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Identifying Voter Preferences for Politicians' Personal Attributes: A Conjoint Experiment in Japan
Abstract
The personal attributes of politicians are often important in determining the outcomes of elections, yet few studies have rigorously investigated which particular personal attributes (among many) are most relevant in shaping voters' preferences for politicians. We investigate this question with a conjoint survey experiment in Japan. In contrast to the commonly observed attributes of actual Japanese politicians, we find that voters dislike older politicians and celebrities, and are indifferent with regard to dynastic family ties and gender. Our results also reveal consistent preferences when respondents are primed with information about the different electoral contexts of Japan's mixed-member bicameral system, despite differences in the observed attributes of politicians across these contexts. These discrepancies suggest a significant role played by parties' recruitment and selection practices, rather than voters' preferences per se, in shaping the types of politicians who represent voters in parliament.
... Originally used in market research, conjoint analysis has since expanded into social sciences, including political science, where it has been applied to study attitudes toward immigration (Hainmueller, Hangartner, and Yamamoto 2015), public assessments of resolve in international relations (Kertzer, Renshon, and Yarhi-Milo 2021), and voter preferences in elections (Bansak et al. 2021a;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2020 (Franchino and Zucchini 2015;Bansak, Bechtel, and Margalit 2021). This method has been used across different countries, including Italy, Norway, and Japan, to demonstrate the causal relationship between candidates' issue positions and voter behavior, highlighting the effectiveness of conjoint survey experiments in capturing the nuances of voter decision-making (Hanretty, Lauderdale, and Vivyan 2020;Arnesen, Duell, and Johannesson 2019). ...
... Considering the mixed member majoritarian system (MMM) for parliamentary elections in Taiwan, where regional legislative seats are determined by a single-member plurality system, it's evident that under Taiwan's prevailing political landscape, single-district legislative seats often reflect a showdown between two major parties (KMT vs. DPP). In contrast to proportional representation systems for local councilor elections, this study, drawing from research by Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto (2020) and Bansak et al. (2021a), argues that paired conjoint survey experiments are more apt for implementation. This method mirrors realworld voter decision-making, where respondents must navigate choices among candidates across various dimensions and attributes. ...
... Cross-national studies often find that candidates with higher educational backgrounds are preferred by voters, as shown in research on Italian, Finnish, and Japanese voters (Franchino and Zucchini 2015;Coffé and Schoultz 2020;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2020 Taiwan's historical and cultural context also highlights the significance of professional backgrounds, such as legal and medical professions, which have been prominent among political figures. Despite the low trust in lawyers, legal backgrounds remain common among ...
This study investigates how personal attributes of political candidates influence voter preferences in Taiwan's regional legislative elections using Conjoint Survey Experiments. The findings highlight that voters prefer candidates with certain attributes, such as youthful appearance, higher educational background, and specific professions. Additionally, the study reveals that policy stances on national defense and security play a significant role due to Taiwan's unique political context. The research also notes variations in attribute preferences among different demographic subgroups, offering insights into voter behavior in East Asia and emerging democracies.
... Citizens may think that other voters will discriminate against LGT candidates, which could lead even positively predisposed individuals to not vote for LGT candidates seen as less likely to win. Electability concerns around out LGT candidates are exacerbated by the fact that such candidates-long ostracized by parties-often lack political experience, a feature that voters see as bolstering electability (Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2020). While electability concerns apply to all LGT candidates, we anticipate a stronger penalty for transgender ones, because of widespread hostility toward trans individuals and because of the very low number of successful transgender candidates in past elections. ...
... First, politicians have many attributes that may attract (or repel) voters, which makes it hard to pinpoint which characteristics voters consider more important. The challenge is magnified because attributes are often correlated (Horiuchi et al. 2020). The conjoint design allows us to disentangle the effect of correlated attributes and evaluate their marginal and relative importance. ...
... The conjoint design allows us to disentangle the effect of correlated attributes and evaluate their marginal and relative importance. Second, by presenting respondents with hypothetical rather than actual candidates, the experiment allows us to isolate the effect of specific characteristics, such as sexual orientation, abstracting from real-life candidates who possess them (Horiuchi et al. 2020). ...
Minority groups have long been underrepresented in politics. Support for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) rights and the incidence of LGBT candidates have dramatically increased in recent years. But do voters (still) penalize LGT candidates? We conducted original survey experiments with nationally representative samples in the United States, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. To varying degrees voters penalize LGT candidates in all countries, with penalties strongest in the United States. Yet, progressives, people with LGBT friends, and nonreligious individuals do not discriminate against gays and lesbians, while transgender candidates face stronger bias. Electability concerns, outright prejudice, and identity cueing (i.e., LGT candidates seen as more liberal) explain voter bias. This study contributes to the literature on minority candidates and disentangles correlated candidate attributes, exploring the intersectionality of bias. Understanding the barriers to the election of LGT people is crucial to improve the representation of marginalized communities. © 2021 Southern Political Science Association. All rights reserved.
... Several studies have employed conjoint analysis to investigate voter preferences in various contexts. In Japan and the Philippines, researchers found that voters prioritize competencies such as political experience, education, and profession over traditional factors (Anabo, 2021;Murcia & Bolo, 2017;Horiuchi et al., 2018). Explicitly focusing on younger voters, Timoteo Jr. (2021) observed that Gen Z and Millennial voters in the Philippines prefer candidates who are not corrupt, wise, and have a solid moral character. ...
... While party identification and pre-election surveys shape voting preferences, issue orientation, and candidate orientation appear less significant (Batara et al., 2021). Interestingly, Horiuchi et al. (2018) noted that voters' preferences for personal attributes often diverge from the observed characteristics of elected officials, suggesting the influence of party recruitment strategies and electoral systems. Gen Z voters, in particular, exhibit unique characteristics that may influence their political preferences. ...
Understanding Generation Z's political preferences is essential for candidates who engage this influential demographic in the 2025 Philippine Senate elections. Despite the growing importance of Gen Z in the electorate, limited research exists on the specific candidate attributes that shape their voting decisions. This study, conducted in Davao City, addresses this gap by examining how Gen Z perceives various candidate attributes through the lens of Multi-Attribute Utility Theory (MAUT) and Rational Choice Theory (RCT). Using conjoint analysis with the PAPRIKA method, the study evaluated the relative importance of six key attributes: political experience, educational background, stance on issues, party affiliation, campaign style, and age group. Data from 1,380 respondents were analyzed to ensure a robust representation of Gen Z preferences. Results reveal that political experience (31.0%) and educational background (18.1%) are the most influential factors, followed by stance on issues (17.2%) and party affiliation (15.8%), with campaign style (10.8%) and age group (7.2%) being less significant. Gen Z voters in this study clearly preferred candidates with substantial experience, advanced academic credentials, and a progressive stance on social and environmental issues, favoring digital over traditional campaign strategies. These findings have theoretical and practical implications, enriching the understanding of Gen Z's decision-making processes and highlighting their prioritization of competence, authenticity, and modern communication. Politicians can use these insights to develop targeted campaign strategies that resonate with Gen Z values, emphasizing progressive policies, qualifications, and digital engagement. By aligning campaign approaches with Gen Z's expectations, candidates have a strategic opportunity to connect meaningfully with this emerging voting bloc in the Philippine political landscape.
