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Political polarization, voting and turnout: insights from survey research |
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| Session Organiser | Dr Simone Marsilio (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele) |
| Time | Wednesday 19 July, 09:00 - 10:30 |
| Room | U6-28 |
Survey research is crucial for political science, providing empirical data to understand public opinion, political behavior, and institutions. This panel reports evidence from different surveys held in Italy, Georgia, Germany, Switzerland, and France concerning polarization, voting behavior, and political participation. In Italy, an online survey tested alternative voting methods during the 2022 elections. The final ranking of parties did not differ much compared to the official one, revealing new insights into party categorization. In Georgia, an analysis of longitudinal social survey data measured the rally-around-the-flag effect during the COVID-19 pandemic and the Russo-Ukrainian war through the level of public trust toward institutions and partisan polarization. The study aimed to identify how these crises invoked the effect and how it varied across different societal groups. In Germany, a vignette survey explored the acceptance of the adaptation of the right to vote in relation to varying citizenship forms, lengths of stay, and political interests. Its goal was to provide insights for politicians on public support for extending the right to vote. In Switzerland, an analysis of total turnout bias was conducted through political and social survey data. The study investigated variations in nonresponse bias in different survey companies. In France, a two-wave panel survey examined the relationship between satisfaction with democracy and radical parties during the 2022 presidential election. The study tested whether the institutional inclusion of marginalized political groups exacerbated dissatisfaction. Overall, these papers offer new insights into key political phenomena, highlighting the importance of survey research in understanding our societies.
Keywords: Political polarization, voting, electoral turnout
Ms Nursel Alkoç (University of Lausanne) - Presenting Author
Political scientists often draw conclusions about political behaviour based on a single survey, usually a postelection survey. It has been known for decades now that postelection surveys systematically overestimate voter turnout. Vote overreporting by non-voters (i.e., measurement error) was previously thought to explain much of the total turnout bias, but more recent studies have emphasised the self-selection of politically engaged citizens that leads then to the overrepresentation of voters among survey respondents (i.e., nonresponse bias). Turnout bias exists not only in postelection surveys, but also in social surveys that include measures of electoral participation. However, our understanding of the size and scope of turnout bias in social surveys is rather limited. The present study offers an examination of nonresponse-induced turnout bias across political and social surveys conducted in Switzerland, drawing upon a rich data set combining all the waves of Selects, ESS, and MOSAiCH as of 2003 Swiss national elections. Our findings suggest that politically engaged individuals are more likely to participate in Selects than ESS, leading the former to significantly overestimate self-reported vote. We did not observe a similar significant effect when comparing Selects and MOSAiCH, however. We discuss the extent to which we can generalise these results under the umbrella of political and social surveys and whether social surveys can be an alternative data source with lower turnout bias for political scientists interested in studying electoral participation.
Ms Madeleine Siegel (DeZIM-Institute) - Presenting Author
The right to vote is one of the most important forms of political participation. It represents an essential means to communicate interests within the population to the political system which otherwise would not or rarely been taken into account in political decisions. In Germany, this political right is directly intertwined with German citizenship. As a result, about 8 million inhabitants with foreign citizenship are not obliged to vote in federal elections.
German citizenship is automatically given to people with German descendancy, partly to those born in Germany and can otherwise only be obtained via a lengthy application process. Just recently, the topic has reappeared in the public debate and been put on the agenda by the current interior minister aiming at facilitating access to German citizenship, and simultaneously permitting more people to use their right to vote.
I would like to approach the topic from a different point of perspective by raising the question whether the adaptation of the right to vote would be accepted by the German population, which would mean a sounder foundation for politicians to decide on that matter. For that, a self developed vignette study with different scenarios - by combining varying citizenship forms, intensity of political interest, lengths of stay and other characteristics – is applied to a randomly drawn sample of German inhabitants (DeZIM.panel). Additionally, after each scenario the respondents are asked whether they think voting in federal elections would be justified. On the basis of the DeZIM.panel – an online access panel of the German residential population oversampling migrants – the vignette analyses shall answer the question whether the German population agreed if the right to vote would be adapted, in general, and in what form(s), in particular.
Dr Simone Marsilio (Università Vita-Salute San Raffaele) - Presenting Author
Dr Théo Delemazure (Université Paris Dauphine)
During the days preceding the 2022 Italian elections, an online survey has been held to test alternative voting methods for the first time in Italy, on a representative sample (n=1000) of Italian voters. Beyond having to select one preferred party, the participants were given the possibility of approving, ranking, or evaluating as many parties as they wanted. When voters provide more political information, some consequences in terms of election results can be found in the literature such as penalizing polarizing candidates and favoring candidate types like consensual, centrist, small, or similarly oriented. Contrary to the expectations, our findings show that the final ranking of Italian parties – especially the first three positions – do not differ much under alternative voting methods compared to the official ones. First, the far-right party Fratelli d’Italia (FdI) is not polarizing as it wins under every rule. Second, the loss of votes by Lega is mostly due to the fact that it acts as a clone of FdI. Third, there does not seem to be a party – either consensual, centrist, or small – that is clearly favored by alternative rules, with potentially the exception of Impegno Civico. Fourth, based on the matrix of parties that were approved together under approval voting, the center-right coalition could be said to be more cohesive than the center-left one, with many Partito Democratico (PD) supporters not co-approving other parties from their coalition. Fifth, based on t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding, the maximum relative distance can be found between Movimento 5 Stelle and FdI, instead of FdI and PD, whose electoral campaign was focused against the former. In conclusion, these results show that the study of alternative voting methods could be extremely insightful when applied to real elections, in relation to both parties’ categorization and voters' behavior.