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Are voters' views about proportional outcomes shaped by partisan preferences? A survey experiment in the context of a real election

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 June 2021

André Blais Open the ORCID record for André Blais [Opens in a new window] ,
Semra Sevi Open the ORCID record for Semra Sevi [Opens in a new window]  and
Carolina Plescia Open the ORCID record for Carolina Plescia [Opens in a new window]
André Blais
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Semra Sevi*
Affiliation:
Université de Montréal, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Carolina Plescia
Affiliation:
University of Vienna, Wien, Austria
*
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

We examine citizens' evaluations of majoritarian and proportional electoral outcomes through an innovative experimental design. We ask respondents to react to six possible electoral outcomes during the 2019 Canadian federal election campaign. There are two treatments: the performance of the party and the proportionality of electoral outcomes. There are three performance conditions: the preferred party's vote share corresponds to vote intentions as reported in the polls at the time of the survey (the reference), or it gets 6 percentage points more (fewer) votes. There are two electoral outcome conditions: disproportional and proportional. We find that proportional outcomes are slightly preferred and that these preferences are partly conditional on partisan considerations. In the end, however, people focus on the ultimate outcome, that is, who is likely to form the government. People are happy when their party has a plurality of seats and is therefore likely to form the government, and relatively unhappy otherwise. We end with a discussion of the merits and limits of our research design.

Keywords

Selection modelssurvey methodology
Type
Research Note
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 10 , Issue 2 , April 2022 , pp. 445 - 451
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the European Political Science Association

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Supplementary material: Link

Blais et al. Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/IL8WSB
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Blais et al. supplementary material

Blais et al. supplementary material

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