... We employ a conjoint survey experiment to address this methodological challenge. Conjoint analysis, which has become popular in political science, is suitable to measure voters' multidimensional preferences underlying choices (Bansak et al., 2022;Hainmueller, Hopkins and Yamamoto, 2014;Horiuchi, Smith and Yamamoto, 2020). As in many other existing studies examining voters' preferences using the conjoint design (e.g., Carnes and Lupu, 2016; ...
... While their finding suggests that voters approve of more effective legislators, few studies have examined the relevance of legislative effectiveness in determining vote choice. Part of the challenge when investigating such a question is that political candidates possess multidimensional attributes that might appeal to or repel voters (Horiuchi, Smith and Yamamoto, 2020). For example, Treul et al. (2022) find that, in primary elections, highly effective lawmakers tend to outperform ineffective lawmakers at the ballot box. ...
... The study of (Horiuchi et al., 2016) however, revealed the discrepancy between voters' preferences and the actual attributes of politicians in Japan. Their results revealed that despite the fact that there are many elderly, celebrity, dynastic, and male politicians in Japan, voters do not appear to prefer older politicians or celebrities, and are indifferent with regard to dynastic family ties and gender. ...
... Their results revealed that despite the fact that there are many elderly, celebrity, dynastic, and male politicians in Japan, voters do not appear to prefer older politicians or celebrities, and are indifferent with regard to dynastic family ties and gender. Furthermore, they found that these preferences are consistent regardless of whether voters consider the different electoral system contexts of the mixed-member bicameral parliament (Horiuchi et al., 2016). ...
The Philippine elections had been characterized by the presence of a weak party system, a low information environment for voters, a history of dynastic rule, and the preponderance of media celebrities in elected political offices. These features amounted to the observation that candidate winnability in the country is discussed often as a "personality versus platform'' issue, highlighting the importance of candidates' personal background. This study examines certain variables associated with the voting preferences of young educated voters for the 2019 Senatorial Elections. Using a quantitative approach, this inquiry specifically sought to analyze the extent to which party identification, issue orientation, candidate orientation, and pre-election surveys affect voters' preferences for candidates. Survey data were obtained from the 210 puposively sampled youth-voters, and were analyzed using structural equation modelling. On the whole, the results of the study indicate the positive association between the respondents' party identification on voting preferences, as well as the positive association between pre-election surveys and the respondents' voting preferences. Both issue orientation and candidate orientation do not appear as significant independent variables The outcome of the study has departed from the prevailing Philippine electoral trend where candidate personality-centered factors have been pivotal for explaining Filipino voting preferences.
... The existing evidence from candidate conjoint experiments, primarily conducted in the United States and other developed democracies, does not display a consistent overall effect of candidate gender. Teele et al. (2018) and Kirkland and Coppock (2018) find respondents prefer female candidates, Ono and Burden (2019) find respondents prefer male candidates, and Hainmueller et al. (2014), Carnes and Lupu (2016), and Horiuchi et al. (2016) find no effect of gender. Our research can help make sense of the mixed results produced by candidate conjoint experiments, which typically examine the overall effect of candidate gender by respondent partisanship or respondent gender, rather than by a measure of genderbased attitudes or stereotypes. ...
... 30 For other examples of candidate conjoint experiments, seeHainmueller et al. (2014);Kirkland and Coppock (2018);Teele et al. (2018); and Ono and Burden (2019) in the United States;Franchino and Zucchini (2015) in Italy;Carnes and Lupu (2016) in Britain, Argentina, and the United States; andHoriuchi et al. (2016) in Japan.31 In the BJKA survey, we include Ennahda, Nidaa Tounes, Afek Tounes, Popular Front (Jabha Shabiyya), Free Patriotic Union, Machrouu Tounes, Current of Love, Initiative Party, Democratic Current, and al-Irada Movement. ...
Although female political representation in the Arab world has nearly doubled in the last decade, little is known about how voters in the region view female politicians and their political platforms, particularly in a new democracy like Tunisia. We conduct original conjoint and vignette survey experiments to examine the effects of candidate gender and gender- and leadership-congruent political platforms on voter support. Building on role congruity theory, we find evidence of bias against female candidates among voters, particularly among respondents who hold patriarchal gender norms. Additionally, we find that all respondents are more likely to prefer candidates who emphasize security issues rather than women’s rights. Overall, our study suggests that female candidates who emphasize issues congruent with stereotypes of political leadership, such as security, can increase voter support, though respondents also reward male candidates who appeal to leadership congruent issues.
... The survey included a conjoint choice task to assess the impact of candidate attributes on respondents' preferences (Hainmueller, Hopkins and Yamamoto 2014). Conjoint designs have been used to study candidate preferences in a variety of contexts (Carlson 2015;Franchino and Zucchini 2015;Horiuchi, Smith and Yamamoto 2020;Carnes and Lupu 2016;Kirkland and Coppock 2018;Sung 2022). In our survey, each respondent completed five pairwise comparisons between hypothetical candidates, like the example in Figure 1. ...
Every year, Americans elect hundreds of thousands of candidates to local public office, typically in low-attention, nonpartisan races. How do voters evaluate candidates in these sorts of elections? Previous research suggests that, absent party cues, voters rely on a set of heuristic shortcuts – including the candidate’s name, profession, and interest group endorsements – to decide whom to support. In this paper, we suggest that community embeddedness – a candidate’s roots and ties to the community – is particularly salient in these local contests. We present evidence from a conjoint survey experiment on a nationally representative sample of American voters. We estimate the marginal effect on vote share of candidate attributes such as gender, race, age, profession, interest group endorsements, and signals of community embeddedness – specifically homeownership and residency duration. We find that voters, regardless of political party, have strong preferences for community embeddedness. Strikingly, the magnitude of the residency duration effect rivals that of prior political experience.
... However, more recent studies have suggested that gender does not necessarily affect voters' choice of candidates. Specifically,Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto's (2020) conjoint survey experiment revealed that the role of gender has only a minimal effect on individual voting in the case of Japan's mixed-member bicameral legislature. Based on three experimental surveys,Kage, Rosenbluth, and Tanaka (2019) found that Japanese voters do not harbor particularly negative attitudes toward female politicians. ...
Objectives
Given the distinct political landscape of Japan, this study aims to explore the impact of gender on the parliamentary behavior of Japanese legislators.
Methods
Utilizing a self‐constructed data set covering the 44th–48th Diets (2005–2021), this study examines the individual‐level parliamentary activities of male and female legislators in Japan. Key metrics analyzed include the frequency of speeches delivered in both plenary and committee sessions, alongside the submission of memorandums to the Diet.
Results
The findings indicate that on the whole, gender exerts only a minimal effect on parliamentary activities. However, upon closer examination of members belonging to opposition parties during specific time periods, female legislators emerge as more active in terms of questioning and memorandum submission compared to their male counterparts.
Conclusion
This study unveils a noteworthy trend wherein women legislators in Japan demonstrate equal or greater engagement in parliamentary activities than their male counterparts. These findings underscore the importance of exploring gender dynamics within political systems beyond the Western sphere. Moreover, they emphasize the necessity for ongoing research into gender representation and participation within Japan's political arena.
... Findings from observational studies (Hobolt & Hoyland, 2011) and survey experiments (Coffé & Theiss-Morse, 2016;Kirkland & Coppock, 2018; see also : Horiuchi, Smith, & Yamamoto, 2020;Teele et al., 2018) consistently show that voters reward candidates who previously held political offices. Interestingly, these studies also find that voters, while exhibiting a preference for a correlate of old age (namely, experience), are not particularly attracted to old politicians per se. ...
