Candidate ballot information and election outcomes: the Czech case

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. www.econstor.eu The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents in D I S C U S S I O N P A P E R S E R I E SIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. We measure the importance of candidate characteristics listed on ballots for a candidate's position on a slate, for preferential votes received by a candidate, and, ultimately, for getting elected. We focus on the effects of gender, various types of academic titles, and also several novel properties of candidates' names. Using data on over 200 thousand candidates competing in recent Czech municipal board and regional legislature elections, and conditioning on slate fixed effects, we find ballot cues to play a stronger role in small municipalities than in large cities and regions, despite the general agreement on higher candidate salience in small municipalities. We also quantify the election advantage of a slate being randomly listed first on a ballot.JEL Classification: D72, D83

Homophily in voting behavior: Evidence from preferential voting

“…4 As the parties nominate a large number of candidates for each election, the voters are not likely to know them all or be familiar with their ability to hold the office. Under such circumstances a voter may base his/her decision to award preferential votes on the basis of secondary information (Jurajda & Münich, 2015). In the Czech Republic such information is available on the ballot, which states the candidates' name, gender, occupation, education, place of residency, political party affiliation and age (see Figure 1 for an example of an annotated ballot).…”

“…Such an interpretation of the ranking may be supported by the fact that incumbent deputies are typically listed in the top positions (see Figure 2). Consequently, candidates in higher positions may be perceived as better prepared for office and receive more votes (Blom-Hansen et al, 2016;Jurajda & Münich, 2015;Lutz, 2010;…”

The effect of the ballot in an unranked ballot system

“…Analyzing party lists in Estonia’s national tier, Allik (2015) shows that women are unlikely to be placed at positions that would reward them with a seat. 1 Likewise, in the Czech Republic, women are six to nine percentage points less likely to hold an electable position (Jurajda and Münich, 2015) and usually hold less than 30% of the top five ballot ranks (Stegmaier et al, 2014). The bias against women is still strong even after accounting for candidates’ political experience and quality (Gendź wi łł and Żół tak, 2020; Górecki and Kukołowicz, 2014).…”

“…Candidates placed in top ranks receive larger vote shares and have a higher probability of being elected (Faas and Schoen, 2006; Grant, 2017; Koppell and Steen, 2004). The assignment of these positions is not random, frequently it is biased against some candidates, such as women (Gendź wi łł and Żół tak, 2020; Jurajda and Münich, 2015).…”

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

“…The most efficient way to obtain information about the different candidates is to use the information presented on the ballot paper (Brockington 2003). Information shortcuts can be derived from the name of a candidate (Jurajda and Münich 2015;Portmann and Stojanović 2019), from additional information about the candidates that is presented on the ballot paper such as the age (Webster and Pierce 2019), gender (Górecki and KukoŃowicz 2014;Ragauskas 2019), or occupation (Mechtel 2014) of a candidate. However, it is questionable how useful such ballot paper cues are.…”