Doctoral Dissertation Research in Political Science: Too Close for Comfort: Elite Cues and Strategic Voting in Multicandidate Elections

政治学博士论文研究：太接近而令人不安：多候选人选举中的精英线索和战略投票

• 批准号: 0214677
• 负责人: John Aldrich
• 金额: $ 0.36万
• 依托单位: Duke University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2002
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2002-08-01 至 2003-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0214677&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Doctoral; Dissertation; Research; Political; Science

The act of voting is one of the most sacred acts in a democracy. It is in the voting booth where citizens register their preferences over who should lead their nation. In some ways it seems a clear and simple act.: one should vote for the candidate they most prefer. However, in the presence of third parties, the evidence shows that many third party supporters abandon their fIrst preference to vote for their second preference. The mechanism behind this choice usually lies in the situation in which a voter's fIrst preference has no chance of winning so that voters do not want to cast a "wasted vote." Political scientists have formalized this logic in mathematical terms, taking into account the probability of a voter being decisive between pairs of candidates and their difference in utility between these pairs. While many studies have found that this model performs well in accounting for levels of strategic voting in different elections, one problem plagues these studies, namely most do not use a measure of the probability term that accounts for whether the voter will be decisive between pairs of candidates. While the logic behind strategic voting makes sense intuitively, the probability that one will cast a decisive vote will always be close to zero in a large electorate, such as the United States. If voters know that the probability of their vote being decisive is essentially zero, then why would they not just vote for their first preference? Riker and Ordeshook themselves acknowledged this problem and argued that people will systematically inflate the probability of being decisive, thus the p term will not be zero (1968). They argue that people might inflate the probability on their own accord or because of messages sent by elites indicating that p is much higher than it objectively is. Though this justification seems credible, few studies have examined whether people do inflate probabilities in the context of multicandidate elections (Blais, 2000) and whether elites play a role in influencing the variables in the voter's calculus (Hsieh et al, 1997). This research proposal address this question in the literature by examining elite cues in multicandidate elections. The primary purpose of this research is to show that one solution to the puzzle of why we even see strategic voting lies in the efforts by elites to influence the probability and utility terms in the individual's calculus. There are three key questions that the research seeks to answer. First of all, do elites try to send signals to convince voters to abandon their first preference and vote for their second preference? Second, are these signals effective? Finally, are there individual and contextual factors that account for who will accept such messages and who will not? The first hypothesis is that third party voters respond to persuasive cues by elites to abandon their first preference and vote for their second preference. Thus, the individual's perception of the variables in the individual calculus will be a function of the messages sent at the elite level. The results should show that individuals who receive messages encouraging them to vote strategically exhibit higher levels of such voting than individuals who do not receive these messages. Second, the effectiveness of such messages will be contingent on contextual factors, such as the source and type of message, as well as individual factors, such as one's level of political sophistication, external and internal political efficacy, and past voting behavior. An experimental design can clearly test these hypotheses by randomly assigning subjects to control and treated groups. This project makes several important contributions to political science. First of all, the project builds on the literature on strategic voting by filling in a missing part of the puzzle, the efforts by elites to influence the variables in the voter's calculus. The project also speaks to the literature on political persuasion. Most studies of persuasion look at the effect of messages on respondent's opinions on various issues. This study examines whether such messages can actually change the behavior of voters. Finally, this project contributes to the campaign and election literature, where the main fmding has been one of minimal effects for campaign messages. There might in fact be a stronger effect of campaign messages once we examine voters who have an incentive to switch their vote.

投票是民主国家最神圣的行为之一。在投票站，公民们登记他们对谁应该领导他们的国家的偏好。在某些方面，这似乎是一个明确而简单的行为。应该投票给他们最喜欢的候选人。然而，在第三方在场的情况下，证据表明，许多第三方支持者放弃了他们的第一选择，投票支持他们的第二选择。这种选择背后的机制通常在于选民的第一偏好没有获胜的机会，因此选民不想投“浪费的一票”。政治学家已经用数学术语将这种逻辑形式化，考虑到选民在候选人对之间起决定性作用的概率以及这些候选人对之间效用的差异。虽然许多研究发现，该模型在不同选举中的战略投票水平方面表现良好，但有一个问题困扰着这些研究，即大多数研究都没有使用概率项来衡量选民是否会在候选人之间起决定性作用。虽然战略性投票背后的逻辑在直觉上是有道理的，但在美国这样的大选民中，一个人投出决定性一票的概率总是接近于零。如果选民知道他们的投票是决定性的概率基本上是零，那么他们为什么不直接投票给他们的第一个偏好呢？Riker和Ordeshook自己也承认这个问题，并认为人们会系统地夸大决策的概率，因此p项不会为零（1968）。他们认为，人们可能会出于自己的雅阁或因为精英发出的信息表明p比客观上高得多而夸大概率。虽然这个理由似乎可信，但很少有研究探讨人们是否在多候选人选举的背景下夸大概率（Blais，2000）以及精英是否在影响选民计算中的变量方面发挥作用（Hsieh et al，1997）。本研究建议解决这个问题，在文献中，通过检查精英线索在multicandidate选举。这项研究的主要目的是表明，为什么我们甚至看到策略性投票的困惑的一个解决方案在于精英的努力，影响个人的演算中的概率和效用条款。这项研究试图回答三个关键问题。首先，精英们是否试图发出信号，说服选民放弃他们的第一偏好，投票给他们的第二偏好？第二，这些信号是否有效？最后，是否有个人和背景因素决定了谁会接受这些信息，谁不会？第一个假设是，第三方选民对精英的说服性暗示做出反应，放弃他们的第一偏好，投票支持他们的第二偏好。因此，个人对个人演算中变量的感知将是精英级别发送的信息的函数。结果应该表明，收到鼓励他们投票的信息的人比没有收到这些信息的人表现出更高的投票水平。其次，这些信息的有效性将取决于上下文因素，如信息的来源和类型，以及个人因素，如一个人的政治成熟度，外部和内部的政治效能，以及过去的投票行为。实验设计可以通过将受试者随机分配到对照组和治疗组来明确测试这些假设。这个项目对政治学做出了一些重要贡献。首先，该项目建立在文献上的战略投票，填补了一个失踪的部分，由精英的努力，影响选民的演算变量。该项目还涉及政治说服方面的文献。大多数关于说服的研究都着眼于信息对受访者在各种问题上的观点的影响。这项研究探讨了这些信息是否真的能改变选民的行为。最后，这个项目有助于竞选和选举文学，其中主要的发现是竞选信息的最小影响之一。事实上，一旦我们研究了那些有动机改变投票的选民，竞选信息的影响可能会更大。