Gerontocracy, in its narrowest sense, refers to political systems ruled by elderly people, whether de jure or de facto. Although formal gerontocratic rules are progressively disappearing, contemporary political systems are still governed by individuals who are significantly older than the mean voter. This article reviews existing explanations for the prevalence of gerontocracy. To summarize main findings, gerontocracy cannot be explained by the leadership qualities of older rulers: aging leaders do not perform better in office and voters seem to be aware of it. Instead, existing research suggests that gerontocracy can be explained by strategic considerations. In autocracies, the selectorate tends to choose aging leaders in order to reduce their expected tenure length. In democracies, voters are more likely to select experienced candidates, which they expect to be more effective at advancing the interests of their constituency: this premium put on experience mechanically lengthens political careers and increases the age of the average politician. Finally, older voters, which participate more in politics, tend to prefer older politicians, because they (correctly) expect them to better defend their own interests.
... Partisanship is the predominant driver of American political behavior (Campbell et al. 1960) and as such is frequently tested in many candidate choice experiments in political science (e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2016;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018;Ono and Burden 2018; see also Kirkland and Coppock 2018). Since third party lawmakers are extremely rare in the U.S. federal government, we only offered Democrat and Republican as options for partisanship. ...
Scholars and pundits fear that the American public's commitment to democracy is declining and that citizens are willing to embrace candidates who would trample democratic principles. We examine whether violations of those principles generate resistance from both voters and top campaign donors and whether such resistance extends across partisan lines. In a conjoint survey experiment, we investigate how regular citizens and donor elites trade off partisanship, policy positions, and support for democratic values when choosing between hypothetical political candidates. Our findings indicate that both citizens and donors punish candidates who endorse violations of democratic principles irrespective of party. However, we find partisan polarization (especially among donors) in the effects of candidates supporting voter identification laws that threaten access to the franchise. These results suggest that the public and donors may sometimes be willing to forgive transgressions against democratic norms that align with their partisan and policy preferences.
... Partisanship is the predominant driver of American political behavior (Campbell et al. 1960) and as such is frequently tested in many candidate choice experiments in political science (e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2016;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018;Ono and Burden 2018; see also Kirkland and Coppock 2018). Since third party lawmakers are extremely rare in the U.S. federal government, we only offered Democrat and Republican as options for partisanship. ...
Scholars and pundits fear that the American public's commitment to democracy is declining and that citizens are willing to embrace candidates who would trample democratic principles. We examine whether violations of those principles generate resistance from both voters and top campaign donors and whether such resistance extends across partisan lines. In a conjoint survey experiment, we investigate how regular citizens and donor elites trade off partisanship, policy positions, and support for democratic values when choosing between hypothetical political candidates. Our findings indicate that both citizens and donors punish candidates who endorse violations of democratic principles irrespective of party. However, we find partisan polarization (especially among donors) in the effects of candidates supporting voter identification laws that threaten access to the franchise. These results suggest that the public and donors may sometimes be willing to forgive transgressions against democratic norms that align with their partisan and policy preferences.
... Partisanship is the predominant driver of American political behavior (Campbell et al. 1960) and as such is frequently tested in many candidate choice experiments in political science (e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2016;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018;Ono and Burden 2018; see also Kirkland and Coppock 2018). Since third party lawmakers are extremely rare in the U.S. federal government, we only offered Democrat and Republican as options for partisanship. ...
Scholars and pundits fear that the American public's commitment to democracy is declining and that citizens are willing to embrace candidates who would trample democratic principles. We examine whether violations of those principles generate resistance from both voters and top campaign donors and whether such resistance extends across partisan lines. In a conjoint survey experiment, we investigate how regular citizens and donor elites trade off partisanship, policy positions, and support for democratic values when choosing between hypothetical political candidates. Our findings indicate that both citizens and donors punish candidates who endorse violations of democratic principles irrespective of party. However, we find partisan polarization (especially among donors) in the effects of candidates supporting voter identification laws that threaten access to the franchise. These results suggest that the public and donors may sometimes be willing to forgive transgressions against democratic norms that align with their partisan and policy preferences.
... Partisanship is the predominant driver of American political behavior (Campbell et al. 1960) and as such is frequently tested in many candidate choice experiments in political science (e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2016;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018;Ono and Burden 2018; see also Kirkland and Coppock 2018). Since third party lawmakers are extremely rare in the U.S. federal government, we only offered Democrat and Republican as options for partisanship. ...
Scholars and pundits fear that the American public’s commitment to democracy is declining and that citizens are willing to embrace candidates who would trample democratic principles. We examine whether violations of democratic principles generate resistance from voters and top campaign donors and whether such resistance extends across partisan lines. In a conjoint survey experiment, we investigate how regular citizens and donor elites trade off partisanship, policy positions, and democratic values when choosing between hypothetical political candidates. Our findings indicate that both citizens and donors punish violations of democratic principles irrespective of party. However, we find partisan polarization (especially among donors) in the effects of candidates supporting voter identification laws that threaten access to the franchise. These results suggest that the public and donors may sometimes be willing to forgive transgressions against democratic norms that align with their partisan and policy preferences.
... Partisanship is the predominant driver of American political behavior (Campbell et al. 1960) and as such is frequently tested in many candidate choice experiments in political science (e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2016;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018;Ono and Burden 2018; see also Kirkland and Coppock 2018). Since third party lawmakers are extremely rare in the U.S. federal government, we only offered Democrat and Republican as options for partisanship. ...
Scholars and pundits fear that the American public's commitment to democracy is declining and that citizens are willing to embrace candidates who would trample democratic principles. We investigate whether violations of democratic principles generate resistance from voters and top campaign donors and whether such resistance extends across partisan lines. In a conjoint survey experiment, we investigate how regular citizens and donor elites trade off partisanship, policy preferences, and democratic values when choosing between hypothetical political candidates. On three of the four democratic values we test, both citizens and donors punish violations of democratic principles irrespective of party. However, we find partisan polarization on support for voter identification laws that restrict access to the franchise, especially among donors. These results suggest that the public and donors may sometimes be willing to forgive transgressions against democratic norms that align with their partisan and policy preferences.
... Partisanship is the predominant driver of American political behavior (Campbell et al. 1960) and as such is frequently tested in many candidate choice experiments in political science (e.g., Carnes and Lupu 2016;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018;Ono and Burden 2018; see also Kirkland and Coppock 2018). Since third party lawmakers are extremely rare in the U.S. federal government, we only offered Democrat and Republican as options for partisanship. ...
... Next, we included a series of conjoint exercises used by Hainmueller and Hopkins (2015), modified to suit the French context. 8 The conjoint experiment is becoming increasingly popular in political science and has been adopted to understand respondents' multidimensional preferences for politicians (e.g., Carlson 2015;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018a;Teele, Kalla, and Rosenbluth 2018) and policies (e.g., Ballard-Rosa, Martin, and Scheve 2016;Bechtel, Hainmueller, and Margalit 2014;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto 2018b), among other topics. ...
