Swiss Political Science Association, Annual Meeting
Geneva, January 2010
Explaining correct voting in Swiss direct democracy
Alessandro Nai
University of Geneva
Abstract
The quality of a political system, and especially a direct-democratic one, lies in the quality of
the decisions citizens take. As some authors argue, this can be measured through the overall
presence of "correct voting", namely the fact that even uninformed citizens can mimic the
choice of political experts (Lupia 1994; Lau and Redlawsk 1997 and 2006).
A growing body of researches tries to identify and explain the presence of correct voting
(Holbrook and McClurg 2006; Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk 2008; McClurg and Sokhey
2008). These researches have essentially concentrated on electoral issues rather than on the
decisions taken by citizens on ballot propositions (Hobolt 2007 being the only exception we
know of). The aim of the present paper is consequently to propose a multilevel model capable
of explaining the presence of correct voting in direct-democratic choices. Built on Swiss data
on federal ballots (VOX data, 1999-2005), our model will investigate the simultaneous effects
on correct voting of individual characteristics (mainly political sophistication), cognitive
strategies activated by citizens (the use of different heuristics), and contextual factors
(intensity of the campaign, priming, justification of arguments, negative campaigning, and
complexity of the project voted). As our results show, a higher quality of the decision is
produced by explanatory factors from different levels. Our paper thus opens up new venues
for studying political behaviour by showing that analyses of correct voting should not be
limited to electoral issues, and by providing empirical analyses able to grasp the theoretical
complexity behind the emergence of more accurate decisions.
Introduction1
Citizens often lack of political sophistication. They are not motivated, they do not possess the
basic knowledge needed to take a competent decision, and often make no serious effort to
compensate the lack of information they suffer. In brief, they are ill equipped for the political
tasks (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1993 and 1996; Zaller 1992; Alvarez & Brehm 2002).
This being, citizens may know how to drive even without knowing how an engine is made
(Bowler and Donovan 1998). In order to overcome their difficulties, some citizens rely on
1
A previous version of this paper has been prepared for the annual meetings of the American Political
Science Association (APSA, September 2009) and the World Association For Public Opinion Research
(WAPOR, September 2009).
1
cognitive shortcuts, which provide them "dependable answers even to complex problems"
(Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock 1991: 19). The widespread literature on the use of such
heuristics has however often little to say on what a "dependable answer" is.
Some authors argue that the quality of a decision may be measured through the capacity to
mimic the behaviour of political experts (Lupia 1994; Lau and Redlawsk 1997; 2006;
Holbrook and McClurg 2006; Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk 2008; McClurg and Sokhey
2008; Christin, Hug and Sciarini 2002). Almost all literature on "correct voting" is however as
of today focussed on electoral issues, rather than on direct democratic decisions (Hobolt 2007
being a notable exception). We aim to compensate this lack. We will investigate the presence
of correct voting in Swiss direct democracy, and try to determine under which conditions this
is more likely to happen.
Switzerland is an excellent laboratory for the study of direct democracy. First, in a mere
quantitative way, a huge part of the popular votes held around the world take place there
(Butler and Ranney 1994; Trechsel and Sciarini 1998). This creates a huge amount of data
that can quite easily be used for our purposes. Second, Swiss direct democracy allow citizens
to express themselves on a wide range of different topics, from international relations to fiscal
policies (Trechsel and Sciarini 1998). Third, which is the most important, direct democracy in
Switzerland has a very important and defining role for the whole political system. As Kobach
states, "Switzerland is the only nation in the world where political life truly revolves around
the referendum" (Kobach 1994: 98). The institutions of direct democracy – popular initiative,
optional and mandatory referenda – introduce a healthy uncertainty into the political process
(Ossipow 1994), and they bound the control of the elites on the political processes in a
twofold way (Trechsel and Sciarini 1998: 101 ff.): first, they create a new arena for direct
intervention by the electorate in some major decisions; second, they force the elites to
moderate hey propositions, since they can quite easily be attacked from the bottom (following
the famed Neidhart's hypothesis; Neidhart 1970). In such a context, where the place of
ordinary citizens is at the core of the political system, it is clear that an analysis of the quality
of their decision demands some special attention. Our paper constitutes a premiere with Swiss
data. No previous research exists for the presence of correct voting for Swiss citizens, even if
their cognitive behaviour has been studied quite extensively (e.g. Marquis and Gilland Lutz
2004; Kriesi 2005; Marquis 2006; Nai and Lloren 2009).
2
Following what has been done for American electors elsewhere (Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk
2008), we will look simultaneously at individual and contextual determinants of correct
voting. At the individual level we will give special attention to the level of sophistication and
to the activation of cognitive heuristics (and especially partisanship). Citizens however do not
form their opinion on their own, and even less without being subjected to a series of external
influences. Political campaigns are an important source of information during opinion
formation, and their influence is today highly studied (e.g. Holbrook 1996; Bowler and
Donovan 1998; Schmitt-Beck and Farrel 2002; De Vreese and Semetko 2004; Lau and
Redlawsk 2006). For this, we will investigate whether the quantitative presence of campaigns
and the quality of their content can help us to understand the presence of correct voting.
