It's Not Easy Being Green: Minor Party Labels as Heuristic Aids

Coan, Travis; Merolla, Jennifer L.; Stephenson, Laura B.; Zechmeister, Elizabeth J.

doi:10.1111/j.1467-9221.2008.00636.x

Cited by 51 publications

(63 citation statements)

References 29 publications

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“…In particular, major party cues will tend to be much more effective as heuristic aids than minor party cues (Coan et al 2008). Hence, our first hypothesis (H.1) states that Prototypes 1, 2 and 4 should have increased the vote-shares of ARI, FPV, and PRO, the parties with higher public prominence and larger campaign spending, vis-a`-vis Prototype 3.…”

Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 87%

Assessing the Impact of Alternative Voting Technologies on Multi-Party Elections: Design Features, Heuristic Processing and Voter Choice

et al. 2010

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This paper analyzes the influence of alternative voting technologies on electoral outcomes in multi-party systems. Using data from a field experiment conducted during the 2005 legislative election in Argentina, we examine the role of information effects associated with alternative voting devices on the support for the competing parties. We find that differences in the type of information displayed and how it was presented across devices favored some parties to the detriment of others. The impact of voting technologies was found to be larger than in two-party systems, and could lead to changes in election results. We conclude that authorities in countries moving to adopt new voting systems should carefully take the potential partisan advantages induced by different technologies into account when evaluating their implementation.

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Section: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 87%

Assessing the Impact of Alternative Voting Technologies on Multi-Party Elections: Design Features, Heuristic Processing and Voter Choice

et al. 2010

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“…It is not surprising then that young people are less inclined to believe in the necessity of parties for the functioning of democratic politics (Holmberg, 2003). These findings are important because existing research shows that familiarity and trust in parties encourage people to rely on party messages, especially with respect to more complex issues (Coan et al, 2008). Experimental research in social psychology demonstrates that familiarity with a source increases the persuasive impact of messages communicated by that source (Weisbuch et al, 2003).…”

Section: Partisan Consent Across Generationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Partisan legitimacy across generations

Anderson

Just

2012

Electoral Studies

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a b s t r a c tIn this paper we argue that parties shape their supporters' views about the political system via the messages they communicate about the desirability of the political system. Moreover, we contend that the effectiveness of such communication varies considerably across generations. Combining data from election surveys collected in 15 democracies as part of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project with data on the policy positions of 116 political parties collected by the Comparative Manifestos Project, we find that supporters of parties that express positive positions toward the political system report systematically higher levels of political legitimacy than supporters of parties that communicate negative views. Moreover, this communication is particularly effective among older party identifiers whose partisan identification tends to be more pronounced. Taken together, these findings suggest that political parties play an active role in shaping citizens' views of the political system but their success in mobilizing consent among citizens in contemporary democracies may weaken with partisan de-alignment and generational change.Ó 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Like a good bottle of wine, good democratic citizenship seems to come with ripe old age. It is well known, for example, that older citizens in established democracies are more likely to participate in politics (e.g. Franklin, 2004;Blais, 2000;Dalton, 2008), 1 exhibit more crystallized political orientations, more stable party identifications (Campbell et al., 1960: 153-156; Miller and Shanks, 1996: 131-132;Sears and Funk, 1999), and report more positive attitudes about the political parties they feel close to as well as the political system in which these parties compete (Dalton, 2004;Holmberg, 2003). Whether they result from life-cycle or generational effects (or some combination of the two), the attitudes and behaviors of older citizens consistently reveal a more supportive stance toward politics and the existing political status quo (Hooghe, 2004). Older individuals, so it seems, provide the backbone of contemporary democracies, while younger citizens often are the sources of instability, innovation, and change. 2While correlations between age and political behavior are well documented in the scholarly literature (for an overview, see van der Brug and Kritzinger, 2012), it is not entirely clear how they fit into dominant accounts of political legitimacy, in part because they say precious little about voters' age, except for the descriptive inference that older voters have more faith in the political system. Instead, the most common explanation of how citizens come to form supportive attitudes of democratic systems relies on Eastonian notions of system outputs, which suggest that such attitudes are shaped by what political systems represent and how they perform: people are said to extend greater legitimacy to political systems that produce superior outcomes (economic, political, and the like), and that do so fairly i...

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“…This requirement essentially limits the SPC questions to relatively less salient policies 9 . According to prior research in the United States, party cues have stronger effects for issues that are less salient, more complex, or more remote from personal experience (Bullock 2006; Coan et al. 2008).…”

Section: Experimental Design and Measurementmentioning

confidence: 99%

What's Left Behind When the Party's Over: Survey Experiments on the Effects of Partisan Cues in Putin's Russia

Brader

Tucker

2009

Politics & Policy

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We consider the question of whether Russia's greatly weakened political parties might continue to exert an influence on public opinion in twenty‐first century Russia. To do so, we carried out a series of survey‐based experiments in Moscow in the spring of 2006. We present evidence showing that partisan cues increase support for public policy proposals and make it more likely that respondents will adopt a position on an issue that mirrors their party's preferred position (“opinion taking”), as well as increase the likelihood that respondents will adopt a position on a given issue at all (“opinion giving”). We also present evidence that party cues can sway the opinions of nonpartisans, though such influence may be limited to cases when the position of a party constitutes an unusually informative or credible signal. The findings should be of interest to those concerned with Russia's post‐communist political development, those interested more broadly in the effects of partisan cues on political behavior, as well as to scholars trying to characterize the nature of “competitive authoritarian” regimes. Consideramos la cuestión de si partidos políticos fuertemente debilitados, como es el caso de los partidos rusos, podrían continuar influyendo la opinión pública en la Rusia del siglo XXI. Para responder esto llevamos a cabo una serie de investigaciones basadas en encuestas realizadas en Moscú en la primavera de 2006. Presentamos evidencia que demuestra que las pautas partidistas incrementan el apoyo del público a sus propuestas de políticas y hacen más probable que un encuestado conozca la preferencia del partido e incluso la llegue a asumir como suya (“tomando opinión”), así como que incremente la posibilidad de que ellos adopten una determinada posición sobre un determinado tópico (“dando opinión”). También presentamos evidencia que las pautas del partido pueden producir cambios de opinión, aunque dicha influencia puede estar limitada a casos donde la posición del partido constituye una señal inusualmente informativa o creíble. Los resultados serán de interés para aquellos preocupados por el desarrollo político de Rusia post‐comunista, aquellos interesados más ampliamente en los efectos de las pautas partidistas en el comportamiento político, así como para los académicos que buscan precisar las características de los regímenes “autoritarios competitivos.”

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It's Not Easy Being Green: Minor Party Labels as Heuristic Aids

Cited by 51 publications

References 29 publications

Assessing the Impact of Alternative Voting Technologies on Multi-Party Elections: Design Features, Heuristic Processing and Voter Choice

Assessing the Impact of Alternative Voting Technologies on Multi-Party Elections: Design Features, Heuristic Processing and Voter Choice

Partisan legitimacy across generations

What's Left Behind When the Party's Over: Survey Experiments on the Effects of Partisan Cues in Putin's Russia

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