To what extent does exposure to immigration condition the types of immigrants citizens are willing to admit? Extending the conjoint approach adopted by Hainmueller and Hopkins (Am J Pol Sci 59(3):529–548, 2015), this study investigates whether the admission preferences of French natives vary based on personal exposure to immigration, as proxied by local demographics and self-reported social contact. Methodologically, we propose and apply new methods to compare attribute salience across different subgroups of respondents. We find that although an inflow of immigrants into respondents’ municipalities has a limited influence on how French natives evaluate prospective immigrants, social contact with immigrants matters. Specifically, French natives who do not frequently interact with immigrants are significantly less favorable toward immigrants from non-western countries, and more favorable toward immigrants from western countries. In contrast, natives who report frequent social interactions with immigrants place less weight on nationality as a criterion for immigrant admission. Although scholars have noted an increasing consensus in immigration attitudes across developed democracies, our findings suggest that individual experiences with immigration condition preferences for immigration policy at the national level.
... More recently, Hainmueller, Hopkins, and Yamamoto (2014) integrated conjoint analysis with the potentialoutcome framework for causal inference, causing a growth in its application. As a result, political scientists have adopted it to measure preferences for politicians (e.g., Carlson, 2015;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto, 2018b), policies (e.g., Bechtel and Scheve, 2013;Horiuchi, Smith, and Yamamoto, 2018a), and politicized issues such as immigration (e.g., Hainmueller and Hopkins, 2015). ...
Although the value of diversity—in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status—to the U.S. military has been subject to debate, preferences for diversity at educational institutions for the military officers are rarely examined systematically. To address this, we investigate whether midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy favor prioritizing diversity in student admissions and faculty recruitment using conjoint analysis, a method suited for estimating attitudes on sensitive and politicized issues. The results show strong preferences in favor of applicants from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds and moderate but still positive preferences for members of traditionally underrepresented racial/ethnic groups in both admissions and faculty recruitment. Midshipmen’s preferences with respect to gender are, however, less straightforward. In particular, we find a strong negative preference against gender non-binary applicants and candidates. Our findings suggest that midshipmen’s attitudes reflect both resolved and unresolved debates that resonate throughout the armed forces.
... We undertook fully randomized conjoint analysis, an approach recently proposed by Hainmueller et al. (2014). Conjoint analysis was used originally in marketing research to explore multidimensional preferences, but has since been developed and applied by political scientists to analyze attitudes toward politicians from different ethnic groups (Carlson 2015), views on men and women political candidates (Teele et al. 2017;Horiuchi et al., forthcoming), policies (Bechtel and Scheve 2013;Horiuchi et al. 2018b), and politicized or sensitive issues such as immigration (Hainmueller and Hopkins 2015) and discrimination (Caruso et al. 2009). This method is particularly suitable for our study as well, since we want to reduce social desirability bias and decompose the multidimensional nature of a holistic assessment of faculty candidates. 2 Our study's novelty lies not only in its methods but also in its substance. ...
What explains the scarcity of women and under-represented minorities among university faculty relative to their share of Ph.D. recipients? Among many potential explanations, we focus on the “demand” side of faculty diversity. Using fully randomized conjoint analysis, we explore patterns of support for, and resistance to, the hiring of faculty candidates from different social groups at two large public universities in the U.S. We find that faculty are strongly supportive of diversity: holding other attributes of (hypothetical) candidates constant, for example, faculty at both universities are between 11 and 21 percentage points more likely to prefer a Hispanic, black, or Native American candidate to a white one. Furthermore, preferences for diversity in faculty hiring are stronger among faculty than among students. These results suggest that the primary reason for the lack of diversity among faculty is not a lack of desire to hire them, but the accumulation of implicit and institutionalized biases, and their related consequences, at later stages in the pipeline.
... We undertook fully randomized conjoint analysis, an approach recently proposed by Hainmueller et al. (2014). Conjoint analysis was used originally in marketing research to explore multidimensional preferences, but has since been developed and applied by political scientists to analyze attitudes toward politicians from different ethnic groups (Carlson 2015), views on men and women political candidates (Teele et al. 2017;Horiuchi et al., forthcoming), policies (Bechtel and Scheve 2013;Horiuchi et al. 2018b), and politicized or sensitive issues such as immigration (Hainmueller and Hopkins 2015) and discrimination (Caruso et al. 2009). This method is particularly suitable for our study as well, since we want to reduce social desirability bias and decompose the multidimensional nature of a holistic assessment of faculty candidates. 2 Our study's novelty lies not only in its methods but also in its substance. ...
In Japan’s gubernatorial and mayoral elections, it is common for the ruling and opposition parties at the national level to endorse the same candidate (the so-called “ainori candidate”). However, few existing studies have comprehensively examined how voters evaluate such candidates. This paper examines the causal effects of party endorsement information on voters’ evaluations of gubernatorial candidates through a candidate conjoint experiment conducted in Japan. The results indicate that candidates endorsed by both the ruling and opposition parties are evaluated by voters to the same extent as candidates with no party endorsement. Additional analysis, conducted by subsampling voters based on partisanship and ideology, suggests that this is because voters who are more likely to use partisan heuristics perceive candidates who are endorsed by both right-wing and left-wing parties as having centrist ideological positions. These findings shed light on the reasons for the widespread cooperation between the ruling and opposition parties in gubernatorial and mayoral elections from the voters’ perspective.
Background
Millions of Americans live with chronic health conditions and disabilities. While disability and disabling conditions are common in the United States, the number of politicians and candidates with disclosed disabilities or chronic health conditions remains extremely low.
Objectives
This study examines what drives the lack of descriptive representation of individuals with disabilities or chronic health conditions. In particular, it examines whether disability bias, or more specifically ableism, drives voter bias against politicians with health challenges and disabilities.
Methods
The analysis relies on two original surveys with samples of American respondents that match Census quotas on key indicators. The first survey was administered to more than 1800 U.S. respondents in 2018. The second survey was administered to 6345 U.S. respondents in 2020. The approach combines observational and experimental data, as well as quantitative and qualitative analysis.
Results
The findings reveal that voters are significantly less likely to support candidates with disclosed disabilities or health conditions. Mental illness and HIV face the strongest discrimination, while physical challenges due to birth conditions like wheelchair usage and dwarfism are the least penalized. A combination of prejudice, negative character assessment, and electability concerns drive voter bias.
Conclusion
Understanding the barriers to the election of politicians with disabilities and chronic health conditions is crucial to improve the representation of marginalized communities, as descriptive representation improves public policy outcomes for marginalized communities.
Political candidates enjoy a well-documented electoral advantage near their place of residence. But knowing that voters prefer candidates who live nearby does not explain why this is the case. What inferences do voters make about local candidates that make them so universally attractive? In this study, I distinguish two well-established theoretical explanations in a conjoint experiment conducted in Denmark. Do people prefer local candidates because of in-group favoritism, or do voters prefer local candidates because they expect them to favor their local area once in office? By independently varying signals of candidates’ (1) behavioral localism and (2) symbolic localism, I estimate the importance of each for voters’ preferences for local candidates. I find that voters’ preference for candidates who live nearby is driven in part by a preference for candidates who spend most of their time looking out for voters’ local interests. While I also find that voters prefer candidates who signal their commitment to the local in-group, these preferences appear to be unrelated to voters’ preference for candidates who live locally. Thus, I find that voters seem to prefer local candidates because of their behavioral localism, while I find no evidence that voters prefer local candidates because of their symbolic localism.