We will first discuss some theoretical implications on how to efficiently measure correct
voting; we shall propose an alternative way to determine who the "more informed" citizens
are, those for which the behaviour is mirrored. Instead of simply looking at the quantity of
factual knowledge detained, we will consider the actual decisional capacity of citizens
(Kuklinski and Quirk 2001). We will assume that a citizen who forms its opinion through a
systematic treatment of information (Eagly and Chaiken 1993) can be seen as a particularly
capable one. After a short methodological chapter, we will investigate under which conditions
this is more likely to happen.
Correct voting?
The main point, before looking at its determinants, is of course how to measure the
"correctness" of the decision taken by citizens. One way to determine whether or not a
decision is good is to impose external criteria. With this approach, the researcher decides that,
in a given situation, some citizens should vote in a specific way in order to cast a "good vote".
Such a solution is easy to execute, and has the advantage of being relatively clear. However,
on the other hand, it faces a strong risk of subjectivity and bias. In fact, "in labeling judgments
as 'good', 'sound', or 'competent', the difficulty is to find criteria independent of the decisionmaking process. […] Unfortunately, as in any other public-opinion research, standards of
quality turn on values, debatable facts, or both. In general, we can discriminate between better
and worse political opinions only by positing normative criteria, which are in all cases open to
criticism" (Kuklinski and Quirk 2000: 157). Therefore, a definition on what a correct decision
is should be based "on the values and beliefs of the individual voter, not on any particular
ideology that presumes the values and preferences which ought to be held by members of
3
different social classes, for instance, and not on any larger social goods or universal values"
(Lau and Redlawsk 1997: 586).
Every decision, if taken freely, is legitimate (Downs 1957); in a democratic system that
allows free and independent reasoning, each choice is as good as all the others. However, as
some authors state, decisions may still be seen as having a higher or lower quality: a choice
could be qualified as "incorrect" if it would be different when taken under better conditions.
In order to take the decision that is more likely to correspond to our political profile, we need
to know the more we can on the subject at stake. If we desire to elect the candidate who better
defends the issues we care for, we have to know his political profile and those of its
adversaries. If we are asked to support or reject a ballot proposition, we should at least know
what are the consequences of an approval or refusal for us, or the country. However, as we
know, incomplete information is a quite common situation when facing a decision. If one
could demonstrate that a choice taken under incomplete information would not be the same
with full information on the subject, then that first choice may be seen as incorrect. On the
other side, if there is consistency between the choice made and the optimal one, the citizen
could be seen as having cast a correct vote. Therefore, "correct voting refers to the likelihood
that citizens, under conditions of incomplete information, nonetheless vote for the candidate
or party they would have voted for had they had full information about those same candidates
and/or parties" (Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk 2008: 396). Such citizens are able to mimic the
behaviour of the more informed ones, and cast a vote that is similar as the one they would
have taken if they were more informed. Following such "as-if" premise, a growing body of
researches tries nowadays to evaluate the quality of the decision taken by citizens, as well as
its determinants (Lau and Redlawsk 1997 and 2006; Holbrook and McClurg 2006; Lau,
Andersen and Redlawsk 2008; McClurg and Sokhey 2008). This has however not be done
systematically, as of today, for direct-democratic situations.
What determines correct voting? Some expectations
Political behaviour has historically been studied by looking primarily at its individual
determinants. Early researches on vote and participation showed that individuals are strongly
influenced by their political predispositions, as well as their level of sophistication. More
recently, literature on political behaviour has begun to understand that contextual
determinants also play a key role (e.g. Kuklinski et al. 2001; Kriesi 2005; Keele and Wolak
2008). Citizens do not exist in a conceptual void, and it seems nowadays simplistic to think
4
that what is around them does not influence their decision. Following what has been recently
done by Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk (2008), we believe therefore that correct voting is
strongly affected by individual and contextual determinants simultaneously.
At the individual level, we expect political sophistication to play a key role on a correct
decision. Sophistication has often been shown as a strong determinant of political behaviour,
in what it enhances a higher attention and more generally a more efficient opinion formation
(Zaller 1992; Delli Carpini and Keeter 1996; Alvarez and Brehm 2002). Furthermore,
political sophistication triggers a higher cognitive engagement through the activation of a
systematic behaviour (Kam 2005; Kriesi 2005; Nai et Lloren 2009).
For this, we believe that among citizens who did not take their decision in an optimal way (i.e
citizens that did not activate any systematic reasoning), the more sophisticated ones are the
more likely to imitate the decision of those with a higher cognitive engagement; when this
condition is missing, citizens cannot make a correct choice. Results found in Lau, Andersen
and Redlawsk (2008) confirm this expectation for American electors. We have therefore:
H1: correct voting is enhanced by higher political sophistication.
