Voter emotional responses and voting behaviour in the 2020 US presidential election

Political polarisation in the United States offers opportunities to explore how beliefs about candidates - that they could save or destroy American society - impact people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviour. Participants forecast their future emotional responses to the contentious 2020 U.S. presidential election, and reported their actual responses after the election outcome. Stronger beliefs about candidates were associated with forecasts of greater emotion in response to the election, but the strength of this relationship differed based on candidate preference. Trump supporters' forecast happiness more strongly related to beliefs that their candidate would save society than for Biden supporters. Biden supporters' forecast anger and fear were more strongly related to beliefs that Trump would destroy society than vice versa. These forecasts mattered: predictions of lower happiness and greater anger if the non-preferred candidate won predicted voting, with Biden supporters voting more than Trump supporters. Generally, participants forecast more emotion than they experienced, but beliefs altered this tendency. Stronger beliefs predicted experiencing more happiness or more anger and fear about the election outcome than had been forecast. These findings have implications for understanding the mechanisms through which political polarisation and rhetoric can influence voting behaviour.

The socio-psychological factors affecting the voting behaviour of the postgraduate politics students: a Q-methodology study

This study aims to answer the question "Are voting behaviours of postgraduate students, a voter group who are politically educated and well-informed about voting behaviours, affected by socio-psychological factors?." In particular, if so, it also aims to reveal which socio-psychological factors affect their voting behaviours. The Q-methodology is utilised in this study. The main reason for this methodological preference is that the Q-methodology is a good tool for systematically identifying and examining a particular group's subjective views that are held around the factors shaping and affecting their voting behaviours by providing factor loadings. Factor loadings, or the cluster of participants, allow us better to illustrate each participant's association with each of the identified socio-psychological or otherwise factors, similar or different orders of ranking by the participants, to detect individual differences, and, therefore, to indicate (1) whether the socio-psychological factors affect the voting behaviours of the participants, and (2) if so, which socio-psychological factor(s) affects most. This also helps us to conclude that the participants who are mostly associated with one or more factors have similar voting behaviours corresponding to or in opposition to the assumptions of the socio-psychological approach. The participants of the research are 57 postgraduate students studying Political Science and Public Administration at Akdeniz University. The results of the research indicate that most of the participants cluster around two separate factors: while the participants gathered under Factor 1 take their political decisions more rationally and are ready to vote for alternative candidates and political parties in different elections, those who load under Factor 2 are affected by some socio-psychological factors: loyalty to her family's (the family factor) and inner circles' political preferences (the inner circle factor), and a long-term commitment and an emotional attachment to a political party and/or the candidate (the time factor). The voting behaviours of the participants gathered under no factors are, however, affected by relatively mixed factors. In addition, it is also revealed that the titles that most differentiate the preferences of the participants cluster around both Factors 1 and 2 are family, education, and rationality.

Would I lie to you? Party affiliation is more important than Brexit in processing political misinformation

In recent years, the UK has become divided along two key dimensions: party affiliation and Brexit position. We explored how division along these two dimensions interacts with the correction of political misinformation. Participants saw accurate and inaccurate statements (either balanced or mostly inaccurate) from two politicians from opposing parties but the same Brexit position (Experiment 1), or the same party but opposing Brexit positions (Experiment 2). Replicating previous work, fact-checking statements led participants to update their beliefs, increasing belief after fact affirmations and decreasing belief for corrected misinformation, even for politically aligned material. After receiving fact-checks participants had reduced voting intentions and more negative feelings towards party-aligned politicians (likely due to low baseline support for opposing party politicians). For Brexit alignment, the opposite was found: participants reduced their voting intentions and feelings for opposing (but not aligned) politicians following the fact-checks. These changes occurred regardless of the proportion of inaccurate statements, potentially indicating participants expect politicians to be accurate more than half the time. Finally, although we found division based on both party and Brexit alignment, effects were much stronger for party alignment, highlighting that even though new divisions have emerged in UK politics, the old divides remain dominant.