Intro
This article examines whether descriptive norms affect voters’ intention to vote in national elections in Japan and whether the impact of descriptive norms is moderated by the anticipated level of electoral competition. Social psychological research suggests that one's chance of voting is higher if they learn that many others are voting. On the other hand, knowing many others vote could make one think that their vote is not needed for influencing the election outcome, leading them to abstain.
Method
To test these competing expectations, I conducted a survey experiment in Japan in June 2022, presenting a hypothetical condition of the Lower House election and asking the respondents’ intention to vote in the hypothetical contest. I used a 2 × 2 design that varied (1) anticipated voter turnout (high turnout, low turnout) and (2) anticipated level of competition (high competition, low competition).
Results
I find that the descriptive norm of high voter turnout is positively associated with the chance of voting only when the expected level of competition is high.
Conclusion
These are not consistent with the prior research demonstrating the strong influence of descriptive norms and the ones finding that the descriptive norm of nonparticipation leads to greater willingness to participate by generating the sense of threat.
Political parties are integral to democracy and yet they frequently engage in anti-democratic, violent behaviour. Parties can employ violence directly, outsource violence to gangs and militias, or form electoral alliances with non-state armed actors. When do parties engage in, or facilitate, violence? What determines the strategies of violence that they employ? Drawing on data from Pakistan, Under the Gun argues that party violence is not a simple manifestation of weak state capacity but instead the intentional product of political incentives, further complicating the process of democratization. Using a rigorous multi-method approach based on over a hundred interviews and numerous surveys, the book demonstrates that a party's violence strategy depends on the incentives it faces in the subnational political landscape in which it operates, the cost it incurs from its voters for violent acts, and its organizational capacity for violence.
The literature on democracies in the developing world paints a picture of rampant vote buying. A growing research field has shed light on how politicians decide whom to target, how individuals view vote buying, and the consequences of such practices. Yet, most research compares support for candidates offering handouts to those who do not. It fails to explore how offering handouts compares to other campaign strategies – promising future targeted goods or community goods, explicitly eschewing vote buying campaign tactics, or garnering support based on ethnic or local social ties. In this study, we employ a conjoint experiment fielded in Malawi (n = 1,166) to examine the relative power of vote buying versus other campaign tactics. Our experimental results reveal that respondents view candidates who promise community service provision or criticize vote buying more positively than those who offer handouts. We also find that the magnitude of the effects for community service provision and anti-vote buying campaigns are greater than that of platforms associated with coethnicity and local social ties. These findings are both substantively and theoretically important. Policymakers and practitioners engaged in voter education efforts may counter vote buying by informing candidates of the potential electoral benefits to championing anti-vote buying platforms and providing community services. Likewise, scholars can better understand elections, representation and democracy by further exploring how different types of voters respond to various campaign appeals in Africa.
Political scientists frequently interpret the results of conjoint experiments as reflective of majority preferences. In this article, we show that the target estimand of conjoint experiments, the average marginal component effect (AMCE), is not well defined in these terms. Even with individually rational experimental subjects, the AMCE can indicate the opposite of the true preference of the majority. To show this, we characterize the preference aggregation rule implied by the AMCE and demonstrate its several undesirable properties. With this result, we provide a method for placing bounds on the proportion of experimental subjects who prefer a given candidate feature. We describe conditions under which the AMCE corresponds in sign with the majority preference. Finally, we offer a structural interpretation of the AMCE and highlight that the problem we describe persists even when a model of voting is imposed.
Can natural disasters affect voters’ electoral choices, and in particular, ideological voting? Even as climate change has increased concerns about the frequency and intensity of disasters, the effects of these negative events on voter behavior are not yet fully understood. Though ideological labels are known to be informative heuristics, the literature has thus far overlooked their role after natural hazards. Might affected citizens become more likely to select candidates with an ideology that can be associated with what victims need after a disaster? Answering this question is difficult since disaster damage can be correlated with multiple victims’ unobserved characteristics. To address this challenge, I use a natural experiment created by the floods that occurred in Chile in 2015 to take advantage of random variation in citizens’ exposure to a disaster. I then capture voters’ electoral choices using a conjoint survey experiment. The findings show that material damage caused by this disaster increased the probability of voters selecting left-wing and independent candidates. Qualitative evidence from interviews helps to illuminate the causal mechanisms underlying these results.
Forty million people around the world and more than one million in the United States live with HIV. Despite the gains in the prevention and treatment of HIV due to medical advances and community advocacy, HIV/AIDS continues to claim lives and disproportionately affect marginalized communities. Stigma against people with HIV remains powerful. While individuals with HIV have gained some visibility in the media, the scarcity of politicians with HIV is striking. This article analyzes a possible reason: voter bias. We examine voters’ reactions to political candidates with HIV using original nationally representative survey experiments from the United States, the United Kingdom and New Zealand. Voters penalize candidates with HIV by 10–12 percentage points in the three countries. Prejudice, electability concerns, and the moral judgment that candidates are responsible for their HIV+ status explain bias. The lack of descriptive representation remains an obstacle to improved policy outcomes for this marginalized community.
Research on the effect of candidate sex on vote choice has tended to find that, even when voters state preferences for candidates of their own sex, party identification tends to win out on election day. However, not all elections present a clear partisan choice for voters: primary elections in the United States, intra-party candidate selection in Australia, and municipal elections in a range of jurisdictions either pit intra-party candidates against each other or provide only weak partisan cues. In this paper, we use a conjoint experiment to directly compare the effects of candidate sex and partisan affiliation on voters' preferences: in one context where partisan affiliation is constant (e.g. a primary contest) and a second where partisan affiliation varies (e.g. a general election). From a probability-based sample of Australian voters, we find left-identifying female respondents tend to prefer female candidates regardless of the candidate's partisan affiliation and electoral context. By contrast, right-identifying male voters prefer male over female candidates in intra-party contests between right-affiliated candidates, suggesting that conservative men are the least supportive of female candidates. As conservative men dominate Australia's current governing parties, we argue the preferences of this demographic inhibits the advancement of female politicians.
We elicit citizens' preferences over hypothetical candidates by applying conjoint survey experiments within a probability-based online panel of the Norwegian electorate. Our experimental treatments differ in whether citizens receive information about candidates' social characteristics only, candidates' issue positions only, or both. From this, we identify whether citizens are able to infer substantive policy positions from the descriptive characteristics of potential representatives and use that information to make candidate choices that achieve substantive representation. We find that candidate choice is driven more by knowledge about candidates' issue positions than by knowledge about their social characteristics and that citizens value substantive representation more robustly than descriptive representation. Importantly, while the direct experimental test of whether voters use the information they obtain from descriptive markers to choose a candidate that gives them substantive representation is inconclusive, we find that voters form beliefs about candidates' issue positions based solely on candidates’ social characteristics.
Does treatment mode matter in studies of the effects of candidate race or ethnicity on voting decisions? The assumption implicit in most such work is that such treatment mode differences are either small and/or theoretically well understood, so that the choice of how to signal the race of a candidate is largely one of convenience. But this assumption remains untested. Using a nationally representative sample of white voting-age citizens and a modified conjoint design, we evaluate whether signaling candidate ethnicity with ethnic labels and names results in different effects than signaling candidate ethnicity with ethnically identifiable photos and names. Our results provide strong evidence that treatment-mode effects are substantively large and statistically significant. Further, these treatment-mode effects are not consistent with extant theoretical accounts. These results highlight the need for additional theoretical and empirical work on race/ethnicity treatment-mode effects.
