This study explores how researchers’ analytical choices affect the reliability of scientific findings. Most discussions of reliability problems in science focus on systematic biases. We broaden the lens to emphasize the idiosyncrasy of conscious and unconscious decisions that researchers make during data analysis. We coordinated 161 researchers in 73 research teams and observed their research decisions as they used the same data to independently test the same prominent social science hypothesis: that greater immigration reduces support for social policies among the public. In this typical case of social science research, research teams reported both widely diverging numerical findings and substantive conclusions despite identical start conditions. Researchers’ expertise, prior beliefs, and expectations barely predict the wide variation in research outcomes. More than 95% of the total variance in numerical results remains unexplained even after qualitative coding of all identifiable decisions in each team’s workflow. This reveals a universe of uncertainty that remains hidden when considering a single study in isolation. The idiosyncratic nature of how researchers’ results and conclusions varied is a previously underappreciated explanation for why many scientific hypotheses remain contested. These results call for greater epistemic humility and clarity in reporting scientific findings.
This paper uses an original question to investigate voters' own evaluations of whether the party they voted for won or lost the election. We examine which aspect of the party's electoral performance has the strongest impact on voters' perceptions. The results reveal that supporters of the largest partythe party with most votes and seats in both Parliament and governmentalmost unanimously believe that their party won the election. But we find that some supporters of smaller parties also feel their party won, when and if their party gained votes and seats compared to the previous election. Moreover, we test whether it is the party's performance at the district or national level that matters most. We find that voters' judgments are shaped mostly by electoral performance at the national level, but having the local candidate elected in the district can partially compensate for a national defeat.
In recent electoral contests, political observers and media outlets increasingly report on the level of "authenticity" of political candidates. However, even though this term has become commonplace in political commentary, it has received little attention in empirical electoral research. In this study, we identify the characteristics that we argue make a politician "authentic". After theoretically discussing the different dimensions of this trait, we propose a survey battery aimed at measuring perceptions of the authenticity of political candidates.Testing our measure using data sets from different countries, we show that the answers to our items load on one latent concept that we call "authenticity". Furthermore, perceptions of candidate authenticity seem to correlate strongly with evaluations of political parties and leaders, and with vote intention, while they are empirically distinguishable from other traits.We conclude that candidate authenticity is an important trait that should be taken into account by future research.
Elections offer a privileged moment in representative democracy, when citizens have the opportunity to express their views, both on the track record of the incumbent government, as on the way the country should be governed in the future. Procedural fairness theory assumes that taking part in a decision making procedure that is perceived to be fair, strengthens the legitimacy of the entire process. Most of the empirical research assumes that the attitudinal effects of elections are mainly due to the fact that one's preferred party wins the elections. In multi-party systems, however, such a clear distinction is not always possible and therefore it is hypothesized that the winner-loser-logic is weaker in this kind of party system. In this study we rely on a unique Belgian panel study to ascertain how electoral participation has an effect on political trust. The results show that in a proportional system all voters rise in political trust following their participation in elections. The winner-loser effect is not significant. Furthermore, the analyses suggest that especially the respondents with the initially lowest trust levels gain most by participating in elections. The theoretical implication of this finding is that apparently elections are still considered to be an important and legitimate linkage mechanism between citizens and the political system.
Retrospective voting is one of the most frequently investigated theories of voting behaviour. It postulates that voters punish or reward incumbent parties according to their performance. This approach, however, cannot explain why voters cast a stable opposition vote, or switch between incumbent parties or opposition parties, respectively. This study fills this gap by showing that this traditional view should be complemented with the approach of retrospective voting to work at the level of political parties – irrespective of their incumbency status. Using the data of the second module of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, it provides the first large-scale test of this new perspective on electoral accountability. The results show that satisfaction with the previously endorsed party is an important determinant of the current party choice, and that it is so for voters for all parties alike. These results provide a theoretical foundation for party switches that could not be explained by the traditional model.
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