Stability and change in the organisation of collective memory representations

In this study, we investigated the impact of a highly consequential public event, the July 15 Coup Attempt, on the structure and organisation of events in Turkish collective memory. To do this, we followed up on our earlier work (Mutlutürk, Tekcan, & Boduroglu, 2021) that used the multidimensional scaling approach to identify critical dimensions in public event representational space. Participants rated the similarity of 15 key public events in a pairwise fashion, across three waves of data collection. They were also asked to report for which political party they had voted in the most recent election. We replicated our earlier results that public events were distinguished based on their political and nonpolitical characteristics; political events were clustered based on their specific attributes. Despite substantial stability in the organisation of collective memories across three time points, the post-coup representational space among voters of the ruling party changed, eliminating clusters within the political dimension and resulting in the ruling party achieving a central and anchor status. These findings suggest that, transformative events may have the potential to impact the structure and organisation of collective memory representations and sociopolitical identity may have to do with the stability of collective memories.

Voter preferences as a source of descriptive (mis)representation by social class

This paper presents the results of a conjoint survey experiment in which Swiss citizens were asked to choose among parliamentary candidates with different class profiles determined by occupation, education and income. Existing survey-experimental literature on this topic suggests that respondents are indifferent to the class profiles of candidates or biased against candidates with high-status occupations and high incomes. We find that respondents are biased against upper middle-class candidates as well as routine working-class candidates. While the bias against upper middle-class candidates is primarily a bias among working-class individuals, the bias against routine working-class candidates is most pronounced among middle-class individuals. Our supplementary analysis of observational data confirms the bias against routine working-class candidates, but not the bias against upper middle-class candidates.

The politics of ageing and retirement: Evidence from Swiss referenda

Ageing threatens the financial sustainability of pay-as-you-go pension systems, since it increases the share of retirees to workers. An often-advocated policy response is to increase retirement age. Ironically, however, the political support for this policy may actually be hindered by population ageing. Using Swiss administrative voting data at municipal level from pension reform referenda (and individual survey data), we show in fact that individuals close to retirement tend to oppose policies that postpone retirement, whereas younger and older individuals are more favourable. The current process of population ageing and the associated increase in the size of the cohort of individuals close to retirement may partially explain why a pension reform that increased retirement age for women was approved in two referenda in 1995 and 1998, while a reform that proposed a similar increase in women's retirement age was defeated in a 2017 referendum.

The evolution of cleavage voting in four Western countries: Structural, behavioural or political dealignment?

Since the heyday of cleavage voting in the 1960s and 1970s, the majority of studies presents evidence of a decline in cleavage voting - caused by either structural or behavioural dealignment. Structural dealignment denotes changes in group size responsible for a decrease in cleavage voting, whereas behavioural dealignment concerns weakening party-voter links over time. A third phenomenon posited in this article is the collective voting abstention of certain (social) groups, here referred to as 'political dealignment', which results in a new type of division of voting versus abstention. The purpose of this article is to examine the three underlying mechanisms for the decline in social class and religious cleavage voting across four Western countries (Great Britain, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States) over the last 40-60 years using longitudinal post-election data. The results prove a strong presence of political dealignment and increasing turnout gaps regarding both the class and religious cleavage. Furthermore, whenever a decline in cleavage voting is present, it is mainly caused by changes in the social groups' behaviour and less by changing social structures in a country.

Does truth matter to voters? The effects of correcting political misinformation in an Australian sample

In the 'post-truth era', political fact-checking has become an issue of considerable significance. A recent study in the context of the 2016 US election found that fact-checks of statements by Donald Trump changed participants' beliefs about those statements-regardless of whether participants supported Trump-but not their feelings towards Trump or voting intentions. However, the study balanced corrections of inaccurate statements with an equal number of affirmations of accurate statements. Therefore, the null effect of fact-checks on participants' voting intentions and feelings may have arisen because of this artificially created balance. Moreover, Trump's statements were not contrasted with statements from an opposing politician, and Trump's perceived veracity was not measured. The present study (N = 370) examined the issue further, manipulating the ratio of corrections to affirmations, and using Australian politicians (and Australian participants) from both sides of the political spectrum. We hypothesized that fact-checks would correct beliefs and that fact-checks would affect voters' support (i.e. voting intentions, feelings and perceptions of veracity), but only when corrections outnumbered affirmations. Both hypotheses were supported, suggesting that a politician's veracity does sometimes matter to voters. The effects of fact-checking were similar on both sides of the political spectrum, suggesting little motivated reasoning in the processing of fact-checks.

