Abstract
Previous research provides solid evidence for the existence of a ballot position effect. The cognitive mechanisms behind this effect are, however, undertheorized and understudied. We develop and test here ‘voter perception effects’ as a possible explanation. Following this reasoning, the list position in a list-PR system functions as a heuristic cue for the competence of candidates: candidates selected for a high list position are perceived as more competent by voters, even when controlling for other candidate characteristics. Our results, based on an experimental design, show that head of lists are indeed perceived as more competent than middle of list candidates. This is related to both advantages for the first position and to disadvantages related to a middle of list position.
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Notes
For sake of clarity: the analyses further developed in this paper will focus on three groups. Candidates on top of the list will be referred to as ‘head of list candidates,’ candidates positioned in the middle of the list will be referred to as ‘middle of list candidates,’ and candidates whose list position was not mentioned, will be referred to as the ‘control group.’
The data are publicly available and online accessible at https://zenodo.org/record/1162716#.WnBwHLpFzI.
However, in reality only very few candidates manage to get elected out of order. Some therefore argue that the Belgian system can be better described as a “quasi-closed system” or a “closed system in disguise.”
However, it needs to be noted that the distinguished mechanisms are potentially interrelated. This will be discussed more in-depth in the concluding section.
We are fully aware that also other people (including journalists and leaders of civil society organizations) could use the list position as a heuristic cue when deciding which candidates they will cover or who they will invite for discussing issues, but that falls outside the scope of this study.
It needs to be noted that there is a methodological discussion on how the motives behind preferential voting are best measured: by means of open- or closed-ended questions. Studies that use a closed question, such as Goeminne and Swyngedouw’s study, show that competence is the most important criterion. Studies in which open questions are used also show that competence is an important aspect, but that also other factors, such as issue positions, local embeddedness, and integrity, are at play (André et al. 2015).
Although it would be interesting to see how the competence perception gradually varies over list positions, we had to restrict our analysis, in function of the feasibility of our design, to three experimental conditions. The head of list position is the most visible and most important position. The inclusion of subsequent positions (e.g., second, third) would make our design unnecessarily complex. Moreover, in Belgium, parties often choose experienced politicians for positions at the bottom of the list, so-called ‘list pushers. Therefore, we decided to analyze a middle of list position (in contrast to a head of list position), and not to use the last position as a treatment since this position could also come with a certain quality label.
The same district magnitude was used across all treatments: each list of candidates consisted of twenty candidates, which is a realistic number of candidates for the Flemish constituencies. To refer to the head of list position, we always indicated the first position on the list. To refer to the middle of list position, we always indicated the tenth position on the list.
The other invitations were apparently sent to invalid or outdated email addresses.
Because of the risk of a selection effect (for example, if only politically interested respondents were able to correctly answer this question), we made a comparison between the final sample and respondents who could not answer the manipulation check correctly. This analysis reveals that these groups do not differ substantially on important sociodemographic aspects. There is a small selection bias in that our final sample is slightly higher educated and younger, but there are no striking differences concerning gender and level of political interest.
The average completion time was 996 seconds. The boundary duration from which a response is considered valid was set at 498 seconds.
The provided answer categories for this question were not reliable to assess whether respondents were aware of the fact that the list position of these candidates was not mentioned.
The exclusion of certain groups of respondents does not significantly affect the results. As a robustness check, we ran analyses on the full sample (including the three aforementioned categories of excluded respondents). The results for the full sample are comparable to the results for the more limited sample.
This element will be tackled in another paper which specifically focuses on gender stereotypes in elections.
Voters’ preference for head of list candidates can be driven by different kinds of factors. In order to test for perceptions of competence, we explicitly referred to competence in the questions. The questions were asked in the following way: “How competent do you consider this politician for functioning in politics in general/for the policy domain at stake?” By explicitly mentioning ‘competent’ in the questions, we believe that respondents’ evaluation of the presented candidates is related to this specific aspect.
One-tailed p values were calculated by dividing the significance level, derived in SPSS, by two.
It needs to be noted that there might be small wording effect at play, since the candidates at the head of list presented themselves as “I am head of list for my party” and candidates at the middle of list presented themselves as “I am placed 10th on the ballot.” The first presentation suggests that the candidate enjoys high standing within his/her party, which might point to a difference in leadership.
Subsequent analyses (not in the table) indicate that the perceived competence of the presented candidates is to a large extent influenced by the party preference of the respondents. Respondents whose preferred party is the same as the one ascribed to the hypothetical candidate perceive the candidate as more competent (p = 0.000) and this applies to all policy issues.
The same analysis was made for different subsamples (according to gender, age, ideological positioning, and level of political interest). The general effect is persistent and holds across these different subgroups, which again reinforces the robustness of our findings.
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Funding
This work was supported by a Research Grant of the Flemish Research Foundation (FWO): Project Number G000915N entitled ‘Political gender stereotypes in a system of Proportional Representation.’ The funder was not involved in the development of the study and the article.
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Devroe, R., Wauters, B. Does high on the ballot means highly competent? Explaining the ballot position effect in list-PR systems. Acta Polit 55, 454–471 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-018-0124-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/s41269-018-0124-y