Biases in Local Government Elections Due to Position on the Ballot Paper

Brook, Douglas A.; Upton, Graham

doi:10.2307/2347133

Cited by 41 publications

(25 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…The topic is almost as old as the political science discipline itself (Bagley 1966;Brooks 1921;Dana 1912;Gold 1952;Mackerras 1968;Mueller 1969;White 1950;Wilson 1912), but scientific interest only really took hold in the last quarter of the twentieth century (Bakker & Lijphart 1980;Bowler et al 1992;Brook & Upton 1974;Byrne & Pueschel 1974;Darcy 1986;Darcy & McAllister 1990;Hughes 1970;Kelley & McAllister 1984;Lijphart & Pintor 1988;Miller & Krosnick 1998;Robson & Walsh 1974;Scott 1977;Taebel 1975;Volcansek 1981) and it has not lost momentum after the turn of the millennium (Alvarez et al 2006;Brockington 2003;Chen et al 2014;Faas & Schoen 2006;Geys & Heyndels 2003;Ho & Imai 2008;Johnson & Miles 2011;Kim et al 2015;King & Leigh 2009;Koppell & Steen 2004;Krosnick et al 2004;Lutz 2010;Matson & Fine 2006;Meredith & Salant 2013;Villodres & de la Puerta 2006 Darcy and McAllister 1990) review of the early literature, most studies do not address this problem, but simply measure whether candidates in different positions on average do better...…”

Section: What We Already Know About Ballot Position and Ballot Layoutmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Given the potential impact on the outcome of elections, it is not surprising that the potential effects of the candidates' position on the ballot paper have attracted considerable scholarly attention. The topic is almost as old as the political science discipline itself (Bagley 1966;Brooks 1921;Dana 1912;Gold 1952;Mackerras 1968;Mueller 1969;White 1950;Wilson 1912), but scientific interest only really took hold in the last quarter of the twentieth century (Bakker & Lijphart 1980;Bowler et al 1992;Brook & Upton 1974;Byrne & Pueschel 1974;Darcy 1986;Darcy & McAllister 1990;Hughes 1970;Kelley & McAllister 1984;Lijphart & Pintor 1988;Miller & Krosnick 1998;Robson & Walsh 1974;Scott 1977;Taebel 1975;Volcansek 1981) and it has not lost momentum after the turn of the millennium The more recent literature recognizes the problem and turns to experimental methods to deal with it. In the following we focus on such studies -which also include some early contributions -in order to assess the current knowledge of name order effects, to identify lacunae in the literature and to argue for the added value of our study.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Ballot position and election results: Evidence from a natural experiment

et al. 2016

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Abstract:Candidates listed first on the ballot paper regularly receive more votes than other candidates, but what role does ballot layout play in this connection? Experimental studies from first-pastthe-post systems show that the ballot position effect is causal as the order of names functions as a cue to voters. Does this also hold for PR systems where voters may vote for a party instead of a specific candidate? We identify a natural experiment in Danish local and regional elections involving more than 10,000 candidates on 103 different ballot papers using ballot layout to study ballot position effects. We find indeed, the ballot position/layout has a causal effect on election results in PR systems. Our findings indicate that the empirical domain of ballot position and layout effects is much wider than suggested by previous research. 2The question of whether a top position on the ballot paper affords a candidate an advantage over other candidates in an election has a long history, both in political science and in practical politics. Woodrow Wilson made the following observation in the beginning of the twentieth century, and it remains valid to this day:I have seen a ballot … which contained seven hundred names. It was bigger than the page of a newspaper and was printed in close columns as a newspaper would be. Of course no voter who is not a trained politician, who has not watched the whole process of nomination carefully, who does not know a great deal about the derivation and character and association of every nominee it contains, can vote a ticket like that with intelligence. In nine cases out of ten, as it has turned out, he will simply mark the first name under each office (Wilson 1912: 593).Since then, a considerable body of political science research has been devoted to identifying more exactly the effect of being listed first on the ballot. Many studies find positive effects, but many studies also find that the contingent effects suggested by Wilson -publicity, It is especially unfortunate that there is so little evidence from proportional representation (PR) systems, which is the most common type of electoral system worldwide (Reynolds et al. 2005: 31). We are primarily interested in list PR systems where voters may vote for a specific candidate or simply vote for a party and thus avoid the challenge of having to select a specific candidate. It is therefore far from clear that ballot position effects will be found in these systems. 4The purpose of this paper is to study list PR systems to determine the degree to which they belong to the empirical domain of ballot position effects. Danish local and regional elections offer a unique opportunity to do this. The paper is structured as follows: We begin by reviewing the existing empirical literature in order to evaluate the present knowledge of ballot position effects, to identify lacunae in the literature, and to argue for the value added by our study. Second, we introduce the Danish local and regional electoral system and its merits as a natural experimen...

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Section: What We Already Know About Ballot Position and Ballot Layoutmentioning

confidence: 99%

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confidence: 99%

Ballot position and election results: Evidence from a natural experiment

et al. 2016

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“…Many sucheffects have been documented to date (Becker, 1954;Belson, 1966;Brook & Upton, 1974;Carp, 1974;Mueller, 1970;Quinn & Belson, 1969 Payne, 1951;Rugg & Cantril, 1944;. Some of these demonstrations identified primacy effects, where response choices presentedearly were most likely to be selected.…”

Section: Studymentioning

confidence: 98%

Context Effects in Social and Psychological Research

Schwarz¹,

Sudman²

1992

209

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), except for brief excerpts in connection with reviews or scholarly analysis. Use in connection with any form of information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed is forbidden. The use of general descriptive names, trade names, trademarks, etc., in this publication, even if the former are not especially identified, is not to be taken as a sign that such names, as understood by the Trade Marks and Merchandise Marks Act, may accordingly be used freely by anyone.Camera-ready copy supplied by the authors. Printed and bound by Braun-Brumfield, Inc., Ann Arbor, MI. Bibb Latane and Deborah Richardson hosted the conference at the Nags Head Conference Center in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Their hospitality, the joys of southern cooking, and the outer banks of North Carolina greatly contributed to an enjoyable and productive meeting. Special thanks are due to Mary A. Spaeth, who edited all contributions to this volume and turned a pile of manuscripts into a readable book. Finally, we thank all conference participants for lively and controversial discussions from breakfast to midnight and for the fine chapters that they contributed.

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“…Clearly, this property is unrealistic when some items are very similar or even substitutes for the others. Secondly, when it is applied to some real data, it was shown that it does not fit the data very well (see, for example, B6ckenholt, 1993;:Brook & Upton, 1974;and Tallis & Dansie, 1983). Therefore, to overcome these problems, dependency structures other than those in the Thurstone order-statistics models are required.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Bayesian analysis of order-statistics models for ranking data

2000

Psychometrika

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Biases in Local Government Elections Due to Position on the Ballot Paper

Cited by 41 publications

References 3 publications

Ballot position and election results: Evidence from a natural experiment

Ballot position and election results: Evidence from a natural experiment

Context Effects in Social and Psychological Research

Bayesian analysis of order-statistics models for ranking data

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