POLS 1501 Exam 3 Notes
Calculus of Voting - Answer- pB+D>C:
C is the cost of voting
- Transportation, taking time off work, obtaining information about candidates, security risks.
- How do politicians/campaigns try to influence this term?
B: degree to which the person prefers one candidat...
POLS 1501 Exam 3 Notes
Calculus of Voting - Answer- pB+D>C:
C is the cost of voting
- Transportation, taking time off work, obtaining information about candidates,
security risks.
- How do politicians/campaigns try to influence this term?
B: degree to which the person prefers one candidate winning to the other
- How do politicians/campaigns try to influence this term?
D: The direct benefit a person gets from voting:
positive feelings from having done their civic duty (intrinsic benefits)
- positive results that come from having other people know that they voted (extrinsic
benefits)
- People may value doing their civic duty more (or less) if they know that others will
praise them for it.
What determines whether a person will vote - Answer- Their attributes and political
context
Treatment in experimental design - Answer- Should mimic the mechanism we want
to study
Gerber and Green Research Results - Answer- - Substantially higher turnout was
observed among those who received mailings promising to publicize their turnout to
their household or their neighbors
- These findings demonstrate the profound importance of social pressure as an
inducement to political participation
- This is evidence that the D term can be large
Determinants of Vote Choice - Answer- Identity-Long-time Democrator Republican
Identity- Member of an ethnic minority in diverse country
Issue Voting- A voter that cares about education issues
Retrospective Voting-Salaried worker during economic crisis
Clientelism/Vote Buying-Poor rural farmer
Partisanship in Developed Democracies - Answer- - A strong predictor of vote choice
is party identification, i.e. a voter's attachment to a party
- Political scientists differ on how sticky partisanship is. Party identification could be...
- A type of social identity that has its origins in political socialization
- A "running tally" of positive and negative judgments about performance of political
parties
- Voters with strong attachments to a party will be less likely to change their vote
choice over time, less affected by campaign tactics, and less likely to be swayed by
policy concerns.
- They are also more likely to follow party positions on policies
- Parties help structure the political world for voters
- Party labels provide information shortcuts that are valuable to voters because
political world is complex
,Political Parties in Poor Democracies - Answer- - Creating organizations of any kind
is difficult in poor countries. As a result...
- Parties less likely to exist as formal institutions with organizational presence from
one election to another
- Poor people face particular challenges to engaging in collective action and, as a
result, politicians mobilize voters using existing social networks and forms of
affiliation
- Voters who are very poor may have political priorities that make it difficult to sustain
a democratic regime
- citizens living at the level of subsistence may be unwilling to wait for post-election
promises to be fulfilled
- recruiting individuals to engage in electoral violence is cheap
Ethnic Voting - Answer- - In many countries ethnicity is a good predictor of vote
choice and national elections are essentially an ethnic census.
- Political scientists offer two different accounts of why people might vote along
ethnic lines...
- Expressive voting (co-ethnic elected officials are valued by voters regardless of
what they do in office)
- Instrumental voting (co-ethnic elected officials are valued by voters because co-
ethnics are more likely to implement the policies they prefer)
Issue Voting: Developed Democracies - Answer- Voters engage in issue voting when
they vote for the party that is closest to them on political issues
- Where parties are reliable, voters may delegate work to parties and follow party on
issues (useful for complex issues!).
- We should then see policies that match the median voter preferences
- Unclear how much voters are driven by issues in developed democracies. Why?
Retrospective Voting - Answer- - Voters have to have a lot of information to vote for
parties on specific issues
- A simpler model of voter choice is that voters look at the past performance of
incumbent parties while in office to decide how to vote in the current election (i.e.
retrospective voting)
- Voters frequently hold incumbents accountable for the state of the economy. This
type of behavior is called economic voting. Requires that voters observe changes in
either:
- The national or local economy
- Their personal economy (pocketbook voting).
- Not limited to economic indicators, e.g spikes in crime and homicides
Vote Buying - Answer- - Most politicians promise voters that they'll be better off if
they win
- In many settings, politicians buy votes from voters
19th c. elections in western democracies
U.S. cities in the 20th century
- Many developing countries today
, Question: In many places it is illegal to purchase votes from individuals before
elections, but it is perfectly legal to make post- election promises to groups. Why
should this distinction matter?
Vote buying occurs in many countries, political scientists have explored...
1) Why vote buying occurs in some countries and not in others?
2) Why do politicians purchase any votes given the secret ballot?
3) Whose votes do politicians buy?
Whose votes are bought? - Answer- Question: If your job were to purchase votes in
your neighborhood, whose votes would you buy?
- Some claims about whose votes are bought...
- Poor voters
- Core (strong) supporters
- Their vote choices are predictable
- Vote buying induces turnout
- Swing (indifferent) voters
- Their votes are cheaper and it is easier to persuade them
- Voters who can be closely monitored
Vote Buying in Nicaragua - Answer- 2008 Municipal Elections:
- Two main parties
- Frente Sandinista por Liberación Nacional (FSLN): Left-wing, Based in poor urban
areas
- Partido Liberal Constitucionalista (PLC):, Center-right, Middle class, small
business, poor rural voters
- Both parties have voters who might be swayed by pre-election inducements
- Gonzalez-Ocantos et al. (2011) use a list experiment to show that questions about
vote buying suffer from social desirability bias in Nicaragua.
- People reported having their votes bought at higher rates when...
- They thought their votes could be monitored
- The participated in a state-sponsored community organization
- Gonzalez-Ocantos et al. find that asking about vote buying a obtrusive and
unobtrusive gives different evidence on the variables that are correlated with vote
buying
- The key problem here is not only that people lie when asked about vote buying, but
that those lies are systematic and are correlated with many of the variables social
scientists have argued explain vote buying
- Questions: Are you persuaded by this study?
- Does the finding that people who believe their ballot is not secret are more likely to
have their votes bought make sense?
- Given the evidence presented here do you believe that both rich and poor people
are equally likely to have their votes bought?
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