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Detecting Voter Understanding of Ideological Labels Using a Conjoint Experiment

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Abstract

Understanding voters’ conception of ideological labels is critical for political behavioral research. Conventional research designs have several limitations, such as endogeneity, insufficient responses to open-ended questions, and inseparability of composite treatment effects. To address these challenges, we propose a conjoint experiment to study the meanings ascribed to ideological labels in terms of policy positions. We also suggest using a mixture model approach to explore heterogeneity in voters’ understandings of ideological labels, as well as the average interpretation of labels. We applied these approaches to conceptions of left–right labels in Japan, where the primary issue of elite-level conflicts has been distinctive compared with other developed countries. We found that, on average, while Japanese voters understand policy-related meanings of “left” and “right,” they primarily associate these labels with security and nationalism, and, secondarily, with social issues; they do not associate these labels with economic issues. Voters’ understandings partly depend on their birth cohort, but observed patterns do not necessarily coincide with what many researchers would predict regarding generational differences in Japanese politics. Mixture model results suggest that some individuals tend to associate left–right labels with security and nationalism policies, while others link them to social policies. Over one-third of respondents seemed to barely understand the usage of left–right labels in policy positions. Our study improves upon existing methods for measuring voter understanding of ideological labels, and reconfirm the global diversity of meanings associated with left–right labels.

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Notes

  1. Some researchers have adopted other ways to study the meaning of ideological labels among the electorate. Claassen et al. (2015) asked respondents to label their own position on several issues as “conservative,” “moderate,” “liberal,” or “none of these.” Their research objective was to detect U.S. voters’ identification of their ideology, but they were unable to distinguish between identity and pure interpretation of the ideological labels. Elsewhere, Zechmeister (2006) employed Q-sorts to detect the meanings of the left–right labels for Mexican and Argentine voters. However, because this methodology requires participants to sort and classify many items over several steps, it is difficult to implement in online surveys and imposes a heavy burden on participants.

  2. Shiraito (2016) had a similar motivation and proposed employing an infinite mixture model. Although this is an option, we adopt a finite mixture model because of the ease of parameter identification and interpretation of estimation results.

  3. See Imai and Tingley (2012) as an introductory guide to this model for political scientists.

  4. It should be noted that previous Japanese studies mostly focused on conservative–progressive labels, rather than left–right, though these terms are considered almost interchangeable in Japan (e.g., Jou & Endo, 2016, who also illustrated some important distinctions between these labels, especially in voter perception of parties’ positions).

  5. In Online Appendix B, we show that older people are not likely to have opinions on social issues, but that is not the case for security and nationalism issues as was found by conducting a secondary analysis of a nationally representative survey.

  6. Replication files are available at the Political Behavior Dataverse (https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/FIHGN0).

  7. The questions and an example conjoint table are shown in Online Appendix C.

  8. For the results of the analysis dividing respondents based on primed labels, see Online Appendix G.2.1. The only significant difference found is that, for choice-based outcomes, agreement with the revision of Article 9 has a larger effect on being identified as more right-leaning when respondents were shown a “right,” rather than “left,” label. We speculate that this result follows from the fact that, regarding constitutional reform, right-leaning movements are more active and thus more reported (e.g., publication of a proposal for revision) than those on the left.

  9. We confirmed that respondents’ characteristics are well balanced across attribute-levels (Online Appendix E). In Online Appendix G.3, we tested the interaction effects between attributes and found no substantively meaningful interaction effects, suggesting that our results are insensitive to profile distributions (de la Cuesta et al., 2021).

  10. For our method of detecting satisficing responses, see Online Appendix D. The results remained unchanged even when including such responses in Online Appendix G.1.

  11. We formally explain this analysis in Online Appendix F.2.

  12. For technical details of the finite mixture of regression models, see Online Appendix F.3.

  13. The reason why we prefer rating-based rather than choice-based results relates to the ease of interpretation of the results. We report the choice-based results and a detailed discussion in Online Appendix F.1.

  14. These tests are based on the AMCE estimation of “disagree” via linear regression, setting “agree” as the baseline.

  15. These results are reported in Online Appendix G.2.2, because of space limitations. In Online Appendix G.2.3, we confirmed that the results did not change when we consider candidates’ display position. In addition, we show in Online Appendix G.4 that a correlational approach yields misleading results regarding economic issues.

  16. The choice-based results are reported in Online Appendix F.1. Coefficient tables are shown in Online Appendix F.2.

  17. When formally tested, significant interactions between attribute-level and respondents’ age are only found for the attributes referred to above (Online Appendix F.2).

  18. See Online Appendix F.3 for a detailed description of results not reported here.

  19. We conjecture that some individuals classified to Group 2 have the unconventional understanding that “left” means reform-oriented, while “right” means status quo-oriented, which is why members would perceive approving the revision of Article 9 as left-leaning. Jou and Endo (2016) previously noted the possibility that Japanese voters misinterpret “kakushin” (progressive) as innovation and “hoshu” (conservative) as maintenance based on their literal meanings in Japanese.

  20. We provide a supplementary discussion addressing the concern that our results are time-bound in Online Appendix G.5.

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Acknowledgements

The survey experiment in this study was conducted with the approval of the Ethics Committee of the University of Tokyo. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at workshops at the University of Tokyo (March 4, 2016; June 4, 2016; March 11, 2017; and November 17, 2018) and a workshop at Keio University (September 30, 2017). The authors thank Masahisa Endo, Kentaro Fukumoto, Hiroshi Hirano, Yuko Kasuya, Yukio Maeda, Kenneth Mori McElwain, Kuniaki Nemoto, Susumu Shikano, workshop participants, and three anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank Jaehyun Song for answering our inquiries about his study. This work was supported by JSPS KAKENHI (Grant Numbers JP13J08571 and JP18K12708) and financial aid from the Sakuradakai Foundation.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Law, Gakushuin University, 1-5-1 Mejiro, Toshima, Tokyo, 171-8588, Japan

    Hirofumi Miwa

  2. Graduate School of Law, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku , Nagoya, Aichi, 464-8601 , Japan

    Reiko Arami

  3. Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo, Tokyo, 113-0033, Japan

    Masaki Taniguchi

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  1. Hirofumi Miwa
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Correspondence to Hirofumi Miwa.

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Miwa, H., Arami, R. & Taniguchi, M. Detecting Voter Understanding of Ideological Labels Using a Conjoint Experiment. Polit Behav 45, 635–657 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-021-09719-5

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