Furthermore, we could expect that those citizens who at least try to compensate their lack of
cognitive engagement (by activating cognitive shortcuts) may know a higher level of correct
voting. Following Sniderman, Brody and Tetlock (1991: 19) "insofar as [heuristics] can be
brought into play, people can be knowledgeable in their reasoning about political choices
without necessarily possessing a large body of knowledge about politics". The motivation to
activate an heuristic reasoning could be seen as an incentive to mimic the behavior of the
more sophisticated citizens (which signals a correct vote). Following what has been found
recently for the American voters (Lau and Redlawsk 2001; 2006; Lau, Andersen and
Redlawsk 2008), this seems to be especially true for the more sophisticated ones. We may
expect therefore that "the advantages of heuristics use to disproportionately advantage experts
– those least in need of cognitive shortcuts" (Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk 2008: 398).
Following some major works in the field, we shall concentrate on referential shortcuts. These
shortcuts allow forming an opinion through cues from the political elite (Sniderman, Brody
and Tetlock 1991; Bowler and Donovan 1998; Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Lau and
Redlawsk 2001; Kam 2005). Those shortcuts presuppose that citizens are at least capable of
5
adapting their behaviour as a function of the cues received during opinion formation.
Therefore:
H2: correct voting is enhanced when cognitive shortcuts are activated, and especially for
those citizens with higher sophistication.
At the contextual level, we shall focus on the political campaign before the ballot. As others
before us, we believe that political campaigns strongly affect the opinion formation processes
of individuals. More intense campaigns activate the interest of citizens on the topics, motivate
their participation, and enhance their attention (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Bowler and
Donovan 1998; Norris 2002; Valentino et al. 2001; De Vreese and Semetko 2004; Lau and
Redlawsk 2006; Wolak 2009). Therefore, "to the extent that campaigning translates into the
greater availability of (or ease of obtaining) information […, one can expect] campaign
intensity to be positively related to correct voting" (Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk 2008: 398).
In addition of their intensity, four other dimensions of political campaigns will be retained in
our analyses: the priming power of the arguments in the campaign, their variety and
justification level, and the overall level of negative campaigning. These four additional
dimensions measure the quality of the campaign, whereas the intensity measures its
quantitative presence.
First, the priming of a campaign measures the way the arguments in the debate are retained by
citizens while taking their decision (Jacobs and Shapiro 1994; Kinder 1998; Iyengar and
Simon 1993; Druckman 2004). A strong priming signals that campaign arguments strongly
influence the motivations that are behind citizens' choices (Iyengar and Simon 1993: 368). We
believe that a campaign with a higher priming is more likely to enhance correct voting, to the
extent that stronger arguments will push even unsophisticated citizens to take the better
decision they can. The relative presence of different arguments will simply measure their
variety; we anticipate that a higher variety signals a higher quality of the debate, which may
enhance the presence of correct voting.
Thirdly, a debate may be more or less rich; independently of the absolute presence of
information (intensity) or the persuasive power of the arguments (priming), a campaign may
be built on arguments that are more or less robust (Steiner et al. 2004). We believe that
arguments with a higher justification level, i.e. arguments whose contribution to the author's
position is straightforward, may open the gate for a better behaviour.
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Fourth, an aggressive debate has been shown to decrease turnout (demobilizing effect; see
Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Ansolabehere et al. 1994), to amplify political cynicism
(Valentino et al. 2001; De Vreese and Semetko 2002), and to globally increase the gap
between population and the political elite (Lau et al. 1999). We anticipate a very similar effect
on correct voting: we believe that a debate particularly rich in attacks (i.e. a debate with a high
level of negative campaigning) may undermine the efforts necessary for non-systematic
voters to mimic the behavior of the more engaged ones.
Priming, justification, variety and negative campaign measure the quality of the information
provided to citizens during opinion formation. They are anticipated to increase the likelihood
of correct voting. We will also see whether differences in the complexity of the task may
affect correct voting. Swiss citizens are asked to form an opinion on a wide range of projects,
which vary highly in terms of the complexity of their content (Caramani 1993; Wälti 1993;
Kriesi 2005). As Lau et al. point out, "objectively easier tasks generally result in more highquality decisions than more difficult tasks" (2008: 397). We also believe that more complex
projects will produce higher difficulties for citizens, which will decrease the likelihood that
those latter vote correctly. We have therefore:
H3: correct voting is enhanced by intense campaigns, high priming, high variety of arguments
and high justification. It diminishes with higher negative campaigning and higher complexity
of the topic.
How to measure correct voting
Some decisions can be qualified as correct even if taken under incomplete information. Some
citizens are able to mimic the behaviour of the more informed ones, and cast a vote that is
similar to the one they would have taken under better conditions. By definition, they cast a
"correct vote".
In order to measure the presence of correct voting, we have beforehand to discriminate the
citizens with regards to the quantity/quality of information they possess. The proxy group
(well-informed proxy group; Kuklinski and Quirk 2001: 296), mirrored by the less
sophisticated citizens, should be built on two premises: "First, the members should have
values and interests similar to those of the focal group – ideally, the identical values and
interests. Second, they should make, in some serious sense, well-informed and capable
decisions on the issue at hand. The more informed and capable the proxy group is, the more
rigorous is the resulting criterion" (Kuklinski and Quirk 2001: 302).
