Ballot position effects in open-list PR systems: the moderating impact of postal voting

Abstract

Various studies demonstrate that candidates at the top of the party list have a strong advantage in preferential voting systems, particularly under open-list PR. Such ballot position effects can be explained by voters’ tendency to rely on easily available information shortcuts when selecting a candidate. In this paper, we argue that the strength of ballot position effects depends on the context of how voters cast their vote. Specifically, we argue that postal voters are less likely to rely on the ballot position cue compared to voters who vote on election day for two reasons. First, postal voters might be more politically interested. Second, postal voters have more time to assess additional information about the candidates. The hypothesis is tested by analyzing newly collected data from two open-list PR elections in the German federal state of Hamburg. The results confirm the theoretical expectations: Ballot position effects are substantively weaker among postal voters. Additional analyses suggest that differences in the political interest between postal voters and election day voters are unlikely to fully explain these results. These findings advance our understanding of ballot position effects and voters’ use of information shortcuts more generally.

Primacy Effects and Voting Methods (Literature Review)

“…This restricts the utility of their fi ndings since they are ultimately incapable of directly determining if by-mail voters are systematically experiencing the primacy effect in a manner similar to in-person voters. Similarly, the use of aggregate data and non-randomized ballots by Jankowski and Frank (2021) limited the scope of their conclusions to offering only a broad correlation between mail voting and a reduced primacy effect. Both studies were also only able to explore the interaction between mail voting and the primacy effect in the context of one electoral system.…”

“…The studies by Pasek et.al. (2014) and Jankowski and Frank (2021) have had limited success in identifying strong causal relationships. Their fi ndings do, however, show promising synergy with existing theories of how mail voting interacts with voters' access to information and provide a useful departure point for future studies.…”

“…al. (2014), the results from Jankowski and Frank (2021) indicate that not only is the theorized relationship between mail-voting and the primacy effect present, but that for some voting methods its impact may be stronger than initially assumed.…”

“…Open-List PR Systems. Jankowski and Frank (2021) explicitly analyzed the 2015 and 2020 elections in the German state of Hamburg to determine if the primacy effect was weaker among by-mail voters. The study was able to separately observe candidate performance among in-person and postal voters due to the ballot boxes in Hamburg each being assigned a unique identifi cation number, with boxes for mail-ballots given numbers two digits longer than election-day boxes.…”

Party-related primacy effects in proportional representation systems: evidence from a natural experiment in Polish local elections

“…A spike may be observed for the last position on the list (Marcinkiewicz, 2014). When voters vote by mail, the primacy bonuses may be smaller (Jankowski & Frank, 2021), but positions on lists are not fully responsible for election victories. It is estimated that about 20% of seats in Polish national parliamentary OLPR elections were won by candidates who would not have won them in a closed-list PR system (Gendźwiłł & Raciborski, 2014;Raciborski, 1997).…”