Party, policy – or both? Partisan-biased processing of policy arguments in direct democracy

Abstract

How do party cues and policy information affect citizens' political opinions? In direct democratic settings, this question is particularly relevant. Direct democratic campaigns are information-rich events which offer citizens the opportunity to learn detailed information about a policy. At the same time parties try to influence citizens' decision procedure by publishing their own positions on the issue. The current debate on whether 'party' or 'policy' has more impact on political opinions has not yet yielded conclusive results. We examine the effect of policy arguments and party cues on vote intention in two Swiss referendum votes using panel survey data. To the simple dichotomous question of "party cues or policy information" we add an additional twist in asking how party cues affect the processing of policy information through processes of motivated reasoning. We find first, that both, policy arguments and party cues, have an independent effect on vote intention. However, in a second part of the analysis, we find strong evidence for partisan biased processing of policy arguments-that is voters tend to align their arguments with their preferred party's position. Our conclusions with regard to the democratic quality of these vote decisions are therefore ambivalent.

Tracing the Boundaries of Motivated Reasoning: How Deliberative Minipublics Can Improve Voter Knowledge

“…The RAND Corporation argues in Truth Decay that the mechanism underlying this problem is biased information processing: “Once a person forms a specific belief—whether it is based on fact, disinformation, or misinformation—that belief is likely to endure” (Kavanagh & Rich, ). More commonly called “motivated reasoning” (Kunda, ), this occurs frequently when people evaluate candidates (Leeper & Slothuus, ), ballot measures (Wells, Reedy, Gastil, & Lee, ), policy information (Colombo & Kriesi, ), or even scientific findings (Hart & Nisbet, ) and new technology (Druckman & Bolsen, ). Motivated reasoning operates across ideological divides and different levels of cognitive ability, with those more capable of effortful reasoning being the most effective at shielding their biases from disconfirming information (Kahan, ).…”

“…By exposing a randomly selected sample to a CIR Statement, we could test the impact, if any, of a minipublic's findings on a wider electorate. In effect, we probed the scope conditions of biased reasoning during a direct democratic election (Colombo & Kriesi, ).…”

Referendums in times of discontent

“…Regarding cues, many scholars stress the importance of partisan cues, or party endorsements (Lupia 1994;Donovan and Bowler 1998;Colombo and Kriesi 2017). The argumentation is simple.…”

Selective Attention and the Information Environment: Citizens’ Perceptions of Political Problems in the 2015 Swiss Federal Election Campaign

“…This, however, does not necessarily lead to an ignorant citizenry and thus to problems in democratic processes. First, informational shortcuts such as partisan cues can allow citizens to reach reasonable political attitudes even when relying on incomplete information (Colombo and Kriesi ; Lupia ; Popkin ). When policy problems are complex, many voters can thus be expected to select the aspects that their preferred party or politician emphasizes with regard to this problem.…”

“…At first, the aspects present for the four most‐mentioned problems (immigration, welfare, the economy and European integration) are assessed in the rolling cross‐sectional and post‐electoral surveys of the 2015 Swiss election study (Selects; Selects ,b). In contrast to the substantial research on the nature and correlates of political attitudes and judgements (e.g., Colombo and Kriesi ; Lavine et al. ; Lupia ; Zaller ), less interest has been spent on the initial step: how citizens select specific aspects of political problems (but see Blais et al.…”