Gulzar, Saad and Robinson, Thomas S and Ruiz, Nelson A (2022) How Campaigns Respond to Ballot Position: A New Mechanism for Order Effects. The Journal of Politics, 84 (2). pp. 1256-1261. DOI https://doi.org/10.1086/715594
Gulzar, Saad and Robinson, Thomas S and Ruiz, Nelson A (2022) How Campaigns Respond to Ballot Position: A New Mechanism for Order Effects. The Journal of Politics, 84 (2). pp. 1256-1261. DOI https://doi.org/10.1086/715594
Gulzar, Saad and Robinson, Thomas S and Ruiz, Nelson A (2022) How Campaigns Respond to Ballot Position: A New Mechanism for Order Effects. The Journal of Politics, 84 (2). pp. 1256-1261. DOI https://doi.org/10.1086/715594
Abstract
An established finding on ballot design is that top positions on the ballot improve the electoral performance of parties or candidates because voters respond behaviorally to salient information. This article presents evidence on an additional unexplored mechanism: campaigns, that can act before voters, can also adjust their behavior when allocated a top position on the ballot. We use a constituency-level lottery of ballot positions in Colombia to establish, first, that a ballot-order effect exists: campaigns randomly placed at the top earn more votes and seat shares. Second, we show that campaigns react to being placed on top of the ballot: they raise and spend more money on their campaign, and spending itself is correlated with higher vote shares. Our results provide the first evidence for a new mechanism of ballot-order effects examined in many previous studies.
Item Type: | Article |
---|---|
Uncontrolled Keywords: | ballots; voting; elections; parties; political psychology |
Divisions: | Faculty of Social Sciences Faculty of Social Sciences > Government, Department of |
SWORD Depositor: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Depositing User: | Unnamed user with email elements@essex.ac.uk |
Date Deposited: | 12 Oct 2022 10:51 |
Last Modified: | 30 Oct 2024 21:25 |
URI: | http://repository.essex.ac.uk/id/eprint/33415 |
Available files
Filename: Gulzar_et_al_2021_how_campaigns_respond.pdf