Electing Happiness: Does Happiness Effect Voting and do Elections Affect Happiness

What causes us to vote and what do we get out of it? We approach these questions using data on voting and subjective well-being (SWB) from a large household panel dataset in the UK. We find some evidence that SWB can affect voting intention but no evidence that the results of three recent elections have any effect on SWB.Voting, life satisfaction, subjective wellbeing

Consideration sets, intentions and the inclusion of "Don't know" in a two-stage model for voter choice

We present a statistical model for voter choice that incorporates a consideration set stage and final vote intention stage. The first stageinvolves a multivariate probit model for the vector of probabilities that a candidate or a party gets considered. The second stage of the model is a multinomial probit model for the actual choice. In both stages we use asexplanatory variables data on voter choice at the previous election, as well as socio-demographic respondent characteristics. Importantly, our modelexplicitly accounts for the three types of "missing data" encountered in polling. First, we include a no-vote option in the final vote intention stage. Second, the "do not know" response is assumed to arise from too little difference in the utility between the two most preferred options in the consideration set. Third, the "do not want to say" response is modelled as a missing observation on the most preferred alternative in the consideration set. Thus, we consider the missing data generating mechanism to be non-ignorable and build a model based on utility maximization to describe the voting intentions of these respondents. We illustrate the merits of the model as we have information on a sample of about 5000 individuals from the Netherlands for who we know how they voted last time (if at all), which parties they would consider for the upcoming election,and what their voting intention is. A unique feature of the data set is that information is available on actual individual voting behavior, measured at the day of election. We find that the inclusion of the consideration set stage in the model enables the user to make more precise inferences on the competitive structure in the political domain and to get better out-of-sample forecasts.Bayesian method;Choice model;Election data;Polling;Probit model

Brief implicit association test: Validity and utility in prediction of voting behavior

We employed the Brief Implicit Association Test (a recently developed short version of IAT) to measure implicit political attitudes toward four political parties running for Serbian parliament. To test its criterion validity, we measured voting intention and actual voting behavior. In addition, we introduced political involvement as a potential moderator of the BIAT’s predictive and incremental validity. The BIAT demonstrated good internal and predictive validity, but lacked incremental validity over self-report measures. Predictive power of the BIAT was moderated by political involvement - the BIAT scores were stronger predictors of voting intention and behavior among voters highly involved in politics. [Projekat Ministarstva nauke Republike Srbije, br. 179018

Aplicación de la Teoría Situacional de los Públicos al primer proceso de voto en el exterior para Costa Rica: Lecciones para las relaciones públicas internacionales y la diplomacia pública

Using information gathered from 40 interviews with Costa Ricans who live abroad (some who decided to vote in the newly granted external voting right and others who did not vote in the Costa Rican National Elections of 2014), the variables that impacted the voting intention and/or behaviour of these Costa Rican diaspora members were categorized using the independent variables presented by the Situational Theory of Publics: problem recognition, constraint recognition (internal and external constraints), and level of involvement. This theory was used to better understand what is moving these potential external voters to vote or not, in order to suggest what kinds of efforts should the Costa Rican government undertake to increase the number of external voters. The implications for public diplomacy and international public relations are explored

Electoral Externalities in Federations - Evidence from German Opinion Polls

Party performance in state and federal elections is highly interdependent. Federal elections impact regional voting dynamics and vice versa (electoral externalities). We quantify the extent of simultaneous electoral externalities between two layers of government. We apply vector autoregressions with predetermined variables to unique opinion poll data for the German state of Berlin and the federal level in Germany. State voting intentions for the state and for the federal parliament are the endogenous variables; the federal election trend is treated as predetermined. Our results suggest that shocks in federal parliament voting intention impact state parliament voting intention, but – as a new finding – to the same extent also vice versa. Externalities account for around 10% to 30% of variation at the other level of government. The effects differ across parties. Electoral externalities are less pronounced for the conservative party, but increase in times of government. The opposite holds true for left-wing parties

Blame and punishment? The electoral politics of extreme austerity in Greece

Can governments that introduce extreme austerity measures survive elections? Contrary to economic voting expectations, the PASOK government in Greece initially appeared to cope quite well, claiming victory in regional elections in 2010 despite widespread anti-austerity protest. In this paper, we interpret this result with the help of a post-election survey, which also covered future voting intention. The explanatory power of models based on theories of economic voting and blame attribution as well as the electoral impact of the government’s representation of the crisis as an existential threat are assessed. Our analysis challenges the interpretation of the 2010 election as an indication of support for PASOK’s austerity policies and reveals weaknesses in its support base, which help contextualise its downfall in the 2012 Parliamentary elections. The paper also underlines the importance of studying the impact of crises discourses on voting choice, particularly since blame attribution receives little support in this case