Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-22dnz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-26T00:46:20.539Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Ballot Order in Cueless Elections: A Comparison of Municipal and Provincial Elections in Québec

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 November 2017

Charles Tessier  and
Alexandre Blanchet
Charles Tessier*
Affiliation:
Université Laval
Alexandre Blanchet*
Affiliation:
McGill University
*
Université Laval, Département de Science politique, Pavillon Charles-De Koninck, 1030 Avenue des Sciences humaines, Québec G1V 0A6, email: charles.tessier.1@ulaval.ca
McGill University, Department of Political Science, Room 24-5, 3610 rue McTavish, Montréal, Québec H3A 1Y2, email: alexandre.blanchet@umontreal.ca
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper studies the prevalence of ballot order effects in two different types of Canadian elections which differ greatly by the strength of party cues they provide to voters. Provincial elections are best described as a typical competition between well established and institutionalized parties, hence providing voters with strong party cues. Alternatively, municipal politics provide voters with much weaker party cues. We use electoral results from recent provincial and municipal elections in Québec and find ballot order effects in municipal elections but not in provincial ones. Although ballot order effects may also be the product of alphabetic preference bias, we argue that in any case these are cognitive biases that are ultimately the product of insufficient cues that voters need in order to cast well-informed votes. The paper, therefore, sheds some light on an understudied type of election in political science.

Résumé

Cet article étudie l'impact de l’ordre des candidats sur les bulletins de vote lors des élections municipales et provinciales au Québec. Les élections provinciales québécoises sont le lieu d’une compétition entre des partis bien établis et offrent donc des signaux partisans forts aux électeurs. À l’inverse, la politique municipale québécoise offre des signaux partisans beaucoup plus faibles. Nos analyses démontrent que les résultats des candidats sont influencés par leur position sur le bulletin de vote lors des élections municipales, mais pas lors des élections provinciales. Bien qu’il soit possible que des biais de préférences alphabétiques soient à l’origine de ces résultats, nous arguons qu'ils sont le produit de biais cognitifs qui résultent de la faiblesse des signaux partisans qui sont nécessaires à la prise de décision des électeurs. L’article apporte également un nouvel éclairage sur des élections qui demeurent peu étudiées en science politique.

Type
Research Article/Étude originale
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 51 , Issue 1 , March 2018 , pp. 83 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

Acknowledgments: The authors would like to thank Laura Stephenson and the reviewers for their comments. They would also like to thank the Fonds de recherche du Québec - Société et culture for their financial support and the Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l'Occupation du territoire for providing the election data.