7
We shall develop later the way we measure the similarity of interests and values among the
proxy and the focal group. First, we wish to discuss the way to determine who the more
informed and/or capable citizens are. Usually, this is quite simply done by looking at the
quantity of information about an issue (or a candidate) a person is able to put forward. The
higher the factual knowledge on the issue (candidate, political program, ballot proposition,
etc.), the higher the likelihood that the person is part of the proxy group. Following Kuklinski
and Quirk (2001), this raises some major concerns. First, building the proxy group in a
coherent way presupposes a strict definition of what a good knowledge on the issue is. Even
admitting this as an easy task, the problem lies in that the explicit link between factual
knowledge and attention on the issue (which produces a citizen that is really informed) is not
straightforward. In other terms, having some knowledge on a subject does not allow to decide,
at the end, if that person is really informed or not. For this, basing the construction of the
proxy group on the level of factual knowledge on the issue, as for example done by Lupia
(1994), is at best perilous (Kuklinsk and Quirk 2001: 303). Secondly, selecting the reference
group solely on the level of information is also theoretically problematic. By looking only at
the level of factual information detained, other individual characteristics that may play a key
role on opinion formation may be underestimated. More informed citizens "might differ from
others in a variety of relevant ways. Some of the differences – in income, education, and
political ideology, for example – are likely to be measured and thus can be taken into account
statistically at the individual level. But other difference, for example, in cultural values or
cognitive styles, usually will not be measured. If these unmeasured differences have important
effects on preferences, they would tend to confound comparisons between the two groups"
(Kuklinski and Quirk 2001: 302).
Following the definition given by Kuklinski and Quirk, the reference group should be
composed of sophisticated citizens, able to take decisions in an informed and capable way.
The literature on correct voting seems mainly focussed on the first dimension. Previous
researches of Lupia (1994), Lau and Redlawsk (1997, 2006), and other scholars on correct
voting build the reference group by looking, in a way or another, at the level of factual
knowledge. In order to avoid the two problems put forward before, we propose here to shift
the focus toward the second dimension of sophistication in Kuklinski and Quirk's definition:
the level of decisional ability. In order to measure whether or not a citizen is able to take a
decision in a capable way, we will look at his level of cognitive engagement during the
8
opinion formation. This will be done by establish which cognitive strategy he activated during
such process.
The use of different cognitive strategies when facing a decision has extensively been shown in
empirical research on neurosciences (Epstein 1994; Stanovich and West 2000; Evans 2003).
Following Stanovich and West (2000), individuals take decisions following System1 or
System 2 processes. System 1 is characterized as automatic, unconscious, and undemanding
of computational capacities. Inversely, System 2 signals a controlled and demanding
processing of information (Stanovich and West 2000: 658-659). Some major models
developed in cognitive psychology support the existence of two different mental paths.
Researches by Shelley Chaiken and colleagues put forward a dual model of opinion
formation, the Heuristic-Systematic Model (HSM), which shapes each decision as a
fluctuation between two cognitive strategies: heuristic and systematic process of decisiontaking (Chaiken 1980; Eagly and Chaiken 1993).
Heuristics are judgemental shortcuts that help citizens to take their decision without requiring
a large amount of sophistication or information. By contrast, citizens can also choose to
activate a systematic reasoning, which can be seen as a "controlled processing of information"
(Stanovich and West 2000: 658-659). More precisely, a systematic processing is an analytic
orientation to information processing in which individuals access and scrutinize a great
amount of information on its relevance to their judgemental task (Eagly and Chaiken 1993:
326). Systematic citizens engage in demanding mental efforts, through voluntary and robust
decrypting of information and arguments where "all things are considered" (Barker and
Hansen 2005).
In short, systematic treatment represents the highest level of cognitive engagement. We
assume here that a citizen who forms its opinion by activating such strategy can be seen as a
particularly capable one. For this, we will build our reference group not by looking at the
level of factual knowledge hold by citizens, but instead by simply ascertain those who have
built their opinion through systematic reasoning. We shall therefore consider that correct
voting exists when a citizen who has not activated a systematic reasoning takes the very same
decision than those who had a higher cognitive engagement during opinion formation.
Of course, both groups (focus and proxy) have to share the same values and political
preferences (Kuklinski and Quirk 2001: 302). When dealing with electoral situations, this is
9
quite easily done by looking the positioning of the citizen toward a series of issues (e.g.
immigration, energy policies, affirmative action, and so on), and at the positioning of the
candidates on those very same issues (see Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk 2008). In our case
this is simply not possible, since we deal with ballot propositions and not electoral issues. The
better solution we have to make sure that both the focus and the proxy group share the same
values is to look at the ideological position of the respondents (simply done through the selfpositioning on the left-right scale). Therefore, correct voting exists when a citizen who has not
activated a systematic reasoning takes the same decision than those who had a higher
cognitive engagement during opinion formation, by holding constant the ideological position
of citizens in both groups.
Our data show that for Swiss ballots (at the federal level, between 1999 and 2005) about 21%
of non-systematic citizens voted correctly2, which is below the levels found elsewhere for
American electors (Lau and Redlawsk 1997 and 2006; Lau, Andersen and Redlawsk 2008;
McClurg and Sokhey 2008). We observe furthermore huge differences among different
projects; the level of correct voting varies between a minimum of 0% for several projects and
a maximum of 68.7%. After some methodological considerations, we will try to determine
what may induce its presence.
