Suchergebnisse

AbstractCorrect voting in elections has been extensively analysed in the recent past. However, thus far, correct voting in direct legislation has hardly been investigated. This is all the more surprising since direct legislation is a more demanding form of democracy and, thus, to vote one's true preferences in direct legislation represents a greater challenge than picking the "right" party or the "right" candidate at elections. Moreover, the few researches on the correctness of individual referendum votes used a measurement method that we think has some methodological shortfalls. Instead, we want to propose another better‐suited method of measuring correct voting in direct legislation settings. This method makes use of voters' stances on the issue at stake. Besides, we will scrutinize the share of correct voting as well as its determinants on the Swiss popular vote of November 2009, which included three rather different propositions. The study shows that a majority of Swiss voters are indeed able to vote their true preferences. The ability to vote correctly depends primarily on the individual voter's project‐specific knowledge, but also, under certain circumstances, on the use of heuristics.

Recent studies in political psychology report a significant association between personality traits and ordinary citizens' attitudes and behaviors in the political arena. A growing body of literature examines the influence of personality on individuals' attachment to a political party and vote choice in electoral settings. In line with these studies, we analyze the relationship between personality traits and "correct voting", i.e., the extent to which citizens vote in accordance with their own preferences and values. Using a large-scale national survey fielded in the context of the 2008 presidential election, we find that, after controlling for well-known predictors of correct voting, some of personality traits not only exert a direct influence on correct voting, but also moderate the effect of strength of party identification, a well-established determinant of correct voting. These findings provide new evidence for the idea that individual differences such as dispositional personality traits are deeply intertwined with both vote choice and democratic representation.

"Darüber, wie viele und welche BürgerInnen bei österreichischen Nationalratswahlen 'richtig', (d.h. ihren Einstellungen und Präferenzen entsprechend) gewählt haben, ist wenig bekannt. Der vorliegende Artikel möchte diese Lücke schließen. Untersucht wird, wie es um 'richtiges Wählen' bei der Nationalratswahl 2008 bestellt war und welche Einflussfaktoren 'richtiges Wahlverhalten' bedingten. Besonderes Augenmerk liegt dabei auf der Frage, welche Rolle das individuelle Mediennutzungsverhalten bzw. die rezipierte Medienberichterstattung für 'richtige Wahlentscheidungen' spielten. Es zeigt sich, dass bei der Nationalratswahl 2008 lediglich ein geringer Anteil der WählerInnen 'richtig' wählte. In Bezug auf die Einflussfaktoren ist hervorzuheben, dass sich der Konsum bestimmter Medien hemmend auf 'richtige Wahlentscheidungen' auszuwirken scheint, wobei die Ergebnisse darauf hindeuten, dass dieser negative Effekt vor allem auf eine vergleichsweise eindimensionale Berichterstattung dieser Medien zurückgeführt werden kann." (Autorenreferat)

ABSTRACTRegret is a basic affect associated with individual choice. While much research in organizational science and consumer behavior has assessed the precedents and consequents of regret, little attention has been paid to regret in political science. The present study assesses the relationship between one of the most democratically consequential forms of political behavior—voting—and feelings of regret. We examine the extent to which citizens regret how they voted after doing so and the factors that might lead one individual to be more regretful than another. Relying on surveys in five different countries after 11 regional and national elections, we find not only that political information leads to a decrease in post-election regret, but also that having voted correctly, or having voted in accordance with one's underlying preferences regardless of information, similarly mitigates regret. The effect of correct voting on regret is greater among the least informed.

Criticisms of the system by which the American political parties select their candidates focus on issues of representativeness-how choices are dominated by relatively small numbers of ideologically extreme primary voters, or how residents of small states voting early in the process have disproportionate influence. This paper adds a different concern, albeit one that still addresses representativeness. How well do primary and caucus voters represent their own values and interests with their vote choices? Lau and Redlawsk's notion of "correct voting" is applied to the 2008 U.S. nominating contests. Four reasons to expect levels of correct voting to be lower in caucus and primary elections than in general election campaigns are discussed. Results suggest that voters in U.S. nominating contests do much worse than voters in general election campaigns, often barely doing better than chance in selecting the candidate who best represents their own values and priorities. Discussion focuses on institutional reforms that should improve citizens' ability to make correct voting choices in caucuses and primaries. Adapted from the source document.

To date, little is known about how many and which citizens in Austrian general elections vote 'correctly' (that is, in a way that is congruent with their attitudes and preferences). This article investigates this matter, primarily focusing on whether and to what extent media consumption and coverage affected the likelihood of a 'correct' voting decision at the 2008 Austrian general election. The analyses demonstrate that only a small proportion of voters voted 'correctly'. Regarding the effects of media consumption and coverage it is shown that the consumption of specific media hinders 'correct voting', and this effect appears to be due to the 'one-dimensionality' of that media coverage. Adapted from the source document.

The extent to which citizens vote in accordance with their own principles and priorities has been proposed as an important measure of a democracy's health. This article introduces a new method of evaluating the ability of individuals to vote for the political party with policy positions closest to their own -- to vote "correctly". Following Lau and Redlawsk (1997), a "correct vote" is defined as the vote choice individuals would make under conditions of perfect information. In other words, a vote is "correct" if it is cast for the party that a voter should vote for, based upon a fully informed comparison of his or her policy positions with those of the parties contesting an election. Voters' policy preferences are estimated here using election study data, and the positions of parties are derived through data from the Comparative Manifestos Project. For illustrative purposes, this new method is applied to the 2004 Canadian federal election. Correct voting rates are calculated by comparing voter and party positions in seven dimensions of political competition, accounting for the relative importance of each dimension. While this study's data are exclusively Canadian, the approach introduced is applicable to other settings. Adapted from the source document.

Lau and Redlawsk (1997)

proposed that the quality of voter decision making can be evaluated by measuring what they called correct voting—the extent to which people vote in accordance with their own values and priorities—but in so doing provided little guidance about what actually determines whether voters can make such high‐quality decisions. This article develops a framework for analyzing the vote decision that views the quality of decision making as a joint function of individual characteristics and various higher‐level campaign factors. We hypothesize that differences in cognitive capacity, political motivation, the availability of political heuristics, and macrolevel factors that affect the difficulty of the choice confronting citizens, including the nature of the political information environment, should all affect the probability of a correct vote. We find significant support for seven proposed hypotheses across three levels of analysis, which places responsibility for incorrect votes on both the individual and our electoral system.