives, they are less likely to vote. Moreover, the negative effect of intervention is found to be conditioned by both individuals’ level of education and ideological identification. Voters on the centre and the left who feel abandoned by left-leaning parties, who have prioritised being responsible to their European paymasters, are significantly more likely to abstain when exposed to intervention. Empirical support for the argument is found via the analysis of aggregate turnout as well as individual level data from the European Social Survey from across fifteen Western European states.

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Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Why vote when you cannot choose? EU intervention and political participation in times of constraint

Turnbull‐Dugarte

2020

European Union Politics

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“…We control for the social class of the discussant, and the frequency of dyadic political discussion because we might expect that respondents would be more likely to pick up messages about approval and disapproval the more often they discuss politics together. We also include controls for dyadic social relationship as it has previously been shown that social pressures from close family members tend to be most influential (Blais et al 2019;Fieldhouse and Cutts 2020). This finding is repeated in our data as shown in Fig.…”

Section: Injunctive Norms and Shared Partisanshipmentioning

confidence: 54%

“…That is, the coefficients for both opposing and shared identification are different to the reference category, but comparing their respective effect sizes and credible intervals, the latter are more likely to be perceived to approve of the respondent voting than the former. The effects are as large, or larger than, the equivalent effects for social relationship, which appear to be a function of social distance (Blais et al 2019;Fieldhouse and Cutts 2020). Spouses and partners have a greater effect on respondents' perceptions of discussant approval of voting than other family members, which in turn matter more than friends do and so on.…”

Section: Injunctive Norms and Shared Partisanshipmentioning

confidence: 81%

“…There is considerable evidence from field experiments of the importance of social pressure-or injunctive norms-in encouraging voter turnout (Gerber et al 2008;Panagopoulos et al 2014;Sinclair 2012). However, with a small number of exceptions (Blais et al 2019;Fieldhouse and Cutts 2020;Glynn et al 2009), survey research on voter turnout has tended to overlook injunctive norms. In particular, there is very little research on who applies normative pressures; whether this is conditional on shared political interests; and how social pressure affects civic duty and voter turnout.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Who Cares If You Vote? Partisan Pressure and Social Norms of Voting

2020

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Social norms are important in explaining why people vote, but where do those norms come from and is social pressure motivated by partisanship? In this article, we use political discussion network data to examine the role of party identification in shaping the relationship between injunctive norms, civic duty and voter turnout. More specifically, we examine the extent to which both the application of injunctive norms and their impact on turnout is affected by shared partisan identification. We find that citizens are more likely to perceive normative pressure to vote from fellow partisans, a phenomenon we refer to as “partisan pressure”. However we do not find consistent evidence for the hypothesis that turnout is more closely related to the approval or disapproval of discussants who share a partisanship. By separating the role of social pressure from that of normative beliefs we also demonstrate that injunctive norms affect voter turnout both directly and indirectly by increasing civic duty.

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“…There is also a connection to be made between our perspective and research on the impact of social pressure on turnout (Knack 1992;Schram and Sonnemans 1996;Blais et al Forthcoming). Those who vote out of social pressure implicitly conform to the norm that the good citizen should vote.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 95%

Conformity and Individuals’ Response to Information About Aggregate Turnout

Blais

Hortalà-Vallvé

2020

Polit Behav

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How do voters react to information about aggregate turnout? Do high turnout levels mobilize or discourage citizens to vote? We argue that it depends on individuals' degree of conformity. We argue that in addition to the classic calculus of voting, conformist voters have an added incentive to 'follow the pack' and vote when turnout is high while abstain when turnout is low. We conduct two separate experiments, the first a survey experiment with a representative sample of the UK population and the second a lab experiment in Canada. Both studies confirm our hypothesis. These findings highlight the importance of taking individuals' level of conformity into account when explaining their decision to vote or abstain.

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The effect of social pressure from family and friends on turnout

Cited by 23 publications

References 52 publications

Why vote when you cannot choose? EU intervention and political participation in times of constraint

Why vote when you cannot choose? EU intervention and political participation in times of constraint

Who Cares If You Vote? Partisan Pressure and Social Norms of Voting

Conformity and Individuals’ Response to Information About Aggregate Turnout

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