IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cog/poango/v10y2022i4p361-373.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do Leader Evaluations (De)Mobilize Voter Turnout? Lessons From Presidential Elections in the United States

Author

Listed:
  • Liran Harsgor

    (School of Political Science, University of Haifa, Israel)

  • Neil Nevitte

    (Department of Political Science, University of Toronto, Canada)

Abstract

Do evaluations of presidential candidates in the US affect the level of voter turnout? Voters’ affections towards presidential candidates, we contend, can either stimulate or inhibit voter inclinations to turnout. Voters are more inclined to turn out when they have positive feelings towards the candidate with which they identify because they want “their” candidate to win. But citizens may also be more likely to vote when they dislike the candidate of the party with which they do not identify. In that case, voters are motivated to prevent the candidate from being elected. Utilizing the American National Election Studies data for 1968–2020, the analysis finds that the likelihood of voting is affected by (a) the degree to which voters’ affections towards the candidate differ from one another (having a clear‐cut choice between options) and (b) the nature of the affections (negative or positive) towards both in‐ and out‐party candidates.

Suggested Citation

  • Liran Harsgor & Neil Nevitte, 2022. "Do Leader Evaluations (De)Mobilize Voter Turnout? Lessons From Presidential Elections in the United States," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(4), pages 361-373.
    • Handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v:10:y:2022:i:4:p:361-373
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/politicsandgovernance/article/view/5723
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Jackman, Robert W., 1987. "Political Institutions and Voter Turnout in the Industrial Democracies," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 81(2), pages 405-423, June.
    2. Richard Brody & Benjamin Page, 1973. "Indifference, alientation and rational decisions," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 1-17, June.
    3. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65(2), pages 135-135.
    4. Brady, Henry E. & Verba, Sidney & Schlozman, Kay Lehman, 1995. "Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 89(2), pages 271-294, June.
    5. Katjana Gattermann & Claes H. de Vreese, 2022. "Understanding leader evaluations in European Parliament elections," European Union Politics, , vol. 23(1), pages 141-160, March.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Alessandro Nai & Diego Garzia & Loes Aaldering & Frederico Ferreira da Silva & Katjana Gattermann, 2022. "For a Research Agenda on Negative Politics," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 10(4), pages 243-246.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. David Brockington, 2004. "The Paradox of Proportional Representation: The Effect of Party Systems and Coalitions on Individuals’ Electoral Participation," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 52(3), pages 469-490, October.
    2. Deniz Guvercin, 2019. "Going to the Polls or Feeding Children? An Empirical Investigation of Voter Turnout among Turkish Women with Children at Home," Bogazici Journal, Review of Social, Economic and Administrative Studies, Bogazici University, Department of Economics, vol. 33(1), pages 1-16.
    3. Michelsen, Claus & Bönisch, Peter & Rosenfeld, Martin T. W., 2010. "Sharing Competences: The Impact of Local Institutional Settings on Voter Turnout," IWH Discussion Papers 21/2010, Halle Institute for Economic Research (IWH).
    4. Ronconi, Lucas & Zarazaga S.J., Rodrigo, 2015. "Labor Exclusion and the Erosion of Citizenship Responsibilities," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 453-461.
    5. Benny Geys & Bruno Heyndels, 2006. "Disentangling The Effects Of Political Fragmentation On Voter Turnout: The Flemish Municipal Elections," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 18(3), pages 367-387, November.
    6. Stefano Bartolini, 2000. "Collusion, Competition and Democracy," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 12(1), pages 33-65, January.
    7. Danny Hayes & Seth C. McKee, 2009. "The Participatory Effects of Redistricting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 1006-1023, October.
    8. Wegenast, Tim, 2010. "Cana, café, cacau: agrarian structure and educational inequalities in Brazil," Revista de Historia Económica / Journal of Iberian and Latin American Economic History, Cambridge University Press, vol. 28(1), pages 103-137, March.
    9. Charles Pattie & Patrick Seyd & Paul Whiteley, 2003. "Citizenship and Civic Engagement: Attitudes and Behaviour in Britain," Political Studies, Political Studies Association, vol. 51(3), pages 443-468, October.
    10. Martins, Rodrigo & Veiga, Francisco José, 2014. "Does voter turnout affect the votes for the incumbent government?," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 36(C), pages 274-286.
    11. Kellermann, Kim Leonie, 2017. "Political participation and party capture in a dualized economy: A game theory approach," CIW Discussion Papers 4/2017, University of Münster, Center for Interdisciplinary Economics (CIW).
    12. Ronconi, Lucas, 2019. "From Citizen's Rights to Civic Responsibilities," IZA Discussion Papers 12457, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    13. Tao, Ran & Su, Fubing & Sun, Xin & Lu, Xi, 2011. "Political trust as rational belief: Evidence from Chinese village elections," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 108-121, March.
    14. Shelleka Gupta & Vinay Chauhan, 2023. "Understanding the Role of Social Networking Sites in Political Marketing," Jindal Journal of Business Research, , vol. 12(1), pages 58-72, June.
    15. Kristin L. Olofsson, 2022. "Winners and losers: Conflict management through strategic policy engagement," Review of Policy Research, Policy Studies Organization, vol. 39(1), pages 73-89, January.
    16. Sanz, Carlos, 2017. "The Effect of Electoral Systems on Voter Turnout: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," Political Science Research and Methods, Cambridge University Press, vol. 5(4), pages 689-710, October.
    17. Shane Singh, 2014. "Linear and quadratic utility loss functions in voting behavior research," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(1), pages 35-58, January.
    18. Isaksson, Ann-Sofie, 2010. "Political participation in Africa: Participatory inequalities and the role of resources," Working Papers in Economics 462, University of Gothenburg, Department of Economics, revised 01 Oct 2010.
    19. Akbulut-Yuksel, Mevlude & Okoye, Dozie & Yuksel, Mutlu, 2017. "Learning to Participate in Politics: Evidence from Jewish Expulsions in Nazi Germany," IZA Discussion Papers 10778, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Rodrigo Martins & Francisco Veiga, 2013. "Economic performance and turnout at national and local elections," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 157(3), pages 429-448, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cog:poango:v:10:y:2022:i:4:p:361-373. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: António Vieira (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cogitatiopress.com/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.