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What makes African voters "up for grabs"? Existing approaches to the swing voter have several liabilities. This article introduces a new measure enabling a more comprehensive assessment of swing voting, including the differentiation between clientelistic and collective goods motivations. The issue of swing voting is then brought to an environment where voters are rarely considered persuadable: Africa. Using a count‐model estimation technique and original survey data from Ghana's critical 2008 elections, the analysis challenges the near consensus in African politics on clientelism as the only electoral strategy. When voters perceive politicians as providing collective, developmental goods, the efficacy of clientelism as a tool to win over voters is reduced. Many persuadable voters can also be won over by both clientelistic and collective goods, thus contradicting the literature presenting these as mutually exclusive. Finally, the analysis shows that incumbents do better when they provide collective goods even in highly clientelistic environments.

The application of the rational choice postulate to a political context invariably leads to the conclusion that most voters are ill informed when making the decision on whom to vote for. In this paper, the authors conduct an empirical evaluation of the rational ignorance theory, based on the model developed by (Rogoff and Sibert Rev Econ Stud LV:116, (1988) and by considering that better informed voters reward political candidates who show better performances. The levels of performance are established through the construction of an empirical frontier using the Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) methodology. According to our results, based on the 1997 Portuguese local elections, even though swing voters do not necessarily behave as rationally ignorant voters, a large majority of voters are rationally ignorant.

Brokers, Voters, and Clientelism addresses major questions in distributive politics. Why is it acceptable for parties to try to win elections by promising to make certain groups of people better off, but unacceptable - and illegal - to pay people for their votes? Why do parties often lavish benefits on loyal voters, whose support they can count on anyway, rather than on responsive swing voters? Why is vote buying and machine politics common in today's developing democracies but a thing of the past in most of today's advanced democracies? This book develops a theory of broker-mediated distribution to answer these questions, testing the theory with research from four developing democracies, and reviews a rich secondary literature on countries in all world regions. The authors deploy normative theory to evaluate whether clientelism, pork-barrel politics, and other non-programmatic distributive strategies can be justified on the grounds that they promote efficiency, redistribution, or voter participation

The 2020 United States presidential race is arguably already over except for about 12 states and 20 counties. If recent presidential election trends are any indication of what will happen in 2020, Democrats in Texas and Republicans in New York might as well stay home on election day because their votes will matter little in the presidential race. The same might be said for voters in most states and counties in the United States. Conversely, for those in Ohio, Florida, Colorado, Iowa, and a handful of other states, every vote matters. These states will be battered with a barrage of presidential candidate visits, commercials, political spending, and countless stories in the media. This book analyzes why the presidential race has been effectively reduced to about a dozen states and 20 counties. Contributors to this volume make substantial updates and additions in light of the 2016 and in anticipation of the 2020 presidential elections, including 6 new chapters exploring why some states are swingers in presidential elections, capable of being won by either of the major candidates. The volume also adds a chapter examining important swing counties throughout the country. Presidential Swing States describes what makes these few states and counties unique and why the presidency is decided by who wins them. With cases studies written by prominent political scientists who are experts on these swing states, Presidential Swing States also explains why some states have been swingers but no longer are, why some are swinging, and which states may become the ones that decide the presidency. ; https://scholarworks.umf.maine.edu/publications/1099/thumbnail.jpg

I examined how voters' attitudes may be influenced by celebrity endorsement of a political candidate. In the study I drew upon reactance theory, reinforcement theory, social identification theory, and the elaboration likelihood model to investigate the effects on young decided and undecided
(swing) voters of party identification and identification with a celebrity endorser in a political campaign. I used a 2 × 2 × 2 between-subjects factorial design to examine the factors of voters' party identification, identification with a celebrity endorser, and status of voting
intention of 256 U.S. university students enrolled in a journalism course. The results suggest that party identification and identification with a celebrity endorser are predictors of effectiveness for celebrity endorsement of political candidates. Theoretical and practical implications are
discussed.

"Electoral Clientelism and Vote Buying" published on by Oxford University Press.

This article tests several hypotheses about distributive politics by studying the distribution of federal spending across US states over the period 1978-2002. It improves on previous work by using survey data to measure the share of voters in each state that are Democrats, Republicans and Independents, or liberals, conservatives and moderates. No evidence is found that the allocation of federal spending to the states is distorted by strategic manipulation to win electoral support. States with many swing voters are not advantaged compared to states with more loyal voters, and 'battleground states' are not advantaged compared to other states. Spending appears to have little or no effect on voters' choices, while partisanship and ideology have large effects. Adapted from the source document.

