Top

Political Behavior

Published in:

29-01-2016 | Original Paper

Dead Man Walking: The Affective Roots of Issue Proximity Between Voters and Parties

Authors: Elias Dinas, Erin Hartman, Joost van Spanje

Published in: Political Behavior | Issue 3/2016

Activate our intelligent search to find suitable subject content or patents.

search-config

AI-assisted search

Off

Abstract

Do voters like the party they already agree with or do they agree with the party they already like? Previous studies have suggested a link from preferences to perceptions. However, such a causal link has not been convincingly demonstrated. Most issue voting studies have adopted the basic premise of spatial models of voting—that voters compare parties’ positions with their own ideal points and apply a rule to choose among these parties. Drawing on a natural experiment, this study shows that perceptual agreement between parties and voters is endogenous to voters’ party affect. We use the murder of a Dutch politician amidst the data collection period of the 2002 Dutch election study. The death increases respondents’ feelings for his party without providing information about its issue stances. This upward shift in feelings translates into a significant increase in the perceived level of proximity with the party. The design also allows us to explore the mechanism bringing parties and voters closer. Rather than taking up the party’s stances, voters move a party’s positions closer to their own views when their feelings for that party increase. The findings challenge established assumptions about the theoretical underpinnings of spatial models of voting. They support classic notions of voter projection and lend credence to recent theories of attitudinal change, which are based on coarse thinking and uninformative updating.

previous article Are Group Cues Necessary? How Anger Makes Ethnocentrism Among Whites a Stronger Predictor of Racial and Immigration Policy Opinions

next article National Party Division and Divisive State Primaries in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1948–2012

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

inform now

Available only for authorised users

The reasons for the assassination remained unclear in the 9 days that remained until the election. The seven main national newspapers speculated in 20 articles about the suspect’s possible motives for killing Fortuyn (search string in the LexisNexis database: “motief OR motieven AND Volkert” from 7 until 15 May 2002). No clear reason was given in any of the articles. In fact, in 17 out of 20 articles it was explicitly stated that his motive was unknown and that it could have been anything, including that he was Fortuyn’s former student—or his former lover.

However, given the design of the survey, some confounding of treatment assignment remained. As described below, we ensure covariate balance by using genetic matching on a set of pretreatment covariates.

By affective party evaluations, we do not mean long-standing party identification, which would be anyway impossible given that the LPF was only established three months before the assassination.

It could be that the event sheds light on the party’s position on exactly these issues. We discuss and rule out this possibility in a separate section dedicated to the examination of competing explanations.

Projection refers to the process whereby individuals project parties’ views onto their own positions. This phenomenon is also known as assimilation, but we stick here to the more frequently used term projection. Notice that projection here means something completely different from the more common usage of the term in Freudian psychology. Furthermore, both projection and persuasion have their negative counterparts. With regard to projection, voters are deemed to disagree more with parties or candidates they dislike (Newcomb 1968; Kinder 1978), a phenomenon known as ‘contrast.’ ‘Negative persuasion effects’ occur when individuals try to avoid the position advocated by a party they dislike (van der Brug 2001). Neither of them is considered here, since our focus is on the effect of an upward shift in party preferences. We do look at these phenomena, however in the online appendix when we examine the case of a negative shift in presidential affective evaluations.

Although the second wave takes place a month after the accident, the saliency of the event generates incentives for parties to openly refine their positions on this issue. Consequently, the design cannot preclude that instead of projection, the mechanism driving increase in proximity is simply rational updating as both voters and parties become more sceptical about nuclear energy.

Even if its main focus is quite different, there is one study that looks at the impact of affective orientations on perceived proximity. Prior to the February 2008 Connecticut presidential primary Gerber et al. (2010) sent a mailing to a random sample of unaffiliated registered voters who, in a pretreatment survey, leaned toward a political party. The mailing informed the subjects that only voters registered with a party were able to participate in the upcoming presidential primary. Subjects were surveyed again in June 2008. The authors find that in the follow-up those forced to choose a party ended up evaluating the party and its leader more positively than those not contacted. However, the study finds no partisanship effects on change in policy orientations. “Forced” partisans did not become more likely to align to party’s policy positions. As the authors argue, one possible reason for this null finding is the salient nature of the issues (keeping troops in Iraq and taxing the rich) and the short time frame of the experiment.

Let V_ij denote the position of individual i, P_ijp the position of party p in a given issue j as perceived by individual i and U_ijp |P_ijp the utility function of i with respect to p conditional on P_ipj. The absolute proximity is based on the following utility function: U_ijp |P_jj = −|V_ij − P_ijp|. When a quadratic proximity measure is used, the results are substantively identical (shown in the online appendix).