Most formal models of valence competition add a single, separable and unweighted component to the standard one-dimensional utility function of voters. This article presents the results of a conjoint analysis experiment in which respondents were asked to choose between two candidates whose profiles vary along five attributes. Four of these traits behave like valence or policy issues as expected, but one, which has been employed in recent formal and empirical works, does not. Moreover, policy and valence are not separable. They interact at least in some cases, taking a competency form whereby the marginal impact of valence on voters’ choice is conditional on candidates’ policies. This result lends support to recent studies that have found more extensive valence voting under ideological convergence. Finally, policy trumps valence in awkward choices. Respondents even prefer corrupt candidates with similar policy views to honest ones with different opinions, despite integrity being declared the most important attribute.
Significance
Little evidence exists on whether preferences about hypothetical choices measured in a survey experiment are driven by the same structural determinants of the actual choices made in the real world. This study answers this question using a natural experiment as a behavioral benchmark. Comparing the results from conjoint and vignette experiments on which attributes of hypothetical immigrants generate support for naturalization with the outcomes of closely corresponding referendums in Switzerland, we find that the effects estimated from the surveys match the effects of the same attributes in the behavioral benchmark remarkably well. We also find that seemingly subtle differences in survey designs can produce significant differences in performance. Overall, the paired conjoint design performs the best.
We investigate the origins of voters' expectations of greater female competency on ''compassion'' issues, such as dealing with poverty or the aged, and greater male competency on military and defense issues. We contrast two alternative explanations: gender-trait stereotypes, emphasizing a candidate's gender-linked personality traits; and gender-belief stereotypes, placing greatest importance on the differing political outlooks of male and female candidates. We test contrasting predictions from these two approaches with data from an experiment in which 297 undergraduate participants were randomly assigned to hear about a male or a female candidate with typically masculine or feminine traits. Overall, there was stronger support for the trait approach. Warm and expressive candidates were seen as better at compassion issues; instrumental candidates were rated as more competent to handle the military and economic issues. Moreover, masculine instrumental traits increased the candidate's perceived competence on a broader range of issues than the feminine traits of warmth and expressiveness. Finally, there was some limited support for the belief approach with gender-based expectations about the candidates' political views affecting their rated competency on compassion but not other types of political issues.
Most political observers agree that incumbent legislators have a considerable advantage over nonincumbents in modern congressional elections. Yet there is still disagreement over the exact source of this advantage and the explanation for its growth over time. To address this debate we utilize a unique set of historical elections data to test for the presence of an incumbency advantage in late-nineteenth-century House elections (1872–1900). We find a modest direct effect of incumbency and a substantial candidate quality effect. Moreover, the cartel-like control of ballot access by nineteenth century political parties created competition in races that the modern market-like system simply does not sustain. Our results suggest that candidate quality is a fundamental piece of the puzzle in understanding the historical development of the incumbency advantage in American politics.
To explain the gender gap in legislatures, scholars have identified several socio-economic, political, and cultural factors that undermine women’s representation. One explanation focuses on electoral institutions. Proportional representation systems with higher district magnitudes have been shown to increase the percentage of women in legislatures.The authors contend that solely concentrating on district magnitude ignores other critical electoral rules that will affect women’s representation. To better understand electoral system effects, scholars must understand how electoral rules beside district magnitude create incentives for candidates to obtain personal votes.The authors argue that those systems with weak incentives for personal votes (party-centered systems) increase women’s representation in comparison with systems that feature strong incentives for personal votes (candidate-centered systems). Using a data set of 57 countries between 1980 and 2005, the authors show that party-centered systems are more conducive to women’s representation.
Survey experiments are a core tool for causal inference. Yet, the design of classical survey experiments prevents them from identifying which components of a multidimensional treatment are influential. Here, we show how conjoint analysis, an experimental design yet to be widely applied in political science, enables researchers to estimate the causal effects of multiple treatment components and assess several causal hypotheses simultaneously. In conjoint analysis, respondents score a set of alternatives, where each has randomly varied attributes. Here, we undertake a formal identification analysis to integrate conjoint analysis with the potential outcomes framework for causal inference. We propose a new causal estimand and show that it can be nonparametrically identified and easily estimated from conjoint data using a fully randomized design. We then demonstrate the value of these techniques through empirical applications to voter decision-making and attitudes toward immigrants.
This paper proposes entropy balancing, a data preprocessing method to achieve covariate balance in observational studies with binary treatments. Entropy balancing relies on a maximum entropy reweighting scheme that calibrates unit weights so that the reweighted treatment and control group satisfy a potentially large set of prespecified balance conditions that incorporate information about known sample moments. Entropy balancing thereby exactly adjusts inequalities in representation with respect to the first, second, and possibly higher moments of the covariate distributions. These balance improvements can reduce model dependence for the subsequent estimation of treatment effects. The method assures that balance improves on all covariate moments included in the reweighting. It also obviates the need for continual balance checking and iterative searching over propensity score models that may stochastically balance the covariate moments. We demonstrate the use of entropy balancing with Monte Carlo simulations and empirical applications.
In 2009, women are still dramatically underrepresented in elected office in the United States. Though the reasons for this
are complex, public attitudes toward this situation are no doubt of importance. While a number of scholars have demonstrated
that women candidates do not suffer at the ballot box because of their sex, we should not assume that this means that voter
attitudes about gender are irrelevant to politics. Indeed, individual attitudes towards women’s representation in government
and a desire for greater descriptive representation of women may shape attitudes and behaviors in situations when people are
faced with a woman candidate. This project provides a more complete understanding of the determinants of the public’s desire
(or lack thereof) to see more women in elective office and support them in different circumstances. The primary mechanism
proposed to explain these attitudes is gender stereotypes. Gender stereotypes about the abilities and traits of political
women and men are clear and well documented and could easily serve to shape an individual’s evaluations about the appropriate
level and place for women in office. Drawing on an original survey of 1039 U.S. adults, and evaluating both issue and trait
stereotypes, I demonstrate the ways in which sex stereotypes do and do not influence public willingness to support women in
various electoral situations.
KeywordsWomen candidates-Gender stereotypes-Descriptive representation
Despite its democratic structure, Japan's government has been dominated by a single party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) since 1955. This book offers an explanation for why, even in the face of great dissatisfaction with the LDP, no opposition party has been able to offer itself as a credible challenger in Japan. Understanding such failure is important for many reasons, from its effect on Japanese economic policy to its implications for what facilitates democratic responsiveness more broadly. The principal explanations for opposition failure in Japan focus on the country's culture and electoral system. This book offers a new interpretation, arguing that a far more plausible explanation rests on the predominance in Japan of clientelism, combined with a centralized government structure and electoral protection for groups that benefit from clientelism. While the central case in the book is Japan, the analysis is also comparative and applies the framework cross-nationally.
