Polarization of Candidate Quality Perceptions: Evidence of Ideological Bias in Voters' Evaluations of Candidates' Competence
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Candidate valence and ideology often are considered separate, although equally important, dimensions of voters' evaluations of candidates. Yet in the polarized environment of U.S. House elections, voters do not separate candidates' ideology from quality. I hypothesize voters exhibit consistency or assimilation bias, rating candidates ideologically similar to themselves as higher quality than candidates ideologically dissimilar. Using a survey of voters and experts from recent U.S. House elections, I find that as voters' ideological distance from a candidate increases, voters' rating of a candidate's competency decreases. However, this relationship between ideological distance and candidate quality rating is conditioned on party identification for incumbents, with opposing partisanship amplifying the negative effect of ideological distance on incumbent quality rating. Experimental evidence shows that if provided only policy, party, or ideology information regarding a candidate, participants who disagree with the candidate's preferences attach negative quality assessments to the candidate. These results imply that polarization runs deeper than partisan or ideological differences - it is personal.Cite
Author(s): Peris, William | Advisor(s): Lewis, Lynn V | Abstract: In a political environment where information competes with “fake news” and partisanship dictates what is believed, voters must separate the two or be deceived. Though accurate information about politicians and policies is available, misperceptions persist, and increasing polarization in the government and the electorate exacerbate the reluctance to consume information that conflicts with existing attitudes. In this paper I identify the sources of information that affect people’s ability to correctly place Congressional candidates on the ideological spectrum and the factors that are associated with misperceptions of ideology. I draw on Bawn and Zaller’s notion of the electoral blind spot to illustrate the degree and skew of misperception in the electorate. I do this for major candidates, both incumbents and challengers, for the US House of Representatives and US Senate between 2006 and 2014. Results suggest that voters are generally unable to discern degrees of partisanship in their candidates. Voters tend to believe candidates are more moderate than they are in reality, and this effect is greater if a candidate is a voter’s co-partisan. Additionally, voters project their own ideological self-identification onto their candidates: The distance a voter considers themself to be from the ideological center influences, proportionally, how far the voter perceives candidates from either political party to be from the center. I examine the relationship between these effects and electoral outcomes to find limited evidence that voters practice proximity voting generally, with only small vote share penalties for candidates who are distant from the mean voter, but I find an effect of misperception of candidate ideology in the outcome of those elections in which better informed voters are less likely to vote for more extreme candidates. The heterogeneity of misperception and the projection of one’s own ideology onto candidates are previously unexplored, but not inconsistent effects on the conception of the electoral blind spot. In voter perceptions of moderation and the combined effect of misperception and candidate proximity, I find evidence consistent with the presence of an electoral blind spot as a set of policies or candidate positions over which the voter is indifferent.
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ABSTRACT This study examines the extent to which priming voters on the trustworthiness of candidates or that of their parties elicits candidatecentric or partycentric attitudes. The analysis provides evidence of the trade-off for voters between mavericks and party insiders in presidential elections. It shows that voters are sensitized to the risks of electing a candidate with no party support, but in the particular case of Argentina, they still consider the candidates’ qualities to be more important than those of their parties. The results show that priming on the trustworthiness of candidates elicits stronger responses from low-income voters, who already have prior candidatecentric inclinations. The findings also reveal statistical differences in vote choice when respondents are primed with party- or candidatecentric frames.
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Theory: Theories of low-information voting are used to examine the effect of candidate demographic characteristics on voting behavior, specifically candidate gender. Hypotheses: For voters in low-information elections, candidate gender operates as a social information cue signaling that women candidates are more liberal than men candidates of the same party. As a result, the gender of a candidate affects ideological voting. Method: Logistic regression analysis is performed on data from the 1986 through 1994 American National Election Studies. Results: Women Democratic candidates fare better than men Democratic candidates among more liberal voters and worse among conservative voters, especially those with minimal knowledge of the candidates. The effect is less clear with Republican women candidates who provide conflicting informational cues (woman and Republican).