An alternative approach is instrumental variable (IV) estimation, whereby the interview date serves as an instrument of the LPF feeling thermometer score. While the interview date is pseudo-random, balance statistics indicate that there is confounding of the instrument. In the presence of confounding, it is advantageous to conduct matching even as a precursor to IV estimation (Keele and Morgan 2013). Within the matched dataset, we opted for a more straightforward comparison between those interviewed before and those interviewed after the murder. In so doing, the analysis estimates intent-to-treat effects. We also conducted IV estimation on the matched data set, and results are substantively identical (shown in the online appendix).

As there are fewer ‘treated’ than ‘untreated’ respondents in our data, we match each person interviewed after the murder to a person interviewed before the assassination, conditional on observable characteristics X. We use genetic matching: a nearest neighbor matching method with balance optimization (Diamond and Sekhon 2013; Sekhon and Mebane 1998; Sekhon 2011, see also the online appendix).

The test serves as a “reverse” placebo test. In placebo tests, none of the comparison groups has taken the treatment; here both groups have taken the treatment. Consequently, we expect no difference in their evaluations of the LPF.

Further analysis based on the ranking of parties in terms of their vicinity to the respondent suggests that these effects extend to a rank-order comparison of parties. The LPF was positioned closer to respondents not only in absolute terms but also compared to the other main parties that contested the 2002 general election. These analyses are avaliable in the online appendix.

An important caveat in this analysis is that persuasion effects might be confounded by an overall shift to conservatism as a result of the murder, with those interviewed after the murder expressing more conservative issue positions (closer to the positions of the LPF, a far right party). Evidence from social psychology suggests that in trying to manage threat and uncertainty, individuals lean towards more right-wing policies (Jost et al. 2007). To the extent that this mechanism operates here, it creates a more favorable setting for the presence of persuasion—for which we still find only limited empirical support.

We also performed an IV estimation, without however correcting for the error correlation between the equations. The results, shown in the online appendix, are if anything more supportive of the presence of projection effects.

Van der Eijk’s (2001) alpha coefficient is an agreement measure that is bound between −1 (complete disagreement) and +1 (complete agreement), see van der Eijk (2001). To avoid confounding from the treatment, the estimation employs only respondents interviewed before the assassination.

Although the key findings from all analyses executed in this section are discussed, as a way to save space some of the actual results are delegated to the appendix. Unless otherwise noted, all analyses use the matched dataset.

These results are shown in the online appendix.

Concerning all four issue questions included in the 2002 DPES, respondents have been asked to position not only the LPF but four other parties as well: the christian democratic CDA, the social democratic PvdA, the right-wing liberal VVD, and the left-wing liberal D66.

A variance ratio test to reject the null of no difference in the variance of responses before and after the assassination provides the following p-values: 0.38 (asylum seekers); 0.73 (crime); 0.13 (redistribution); 0.12 (euthanasia).

That said, the decline in variance might signal more information about the LPF’s stances after the event. Although this result does not explain away our results concerning asylum-seekers and crime, it might play a role in the projection effect found for redistribution. We address the information hypothesis in detail in the following paragraphs.

Importantly, the hypothesis that respondents locate the LPF in more centrist positions after the event might not be driven only by media coverage. For instance, since Fortuyn held radical views on the issue of asylum seeekers, people might anticipate a move towards more centrist positions once a new leader is appointed. In our tests we thus focus on whether such a move towards centrist positions has taken place, without investigating whether this move stems from media coverage or from other sources.

We cannot anymore use those located at the same position as the LPF because for them the only movement as a result of the event would be driven by moving themselves along this category, which is ruled out by assumption. In other words, when implemented among those located at the same position as the LPF, this between-subject comparison provides no information about either the news or the projection mechanism.

Although there are competing explanations of the effects attributed to priming effects (Lenz 2010), we do not explore them here because we only want to use a plausible side-effect of this theory as an alternative explanation for our affect-driven mechanism.

The results are shown in the Online Appendix. The only exception in the null findings is the issue of redistribution. When using the feeling thermometer as a dependent variable, the interaction between proximity and “Post-Assassination” is positive, which means that proximity between respondents and the party on this issue weakens as a predictor of LPF evaluations (proximity is measured by distance and thus is negatively associated with party evaluations). This is the opposite of what the priming hypothesis would expect. No significant pattern is observed when vote intention is used as the dependent variable.

That said, increasing non-response after the event might signal an increase in the level of uncertainty about the LPF’s stances as a result of the murder. To the extent that uncertainty leads to differences in the positioning of the LPF, non-response might pose a threat to inference. That said, the levels of missingness remain very low even after the murder.