Data and methods
Empirical analyses are based on data coming from surveys made after federal ballots between
1999 and 2005 (VOX data; N = 77'7663). In Switzerland, often several projects are submitted
conjointly in a ballot; our period covers 23 federal ballots, in which 75 different projects were
submitted. After each ballot, a random three-stage sample of about 1000 individuals was
constructed. All individual factors are directly or indirectly measured through the VOX data;
contextual factors are drawn from a content analysis of the political ads fond in the press
before the vote.
Two dimensions of political sophistication are analyzed here: the level of factual knowledge
on the issues related to the ballot and the level of political motivation. Factual knowledge is
measured through two ballot-related questions, one asking to retrieve the exact title of the
2
3
Calculated among non-systematic citizens having participated in the ballot, and only when at least 60% of
the proxy group voted consensually (N=28'920).
Analyses done only for those citizens who declared having participated.
10
project submitted, and the other to briefly explain its content. To each exact answer one point
is attributed; this produces a 0-2 variable where 2 points signal the highest knowledge.
Political motivation is deducted from a question asking whether citizens are in general
interested in politics; those who declare having a strong interest in politics are the more
motivated ones.
The use of referential strategies is deducted indirectly, since no direct measure of the
cognitive behaviour exists in VOX data. A vote identical to the instruction provided by the
closest party signals a partisan heuristic, while a vote identical to the government's instruction
signals a trust heuristic when trust in government is high. McClurg ans Sokhey (2008)
compute the use of partisan heuristic in a similar way.
At the contextual level, the five dimensions of the political campaign before the vote intensity, priming, justification, variety and negative campaigning - are measured through a
content analysis of political ads found in the press before the vote. Political ads provide voting
instructions, and are financed by institutional or independent political actors. For the whole
1999-2005 period, we scrutinized six major journals of the Swiss deliberative space4. Every
political ad published in the month before the vote was retained; we collected about 7200
different ads. We found a sufficiently high number of ads5 for about only the half of the
projects (34 on the overall 756); where only a few ads were found, indicators were not
considered as robust.
Intensity of the campaign is measured through the overall size of the ads found in the press for
a specific object multiplied by their number. The higher the score, the higher the intensity. A
similar procedure has been done elsewhere (Kriesi, Sciarini and Marquis 2000; Kriesi 2005:
40 sgg.; Marquis 2006: 403 sgg.). A simplified ordinal variable (very low, low, high, very
high intensity) is built on the quartiles of the original continuous variable.
Priming of the arguments is retraced by confronting the main arguments7 found in the ads for
a specific object (and vote direction) with the aggregate spontaneous vote motivations given
4
5
6
7
Tribune de Genève, Le Temps (French), Neue-Zürcher Zeitung, Tages-Anzeiger (German), Regione,
Giornale del Popolo (Italian). Those journals cover a high amount of the information provided by journals,
and cover the main ideological orientations of the Swiss press.
At least 4 ads during the 4 weeks preceding the vote in at least 2 linguistic regions (for both directions of the
campaign) were considered as sufficient.
Among those 34 projects, one had to be also excluded since no measure of correct voting was possible
(missing data on key variables). Analyses for the contextual level will be carried on 33 cases.
Following Petty and Priester (1994; in Marquis 2006: 466), and argument is an information that says
something on the validity of the decision. In other terms, an argument is an explicit reason that supports the
vote instruction provided in the ad. Several arguments may be contained in every single ad.
11
by citizens in VOX surveys. If a high correlation exists between the arguments and the
spontaneous motivations, the priming has been high. In order to facilitate the comparison, the
classification of arguments found in the press is made backwards, starting from the
classification of the spontaneous vote motivations in the VOX data (Marquis 2006: 467;
Kriesi, Sciarini and Marquis 2000: 12). Correlation is measured by looking at the absolute
number of principal arguments both distributions have in common.
Variety of arguments looks at the absolute number of different arguments developed in each
campaign.
The level of justification of the arguments is measured following what proposed by Steiner et
al. (2004) for parliamentary debates. Their main idea is that "the tighter the connection
between premises and conclusions the more coherent the justification is" (Steiner et al. 2004:
21). They recognize four levels of justification (2004 : 57 ff. and 171-173): absent (no
justification provided by the author of the ad), inferior (there is a justification, but the
inference between the reason and the vote recommendation is not explicit), qualified (explicit
link between justification and recommendation; full inference), and sophisticated (two or
more qualified justifications present in the ad). During content analysis, we attributed to each
ad a value on a 0-3 scale (3 signals the presence of sophisticated justification, 0 the absence of
any justification, and so on); for each campaign, the value of justification is simply the mean
value on this scale for each ad; the higher, the stronger the justification level of the campaign.
Negative campaigning is measured by attributing one point to each ad that contains one or
more explicit attacks toward the political adversaries. The value for each campaign is simply
the percentage of ads containing those attacks.