References

Althaus, Scott L. 2003. Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics: Opinion Surveys and the Will of the People. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 1996. “Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 40:194–230.Google Scholar
Bartels, Larry M. 2008. Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age. Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Blais, André, Gidengil, Elisabeth, Fournier, Patrick and Nevitte, Neil. 2009. “Information, visibility and elections: Why electoral outcomes differ when voters are better informed.” European Journal of Political Research 48: 256–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E. and Stokes, Donald E.. 1960. The American Voter. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chen, Eric, Simonovits, Gàbor, Krosnick, Jon A. and Pasek, Josh. 2014. “The Impact of Candidate Name Order on Election Outcomes in North Dakota.” Electoral Studies 35:115–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Converse, Philip E. 1964. “The nature of belief systems in mass publics.” In Ideology and discontent, ed. Apter, David E.. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Cowan, Nelson, Scott Saults, J., Elliott, Emily M. and Moreno, Matthew V.. 2002. “Deconfounding Serial Recall.” Journal of Memory and Language 46: 153–77.Google Scholar
Cribari-Neto, Francisco and Zeileis, Achim. 2010. “Beta Regression in R.” Journal of Statistical Software 34: 1–24.Google Scholar
Delli Carpini, Michael X. and Keeter, Scott. 1996. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Downs, Anthony. 1957. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper & Brothers.Google Scholar
Erikson, Robert S., MacKuen, Michael and Stimson, James A. 2002. The Macro Polity. New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Forgas, Joseph P. 2011. “Can Negative Affect Eliminate the Power of First Impressions? Affective Influences on Primacy and Recency Effects in Impression Formation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 47: 425–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gidengil, Elisabeth, Blais, André, Nevitte, Neil and Nadeau, Richard. 2004. Citizens. Vancouver: UBC Press.Google Scholar
Hansen, Kasper M. 2009. “Changing Patterns in the Impact of Information on Party Choice in a Multiparty System.” International Journal of Public Opinion Research 21: 525–46.Google Scholar
Haugtvedt, Curtis P. and Wegener, Duane T.. 1994. “Message Order Effects in Persuasion: An Attitude Strength Perspective.” Journal of Consumer Research 21: 205–18.Google Scholar
Ho, Daniel E. and Imai, Kosuke. 2006. “Randomization Inference With Natural Experiments: An Analysis of Ballot Effects in the 2003 California Recall Election.” Journal of the American Statistical Association 101: 888–900.Google Scholar
Ho, Daniel E. and Imai, Kosuke. 2008. “Estimating causal effects of ballot order from a randomized natural experiment the California alphabet lottery, 1978–2002.” Public Opinion Quarterly 72: 216–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kim, Nuri, Krosnick, Jon and Casasanto, Daniel. 2014. “Moderators of Candidate Name-Order Effects in Elections: An Experiment.” Political Psychology 36 : 52542.Google Scholar
Koppell, Jonathan GS and Steen, Jennifer A.. 2004. “The Effects of Ballot Position on Election Outcomes.” The Journal of Politics 66: 267–81.Google Scholar
Krosnick, Jon A and Alwin, Duane F. 1987. “An evaluation of a cognitive theory of responseorder effects in survey measurement.” Public Opinion Quarterly 51: 201–19.Google Scholar
Li, Cong. 2010. “Primacy Effect or Recency Effect? A Long-Term Memory Test of Super Bowl Commercials.” Journal of Consumer Behaviour 9: 32–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lupia, Arthur. 1994. “Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections.” The American Political Science Review 88: 63–76.Google Scholar
Lupia, Arthur and McCubbins, Mathew D.. 1998. The democratic dilemma: Can citizens learn what they need to know? New York: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Malhotra, Neil. 2008. “Completion Time and Response Order Effects in Web Survey.” Public Opinion Quarterly 72: 914–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Miller, Joanne M. and Krosnick, Jon A.. 1998. “The Impact of Candidate Name Order on Election Outcomes.” Public Opinion Quarterly 62: 291–330.Google Scholar
Miller, Nicholas R. 1986. “Information, Electorates and Democracy: Some Extensions and Interpretations of the Condorcet Jury Theorem.” In Information Pooling and Group Decision Making, ed. Grofman, B. and Owen, G.. Greenwich CT: JAI Press.Google Scholar
Oscarsson, Henrik. 2007. “A Matter of Fact? Knowledge Effects on the Vote in Swedish General Elections, 1985–2002.” Scandinavian Political Studies 30: 301–22.Google Scholar
Page, Benjamin I. and Shapiro, Robert Y.. 1992. The Rational Public: Fifty Years of Trends in Americans’ Policy Preferences. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Pasek, Josh, Schneider, Daniel, Krosnick, Jon A., Tahk, Alexander, Ophir, Eyal and Milligan, Claire. 2014. “Prevalence and Moderators of the Candidate Name-Order Effect: Evidence from Statewide General Elections in California.” Public Opinion Quarterly 78: 416–39.Google Scholar
Popkin, Samuel L. 1991. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sniderman, Paul M., Brody, Richard A. and Tetlock, Phillip E.. 1991. Reasoning and Choice: Explorations in Political Psychology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Tóka, Gábor and Popescu, Marina. 2007. “Inequalities of Political Influence in New Democracies.” International Journal of Sociology 37: 67–93.Google Scholar
Webstera, Donna M., Richterb, Linda and Kruglanskib, Arie W.. 1996. “On Leaping to Conclusions When Feeling Tired: Mental Fatigue Effects on Impressional Primacy.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 32: 181–95.Google Scholar