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ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the major trends in scholarship about the relationship between the advertising content and vote choice, the role of cognition or affect in advertising persuasion, the political consequences of electoral politics in the contemporary American setting, and the effects of facial similarity on voter behavior. The theory that I shall seek to elaborate here puts considerable emphasis on political advertising as a substantial component of news coverage, the relationship between elite conflict and mass political behavior, the effects of candidates' decisions on voting outcomes, and the processes underlying voters' decisions.Keywords: political advertising, cognitive process, voting behavior1. IntroductionI am specifically interested in how previous research investigated the relationship between the tone of advertising aired and people's political efficacy and attitudes toward government, changes in the content of campaign communications, the nature and extent of rationality in electoral behavior, and the impact of ad coverage on the electorate. The mainstay of the paper is formed by an analysis of the relationship between how many ads a candidate runs and that candidate's vote share, the impact of positive and negative ad exposure on perception of tone, individual and specific factors that might affect people's perceptions of ad tone, and people's perceptions of the tone of advertising.2. The Processes Underlying Voters' DecisionsRogowski examines how ideological conflict between competing candidates in elections affects voter turnout. Increasing policy differences between candidates significantly reduce voter turnout. Citizens with lower levels of education and political information are disproportionately demobilized by ideological conflict. Contextual factors, including the nature of the electoral choices on offer, affect mass political behavior. The degree of ideological conflict between candidates may affect mass political participation. Citizens' perceptions are useful for examining how voters view the nature of the electoral choices that are presented to them.The preceding considerations suggest that presidential elections may offer an opportunity to examine how varying levels of conflict between the candidates affects turnout in those elections. Rogowski examines citizens' willingness to vote1 as a function of the level of ideological conflict between candidates in the district in which they live. Ideological conflict in elections has a demobilizing effect on voter turnout. Increased levels of ideological conflict reduce participation in the exercise of collective choice. In electoral contests with high levels of ideological conflict, the relevant chasm between voters and nonvoters is defined on the basis of political sophistication. A citizen's relative ideological position vis-a-vis the candidates has little impact on her decision to vote. Candidates may use their platform choices to generate particular patterns of voter turnout.2Gordon et al. affirm that the winner-take-all nature of elections ensures that a significant proportion of voters3 choose a candidate who is not elected. The election process provides voters a significant incentive to influence others. Political advertising can mobilize an individual to participate in an election and can persuade an individual to vote for a particular candidate. The ultimate goal of political campaigns is to influence choice.4 Bailenson et al. compare the relative effects of candidate familiarity as well as partisan, issue, gender, and facial similarity on voters' evaluations of candidates. Facial similarity is a likely criterion for choosing between candidates. Candidates whose faces appear similar to large amounts of voters are in unique positions to achieve influence. Increasing the facial resemblance between candidates and voters can alter electoral results.53. The Relationship between Ideological Conflict and Voter TurnoutGerber et al. …
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Political advertising
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Prior research has demonstrated a clear negativity effect (greater weighting of candidate weaknesses compared with strengths) in the evaluation of U.S. presidential candidates in each of the past six elections analyzed. The authors adopt a motivational view and question the robustness of this finding. They reanalyze past National Election Studies data along with new data and conclude that the negativity effect is not universal across voters; it is a robust effect only for voters who dislike the candidate. They argue that previous findings are due to aggregation of data across voters who vary in their motivations.
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Voters’ perceptions of political actors are known to be biased by their partisanship, such that the favorite candidate or party will be perceived as closer to the voter’s position, while disliked parties and candidates will be perceived as further away from the voter’s position. Using data from a survey of candidates competing in the 2012 Congressional elections I show that politicians’ perceptions are also contaminated by similar projection effects. The survey asked candidates to place themselves, as well as their opponent, the median voter in their district, the median Congressperson from their party and the two main presidential candidates on a Liberal-Conservative ideology scale. The results show that Democratic candidates perceive their Republican opponents as more extreme than they declare themselves to be and than they really are, and the same is true about Republicans’ perceptions of Democrats. There is a general tendency among candidates to perceive their party as closer to their own position, regardless of what that position is, and a similar effect is documented with respect to the position of the median voter. This adds projection to the list of factors that prevent candidates from converging to their district medians.
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This contribution studies voters’ gender preferences for electoral candidates on the occasion of the 2009 regional elections in Belgium. The question is to what extent voters cast a preference vote for either male or female candidates, and how this preference can be explained. The results show that more than half of the group of voters expresses a clear gender preference, and this preference is often at the advantage of male candidates. Contrary to common assumptions, however, we find that differences in voters’ gender preferences can only partially be explained by voters’ own gender. The link between voters’ and candidates’ gender exists, but it is relatively weak and holds only for men. Much more important are voters’ access to political resources and party affiliation. Politically disengaged and rightwing voters display a clear preference for male candidates. Voting for female candidates expresses an informed choice made by higher educated voters.
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