Given that the information shock is negative for the popularity of Nixon, the shift in preference actually generates the negative image mirrors of projection and persuasion, which are called contrast and negative persuasion respectively.

Such a need for rationalization is absent when voters are asked about the issue of euthanasia, because this is not a key electoral issue and thus the need for consistency between party preferences and perceptions is weaker.

Achen, C. (1992). Social psychology, demographic variables, and linear regression: Breaking the iron triangle in voting research. Political Behavior, 14(3), 195–211.CrossRef

Achen, C. (2002). Parental socialization and rational party identification. Political Behavior, 24(2), 151–170.CrossRef

Aldrich, J., & McKelvey, R. D. (1977). A method of scaling with applications to the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections. American Political Science Review, 71(1), 111–130.CrossRef

Bartels, L. M. (2002). Beyond the running tally: Partisan bias in political perceptions. Political Behavior, 24(2), 117–150.CrossRef

Bartle, J., & Crewe, I. (2002). The impact of party leaders in Britain: Strong assumptions, weak evidence. In A. S. King (Ed.), Leaders’ personalities and the outcomes of democratic elections (pp. 70–95). Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Black, D. (1958). The theory of committees and elections. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Blais, A., Nadeau, R., Gidengil, E., & Nevitte, N. (2001). The formation of party preferences: Testing the proximity and directional models. European Journal of Political Research, 40(August), 81–91.

Brady, H. E. (2011). The art of political science: Spatial diagrams as iconic and revelatory. Perspectives on Politics, 9(2), 311–331.CrossRef

Brody, R. A., & Page, B. I. (1972). Comment: The assessment of policy voting. American Political Science Review, 66(2), 450–458.CrossRef

Campbell, A., Converse, P., Miller, W., & Stokes, D. (1960). The American voter. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Carmines, E. G., & Stimson, J. A. (1980). The two faces of issue voting. The American Political Science Review, 74, 78–91.CrossRef

Carsey, T. M., & Layman, G. C. (2006). Changing sides or changing minds? Party identification and policy preferences in the American electorate. American Journal of Political Science, 50(2), 464–477.CrossRef

Claassen, R. (2009). Direction versus proximity: Amassing experimental evidence. American Politics Research, 37(2), 227–253.CrossRef

Clarke, H., Sanders, D., Stewart, M., & Whiteley, P. (2004). Political choice in Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Dalton, R. J. (1985). Political parties and political representation: Party supporters and party elites in nine nations. Comparative Political Studies, 17(3), 267–299.CrossRef

Diamond, A., & Sekhon, J. S. (2013). Genetic matching for estimating causal effects: A general multivariate matching method for achieving balance in observational studies. Review of Economics and Statistics, 95(3), 932–945.CrossRef

Dinas, Elias, & van Spanje, J. H. P. (2011). Crime story: The role of crime and immigration in the anti-immigration vote. The case of the Dutch LPF in 2002. Electoral Studies, 30(4), 658–671.CrossRef

Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper and Row.

Enelow, J. M., Hinich, M. J., & Mendell, N. R. (1986). An empirical evaluation of alternative spatial models of elections. Journal of Politics, 48(3), 675–693.CrossRef

Erikson, R. S., MacKuen, M. B., & Stimson, J. A. (2002). The macro polity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Feldman, S., & Conover, P. J. (1983). Candidates, issues, and voters: The role of inference in political perception. Journal of Politics, 45(4), 810–839.CrossRef

Franklin, C. H., & Jackson, J. E. (1983). The dynamics of party identification. American Political Science Review, 77(4), 957–973.CrossRef

Gaines, B. J., Kuklinski, J. H., Quirk, P. J., Peyton, B., & Verkuilen, J. (2007). Same facts, different interpretations: Partisan motivation and opinion on Iraq. Journal of Politics, 69(4), 957–974.CrossRef

Gerber, A., Huber, G., & Washington, E. (2010). Party affiliation, partisanship, and political beliefs: A field experiment. American Political Science Review, 104(4), 720–744.CrossRef

Giger, N., & Braeuninger, T. (2011). On the Measurement of Party Positions and Consequences for Political Representation. Presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Political Science Association, Dublin.