Complexity of the project is computed by looking, for each project, at the part of citizens
declaring having had difficulties during the opinion formation. The higher that part, the more
complex the project had to be (Kriesi 2005). Coan et al. (2008) compute their measure of
complexity in a quite similar way. Such procedure measures the perceived complexity of the
project; this allows us to avoid any bias in establishing it through external estimations8.
Correct voting exists by our definition when a citizen who has not activated a systematic
reasoning takes the same decision than those who had a higher cognitive engagement (both
groups sharing the same values). In order to see whether or not a citizen has activated a
systematic reasoning, we need to ascertain 1) if he was able to treat a high amount of
8
For example by asking at some political experts to class the projects from the easiest to the more complex,
as done elsewhere (Kriesi 2003).
12
information, and 2) if he was able to assimilate the arguments present in the information
treated.
In our data, a question asks the respondents about the intensity of the information search
during opinion formation. Second, in our data respondents were asked to position themselves
on a battery of arguments related to the political campaign before the ballot. We believe that
those citizens who have a strong positioning toward those arguments have been more able to
comprehend and assimilate them, which is an indicator of systematic behaviour.
By combining those two dimensions, we considered that a systematic strategy was activated
when the citizen had consulted a higher amount of information and was able to strongly
position himself toward the main arguments in the campaign9. In the integrated dataset
covering all Swiss ballots between 1999 and 2005, 24.3% of citizens used systematic
reasoning.
We created 3 categories of ideological positioning (left, right, centre) starting from the selfpositioning of respondents on a 10 points left-right scale. For each category, the choice of the
systematic voters (decision of the majority of 60% or more among them10) is the reference in
order to compute the existence of correct voting for the non-systematic citizens.
Due to missing data on the original variables on campaign arguments used to compute the
presence of systematic reasoning, 6 projects were excluded from our analyses.
Results
Our aim is to show that individual and contextual determinants work together to shape correct
voting. For this, a hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM) has been run11. Table 1
presents the results for the model with both fixed and random effects.
We see first that sophistication enhances the quality of the vote, but only through the level of
motivation. As expected, a stronger political motivation increases the likelihood that the nonsystematic citizen indeed votes correctly. In order to mimic the behaviour of those that formed
9
10
11
In our data, respondents declared having consulted an average of 5.4 information sources during opinion
formation. High information search exists when 6 or more different sources have been consulted. In order to
measure the strength of positioning toward arguments, a series of factor analyses have been performed on
the original questions (which ask respondents to declare if they are in favor, neutral, or against each
argument). The extracted factor represents the principal conflict dimension of the campaign (Kriesi 2005;
Nai and Lloren 2009). Those who have a strong positioning toward such factor are considered to have
strongly integrated the arguments. More details on the measure of systematic behavior are available upon
request.
When no clear majority was found, correct voting was impossible to compute.
We work with a binary dependent variable (presence or not of correct voting); a logit transformation is
therefore used. Our models are run with HLM 6.06 (Raudenbush et al. 2004) through Restricted Maximum
Likelihood (RML); all variables entered in the models as grand centered.
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their opinion though systematic reasoning, citizens have to dispose of some key cognitive
tools that may trigger their reflection. Being motivated in everything that is political seems to
give them what they need. This confirms partially our first hypothesis. Unexpectedly,
disposing of a higher knowledge on the project voted does not affect the quality of the
decision; the likelihood of correct voting is very similar among citizens with different levels
of knowledge. We note that McClurg and Sokhey (2008) also find no statistically significant
effect of knowledge on correct voting.
Like in Lau et al. (2008) and McClurg and Sokhey (2008), our results provide great support
for the heuristic hypothesis. Even in direct-democratic situation, where the link between
choice and party affiliation is more indirect that in elections, partisanship is a very strong
predictor for correct voting. Our results clearly show that the likelihood that non-systematic
citizens vote correctly is strongly increased for those that activated a partisan heuristic.
Knowing the position of the preferred party clearly helps all citizens to form their opinion
(Bowler and Donovan 1998; Lupia 1994; Lupia and McCubbins 1998; Kam 2005); our results
show that a huge help is also provided by partisanship to those that desire to mimic a
systematic behaviour they could not afford.
We see a counterintuitive result for trust (only significant in the random effects model). An
activation of trust heuristic diminishes the use of correct voting. Interpretation of such result is
not straightforward, but may be related to the government position on different direct
democratic instruments; a major difference exists between popular initiatives and referenda
(Kriesi 2005: 20 ff.). The first intervene at the very beginning of the decision-making process;
an initiative launches the debate and forces elites and government to redefine their main
concerns (agenda-setting function). By contrast, referenda intervene at the very end of the
process, once the legislative body has adopted a proposition. Government naturally assumes
opposite roles depending on the nature of the instrument: a defensive role for referenda, an
offensive role for initiatives12. We may therefore imagine that citizens modify their cognitive
behaviour - the use of trust heuristic - depending on the government's role. An alternative
model also controlling for the effect of the instrument type partially confirms this intuition
(results not shown). The difference between initiatives and referenda does not affect directly
the quality of the decision (no significant direct effect on correct voting), but has an
interesting cross-level effect with the use of trust heuristic; the use of trust heuristic strongly
12
This is evidently not a written rule. It may happen, for example, that a popular initiative is defended not only
by those who launched it but also by the government itself. This is however very rare.
