| 1. |
- Adman, Per, 1970-
(author)
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Does poor health cause political passivity even in a Scandinavian welfare state? : Investigating the impact of self-rated health using Swedish panel data
- 2020
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In: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 65
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Poor health is generally believed to cause political passivity. Prior studies that satisfactorily acknowledge the causality problems involved are mainly limited to considering turnout and the U.S.A., so we lack knowledge of how non-electoral participation is affected in other countries. This article considers Sweden, characterized by a generous welfare state and an extensive public health system. Using unique panel data, which allow more thorough analyses of causality, poor health was found to have a negative effect on voting but not on non-electoral participation. By primarily focusing on other countries than Sweden and the U.S.A., it is a task for future longitudinal research to show whether the belief that poor health lead to political passivity is incorrect—or whether Sweden is an exceptional case, due to the barriers to participation being particularly low there.
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| 2. |
- Agerberg, Mattias, 1986
(author)
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Understanding preferences for descriptive political representation among citizens with immigrant background
- 2024
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In: ELECTORAL STUDIES. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 90
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Today, citizens with an immigrant background make up a large minority in many western democracies. However, we still know little about how this growing group of citizens wants to be represented politically, often due to a simple lack of data. This study overcomes this obstacle by using Facebook ad campaigns to target Swedish citizens with immigrant background directly. In a series of experiments the study shows important similarities between native Swedes and citizens of immigrant origin, with both groups emphasizing substantive representation. The study also reveals substantial heterogeneity within the immigrant group: respondents show no preference for being represented by another immigrant in general. Only a shared immigrant background elicits a positive response, thus cautioning against treating " immigrant background " as a homogenous category. The results also highlight an understudied source of discrimination where respondents with immigrant background show a strong negative reaction against immigrants from certain countries.
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| 3. |
- Ahlskog, Rafael
(author)
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Education and voter turnout revisited : Evidence from a Swedish twin sample with validated turnout data
- 2021
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In: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 69
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The association between education and voter turnout is well-established in almost a century of research. The causal status of this correlation, however, is still subject to debate. Results in the previous literature differ substantially, and this may reflect both methodological differences and heterogeneous effects across populations or types of elections. This study addresses the question using a discordant twin design and variance decomposition methods with validated turnout data for both firstand second-order elections in a large sample of Swedish twins, paired with population-wide sibling data. Results show that education does not have an effect on national electoral turnout, but does have an effect on turnout in the European elections. Furthermore, the association between education and turnout is shown to be affected by substantial genetic confounding, which leaves a non-trivial amount of bias even in sibling based designs. This underscores the importance of taking genetic confounding seriously in observational research.
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| 4. |
- Bäck, Hanna, et al.
(author)
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Elite communication and affective polarization among voters
- 2023
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In: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier BV. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 84
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- How does elite communication influence affective polarization between partisan groups? Drawing on the literature on partisan source cues, we expect that communication from in- or outgroup party representatives will increase affective polarization. We argue that polarized social identities are reinforced by partisan source cues, which bias perceptions of elite communication and result in increased intergroup differentiation. Further, we expect that the effect of such source cues is greater for voters with stronger partisan affinities. To evaluate our hypotheses, we performed a survey experiment among about 1300 voters in Sweden. Our analyses show that individuals who received a factual political message with a source cue from an in- or outgroup representative exhibited higher affective polarization, especially when they already held strong partisan affinities. This suggests that political elites can increase affective polarization by reinforcing existing group identities, and that this occurs in conjunction with biased interpretation of elite communication. The results improve our understanding of how political elites can influence affective polarization and add to previous research on party cues and attitude formation by demonstrating that such source cues can also increase intergroup differentiation.
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| 5. |
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| 6. |
- Dehdari, Sirus H., et al.
(author)
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Early voting can widen the turnout gap : The case of childbirth
- 2024
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In: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 90
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Early voting procedures boost voter participation and have therefore been suggested as institutional remedies for the problem of unequal turnout. Scholars have, however, raised concerns that making voting more convenient may actually lead to a less representative electorate. We contribute to this debate by leveraging large-scale Swedish registry data to analyze persons expecting a child around the time of the election. Our results indicate that politically engaged high-status voters are more likely to use the opportunity to vote in advance when faced with the risk of not being able to vote on election day. Given the large number of obstacles to election-day voting that individuals face throughout life, it is therefore conceivable that efforts to make voting more convenient and less costly for citizens may in the end lead to less representative electorates.
