Polls, Coalition Signals, and Strategic Voting: An Experimental Investigation of Perceptions and Effects

The paper investigates how poll information and coalition signals affect strategic voting, defined as casting a vote for a party other than the most preferred party to better influence the election outcome. In particular if the outcome of an election is perceived to be close, voters in multi-party systems with proportional representation and coalition governments should have an incentive to cast a vote for the party that best influences the formation of the next government. The study focuses in particular on voters’ attention to and perception of polls and coalition signals sent by parties before elections. The study used an innovative design that embedded a laboratory experiment in two real election campaigns, allowing the manipulation of poll results and coalition signals in a realistic environment. The findings suggest that political sophistication plays a crucial role for the accurate perception of polls and strategic voting. Coalition signals are found to have a surprisingly strong effect on (apparently) strategic voting.

Strategic Voting in Multiparty Systems: A Group Experiment

The paper tests the theory of strategic voting for multiparty systems with proportional representation and coalition governments at the micro-level. The study focuses in particular on the question whether participation in repeated elections allows voters to learn from experience and enables them to optimize their decision behavior. An economic group experiment with decision scenarios of varying degrees of difficulty was used to test decision making at both the individual and group level. The results suggest that a majority of voters were able to pursue successful decision strategies and that the difficulty of the decision scenarios affected the voting performance of the participants as expected. However, a learning effect is not supported by the data.

Polls, coalitions signals, and strategic voting : an experimental investigation of perceptions and effects

The paper investigates how poll information and coalition signals affect strategic voting, defined as casting a vote for a party other than the most preferred party to better influence the election outcome. In particular if the outcome of an election is perceived to be close, voters in multi-party systems with proportional representation and coalition governments should have an incentive to cast a vote for the party that best influences the formation of the next government. The study focuses in particular on voters’ attention to and perception of polls and coalition signals sent by parties before elections. The study used an innovative design that embedded a laboratory experiment in two real election campaigns, allowing the manipulation of poll results and coalition signals in a realistic environment. The findings suggest that political sophistication plays a crucial role for the accurate perception of polls and strategic voting. Coalition signals are found to have a surprisingly strong effect on (apparently) strategic voting

Strategic voting under proportional representation and coalition governments : a simulation and laboratory experiment

The theory of strategic voting has been tested in experiments for elections in single member districts with three candidates or parties. It is unclear whether it can explain strategic voting behavior in a fairly common type of political system, multi-party systems with proportional representation, minimum vote thresholds, and coalition governments. In this paper, we develop a (non-formal) strategic voting game and show in a simulation that the model produces election scenarios and outcomes with desirable characteristics. We then test the decision-theoretic model in a laboratory experiment. Participants with a purely instrumental (financial) motivation voted in a series of 25 independent elections. The availability of polls and coalition signals by parties was manipulated. The results show that voters are frequently able to make optimal or strategic vote decisions, but that voters also rely on simple decision heuristics and are highly susceptible to coalition signals by parties

Strategic Voting in Multiparty Systems : A Group Experiment

The paper tests the theory of strategic voting for multiparty systems with proportional representation and coalition governments at the micro-level. The study focuses in particular on the question whether participation in repeated elections allows voters to learn from experience and enables them to optimize their decision behavior. An economic group experiment with decision scenarios of varying degrees of difficulty was used to test decision making at both the individual and group level. The results suggest that a majority of voters were able to pursue successful decision strategies and that the difficulty of the decision scenarios affected the voting performance of the participants as expected. However, a learning effect is not supported by the data

Voting for coalitions? : The role of coalition preferences and expectations in voting behavior

Coalition governments are the norm in many countries, even though voters can only cast their vote for an individual party, not a specific coalition. Some voters might nevertheless cast their vote in a way that maximizes the probability that a preferred coalition will be formed after the election. In the paper, we investigate the effect of coalition preferences and expectations on vote decisions, above and beyond the preferences for specific parties. We focus in particular on voters’ ability to form differentiated expectations about possible coalitions, the likelihood of a majority and the likelihood that the parties will be able to agree on a coalition. We report the results of a nationally representative survey conducted before the 2006 Austrian General Election. We collected detailed information about respondents' party and coalition preferences and expectations about the electoral outcomes. Green Party voters are used to demonstrate that the effect of coalition preferences depends on whether or not voters expect a coalition to succeed

How to test 'real' campaign effects: linking survey data to content analytical data

Die Verfasser legen zunächst eine inhaltsanalytische Untersuchung des Wahlkampfs zur Bundestagswahl 1990 vor, die Auskunft über Thematik und Themenpräsentation im Wahlkampf gibt. Diese Ergebnisse werden in einem zweiten Schritt mit Umfragedaten aus dem entsprechenden Zeitraum verknüpft. Die Verbindung von Inhaltsanalyse und Umfragedaten erlaubt es, direkte Auswirkungen der Wahlkampfberichterstattung in den Medien auf die Wähler zu messen und zu analysieren. Hier steht die Frage nach den Auswirkungen der Fernsehberichterstattung auf die Einstellung der Wähler im Vordergrund des Interesses. Die Untersuchung zeigt, daß sich der Einfluß der Medienberichterstattung auf politische Einstellungen eher langsam und kumulativ vollzieht. (ICE

Strategic voting under proportional representation and coalition governments: a laboratory experiment

"We investigate whether the theory of strategic voting can explain voting behavior in a fairly common type of political system, multi-party systems with proportional representation, minimum vote thresholds, and coalition governments. In this paper, we develop a formal (computational) strategic voting game and show in a simulation that the model produces election scenarios and outcomes with desirable characteristics as well as different opportunities for strategic voting. We then test the decision-theoretic model in a laboratory experiment, taking into account both sophisticated and heuristic decision strategies. Participants with a purely instrumental (financial) motivation voted in a series of 25 independent elections. The availability of polls and coalition signals by parties was manipulated. The results show that voters are frequently able to make optimal or strategic vote decisions, but that voters also rely on simple decision heuristics and are highly susceptible to coalition signals by parties." (author's abstract

Coalition preferences in multiparty systems

"Coalition preferences in multiparty systems have received increasing attention in recent years, both as an additional political identity beyond parties and as another explanatory factor for vote decisions above and beyond party preferences. In this paper, we use survey data from the 2006 Austrian election to investigate the accessibility of party and coalition preferences and the extent to which coalition preferences can be explained by party preferences and other affective and cognitive factors such as candidates, ideology, and issue positions. The evidence suggests that questions about coalitions are associated with longer response times than similar questions about party preferences, that is, respondents must make more of a cognitive effort to form and/or retrieve them. Finally, coalition preferences are only partially predicted by party preferences and candidate evaluations, while policy preferences are mostly unrelated. Coalition preferences emerge as a fairly independent factor in multiparty systems." (author's abstract

Forecasting the outcome of a national election: the influence of expertise, information, and political preferences

"Five days in advance of the 2005 German national election, political experts, voters, and novices were asked to predict the outcome of the election. In an experimental manipulation, half of the non-expert sample was provided with additional poll information in the form of a figure with trend lines. The results show that (1) experts were marginally more accurate than non-experts but highly overconfident in their predictions, that (2) access to pre-election poll information improved the forecasting ability of novices, and that (3) partisan preferences biased the forecasts of voters to a small degree (projection effect)." (author's abstract