Immigration, political trust, and Brexit - Testing an aversion amplification hypothesis

A few weeks prior to the EU referendum (23rd June 2016) two broadly representative samples of the electorate were drawn in Kent (the south-east of England, N = 1,001) and Scotland (N = 1,088) for online surveys that measured their trust in politicians, concerns about acceptable levels of immigration, threat from immigration, European identification, and voting intention. We tested an aversion amplification hypothesis that the impact of immigration concerns on threat and identification would be amplified when political trust was low. We hypothesized that the effect of aversion amplification on voting intentions would be mediated first by perceived threat from immigration, and then by (dis) identification with Europe. Results in both samples were consistent with this hypothesis and suggest that voters were most likely to reject the political status quo (choose Brexit) when concerns that immigration levels were too high were combined with a low level of trust in politicians.

Quantum generalized observables framework for psychological data: a case of preference reversals in US elections

Politics is regarded as a vital area of public choice theory, and it is strongly relying on the assumptions of voters' rationality and as such, stability of preferences. However, recent opinion polls and real election outcomes in the USA have shown that voters often engage in 'ticket splitting', by exhibiting contrasting party support in Congressional and Presidential elections (cf. Khrennikova 2014 Phys. ScriptaT163, 014010 (doi:10.1088/0031-8949/2014/T163/014010); Khrennikova & Haven 2016 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A374, 20150106 (doi:10.1098/rsta.2015.0106); Smith et al. 1999 Am. J. Polit. Sci.43, 737-764 (doi:10.2307/2991833)). Such types of preference reversals cannot be mathematically captured via the formula of total probability, thus showing that voters' decision making is at variance with the classical probabilistic information processing framework. In recent work, we have shown that quantum probability describes well the violation of Bayesian rationality in statistical data of voting in US elections, through the so-called interference effects of probability amplitudes. This paper is proposing a novel generalized observables framework of voting behaviour, by using the statistical data collected and analysed in previous studies by Khrennikova (Khrennikova 2015 Lect. Notes Comput. Sci.8951, 196-209) and Khrennikova & Haven (Khrennikova & Haven 2016 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A374, 20150106 (doi:10.1098/rsta.2015.0106)). This framework aims to overcome the main problems associated with the quantum probabilistic representation of psychological data, namely the non-double stochasticity of transition probability matrices. We develop a simplified construction of generalized positive operator valued measures by formulating special non-orthonormal bases with respect to these operators.This article is part of the themed issue 'Second quantum revolution: foundational questions'.

Health at the ballot box: disease threat does not predict attractiveness preference in British politicians

According to disease avoidance theory, selective pressures have shaped adaptive behaviours to avoid people who might transmit infections. Such behavioural immune defence strategies may have social and societal consequences. Attractiveness is perceived as a heuristic cue of good health, and the relative importance of attractiveness is predicted to increase during high disease threat. Here, we investigated whether politicians' attractiveness is more important for electoral success when disease threat is high, in an effort to replicate earlier findings from the USA. We performed a cross-sectional study of 484 members of the House of Commons from England and Wales. Publicly available sexiness ratings (median 5883 ratings/politician) were regressed on measures of disease burden, operationalized as infant mortality, life expectancy and self-rated health. Infant mortality in parliamentary constituencies did not significantly predict sexiness of elected members of parliament (p = 0.08), nor did life expectancy (p = 0.06), nor self-rated health (p = 0.55). Subsample analyses failed to provide further support for the hypothesis. In conclusion, an attractive leader effect was not amplified by disease threat in the UK and these results did not replicate those of earlier studies from the USA concerning the relationship between attractiveness, disease threat and voting preference.

When votes depend on who's listening: Voters' intragroup status and voting procedure predict representative endorsement in intergroup contexts

Three experiments investigated whether the selection of a representative in intergroup interdependence settings can reflect group members' strategic behaviour. We tested the impact of an individual's intragroup status (normative vs. pro-out-group deviant, Experiments 1-3) and of voting procedure (Experiments 2 and 3) on the choice of an in-group representative. Experiment 1 shows that normative members prefer normative representatives, whereas pro-out-group deviant members equally like normative and pro-out-group deviant representatives. Experiment 2 extends these results and shows that voting procedure (private vs. in-group audience) moderates this effect. Pro-out-group deviant members' preferences and behaviours appear more strategic and context-sensitive than normative ones. Specifically, pro-out-group deviants vote more for normative representatives than for pro-out-group deviants when facing an in-group audience, whereas the reverse pattern emerges in private. Experiment 3 shows that this moderation effect is specific to in-group audiences compared to out-group ones, reinforcing the idea that normative members 'stick to their guns'. Implications of these findings for leader endorsement and intergroup relations are discussed.