Voting for the lesser evil: evidence from a conjoint experiment in Romania

Mares, Isabela; Visconti, Giancarlo

doi:10.1017/psrm.2019.12

Cited by 25 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 36 publications

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“…Electoral clientelism has occurred in all types of elections in the past two decades (Gherghina, 2013;Giugăl et al, 2011;Mares and Visconti, 2019;Mares and Young, 2019). Clientelism has evolved to take different forms from the provision of money, food, or objects to jobs or preferential access to services.…”

Section: Political Parties Electoral Volatility and Clientelism In Ro...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Buying loyalty: Volatile voters and electoral clientelism

Gherghina

Țap

2022

Politics

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Electoral volatility and clientelism were traditionally analysed through the lenses of clientelistic behaviour by political actors. However, we know very little about the importance of volatility for the formation of attitudes towards clientelism within the electorate. This article addresses that gap by analysing the extent to which volatile voters are more likely to accept electoral clientelism as a political practice. We bring evidence from Romania, which is a crucial case due to its extensive use of clientelism in elections over time and high electoral volatility. The analysis uses individual-level data from a survey conducted on a national representative sample of 4316 respondents in 2021. Contrary to the theoretical expectations, the findings illustrate that loyal voters accept clientelism easier, which holds when controlling for variables such as targeting awareness, political interest, income, or education. These results have important implications for the study of elections and voting behaviour.

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Section: Political Parties Electoral Volatility and Clientelism In Ro...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Buying loyalty: Volatile voters and electoral clientelism

Gherghina

Țap

2022

Politics

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“…In general, the campaign lasts for one month before the election and is characterized by media presence, street campaigning, rallies, and different forms of clientelism. Regarding the latter, earlier studies indicate a relatively high incidence of vote buying with money, goods, or welfare promises (Gherghina and Volintiru, 2017;Mares and Visconti, 2019). The campaign ends on the last Thursday before voting, which usually takes place on a Sunday.…”

Section: Analysis and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Begin Again: Election Campaign and Own Opinions Among First‐Time Voters in Romania

Gherghina

Rusu

2021

Social Science Quarterly

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Objective. This article analyzes under what circumstances first-time voters are likely to be influenced by the election campaign or by their opinion prior to campaign in their vote choice. Methods. It uses individual-level data from an original online survey conducted among Romanian first-time voters in the November 2019 presidential election. Results. The results indicate that those who trust politicians, find the campaign informative and use social media are influenced by election campaign. Those with higher political knowledge and interest follow their precampaign attitudes in casting the vote. Conclusion. The study reveals the existence of distinct causal mechanisms for young voters who are influenced at the polls by the election campaign or by their own attitude prior to campaign. This indicates the necessity to include the existence of an opinion prior to campaign in future analytical frameworks about voting behavior.Election campaigns are short periods of time in which candidates spend considerable time, effort, and money to shape what citizens think about them (Fridkin and Kenney, 2011). They generate news coverage, informative material, and persuasive messages that can influence citizens' preferences, evaluations, and vote intentions (Ansolabehere and Iyengar, 1994;Nadeau et al., 2008). Campaigns make the electorate more knowledgeable and increase both the external and internal efficacy of voters (Hansen and Pedersen, 2014). Extensive literature indicates that many individuals decide how to vote based on the content of election campaigns (Peterson, 2015). At the same time, another strand of literature argues that campaign effects are limited and previous preferences, partisan dispositions, or political context outside the campaign may drive people's decisions how to vote (Hillygus and Jackman, 2003). The theory of campaigns' minimal effects goes back to more than half a century (Campbell et al., 1960) and claims that voters select a candidate before the campaign begins, mostly by identification with that person (Levine, 2005) and in accordance with their own preferences and values (Ha and Lau, 2015). As such, individual votes can be predicted based on voters' attitudes prior to the campaign (Gelman and King, 1993). In this sense, voters' partisanship is one important determinant that makes the campaign effects fade.So far, the debate about campaign effects has sought to provide evidence at the level of the entire voting population. There is little empirical evidence about these effects on the first-time voters. This category is special for two reasons. First, since they could not vote before, this is the first election campaign to which they have been subjected and arguably

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“…This type of design identifies the impact of different attributes on the probability of selecting a candidate, allowing us to mimic more realistic scenarios, in which people evaluate politicians along different dimen-sions when making electoral choices. Such experiments have been used to understand how people evaluate immigrants (Hainmueller et al 2014), US Supreme Court judges (Sen 2017), and mayoral candidates (Mares and Visconti 2020), among other subjects.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Reevaluating the Role of Ideology in Chile

Visconti

2021

Lat Am Polit Soc

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Voters’ ideological stances have long been considered one of the most important factors for understanding electoral choices in Chile. In recent years, however, the literature has begun to call this premise into question, due to several changes in the Chilean political landscape: the current crisis of representation, the high programmatic congruence between the two main coalitions, the decline in the political relevance of the dictatorship, and the rise of nonprogrammatic electoral strategies. In addition to these transformations, Chile switched to voluntary voting in 2012. This article studies whether ideology still informs electoral choices in Chile in an era of voluntary voting. It implements a conjoint survey experiment in low-to-middle-income neighborhoods in Santiago, where voters would be expected to be less ideological. It shows that candidates’ ideological labels are crucial for understanding the electoral decisions of a large part of the sample, particularly among likely voters.

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Voting for the lesser evil: evidence from a conjoint experiment in Romania

Cited by 25 publications

References 36 publications

Buying loyalty: Volatile voters and electoral clientelism

Buying loyalty: Volatile voters and electoral clientelism

Begin Again: Election Campaign and Own Opinions Among First‐Time Voters in Romania

Reevaluating the Role of Ideology in Chile

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