Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-g4j75 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-22T10:49:00.912Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The electoral implications of politically irrelevant cues under demanding electoral systems

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 June 2019

Taishi Muraoka
Taishi Muraoka*
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, Washington University, One Brookings Dr., St. Louis, MO63130, United States
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Cognitively demanding electoral systems increase the chance that voters make their choices based on politically irrelevant cues. To illustrate this argument, I analyze the effect of candidate name complexity—a visual cue that contains no politically meaningful information—in Japan, where voters need to write their preferred candidate's name on a blank ballot paper. I find that when electoral systems require voters to weigh a large number of candidates and simultaneously reduce the usefulness of partisan cues, candidates with more complex names tend to receive lower vote shares. By contrast, under less cognitively demanding systems, candidate name complexity has no effect on election outcomes. These findings have important implications for the debate on the “best” electoral system design.

Keywords

Comparative politicspolitical institutionsrepresentation and electoralsystemsvoting behavior
Type
Original Article
Information
Political Science Research and Methods , Volume 9 , Issue 2 , April 2021 , pp. 312 - 326
Copyright
Copyright © The European Political Science Association 2019

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Achen, CH and Bartels, LM (2016) Democracy for Realists: Why Elections Do Not Produce Responsive Government. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Angrist, JD (2006) Instrumental variables methods in experimental criminological research: what, why and how. Journal of Experimental Criminology 2, 23–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Augenblick, N and Nicholson, S (2015) Ballot position, choice fatigue, and voter behaviour. The Review of Economic Studies 83, 460–480.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banducci, S, Giebler, H and Kritzinger, S (2017) Knowing more from less: how the information environment increases knowledge of party positions. British Journal of Political Science 47, 571–588.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barnes, TD, Tchintian, C and Alles, S (2017) Assessing ballot structure and split ticket voting: evidence from a quasi-experiment. The Journal of Politics 79, 439–456.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blumenau, J, Eggers, AC, Hangartner, D and Hix, S (2017) Open/closed list and party choice: experimental evidence from the UK. British Journal of Political Science 47, 809–827.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Calvo, E, Escolar, M and Pomares, J (2009) Ballot design and split ticket voting in multiparty systems: experimental evidence on information effects and vote choice. Electoral Studies 28, 218–231.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, JM and Hix, S (2011) The electoral sweet spot: low-magnitude proportional electoral systems. American Journal of Political Science 55, 383–397.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carey, JM and Shugart, MS (1995) Incentives to cultivate a personal vote: a rank ordering of electoral formulas. Electoral Studies 14, 417–439.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catalinac, A (2016) From pork to policy: the rise of programmatic campaigning in Japanese elections. The Journal of Politics 78, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Catalinac, A (2018) Positioning under alternative electoral systems: evidence from Japanese candidate election manifestos. American Political Science Review 112, 31–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crisp, B and Ingall, RE (2002) Institutional engineering and the nature of representation: mapping the effects of electoral reform in Colombia. American Journal of Political Science 46, 733–748.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cunow, SF (2014) Vote choice in complex electoral environments. Ph. D. thesis, University of California, San Diego.Google Scholar
Donderi, DC (2006) Visual complexity: a review. Psychological Bulletin 132, 73–97.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eng, HY, Chen, D and Jiang, Y (2005) Visual working memory for simple and complex visual stimuli. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 12, 1127–1133.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Eppler, MJ and Mengis, J (2004) The concept of information overload: a review of literature from organization science, accounting, marketing, MIS, and related disciplines. The Information Society 20, 325–344.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fujiwara, T (2015) Voting technology, political responsiveness, and infant health: evidence from Brazil. Econometrica 83, 423–464.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fukumoto, K and Miwa, H (2018) Share the name, share the vote: a natural experiment of name recognition. The Journal of Politics 80, 726–730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garrett, JC and Brooks, CI (1987) Effect of ballot color, sex of candidate, and sex of college students of voting age on their voting behavior. Psychological Reports 60, 39–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gasper, JT and Reeves, A (2011) Make it rain? Retrospection and the attentive electorate in the context of natural disasters. American Journal of Political Science 55, 340–355.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Golder, M and Stramski, J (2010) Ideological congruence and electoral institutions. American Journal of Political Science 54, 90–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hayes, D and Lawless, JL (2015) As local news goes, so goes citizen engagement: media, knowledge, and participation in US house elections. The Journal of Politics 77, 447–462.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Healy, AJ, Malhotra, N and Mo, CH (2010) Irrelevant events affect voters' evaluations of government performance. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, 12804–12809.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hirano, S (2006) Electoral institutions, hometowns, and favored minorities: evidence from Japan electoral reforms. World Politics 59, 51–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ho, DE and Imai, K (2008) Estimating causal effects of ballot order from a randomized natural experiment: the California alphabet lottery, 1978–2002. Public Opinion Quarterly 72, 216–240.