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Published Articles
Do Voting Advice Applications Change Political Behavior?
Do Voting Advice Applications Change Political Behavior?
joint paper with Christine Benesch, Mark Schelker, and Lukas Schmid. (2023) 85(2) Journal of Politics.
joint paper with Christine Benesch, Mark Schelker, and Lukas Schmid. (2023) 85(2) Journal of Politics.
We analyze how the introduction of the voting advice application smartvote in Switzerland affects voter turnout, voting behavior, and electoral outcomes. The Swiss context offers an ideal setting to identify the causal effects of voting advice applications using real-world aggregate data because smartvote was introduced in different cantons at different points in time. We find that smartvote does not affect turnout but that voters more actively select candidates instead of parties by splitting their ballot. Our findings suggest that no specific party seems to benefit from the change in voting behavior.
Voter Turnout and Selective Abstention in Concurrent Votes
Voter Turnout and Selective Abstention in Concurrent Votes
This paper studies voter turnout and selective abstention on voting days with more than one election or referendum. We extend the rational choice model to a setting with multiple concurrent votes. The model is based on a voter’s net benefit, which includes a vote’s salience and information costs. It explains how the net benefit of different concurrent votes enters a voter’s utility function and thereby affects turnout and selective abstention, the tendency to vote in one but not all votes held on the same day. We test our theoretical predictions using data on concurrent propositions in Switzerland from 1988 to 2016. Our results suggest that the proposition with the highest net benefit and the sum of the net benefits of all concurrent propositions are relevant determinants of the individual turnout decision. We also find that a proposition’s net benefit explains variation in selective abstention.
Working Papers
Information and the Demand for Political Candidates
Information and the Demand for Political Candidates
This paper analyzes how the introduction of the voting advice application (VAA) smartvote affects the representation of women in parliament. I argue that providing more information about political candidates reduces statistical discrimination by decreasing uncertainty and allowing voters to update their beliefs. Switzerland offers an optimal setting to identify the causal effect of voting advice applications as the introduction of smartvote was staggered at the cantonal level. The results show that tailor-made voting recommendations provided by smartvote increase the share of women in parliament as they receive relatively more votes than men. Analyzing the mechanisms reveals that smartvote causes voters to replace male with female candidates on their ballots, which supports the theoretical argument. Further findings show that smartvote does not affect the supply of political candidates.
Information_and_Demand_for_Political_Candidates (9).pdfSimultaneous Elections and Referendums: Who Benefits?
Simultaneous Elections and Referendums: Who Benefits?
The literature has revealed that concurrently holding elections is an effective practice to increase political participation. However, it may also affect electoral outcomes and voting behavior. In this article, I exploit a quasi-experiment from Switzerland in which some cantonal parliamentary elections were held concurrently with referendums at the federal level. Analyzing 368 cantonal parliamentary elections with a proportional representation between 1951 and 2022 shows that holding concurrent referendums increases election turnout by a substantial margin. The magnitude of this effect depends on the difference in turnout rates between the elections and referendums. Further results indicate that voters from the whole political spectrum are equally mobilized and do not rely on the well-known incumbents but on party cues as a decision shortcut. Robustness tests support a causal interpretation of the main results.
Elections_and_Referendums.pdfDirect Democracy and State Government Finances
Direct Democracy and State Government Finances
joint paper with Benedikt Marxer.
joint paper with Benedikt Marxer.
This paper analyzes the causal effect of citizen-initiated ballot measures, defined as initiatives and veto referendums, on state government revenue and expenditure. In the United States, several states have implemented direct democratic institutions at various times. We utilize this staggered adoption setting by leveraging a novel panel dataset spanning from 1890 to 2008. We show that the introduction of citizen-initiated ballot measures negatively affects state revenue and expenditure when using a difference-in-differences design. Significant pre-treatment effects question the causal interpretation of these findings. To overcome these identification issues, we use the novel partially pooled synthetic control method, which constructs a synthetic control group based on the pre-treatment imbalance for each treated state and across all treated units. The results indicate that introducing citizen-initiated ballot measures does not affect state finances. These findings are robust to multiple robustness tests. This research offers new insights into the fiscal implications of citizen-initiated legislation.
3_Direct_Democracy (1).pdfWhat Drives Voter Bias Against Muslim Politicians? An Experimental Examination
What Drives Voter Bias Against Muslim Politicians? An Experimental Examination
joint paper with Henning Finseraas.
joint paper with Henning Finseraas.
We argue that stereotypes about the political beliefs and traits of Muslim candidates place them in a disadvantaged position when running for office. We run experiments to identify important stereotypes about Muslims as politicians, and then run follow-up experiments to examine whether these stereotypes explain unwillingness to vote for them. Our results show that the anti-Muslim bias is strongly influenced by beliefs about Muslim candidates' positions on minority rights issues. The initial anti-Muslim bias is reduced by 50 percent when voters can use policy positions on these issues to select candidates, closing the gap in anti-Muslim bias between left- and right-wing respondents. The anti-Muslim bias is small when voter-candidate ideology aligns, illustrating the importance of political stereotypes. Our findings imply that the anti-Muslim bias will depend on the political information environment.
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