20,731 research outputs found

    Extreme right-wing voting in Western Europe

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    In this study we explain extreme right-wing voting behaviour in the countries of the European Union and Norway from a micro and macro perspective. Using a multidisciplinary multilevel approach, we take into account individual-level social background characteristics and public opinion alongside country characteristics and characteristics of extreme right-wing parties themselves. By making use of large-scale survey data (N = 49,801) together with country-level statistics and expert survey data, we are able to explain extreme right-wing voting behaviour from this multilevel perspective. Our results show that cross-national differences in support of extreme right-wing parties are particularly due to differences in public opinion on immigration and democracy, the number of non-Western residents in a country and, above all, to party characteristics of the extreme right-wing parties themselves

    Contextual effects on the vote in Germany: A multilevel analysis

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    This paper addresses the old topic of contextual effects on voting behaviour. Current multilevel analysis techniques provide a powerful tool to (re-)examine such regional influ-ences on individual voting decisions. We apply multilevel analysis to German electoral data. Our results prove evidence of two contextual effects. The unemployment level of the district has a positive effect on SPD support, which confirms the local equivalent of the economic vote model. Furthermore the global strength of a party in a district has a positive effect on the individual decision to support that party. This is a confirmation of what has been labelled as breakage. Both effects demonstrate the continuing impact of the locality on individual vote preferences in Germany. -- Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit dem alten Thema der Kontexteffekte beim Wahlverhalten. Neue Techniken der Multi-Level-Analyse bieten ein mĂ€chtiges Instrument, mit dem regionale EinflĂŒsse auf Wahlentscheidungen (neu) untersucht werden können. Die Multi-Level-Analyse wird auf deutsche Wahldaten angewendet und weist zwei Kontexteffekte nach. Die Arbeitslosenquote des Wahlkreises hat einen positiven Effekt auf die UnterstĂŒtzung der SPD, was dem regionalen Äquivalent des Modells des economic voting entspricht. Außerdem wirkt sich die allgemeine StĂ€rke einer Partei in einem Kreis positiv auf die individuelle Entscheidung aus, diese Partei zu unterstĂŒtzen. Dieses zweite Ergebnis bestĂ€tigt die Annahme, die als Breakage bezeichnet wird. Beide Effekte zeigen, dass individuelle Wahlentscheidungen in Deutschland weiterhin regionalen EinflĂŒssen unterliegen.

    Political Participation and Quality of Life

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    Theoretical literatures on procedural utility and the psychological benefits of political participation suggest that people who participate in political activities will be more satisfied with their lives because of the resulting feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness. Individual-level data from Latin America show—in one dataset under study but not in another—a positive and statistically significant relationship between voting and life satisfaction. Variation in desire to vote as measured in Costa Rica, however, suggests that the causal arrow may run from happiness to voting. The use of multilevel models further reveals a consistent—but untheorized—cross-country negative relationship between enforced compulsory voting and happiness. Only preliminary results are found regarding the relationship between some other forms of political participation and life satisfaction.

    Characteristics of urban regions and all-cause mortality in working-age population

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    Using Finnish register data on individuals linked to information on urban regions, this study aimed to estimate the effects of some regional characteristics on all-cause mortality among working-age population in 1995-2001, and to find out whether these effects are different among those long-term unemployed than among others. Multilevel Poisson regression models were used. The characteristics of regions included unemployment rate, level of urbanisation, voting turnout, a summary measure of family cohesion, and the geographic location of the region. Our study showed that effects of most area characteristics on mortality were clear among those who suffered from long-term unemployment in the baseline but not among others, adjusting for basic socio-demographic characteristics of the individuals. The results thus suggest that the weaker in the society are more vulnerable to the effects of social environment than those better off.all-cause mortality, area effects, cross-level interactions, multilevel analysis, unemployment

    How local media coverage of voter fraud influences partisan perceptions in the United States

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    Extant findings show that voter fraud is extremely rare and difficult to prove in the United States. Voter’s knowledge about voter fraud allegations likely comes through the media, who tend to sensationalize the issue. In this study, we argue that the more voters are exposed to media coverage of voter fraud allegations, the more likely that they will perceive that voter fraud is a frequent problem. We merge the 2012 Survey of Performance of American Elections with state-level media coverage of voter fraud leading up to the 2012 election. Our results show that media coverage of voter fraud is associated with public beliefs about voter fraud. In states where fraud was more frequently featured in local media outlets, public concerns about voter fraud were heightened. In particular, we find that press attention to voter fraud has a larger influence on Republicans than Democrats and Independents. We further find that media coverage of voter fraud does not further polarize partisan perceptions of voter fraud. Rather, political interest moderates state media coverage on voter fraud beliefs only among Republicans. Lastly, our results provide no support that demographic changes, approval of election administration, or information concerning actual reported voting irregularities have any discernable effects on partisan perceptions

    The 2008 election: A preregistered replication analysis

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    We present an increasingly stringent set of replications of Ghitza & Gelman (2013), a multilevel regression and poststratification analysis of polls from the 2008 U.S. presidential election campaign, focusing on a set of plots showing the estimated Republican vote share for whites and for all voters, as a function of income level in each of the states. We start with a nearly-exact duplication that uses the posted code and changes only the model-fitting algorithm; we then replicate using already-analyzed data from 2004; and finally we set up preregistered replications using two surveys from 2008 that we had not previously looked at. We have already learned from our preliminary, non-preregistered replication, which has revealed a potential problem with the published analysis of Ghitza & Gelman (2013); it appears that our model may not sufficiently account for nonsampling error, and that some of the patterns presented in that earlier paper may simply reflect noise. In addition to the substantive interest in validating earlier findings about demographics, geography, and voting, the present project serves as a demonstration of preregistration in a setting where the subject matter is historical (and thus the replication data exist before the preregistration plan is written) and where the analysis is exploratory (and thus a replication cannot be simply deemed successful or unsuccessful based on the statistical significance of some particular comparison).Comment: This article is a review and preregistration plan. It will be published, along with a new Section 5 describing the results of the preregistered analysis, in Statistics and Public Polic

    Perceptions of Electoral Fairness and Voter Turnout

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    Previous research has established a link between turnout and the extent to which voters are faced with a “meaningful” partisan choice in elections; this study extends the logic of this argument to perceptions of the “meaningfulness” of electoral conduct. It hypothesizes that perceptions of electoral integrity are positively related to turnout. The empirical analysis to test this hypothesis is based on aggregate-level data from 31 countries, combined with survey results from Module 1 of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems survey project, which includes new and established democracies. Multilevel modeling is employed to control for a variety of individual- and election-level variables that have been found in previous research to influence turnout. The results of the analysis show that perceptions of electoral integrity are indeed positively associated with propensity to vote. </jats:p
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