Can Voters Be Equal? A Cross-national Analysis

Tóka, Gábor

doi:10.1556/revsoc.10.2004.1.3

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Font and Virós 1995), and this is what we see here as well, with the effect turning negative and statistically significant in Moldova only. The only result really contradicting previous findings in Tóka's (2003) cross-national comparison is that the impact of rural residence on knowledge is not significant in any of these analyses.…”

Section: Effects Of Social Inequalities On Turnout and Political Knowcontrasting

confidence: 96%

Inequalities of Political Influence in New Democracies

Tóka

Popescu²

2007

International Journal of Sociology

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We examine two sources of political inequalities that seem inevitable in elections, supposedly the most egalitarian and most fundamental of modern democratic processes. The first stems from the fact that not everyone is equally likely to vote, and the second from unequal political information levels, which may make some groups of citizens better able than others to express their political preferences in the vote. We use survey data from two economically less advanced new democracies to empirically assess the degree to which inequalities of turnout and political information level may influence election outcomes. Our statistical analysis relies on simulation methods developed by Bartels (1996) and Citrin, Schickler, and Sides (2003). For the first time in the literature, we provide separate estimates of how equally large increases in everyone's knowledge and how a complete equalization of knowledge level across social groups may affect election outcomes. Our results show that election outcomes in Romania and Moldova may

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Section: Effects Of Social Inequalities On Turnout and Political Knowcontrasting

confidence: 96%

Inequalities of Political Influence in New Democracies

Tóka

Popescu²

2007

International Journal of Sociology

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“…While the work noted above provides independent evidence of information effects, these and many other studies interested in political information tend to focus only on a single country and, in many cases, single elections (but see Tóka, 2003Tóka, , 2004. As argued here, there are reasons to expect that the strength of the informationconsiderations relationship will vary as a function of the complexity of the decision environment.…”

Section: Why Does Information Heterogeneity Matter?mentioning

confidence: 88%

“…For example, Richard Johnston and his colleagues (1996) use data from a survey of opinion about the 1992 Canadian Charlottetown Accord to show information-group differences in the factors that are employed in the decision calculus. According to Johnston et al (1996), while feelings play a role in the decision regardless of information level, in the high information group Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 07:06 22 December 2014 32 J. Roy these considerations are incorporated into more complex and consistent reasoning chains.While the work noted above provides independent evidence of information effects, these and many other studies interested in political information tend to focus only on a single country and, in many cases, single elections (but see Tóka, 2003Tóka, , 2004. As argued here, there are reasons to expect that the strength of the informationconsiderations relationship will vary as a function of the complexity of the decision environment.…”

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confidence: 88%

Information Heterogeneity, Complexity and the Vote Calculus

Roy

2011

Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties

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US election studies (21 studies in total) to examine the effect of political information on the vote calculus across time and countries. In doing so, two core questions are addressed. First, do differences in political information affect how individuals arrive at their vote choice? The expectation is that there will be a positive relationship between information level and the number and difficulty of factors considered in the vote calculus. Secondly, this study tests the hypothesis that the magnitude of information effects in the decision process will be a function of the complexity of the electoral context. The findings support both hypotheses. Factors incorporated into the decision process differ across information groups, but only when the electoral context is relatively complex.Since the earliest days of the behavioral revolution, researchers have probed, picked, and prodded "the voter" in an effort to find out what prompts individuals to choose a particular candidate or party. This work has advanced our understanding of voting behavior by highlighting the influence of an array of demographic, psychological, and attitudinal factors. However, despite the remarkable depth and breadth of the voting behavior literature, there has been surprisingly little comparative work that considers how political information heterogeneity affects who employs which factors in deciding how to vote. As a result, we know very little about the systematic differences in the vote calculus that may exist across information groups and how these differences may vary across time and space. This article aims to address this gap by employing cross-time and cross-national data to examine how political information affects the factors that are incorporated into the vote calculus. 1 Unlike much of the voting behavior literature, the focus of this work is not on explaining vote choice per se . Rather, this article examines the vote decision process . More specifically, this research is interested in differences in the number and types of factors that voters incorporate into their decision process according to their level of political information. While earlier work has considered the influence of information on the vote (see Downloaded by [McMaster University] at 07:06 22 December 2014 30 J. Roya limited effort to fully dissect how information heterogeneity affects the vote calculus. One of the primary contributions that this research makes is offering an explanation of how information differences affect the vote decision process both across time and across countries. The first hypothesis tested here contends that an individual's level of political information conditions the number of factors that are incorporated into the decision calculus. However, it may be that a raw comparison of the number of factors included in the decision calculus is too crude an instrument to understand information-based differences in the decision calculus. It may be that it is not simply differences in the quantity of factors that are included that vary across inf...

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“…First, we have used a more realistic point of reference regarding political knowledge than previous analyses (e.g. Bartels, 1996; Hansen, 2009; Tóka, 2004). Compared to these studies, we have utilized additional political knowledge gained in the course of this deliberation that is real rather than stipulated.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies have assessed the effect of political knowledge in the context of US elections (Althaus, 1998; Bartels, 1996), in single European countries (Hansen, 2009 for Denmark; Oscarsson, 2007 for Sweden) and in a broader comparative perspective (Tóka, 2004). The single-country studies compare actual (self-reported) voter choices to counterfactual fully informed choices (Althaus, 1998; Bartels, 1996; Hansen, 2009; Oscarsson, 2007), while Tóka (2004) applies information levels that are less than full but nonetheless arbitrary. The problem with these operationalizations is that the counterfactual information levels are either unrealistic or artificial, reflecting the fact that researchers do not know how much knowledge increase can be realistically expected.…”

Section: Research Design and Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

Deliberation, political knowledge and vote choice: Results from an experiment with second-order elections

Bernhagen

Schmitz

2014

European Union Politics

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This article assesses the effects of deliberation and increased political knowledge on vote choice. The observed knowledge gains result from participation in a deliberative experiment in the context of second-order elections, which facilitates realistic estimates of information gains that can be expected if citizens were politically more engaged than they actually are. Using survey data on 333 participants in the deliberative experiment and 729 respondents from a control group, we find that deliberation is associated with significant changes in vote choice. Specifically, participating in the deliberative event is related to an increased likelihood of vote switching in favour of Green parties. However, there is no support for the expectation that changes in citizens' party choices are related to the observed increase in political knowledge.

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Can Voters Be Equal? A Cross-national Analysis

Cited by 8 publications

References 31 publications

Inequalities of Political Influence in New Democracies

Inequalities of Political Influence in New Democracies

Information Heterogeneity, Complexity and the Vote Calculus

Deliberation, political knowledge and vote choice: Results from an experiment with second-order elections

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