Granberg, D. (1983). Preferences, expectations, and placement judgements: Some evidence from Sweden. Social Psychology Quarterly, 46(4), 363–368.CrossRef

Granberg, D. (1985). An anomaly in political perception. Public Opinion Quarterly, 49(4), 504–516.CrossRef

Granberg, D., & Brent, E. (1983). When prophecy bends: The preference-expectation link in U.S. Presidential Elections, 1952-80. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45(3), 477–491.CrossRef

Granberg, D., Kasmer, J., & Nannerman, T. (1988). An empirical examination of two theories of political perception. Political Research Quarterly, 41(1), 29–46.CrossRef

Grand, P., & Tiemann, G. (2013). Projection effects and specification bias in spatial models of European Parliament elections. European Union Politics, 14(4), 497–521.CrossRef

Groenendyk, E. (2012). Justifying party identification: A case of identifying with the “lesser of two evils”. Political Behavior, 34(3), 453–475.CrossRef

Grynaviski, J. (2006). A Bayesian learning model with applications to party identification. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 18(3), 323–346.CrossRef

Heider, F. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley.CrossRef

Iyengar, S., & Kinder, D. R. (1987). News that matters: Agenda setting and priming in a television age. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Jessee, S. A. (2009). Spatial voting in the 2004 presidential election. American Political Science Review, 103(1), 59–81.CrossRef

Johnston, R., Fournier, P., & Jenkins, R. (2003). Party location and party support: Unpacking competing models. Journal of Politics, 64(4), 1145–1160.

Jost, J. T., Napier, J. L., Thorisdottir, H., Gosling, S. D., Palfai, T. P., & Ostafin, B. (2007). Are needs to manage uncertainty and threat associated with political conservatism or ideological extremity? Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(7), 989–1007.CrossRef

Judd, C. M., Kenny, D. A., & Krosnick, J. A. (1983). Judging the positions of political candidates: Models of assimilation and contrast. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44(5), 952–963.CrossRef

Keele, L., & Morgan, J. (2013). Stronger instruments by design. Unpublished manuscript.

Kinder, D. R. (1978). Political person perception: The asymmetrical influence of sentiment and choice on perceptions of presidential candidates. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36(8), 859–871.CrossRef

Kleinnijenhuis, J., Oegema, D., De Ridder, J., van Hoof, A., & Vliegenthart, R. (2003). De puinhopen in het nieuws: De rol van de media bij de Tweede-Kamerverkiezingen van 2002. Alphen aan den Rijn: Kluwer.

Krosnick, J. A. (1990). Americans’ perceptions of presidential candidates: A test of the projection hypothesis. Journal of Social Issues, 46(2), 159–182.CrossRef

Krosnick, J. A., & Kinder, D. R. (1990). Altering the foundations of support for the president through priming. American Political Science Review, 84, 497–512.CrossRef

Lachat, R. (2008). The impact of party polarization on ideological voting. Electoral Studies, 27(4), 687–698.CrossRef

Lee, S. Y. (2007). Information heterogeneity and voter uncertainty in spatial voting: The U.S. Presidential Elections, 1992-2004. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Lenz, G. S. (2009). Learning and opinion change, not priming: Reconsidering the priming hypothesis. American Journal of Political Science, 53(4), 821–837.CrossRef

Lenz, G. S. (2012). Follow the leader? How voters respond to politicians’ performance and policies. Chicago: Chicago University Press.CrossRef

Lewis, J. B., & King, G. (1999). No evidence on directional vs. proximity voting. Political Analysis, 8(1), 21–33.CrossRef

Macdonald, S. E., Rabinowitz, G., & Listhaug, O. (2007). Simulating models of issue voting. Political Analysis, 15(4), 406–427.CrossRef

Markus, G. B., & Converse, P. E. (1979). A dynamic simultaneous equation model of electoral choice. American Political Science Review, 73(4), 1055–1070.CrossRef

Merrill, S, III, & Grofman, B. (1999). A unified theory of voting: directional and proximity spatial models. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

Merrill, S, III, Grofman, B., & Adams, J. (2001). Assimilation and contrast effects in voter projections of party locations: Evidence from Norway, France and the USA. European Journal of Political Research, 40(2), 199–221.CrossRef

Milanovic, B. (2000). The median-voter hypothesis, income inequality, and income redistribution: An empirical test with the required data. European Journal of Political Economy, 16(3), 367–410.CrossRef

Miller, W. E., & Merrill Shanks, J. (1996). The New American voter. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Mullainathan, S., Schwartzstein, J., & Shleifer, A. (2008). Coarse thinking and persuasion. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 123(2), 577–619.CrossRef

Newcomb, T. M. (1968). Interpersonal balance. In R. P. Abelson (Ed.), Theories of cognitive consistency: A sourcebook (pp. 28–51). Chicago: Rand-McNally.