Democracy is supposed to be the antithesis of hereditary rule by family dynasties. And yet “democratic dynasties” continue to persist in democracies around the world. They have been conspicuously prevalent in Japan, where more than a third of all legislators and two-thirds of all cabinet ministers in recent years have come from families with a history in parliament. Such a high proportion of dynasties is unusual and has sparked concerns over whether democracy in Japan is functioning properly. This book introduces a comparative theory to explain the causes and consequences of dynasties in democracies like Japan. Members of dynasties enjoy an “inherited incumbency advantage” in all three stages of a typical political career: selection, election, and promotion. However, the nature and extent of this advantage, as well as its consequences for elections and representation, varies by the institutional context of electoral rules and candidate selection methods within parties. In the late 1980s, roughly half of all new candidates in Japan’s long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party were political legacies. However, electoral system reform in 1994 and subsequent party reforms have changed the incentives for party leaders to rely on dynastic politics in candidate selection. A new pattern of party-based competition is slowly replacing the old pattern of competition based on localized family fiefdoms.
Although politicians’ personal attributes are an important component of elections and representation, few studies have rigorously investigated which attributes are most relevant in shaping voters’ preferences for politicians, or whether these preferences vary across different electoral system contexts. We investigate these questions with a conjoint survey experiment using the case of Japan’s mixed-member bicameral system. We find that the attributes preferred by voters are not entirely consistent with the observed attributes of actual politicians. Moreover, voters’ preferences do not vary when asked to consider representation under different electoral system contexts, whereas the observed attributes of politicians do vary across these contexts. These findings point to the role of factors beyond voters’ sincere preferences, such as parties’ recruitment strategies, the effect of electoral rules on the salience of the personal vote, and the availability of different types of politicians, in determining the nature of representation.
Representative democracy entails the aggregation of multiple policy issues by parties into competing bundles of policies, or “manifestos,” which are then evaluated holistically by voters in elections. This aggregation process obscures the multidimensional policy preferences underlying a voter’s single choice of party or candidate. We address this problem through a conjoint experiment based on the actual party manifestos in Japan’s 2014 House of Representatives election. By juxtaposing sets of issue positions as hypothetical manifestos and asking respondents to choose one, our study identifies the effects of specific positions on the overall assessment of manifestos, heterogeneity in preferences among subgroups of respondents, and the popularity ranking of manifestos. Our analysis uncovers important discrepancies between voter preferences and the portrayal of the election results by politicians and the media as providing a policy mandate to the Liberal Democratic Party, underscoring the potential danger of inferring public opinion from election outcomes alone.
What effect do candidates with local ties have on voter turnout and party support? A considerable challenge within the existing literature on the personal vote, including that part which derives from local ties, is disentangling it from the party vote using observational data. We exploit the unique institutional context of Norway's historical two-round system, and data measured at the municipality level, to evaluate the mobilizational impact of voter attachment to parties versus (local) candidates. Under this system, entry into the second round was unrestricted, with the number and identity of candidates determined by elite coordination decisions. In municipalities where coordination at the district level between rounds resulted in the withdrawal of a candidate with local ties, we document a strong negative effect on both turnout and party support, which highlights the value of the personal vote for mobilization, and the potential trade-offs that confront parties and coalitions in nomination decisions.
In most democracies, lawmakers tend to be vastly better off than the citizens who elect them. Is that because voters prefer more affluent politicians over leaders from working-class backgrounds? In this article, we report the results of candidate choice experiments embedded in surveys in Britain, the United States, and Argentina. Using conjoint designs, we asked voters in these different contexts to choose between two hypothetical candidates, randomly varying several of the candidates’ personal characteristics, including whether they had worked in blue-collar or white-collar jobs. Contrary to the idea that voters prefer affluent politicians, the voters in our experiments viewed hypothetical candidates from the working class as equally qualified, more relatable, and just as likely to get their votes. Voters do not seem to be behind the shortage of working-class politicians. To the contrary, British, American, and Argentine voters seem perfectly willing to cast their ballots for working-class candidates.
We ask whether the birthplaces of Italian members of Parliament are favoured in the allocation of central government transfers. Using a panel of municipalities for the years between 1994 and 2006, we find that municipal governments of legislators' birth towns receive larger transfers per capita. Exploiting variation in birthplaces induced by parliamentary turnover for estimation, we find that this effect is driven by legislators who were born in a town outside their district of election. As a result, we argue that our findings cannot be a consequence of re-election incentives, the usual motivation for pork-barrel policies in the literature. Rather, politicians may be pursuing other personal motives. In line with this hypothesis, we find that the birth town bias essentially disappears when legislative elections are near. We explore several possible mechanisms behind our results by matching parliamentarians to a detailed dataset on local level administrators.
Electoral Systems and Political Context illustrates how political and social context conditions the effects of electoral rules. The book examines electoral behavior and outcomes in countries that use “mixed-member” electoral systems – where voters cast one ballot for a party list under proportional representation (PR) and one for a candidate in a single member district (SMD). Based on comparisons of outcomes under the two different rules used in mixed-member systems, the book highlights how electoral systems' effects – especially strategic voting, the number of parties, and women's representation – tend to be different in new democracies from what one usually sees in established democracies. Moreover, electoral systems such as SMDs are usually presumed to constrain the number of parties irrespective of the level of social diversity, but this book demonstrates that social diversity frequently shapes party fragmentation even under such restrictive rules.
Looking at women's power in the home, in the workplace, and in politics from a political economy perspective, Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth demonstrate that equality is tied to demand for women's labor outside the home, which is a function of structural, political, and institutional conditions. They go on to explain several anomalies of modern gender politics: why women vote differently from men; why women are better represented in the workforce in the United States than in other countries but less well represented in politics; why men share more of the household work in some countries than in others; and why some countries have such low fertility rates. The first book to integrate the micro-level of families with the macro-level of national institutions, Women, Work, and Politics presents an original and groundbreaking approach to gender inequality. © 2010 by Torben Iversen and Frances Rosenbluth. All rights reserved.
This paper uses a regression discontinuity design to estimate the degree to which incumbents scare off challengers with previous officeholder experience. The estimates indicate a surprisingly small amount of scare-off, at least in cases where the previous election was nearly tied. As Lee and others have shown (and as we confirm for our samples) the estimated party incumbency advantage in these same cases is quite large—in fact, it is about as large as the average incumbency advantage for all races found using other approaches. Drawing from previous estimates of the electoral value of officeholder experience, we thus calculate that scare-off in these cases accounts for only about 5-7 percent of the party incumbency advantage. We show that these patterns are similar in elections for US House seats, statewide offices and US senate seats, and state legislative seats.
Descriptive representation within legislatures is often held to be important because of its assumed effects on public policy. The research to date on the descriptive representation of women has generally focused on elite attitudes rather than on policy outcomes, and there is little agreement on the relationship between the increased representation of women and improved policy outcomes. We investigate the form of this relationship and whether the scope for a translation of descriptive representation into substantive representation is greatest during periods of policy innovation. We use a statistical analysis of child-care coverage in Norwegian municipalities in 1975, 1979, 1983, 1987, and 1991 to model the relationship between female representation and the provision of child care. We find that descriptive representation does affect policy outcome and that this relationship varies both according to the level of female representation and over time.
There are two distinct bodies of research on candidate gender. The first argues that voters are not biased against female candidates. These studies are usually based on aggregate analyses of the success rates of male and female candidates. The second body of research argues that voters employ gender stereotypes when they evaluate candidates. These studies are usually based on experiments which manipulate candidate gender. This study seeks to unite these literatures by incorporating gender stereotypes and hypothetical vote questions involving two candidates in one model I argue that many voters have a baseline gender preference to vote for male over female candidates, or female over male candidates. Using original survey data, I find that this general predisposition or preference can be explained by gender stereotypes about candidate traits, beliefs, and issue competencies, and by voter gender. I also argue that this baseline preference affects voting behavior.
