Off the Fence, Onto the Bandwagon? A Large-Scale Survey Experiment on Effect of Real-Life Poll Outcomes on Subsequent Vote Intentions

Meer, Tom van der; Hakhverdian, Armèn; Aaldering, Loes

doi:10.1093/ijpor/edu041

Cited by 55 publications

(55 citation statements)

References 45 publications

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“…Our findings add to a growing literature on bandwagon effects in European democracies (Morton et al 2015;Stolwijk et al 2016;Van der Meer et al 2016). Ongoing debates about dissemination of polls are perhaps even more relevant than ever considering some recent polling and prediction failures by political journalists and pundits (cf Aalberg & van Aelst 2014;Donsbach 2001;Petersen 2012).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 51%

“…More recent studies have explored the importance of how polls influence vote choice with causal designs and in new contexts. These studies all confirm bandwagon effects in the Netherlands, France, Austria and Germany (Meffert et al 2011;Morton et al 2015;Stolwijk et al 2016;Van der Meer et al 2016). Using a strong causal design in a new context, we situate our research alongside these recent contributions to further expand the scope of the bandwagon effect and replicate it in yet another context with its own distinct political culture.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

“…The logic resembles that of the 'herding effect' in economics, which some think underlies the boom and bust cycle of the economy. Since our short research note does not allow for a comprehensive review of the literature, we refer readers to the recent review in Van der Meer et al (2016) or Hardmeier (2008).…”

Section: Polls and Voting Behaviour: The Bandwagon Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour

Dahlgaard

Hansen

et al. 2017

Scand Pol Stud

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This article investigates how election information such as opinion polls can influence voting intention. The bandwagon effect claims that voters ‘float along’: a party experiencing increased support receives more support, and vice versa. Through a large national survey experiment, evidence is found of a bandwagon effect among Danish voters. When voters are exposed to a news story describing either an upwards or downwards movement for either a small or large party, they tend to move their voting intentions in the according direction. The effect is strongest in the positive direction – that is, when a party experiences increased support, more follows. Consistent effects are found across two different parties for a diverse national sample in a political context very different from earlier research on the bandwagon effects. Considering previous research and the fact that evidence is not found that suggests that the effect of polls vary across sociodemographic groups, the results imply that bandwagon behaviour is based not on social or political contingencies, such as media or political institution, but on fundamentals of political cognition.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 51%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 59%

Section: Polls and Voting Behaviour: The Bandwagon Effectmentioning

confidence: 99%

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How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour

Dahlgaard

Hansen

et al. 2017

Scand Pol Stud

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“…Performance in previous elections is used by parties to measure the competitiveness of upcoming elections, as well as by the media which, during election campaigns, tend to compare the parties’ prospects of gaining or losing relative to the previous election. In particular, we see that compared to opinion poll data, which are often subject to journalistic interpretation or media framing (e.g., Van der Meer, Hakhverdian, & Aaldering, ), previous election outcomes can provide voters with important objective information to be used in upcoming elections (Blais & Bodet, ). Thus, electoral gains and losses, that is, vote change since the previous election, should matter for supporters in perceiving whether or not their party has won (see also Delgado, ; Stiers et al, ).…”

Section: Who Are the Election Winners: Hypothesesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On the Subjectivity of the Experience of Victory: Who Are the Election Winners?

Plescia

2018

Political Psychology

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Elections represent key moments in democratic countries, and an established finding from the existing literature is that winners of elections display higher levels of satisfaction with democracy. Yet we know almost nothing about the times when voters feel like winners of an election. Using panel data in four countries, this article finds that while the objective performance of the supported party—measured using vote share and changes in vote share from the previous election—has a very important effect on feeling like an election winner, prior expectations regarding the election’s outcome as well as preferences for the supported party significantly moderate the effect of party performance on voter feelings. It seems also that the identification of the winners and losers of elections are clearer in majoritarian‐style democracies than in proportional systems with coalition governments. Ultimately, the findings indicate that measuring who are the winners of an election using exclusively objective measures of party performance may provide a distorted view of public opinion following the elections.

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“…An important feature of the political coverage in both non-election and election times is how parties and politicians stand in the polls. This coverage provides the public and politicians with information on the nature of political competition, shapes the public's attitudes and matters for political outcomes (Ansolabehere & Iyengar, 1994;Rothschild & Malhotra, 2014;Searles, Smith, & Sui, 2018;van der Meer, Hakhverdian, & Aaldering, 2016, Westwood, Messing, & Lelkes, 2018.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Transforming Stability into Change: How the Media Select and Report Opinion Polls

Larsen

Fazekas

2019

The International Journal of Press/Politics

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Although political polls show stability over short periods of time, most media coverage of polls highlights recurrent changes in the political competition. We present evidence for a snowball effect where small and insignificant changes in polls end up in the media coverage as stories about changes. To demonstrate this process, we rely on the full population of political polls in Denmark and a combination of human coding and supervised machine learning of more than four thousand news articles. Through these steps, we show how a horserace coverage of polls about change can rest on a foundation of stability.

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Off the Fence, Onto the Bandwagon? A Large-Scale Survey Experiment on Effect of Real-Life Poll Outcomes on Subsequent Vote Intentions

Cited by 55 publications

References 45 publications

How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour

How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour

On the Subjectivity of the Experience of Victory: Who Are the Election Winners?

Transforming Stability into Change: How the Media Select and Report Opinion Polls

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