Ottati, V. C., & Wyer, R. S, Jr. (1993). Affect and political judgment. In S. Iyengar & W. J. McGuire (Eds.), Explorations in political psychology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

Page, B. I., & Jones, C. C. (1979). Reciprocal effects of policy preferences, party loyalties and the vote. American Political Science Review, 73(4), 1071–1090.CrossRef

Papageorgiou, A. (2010). Finnish parties’ positions in 2007: A matter of equilibrium or voters’ projection? Electoral Studies, 29(4), 724–732.CrossRef

Persson, T., Roland, G., & Tabellini, G. (1997). Separation of powers and political accountability. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 112(4), 1163–1202.CrossRef

Petty, R. E., & Cacioppo, J. T. (1986). The elaboration likelihood model of persuasion. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 123–205.CrossRef

Powell, B. G, Jr. (2000). Elections as instruments of democracy: Majoritarian and proportional visions. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Price, V. (1989). Social identification and public opinion: Effects of communicating group conflict. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53(2), 197–224.CrossRef

Sekhon, J. S. (2011). Matching: Multivariate and propensity score matching with auto-mated balance search. Journal of Statistical Software, 42(7), 1–52.CrossRef

Sekhon, J. S., & Mebane, W. R, Jr. (1998). Genetic optimization using derivatives: Theory and application to nonlinear models. Political Analysis, 7(1), 187–210.CrossRef

Shepsle, K. A., & Bonchek, M. S. (1997). Analyzing politics. Rationality, behavior and institutions. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.

Sherif, M., & Hovland, C. I. (1961). Social Judgement: Assimilation and contrast effects in communication and attitude change. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.

Tomz, M., & Van Houweling, R. P. (2008). Candidate positioning and voter choice. American Political Science Review, 102(3), 303–318.CrossRef

Tomz, M., & Van Houweling, R. P. (2009). The electoral implications of candidate ambiguity. American Political Science Review, 103(1), 83–98.CrossRef

Tomz, M., & Van Houweling, R. P. (2014). Political repositioning: A conjoint analysis. Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University.

van der Brug, W. (2001). Perceptions, opinions and party preferences in the face of a real world event: Chernobyl as a natural experiment in political psychology. Journal of Theoretical Politics, 13(1), 53–80.CrossRef

van der Brug, W. (2003). How the LPF fuelled discontent: Empirical tests of explanations of LPF support. Acta Politica, 38(1), 89–106.CrossRef

van der Eijk, C. (2001). Measuring agreement in ordered rating scales. Quality & Quantity, 35(3), 325–341.CrossRef

van der Eijk, C., & Franklin, M. (1996). Choosing Europe? The European electorate and national politics in the face of the union. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.CrossRef

van Holsteyn, J. J. M., & Irwin, G. A. (2003). Never a dull moment: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch parliamentary election of 2002. West European Politics, 26(2), 41–66.CrossRef

van Praag, P. (2003). De LPF-kiezer: Rechts, cynisch of modaal? In DNPP (Ed), Jaarboek Nederlandse Politieke Partijen 2001 (pp. 96–116). Groningen: DNPP.

Van Spanje, J. H. P. (2011). The wrong and the right. A comparative analysis of ‘anti-immigration’ and ‘far right’ parties in contemporary Western Europe. Government and Opposition, 46(3), 293–320.CrossRef

Visser, M. (1994). Policy voting, projection, and persuasion: An application of balance theory to electoral behavior. Political Psychology, 15(4), 699–711.CrossRef

Winter, N., & Berinsky, A. J. (1999). What’s your temperature? Thermometer ratings and political analysis. Atlanta, GA: Annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.

Title: Dead Man Walking: The Affective Roots of Issue Proximity Between Voters and Parties
Authors: Elias Dinas
Erin Hartman
Joost van Spanje
Publication date: 29-01-2016
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Political Behavior / Issue 3/2016
Print ISSN: 0190-9320
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6687
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-016-9331-2

Springer Professional

Abstract

Please log in to get access to your license.

Dont have a licence yet? Then find out more about our products and how to get one now:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Other articles of this Issue 3/2016

The Dead Hand of the Past? Toward an Understanding of “Constitutional Veneration”

Rolling off the Tongue into the Top-of-the-Head: Explaining Language Effects on Public Opinion

Intra-Party Politics and Public Opinion: How Candidate Selection Processes Affect Citizens’ Satisfaction with Democracy

Estimating the Impact of Education on Political Participation: Evidence from Monozygotic Twins in the United States, Denmark and Sweden

Unresponsive and Unpersuaded: The Unintended Consequences of a Voter Persuasion Effort

Are Group Cues Necessary? How Anger Makes Ethnocentrism Among Whites a Stronger Predictor of Racial and Immigration Policy Opinions