14
increases the likelihood of correct voting during votes on referenda (i.e. when government has
a defensive role), and strongly decreases that likelihood for popular initiatives, where an
offensive role is played by the government. This does not help to understand why the use of
trust heuristic has a general negative effect on correct voting; it may however shed some light
on how citizens react to government's positions with a specific cognitive behavior. All other
determinants in this alternative model have very similar effects to those in Table 1.
---------Table 1 about here
---------We also expected the use of heuristics to advantage more sophisticated citizens, but our
results do not allow to confirm this hypothesis; the interactive effects between the use of
heuristics and the two dimensions of sophistication are hardly significant. The only interesting
effect exists between knowledge and the use of trust heuristic: the combined presence of these
two determinants significantly increases the likelihood of correct voting. This effect is
however only present in the model with fixed effects, and completely disappears when slopes
are allowed to randomly vary across level-2 units (random effects).
Our results show that the context in which citizens form their opinion highly influence the
quality of their decision. This appears both generally13 and specifically for the various
contextual dimensions.
First, and surprisingly enough, the intensity of the campaign does not enhance the use of
correct vote, quite the contrary. Disposing of a higher quantity of information on which form
their opinion, non-systematic citizens seem to mimic way less the systematic ones. Too much
information may kill the information. In analysing the effect of network disagreement on
correct voting, McClurg and Sokhey find that being subjected to multiple and contrasting
points of view (which signals a high network disagreement) diminishes the quality of the vote.
They imagine that being exposed to multiple points of view may enhance the ambivalence of
citizens, which makes their final decision more difficult (McClurg and Sokhey 2008: 15). In
13
We found a quite high interclass correlation (which can be interpreted as the correlation between two level-1
observations randomly chosen among a randomly chosen level-2 observation). This means that individual
units (citizens) are strongly nested into contextual observations (the ballots).
15
our case, we could therefore imagine that being exposed to a high quantity of information
increases the difficulties faced when mimic the behaviour of the systematic citizens.
A similar conclusion can be drawn for the level of justification of arguments; facing a
campaign composed by more robust arguments (i.e. arguments with a better justification),
citizens are less inclined to vote correctly. More robust arguments are, by definition, more
complex; qualified justifications demand higher attention. We may therefore imagine that
"easier" arguments are better tools for those citizens who desire to mimic a behaviour they
could not afford. This being, and as expected, disposing of a higher variety of arguments
enhance a better behaviour. Even if the absolute quantity of information (intensity) works
against the quality of the vote, as seen above, a greater quantity of arguments does the
opposite.
When information is abundant, only a few arguments are presented and those last are too
complicated to assimilate, citizens face a more complex task. As pointed out by Kuklinski et
al. (2001: 412), "a small amount of highly pertinent information will often enhance citizens
competence far more than a mountain of peripherally relevant facts and arguments. Rather
than the volume, then, it is the diagnostic value of information that influences how well
citizens are able to cope with policy choices". This seems pertinent for the Swiss case, where
correct voting is better enhanced by the diversification of the information (variety of
arguments) rather than by its quantitative presence.
The stronger result in Table 1 concerns the effect of negative campaigning. Odds for negative
campaigning are noteworthy pointed toward the fact that a more offensive campaign produces
a decision with higher quality. This invalidates our expectation that a debate filled with
negativism produces a demobilizing effect (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Ansolabehere et
al. 1994) also with regards to correct voting. Quite the contrary, a higher level of attacks
seems to provoke some sort of stimulation, similar to the one found on turnout by Finkel and
Geer (1998). Citizens may therefore answer an excessive negativism with an increasing of
their interest in the topic, which may lower the difficulties in mimic the behaviour of the
systematic ones. Negative elements may certainly discourage part of the electorate, but may
also facilitate the access to information for others (Crigler et al. 2006; Geer 2006).
Contrarily to what expected, finally, complexity and priming do not seem to influence correct
voting.
In a nutshell, context strongly enhances correct voting but in a fairly more complex way than
anticipated. A better decision is more likely achieved when citizens face not-too-abundant
16
information, composed by various but not-too-complex arguments. Furthermore, negativism
probably increases the attention to the debate, and thus facilitates the access to the information
provided by the campaign.
Conclusion
The quality of a political system, and especially of a direct-democratic one, lies in the quality
of the decisions citizens take. As cleverly pointed out by Lau and Redlawsk (2006: 74), "if we
are going to make judgements about the 'democratic' nature of different forms of government,
we should do so at least initially on the basis of the quality of correctness of the political
decisions that citizens make […] rather than on the basis of the ways in which those decisions
are reached". As some authors argue, the quality of such decisions can be measured through
the overall presence of "correct voting", namely the fact that even uninformed citizens can
mimic the choice of political experts (Lupia 1994; Lau and Redlawsk 1997; 2006).