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horiuchi, Y (2005) Institutions, Incentives and Electoral Participation in Japan: Cross-Level and Cross-National Perspectives. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horiuchi, Y and Saito, J (2003) Reapportionment and redistribution: consequences of electoral reform in Japan. American Journal of Political Science 47, 669–682.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jankowski, M (2016) Voting for locals: voters' information processing strategies in open-list PR systems. Electoral Studies 43, 72–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jerit, J, Barabas, J and Bolsen, T (2006) Citizens, knowledge, and the information environment. American Journal of Political Science 50, 266–282.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Keller, KL and Staelin, R (1987) Effects of quality and quantity of information on decision effectiveness. Journal of Consumer Research 14, 200–213.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Krauss, ES and Pekkanen, R (2004) Explaining party adaptation to electoral reform: the discreet charm of the LDP? Journal of Japanese Studies 30, 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, RR and Redlawsk, DP (2006) How Voters Decide: Information Processing in Election Campaigns. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lau, RR, Andersen, DJ and Redlawsk, DP (2008) An exploration of correct voting in recent US presidential elections. American Journal of Political Science 52, 395–411.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lijphart, A (2012) Patterns of Democracy: Government Forms and Performance in Thirty-Six Countries. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Liversedge, SP, Zang, C, Zhang, M, Bai, X, Yan, G and Drieghe, D (2014) The effect of visual complexity and word frequency on eye movements during Chinese reading. Visual Cognition 22, 441–457.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marcinkiewicz, K and Stegmaier, M (2015) Ballot position effects under compulsory and optional preferential-list PR electoral systems. Political Behavior 37, 465–486.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCubbins, MD and Rosenbluth, F (1995) Party provision for personal politics: dividing the vote in Japan. In Cowhey, PF and McCubbins, MD (Eds), Structure and Policy in Japan and the United States. Cambridge, NY: Cambridge University Press, pp. 35–55.Google Scholar
Moehler, D and Conroy-Krutz, J (2016) Eyes on the ballot: priming effects and ethnic voting in the developing world. Electoral Studies 42, 99–113.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mori, Y and Mizusaki, T (2012) JED-M Mizusaki-Mori Syugiin Giin So-Senkyo Data 28-44. Tokyo, Japan: Bokutakusha.Google Scholar
Niemi, RG and Herrnson, PS (2003) Beyond the butterfly: the complexity of US ballots. Perspectives on Politics 1, 317–326.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Reilly, CA (1980) Individuals and information overload in organizations: is more necessarily better? Academy of Management Journal 23, 684–696.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O'Sullivan, CS, Chen, A, Mohapatra, S, Sigelman, L and Lewis, E (1988) Voting in ignorance: the politics of smooth-sounding names. Journal of Applied Social Psychology 18, 1094–1106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Otokita, S (2017) Toukyoto no Yami wo Abaku. Tokyo, Japan: Shinchosha.Google Scholar
Peterson, E (2017) The role of the information environment in partisan voting. The Journal of Politics 79, 1191–1204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pieters, R, Wedel, M and Batra, R (2010) The stopping power of advertising: measures and effects of visual complexity. Journal of Marketing 74, 48–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, B (2000) Elections as Instruments of Democracy. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Reed, SR and Smith, DM (2017) The Reed-Smith Japanese House of Representatives Elections Data Set (JHRED). Version: 23 August, 2017 Available at https://sites.google.com/site/danielmarkhamsmith/data.Google Scholar
Reynolds, A and Steenbergen, M (2006) How the world votes: the political consequences of ballot design, innovation and manipulation. Electoral Studies 25, 570–598.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rogers, J and Tyszler, M (2018) Information and economic voting. Political Science Research and Methods 6, 753–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rudolph, L and Däubler, T (2016) Holding individual representatives accountable: the role of electoral systems. The Journal of Politics 78, 746–762.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schaffner, BF, Streb, M and Wright, G (2001) Tearns without uniforms: the nonpartisan ballot in state and local elections. Political Research Quarterly 54, 7–30.Google Scholar
Shugart, M and Wattenberg, MP (2001) Mixed-Member Electoral Systems: The Best of Both Worlds? New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Shugart, MS, Valdini, ME and Suominen, K (2005) Looking for locals: voter information demands and personal vote-earning attributes of legislators under proportional representation. American Journal of Political Science 49, 437–449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva, RR, Chrobot, N, Newman, E, Schwarz, N and Topolinski, S (2017) Make it short and easy: username complexity determines trustworthiness above and beyond objective reputation. Frontiers in Psychology 8, 1–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, DM (2018) Dynasties and Democracy: The Inherited Incumbency Advantage in Japan. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Snyder, JM and Strömberg, D (2010) Press coverage and political accountability. Journal of Political Economy 118, 355–408.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taagepera, R, Selb, P and Grofman, B (2014) How turnout depends on the number of parties: a logical model. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion & Parties 24, 393–413.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Grinsven, B and Das, E (2016) Logo design in marketing communications: brand logo complexity moderates exposure effects on brand recognition and brand attitude. Journal of Marketing Communications 22, 256–270.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zürn, M and Topolinski, S (2017) When trust comes easy: articulatory fluency increases transfers in the trust game. Journal of Economic Psychology 61, 74–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Supplementary material: Link

Muraoka Dataset

Dataset

https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/2PTJJV
Link
Supplementary material: PDF

Muraoka supplementary material

Online Appendix

Download Muraoka supplementary material(PDF)
PDF 1.2 MB