There has been extensive research into the extent to which voters utilise short cuts based on gender and race stereotypes when evaluating candidates, but relatively little is known about how they respond to other background characteristics. We compare the impact of candidates' sex, religion, age, education, occupation and location/residence through a survey experiment in which respondents rate two candidates based on short biographies. We find small differences in the ratings of candidates in response to sex, religion, age and education cues but more sizeable effects are apparent for the candidate's occupation and place of residence. Even once we introduce a control for political party into our experimental scenarios the effect of candidate's place of residence continues to have a sizeable impact on candidate evaluations. Our research suggests that students of electoral behaviour should pay attention to a wider range of candidate cues.
The growing literature on personal vote assumes that candidates with strong local ties should be more successful electorally and more likely to break party unity in parliament. Using unique data from Estonia on candidates' personal vote-earning attributes, such as local birthplace and local-level political experience, this research note offers the first direct test of both of these assumptions. I find that candidates with local-level political experience tend to be electorally more successful, and, once in parliament, they are more likely to behave independently and break party unity. Local birthplace has no effect on either personal vote or party unity. These findings have clear policy implications for the electoral and legislative strategies of political parties.
Seat allocation formulas affect candidates' incentives to campaign on a personal rather than party reputation. Variables that enhance personal vote-seeking include: (1) lack of party leadership control over access to and rank on ballots, (2) degree to which candidates are elected on individual votes independent of co-partisans, and (3) whether voters cast a single intra-party vote instead of multiple votes or a party-level vote. District magnitude has the unusual feature that, as it increases, the value of a personal reputation rises if the electoral formula itself fosters personal vote-seeking, but falls if the electoral formula fosters party reputation-seeking.
The loss of power by the Liberal Democratic Party after more than half a century of dominance was the most obvious outcome of Japan’s 2009 election, but together the 2005 and 2009 elections demonstrate significant shifts in both the foundations of party support and the importance of national swings in support for one party or another. Since 2005, urban-rural differences in the foundations of the leading parties have changed dramatically, and Japan has moved from a system dominated by locally based, individual candidacies toward a two-party system in which both party popularity and personal characteristics influence electoral success or failure.
This article presents evidence that electoral institutions affect the geographic distribution of both candidate electoral support and government resources. The author exploits two electoral reforms in Japan to identify the effect of institutional incentives: (1) the 1994 electoral reform from a multimember single nontransferable vote (SNTV) system to a mixed-member majoritarian (MMM) system with a single-member district (SMD) component and a proportional representation component; and (2) the 1925 electoral reform from a predominantly SMD system to a multimember SNTV system. Using several new data sets, the two main findings of this article are that (1) Japanese representatives competing in multimember SNTV districts had more geographically concentrated electoral support than those competing in SMDs and that (2) intergovernmental transfers appear to be more concentrated around Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) incumbents' home offices under the multimember SNTV system than under the MMM system. The findings in this article highlight the connection between institutions and geographic patterns of representation.
Analysis of both district-level and aggregate time-series data from postwar House elections supports the thesis that strategic political elites play a pivotal role in translating national conditions into election results and therefore in holding members of Congress collectively accountable for the government's performance. More high-quality candidates run when prospects appear to favor their party; they also win significantly more votes and victories than other candidates in equivalent circumstances. Thus, strategic career decisions both reflect and enhance national partisan tides. The electoral importance of strategic politicians has grown over time in tandem with the trend toward candidate-centered electoral politics. This has rendered the effects of national forces less automatic, more contingent, thus threatening the capacity of elections to enforce some degree of collective responsibility
Proportional representation systems affect the extent to which elected legislators exhibit various attributes that allow them to earn a personal vote. The sources of variation in personal vote-earning attributes (PVEA) lie in informational shortcuts voters use under different electoral rules. List type (closed or open) and district magnitude (the number of legislators elected from a district) affect the types of shortcuts voters employ. When lists are closed, legislators' PVEA are of decreasing usefulness to voters as magnitude (and hence the number of candidates on a list) increases. When lists are open, legislators' PVEA are increasingly useful to voters as magnitude increases, because the number of candidates from which voters must choose whom to give a preference vote increases. As predicted by the theory, the probability that a legislator will exhibit PVEA—operationalized as local birthplace or lower-level electoral experience—declines with magnitude when lists are closed, but rises with magnitude when lists are open.
If voters are biased against female candidates, only the most talented, hardest working female candidates will succeed in the electoral process. Furthermore, if women perceive there to be sex discrimination in the electoral process, or if they underestimate their qualifications for office, then only the most qualified, politically ambitious females will emerge as candidates. We argue that when either or both forms of sex-based selection are present, the women who are elected to office will perform better, on average, than their male counterparts. We test this central implication of our theory by studying the relative success of men and women in delivering federal spending to their districts and in sponsoring legislation. Analyzing changes within districts over time, we find that congresswomen secure roughly 9% more spending from federal discretionary programs than congressmen. Women also sponsor and cosponsor significantly more bills than their male colleagues.
According to the minority empowerment thesis, minority representation strengthens representational links, fosters more positive attitudes toward government, and encourages political participation. We examine this theory from a cross-national perspective, making use of surveys that sampled minorities in the United States and New Zealand. Both countries incorporate structures into their electoral systems that make it possible for minority groups to elect representatives of their choice. We find that in both countries descriptive representation matters: it increases knowledge about and contact with representatives in the U.S. and leads to more positive evaluations of governmental responsiveness and increased electoral participation in New Zealand. These findings have broad implications for debates about minority representation.
Carey and Shugart (1995) offer a four component composite index of “incentives to cultivate a personal vote.” We argue that this index, while tapping important aspects of electoral system choice, is best regarded as encompassing two distinct dimensions: degree of party-centeredness of the electoral system, on the one hand, and incentives for “parochial” behavior on the part of legislators, on the other. Also, while we have no problem with the three indicators used by Carey and Shugart to measure party-centeredness; to measure parochial incentives we prefer to use a new measure, E (Grofman, 1999a) of the size of a legislator's electoral constituency, rather than using district magnitude, m, as a proxy for a the size of a legislator's geographic constituency, as Carey and Shugart do. In the conclusion to the paper we argue that the degree of similarity between any two electoral systems will depend upon the research question at issue, and that the expected degree of proportionality of election results is only one of the many political consequences of electoral laws to which we ought to be paying attention.
All polities may be judged against an ideal of electoral “efficiency” defined as responsiveness to the collective-goods preferences of the majority of the electorate. An index of efficiency permits a visual representation of where any democratic system falls in each of two dimensions, interparty and intraparty. Deviation from the “efficient” ideal encourages politicians to cater to parochial interests at the expense of broad policy preferences. Recent electoral reforms in four countries (Italy, Japan, New Zealand and Venezuela) represent moves away from electoral systems that represented different extreme deviations from efficiency.
Causal Inference in Conjoint Analysis: Understanding Multi-dimensional Preferences via Stated Preference Experiments
- Jens Hainmueller
Entropy Balancing: A Multivariate Reweighting Method to Produce Balanced Samples in Observational Studies
- Jens Hainmueller