Correct voting for electoral situations has drawn some serious attention lately. However, only
scarce literature exists on its presence also during direct-democratic events. Given the central
role played by citizens (and their decisions) in such contexts, a systematic analysis on the
quality of their decision was needed.
In this paper, we measured the presence of a correct voting as the imitation of those citizens
that formed their opinion through systematic reasoning (Eagly and Chaiken 1993). Our aim
was to demonstrate that correct voting is enhanced not only by some major individual assets,
but also by the dynamics at the contextual level. Through a series of hierarchical models, we
proved that correct. Our results show, first, a direct effect of sophistication on correct voting;
those non-systematic individuals that were particularly motivated had a higher chance to cast
a correct vote. Again, this shows the fundamental role of sophistication as impulsion for a
better political behaviour. Our results also prove that partisanship has a key role on correct
voting. Knowing the position of the preferred party clearly helps all citizens to form their
opinion; our results show that a huge help is also provided by partisanship to those that desire
to mimic a systematic behaviour they could not afford, which provides strong support for the
heuristic hypothesis.
At the contextual level, we showed that too much information works against a better decision.
Probably by decreasing the risk of ambivalence (which leads to higher difficulties), a less
intense campaign enhances correct voting. Easier but variegate arguments also push citizens
17
toward a better decision; when information is abundant but only a few arguments are
presented, citizens face a more complex task. Finally, Swiss citizens seem to react positively
to more offensive campaigns, i.e. campaigns whose interventions are characterised by a
higher level of attacks or offences. Instead of demobilise the voters as often proposed in the
literature (Ansolabehere and Iyengar 1995; Ansolabehere et al. 1994), negative campaigning
seems to stimulate citizens toward a better behaviour.
The effects shown for the contextual variables on correct voting are not only empirically
interesting. They provide consistent support to the idea that the quality of political processes
can be enhanced top-down. By working on the content of political interventions – e.g. by
providing more focussed information, composed by various but easier arguments – political
actors can directly push the citizens toward a better behaviour. Citizens should however not
adopt a wait-and-see approach, and justify their defection solely on the deficiencies of the
informational environment. Independently of the quantity and quality of the information,
individual determinants still play a key role on the quality of their behaviour.
Finally, showing that correct decisions can be reached also in unfavourable situations answers
directly to some major criticisms that are drawn against direct democracy (see Butler and
Ranney 1994: 17 ff.). Accordingly, "if most people, most of the time, vote correctly, then we
should not be too concerned if those vote decisions are reached on the basis of something less
than full information" (Lau and Redlawsk 2006: 74). Especially in a political system where
the role of citizens is important (and growing), the presence of correct decisions reassures
about the capacities of the electorate.
18
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22
Tables
Table 1: Hierarchical generalized linear models for correct voting
Multilevel determinants
Model with fixed
effects
odds ratio (Se)
Model with random
effects
odds ratio (Se)
Intercept
.05 (.4)***
.03 (.4)***
Level-1 variables
Political knowledge
Political motivation
Partisan heuristic
Trust heuristic
Political knowledge * Partisan heuristic
Political knowledge * Trust heuristic
Political motivation * Partisan heuristic
Political motivation * Trust heuristic
1.09 (.1)
1.63 (.1)***
10.62 (.4)***
.67 (.6)
.84 (.1) †
1.99 (.2)**
.83 (.1) †
.77 (.2)
1.01 (.2)
1.65 (.1)***
12.65 (.5)***
.20 (.7)*
1.02 (.1)
1.06 (.1)
.73 (.2) †
.75 (.2)
Level-2 variables
Justification
Intensity
Priming
Variety
Negative campaigning
Complexity
.08 (1.6)
.35 (.6) †
1.06 (.3)
1.09 (.0)*
898.04 (3.0)*
1.00 (.0)
.10 (1.0)*
.28 (.4)**
.80 (.2)
1.08 (.0)***
127.8 (2.2)*
.96 (.0) †
Variance components
Chi-sq
Chi-sq
Intercept
Political knowledge
Political motivation
Partisan heuristic
Trust heuristic
Political knowledge * Partisan heuristic
Political knowledge * Trust heuristic
Political motivation * Partisan heuristic
Political motivation * Trust heuristic
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
1050.6***
61.7***
59.0***
44.7***
26.9
39.6 †
5.2
58.0***
34.9
Interclass correlation (intercept-only model) a
N (level-1)
N (level-2)
ρ =.55
19'924
34
Note: Dependent variable is the presence of a correct vote (binary variable). Models have been run
with HLM 6.06, through Restricted Maximum Likelihood (RML) estimations. Effects controlled
by age, sex and education (individual level), and year of the vote (contextual level).
a
Interclass correlation for multilevel logistic models is calculated through the following
approximation: ρ = (σ2u0) / (σ2u0 + π2/3). The variance of level-2 residuals (σ2u0) is divided by the
total variance (σ2u0 plus the variance of the logistic distribution for level-1 residuals π2/3=3.29).
See Snijders and Bosker (1999: 224) for more details.
*p<0.05, **p<.01, ***p<.001, †p<.1
23