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| 7. |
- Eriksson, Lina M., 1978-
(author)
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Winds of Change : Voter Blame and Storm Gudrun in the 2006 Swedish Parliamentary Election
- 2016
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In: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier BV. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 41, s. 129-142
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Can a natural disaster shift long-standing party support for the long-term? Studies of political behavior indicate that, as elections approach, voters punish or credit governments based on their responses to severe weather phenomena. It may still be considered an open question, however, if poor crisis response could trigger more durable shifts in long-standing party support. I provide empirical evidence suggesting that it could. I exploit a crucial case for the study of change in party support, Storm Gudrun (Erwin), to examine long lasting punishment effects over crisis response. The estimated effect is of a magnitude that equals the largest block-transfer of voters in Swedish history and can be seen over three parliamentary elections (2006, 2010 and 2014).
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| 8. |
- Finseraas, Henning, et al.
(author)
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A mixed blessing for the left? Early voting, turnout and election outcomes in Norway
- 2014
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In: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier BV. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 33, s. 278-291
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- Is there a relationship between turnout and election outcomes? Although this is a classic topic in political science, most studies on multiparty systems have important theoretical and empirical shortcomings. First, we argue that the proper implication of the theoretical argument that underpins research on the turnout-vote nexus is that high levels of turnout should typically benefit both traditional social democratic parties andparties of the radical right relative to other types of parties, including not only those of the traditional right, but also ‘left-libertarian’ parties. Second, few have studied the relationship between turnout and election outcomes with a research design that is appropriate for causal inference. In our empirical study, our identification strategy is to exploit a Norwegian reform of early voting rules as an exogenous source of variation in turnout. Our theoretical expectations are largely borne out in our empirical results.
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| 9. |
- Fredén, Annika, 1981-, et al.
(author)
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Insurance strategic considerations in coalition-oriented systems : A consideration set model approach
- 2018
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In: Electoral Studies. - Amsterdam, Netherlands : Elsevier BV. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 57, s. 302-308
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- During a vote-decision process, citizens elect between some of the parties – not all of them. In this paper, we explore a potential strategic reason to include an additional alternative in the consideration set. Drawing on research from the field of strategic voting, we study incentives to defect to a party at risk of falling below an electoral threshold in order to elect a winning coalition (”insurance”). Our argument is that these types of strategic considerations occur already in the campaign, but do not always translate into choice. Using the so-called consideration set model approach (CSM), which focuses on how voters select fewer alternatives among a larger number of parties, we model vote choice over an election campaign using panel data from the Swedish National Election Studies of 2014. In line with our argument, we demonstrate that the insurance strategy was prevalent earlier in the decision-making process, when forming the consideration set.
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| 10. |
- Hultin Rosenberg, Jonas, FD, 1983-, et al.
(author)
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Attitudes toward competing voting-right requirements : Evidence from a conjoint experiment
- 2022
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In: Electoral Studies. - : Elsevier. - 0261-3794 .- 1873-6890. ; 77
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Journal article (peer-reviewed)abstract
- The prevailing trend of treating voting-rights as a privilege for citizens has been challenged by a lively debate among democratic theorists. Growing numbers of resident non-citizens and non-resident citizens are likely to make voting-rights regulations more politically salient. Yet, these issues are largely missing in studies of public opinion and little is known about the support for the citizenship-requirement and its more or less democratic alternatives. Informed by normative democratic theory, this article opens the research field by conducting the first comprehensive study of attitudes toward competing requirements for voting-rights, using a conjoint experiment on a nationally representative sample of U.S. citizens. The results indicate that considerable proportions of respondents support a residency-requirement and a democratically dubious economic contribution-requirement, restricting voting-rights to taxpayers only. Nevertheless, the current citizenship-requirement is supported by a majority across sociodemographic groups, indicating sociological legitimacy of the current order and some but limited leeway for changes.
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