Time-of-voting decision and susceptibility to campaign effects

Fournier, Patrick; Nadeau, Richard; Blais, André; Gidengil, Elisabeth; Nevitte, Neil

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2003.09.001

Cited by 105 publications

(98 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…Moreover, contested primaries often do not feature incumbents, meaning that citizens cannot retrospectively evaluate government performance (Fiorina 1981). We would expect less of an effect in general elections because strong partisans are more likely than Independents to vote early (Stein et al 2004), and these voters tend to be more resistant to campaign effects (Fournier et al 2004). The figure shows that in both counties over half of the VBM ballots were returned more than seven days prior to Election Day.…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Convenience Voting Can Affect Election Outcomes

Meredith

Malhotra

2011

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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Forms of convenience voting, including voting-by-mail (VBM), provide citizens the opportunity to cast ballots without being exposed to the information revealed in the final weeks leading up to Election Day. This creates the possibility that informational differences will cause VBM and polling place voters to vote differently. We test this hypothesis by looking at whether the increased use of VBM at the precinct-level relates to candidates' vote shares in the 2008 California presidential primary. An election administration policy in California, in which all voters are assigned to VBM based on an arbitrary threshold of the number of registered voters, is exploited to overcome the identification problem caused by the selfselection of voters into VBM. We show that the use of VBM affects the relative performance of candidates remaining in the race and increases the probability of selecting withdrawn candidates. Our findings have implications both for election administration policy and for the study of campaign effects in American elections. Election officials should consider waiting until closer to Election Day to send out mail ballots, or instruct voters to wait until they are ready to make a decision before voting.

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Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Convenience Voting Can Affect Election Outcomes

Meredith

Malhotra

2011

Election Law Journal: Rules, Politics, and Policy

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“…Alternatively, do voters decide late because they face an increasingly competitive campaign environment that communicates an abundance of mixed information? Or does the mixed campaign environment interact with individual characteristics to affect late decision?Timing of vote decision, the point at which a voter reports having made up his or her mind, has been suggested as a mediator of campaign effects on vote choice (Fournier, Nadeau, Blais, Gidengil, & Nevitte, 2004). Political communication researchers, nevertheless, face two challenges in their attempts to understand decision-timing as the dependent variable: (a) variability in the campaign information environment-that is, the extent to which it is onesided or partial to one candidate as opposed to mixed with equally favorable information for both candidates, and (b) variability in individual openness to persuasion-specifically, the extent to which individuals are ambivalent about the candidates.…”

mentioning

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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“…depending on the timing of the vote decision (Chaffee & Rimal, 1996;Fournier et al, 2004;Lachat & Sciarini, 2002). However, we do not include voters' heterogeneity in the present article, focussing instead on the role of the context.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Campaign Effects in Direct-Democratic Votes in Switzerland

Sciarini

Tresch

2011

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties

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The purpose of this article is to analyze the conditions under which referendum campaigns have an impact on voting choices. Based on a model of opinion formation that integrates both campaign effects and partisan effects, we argue that campaign effects vary according to the context of the popular vote (size and type of conflict among the party elite and intensity and direction of the referendum campaign). We test our hypotheses with two-step estimations for hierarchical models on data covering 25 popular votes on foreign, European and immigration policy in Switzerland. Our results show strong campaign effects and they suggest that their strength and nature are indeed highly conditional on the context of the vote: The type of party coalition pre-structures the patterns of individual voting choices, campaign effects are higher when the campaign is highly intense and they are more symmetric when it is balanced.

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Time-of-voting decision and susceptibility to campaign effects

Cited by 105 publications

References 16 publications

Convenience Voting Can Affect Election Outcomes

Convenience Voting Can Affect Election Outcomes

Campaign Mixed-Message Flows and Timing of Vote Decision

Campaign Effects in Direct-Democratic Votes in Switzerland

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