Factors Influencing Electoral Choice: the Potential of Factorial Design
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.29038/2306-3971-2022-01-06-16Keywords:
factorial survey, vignettes, political behavior, electoral choice, online surveysAbstract
The article discusses the cognitive capabilities of factorial survey in the study of factors affecting the electoral choice of candidates for deputies to the Verkhovna Rada elected by majority voting. The focus of the article is the consideration of theoretical concepts of electoral choice and the selection of its determinants. The expediency of using established factors to study the electoral choice of ukrainian voters is illustrated on the example of empirical research conducted in Ukraine. The article also reflects the results of a pilot study using the method of factorial survey, which established the significance of such factors of candidate choice as the attitude of the voter to the party that supports the candidate; personal sympathy for the candidate; assessments of the candidate’s ability to best solve the problems of the district; the candidate’s chances of winning. At the same time, we did not find evidence of the significance of the factor of the immediate environment approval on the choice of a candidate. In addition, the paper provides evidence of the possible heterogeneity of the influence of established factors in terms of groups with different levels of interest in politics and the frequency of discussion of political issues with relatives. Possible directions of further research of electoral choice factors are offered.
References
Antunes, R. (2010). Theoretical models of voting behaviour. Exedra, 157–163.
Auspurg, K., & Hinz, T. (2015). Factorial Survey Experiments. Qualitative Applications in the Social Sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4135/9781483398075.
Bernhard, R., & Freeder, S. (2018). The More You Know: Voter Heuristics and the Information. Political Behavior, 42(2), 603–623. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-018-9512-2.
Christensen, H., Järvib, T., Mattila, M., & von Schoultz, Å. (2021). How voters choose one out of many: a conjoint analysis of the effects of endorsements on candidate choice. Political Research Exchange, 3(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/2474736X.2021.1892456.
Cutler, F. (2002). The Simplest Shortcut of All: Sociodemographic Characteristics and Electoral Choice. The Journal of Politics, 64(2), 466–490. doi:10.1111/1468-2508.00135.
Downs, A. (1957). An economic theory of democracy. New York: Harper & Row. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Green, D., Palmquist, B., & Schickler, E. (2002). Partisan hearts & minds: political parties and the social identities of voters. New Haven: Yale University Pres.
Ilko Kucheriv Democratic Initiatives Foundation (2012). 2012 elections: for whom and why are voters going to vote in the majority constituencies? Retrieved February 11, 2022 from https://dif.org.ua/article/vibori-2012-za-kogo-i-chomu-zbirayutsya-golosuvati-vibortsi-na-mazhoritarnikh-okrugakh.
KIIS (2019). 100 days after the presidential election: estimates and expectations. Retrieved February 15, 2022 from https://www.kiis.com.ua/?lang=eng&cat=reports&id=889&page=2.
Kohler, U. (2019). Possible Uses of Nonprobability Sampling for the Social Sciences. Survey Methods: Insights from the Field. Retrieved April 15, 2022 from https://surveyinsights.org/?p=10981.
Lazarsfeld, P., Berelson, B., & Gaudet, H. (1960). The People’s Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce.
LimeSurvey (2022). The most popular Free Open Source Software survey tool on the web. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://www.limesurvey.org/.
Lukerya, T. (2019). Construction of a synthesized model for the study of electoral behavior based on the theory of dualism M. Archer. Ukrainian Society, 4 (71), 9–23.
R Core Team (2022). R: A language and environment for statistical computing. R Foundation for Statistical Computing, Vienna, Austria. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://www.R-project.org/.
Rating Group (2019). Assessments of the Electoral Process: Intentions and Motives for Voting, Trust and Sympathy. Retrieved March 10, 2022, from https://ratinggroup.ua/research/ukraine/ocenki_izbiratelnogo_processa_ namereniya_i_motivy_golosovaniya_doverie_i_simpatii.html.
Razumkov Center (2019). Ukraine after the elections: public expectations, political priorities, development prospects. Kyiv: Zapovit, 47–48.
Solt, F., & Hu, Y. (2021). dotwhisker: Dot-and-Whisker Plots of Regression Results. R package version 0.7.4. Retrieved December 10, 2021 from https://CRAN.R-project.org/package=dotwhisker.
Sydorov, M., & Sereda, O. (2019). Factorial Design in LimeSurvey: Approaches of Realization, The 5th Baltic-Nordic Conference on Survey Statistics – BaNoCoSS-2019 – 16th - 20th of June in Örebro, Sweden Retrieved April 05, 2022 from https://www.oru.se/globalassets/oru-sv/institutioner/hh/konferenser/banocoss-2019/abstracts/session-3/mykola-sydorov.pdf.
Sydorov, M., & Dovbnya, V. (2019). Factors of Students Satisfaction of the Educational Process (on the example of the study of Taras Shevchenko National University students). Sociological studios, 1(14), 45–52. https://doi.org/10.29038/2306-3971-2019-01-45-52.
Treischl, E., & Wolbring, T. (2021). The Past, Present and Future of Factorial Survey Experiments: A Review for the Social Sciences. methods, data, analyses, 1–30. https://doi.org/10.12758/mda.2021.07.
Vityuk, N. (2019). Socio-psychological features of electoral choice. Bulletin of the Precarpathian University. Philosophical and Psychological Sciences, 22, 59–67.
Zhvania, T. (2014). Electoral behavior: theoretical approaches to the study. Modern society: political science, 1, 39–49.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2022 Daniil Karakai, Mykola Sydorov, Oleksii Sereda
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