In 2001 the Italian government introduced a personal income tax reform to be implemented in successive phases. In 2004 taxes were reduced to all income levels with higher gains for low-income and high-income individuals than for middle-income ones. A large debate arised. This paper explores the political economy reasons under this tax reform, mainly the attempt of the government to attract the uncertain voters (swing voters). A probabilistic voting model is introduced to capture the importance of swing voters. The model predicts that the average personal income tax rate tends to be lower for groups of lower income, higher preference for leisure and containing more politically mobile voters (swing voters). However, data from Italian polls show that, while the tax reform was a good strategy to attract swing voters, the specific design of the reform, which favored high-income and low-income individuals, but not the middle class, was not the more appropriate strategy. Adapted from the source document.

This article tests several hypotheses about distributive politics by studying the distribution of federal spending across US states over the period 1978–2002. It improves on previous work by using survey data to measure the share of voters in each state that are Democrats, Republicans and Independents, or liberals, conservatives and moderates. No evidence is found that the allocation of federal spending to the states is distorted by strategic manipulation to win electoral support. States with many swing voters are not advantaged compared to states with more loyal voters, and 'battleground states' are not advantaged compared to other states. Spending appears to have little or no effect on voters' choices, while partisanship and ideology have large effects.

We assess the opinions of Georgia voters regarding the 2020 presidential election, election administration, and voting laws following passage of Senate Bill (SB) 202. After the 2020 presidential election and subsequent 2021 Senate runoffs, contests all won by Democrats in Georgia, the Republican-controlled legislature passed SB 202 to appease their agitated and disaffected base of supporters. It appears that SB 202 had the effect of boosting Republican voters' confidence in Georgia's election system while registering the opposite effect among Democratic voters. Indeed, across a host of questions, including several asking about specific provisions in SB 202, we find a partisan schism in opinions expressed by Democrats and Republicans.

In this research note, we argue that a segment of Trump voters may be motivated to demonstrate that they are not racially insensitive by saying they voted for Obama in 2012. As a result, what may appear as a substantial group of swing voters may be—in part—partisan voters who want to avoid perceptions of racial bias. Using data from a survey of a nationally representative nonprobability sample from YouGov, polling data from the 2016 election, and a survey experiment conducted with a convenience sample of American adults, we find that Obama-Trump voters score significantly higher on a social monitoring scale than others and that respondents are significantly more supportive of Trump when they are given the opportunity to mention who they voted for in 2012. The combination of results suggests that the number of Obama-Trump voters may be overestimated due to self-monitoring.

The 2012 election was marked by discussions of women's issues from abortion to equal pay, and both presidential candidates employed strategies designed to win female voters. Since women vote in larger numbers than men and are more likely to be swing voters, it was imperative that the candidates win support among women. This study draws from group identification theories to better understand the process of gender socialization that influences young women's perceptions of candidates and the effect of targeted advertising. The findings of this study build upon existing group identification theory and suggest the need for more nuanced theories of female voters that take into consideration identification with one's gender group as well as beliefs about women's roles in society. Specifically, this study found that strong gender group identification was associated with higher favorability ratings of Obama. Women holding more egalitarian gender role beliefs were also more likely to rate Obama favorably. Gender group identification did not influence ratings of Romney, but women with more traditional gender role beliefs rated Romney more favorably. No direct support was found for an effect of targeted political advertising in this study, however, we argue that additional research is needed in this area.

Research is mixed as to whether politicians target swing voters or core supporters with distributive spending and whether citizens' turnout affects this strategy. I use a novel data set and research design to examine this—a survey experiment on elected municipal officials. Respondents indicated which of two neighborhoods to target with a local project. I find that local officials, on average, target swing neighborhoods over core ones because they believe that swing voters are more likely than core voters to electorally punish politicians for targeting other groups. Yet, a large proportion still target core voters but not for reasons consistent with extant theory. Officials generally target high turnout neighborhoods over low turnout ones but under certain conditions are also willing to target lower turnout citizens. These findings point to the need for ongoing work to identify the conditions under which officials will target core or swing voters.