IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/sagope/v3y2013i4p2158244013515684.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Voting Present

Author

Listed:
  • James Lo

Abstract

During his time as a state senator in Illinois, Barack Obama voted “Present†129 times, a deliberate act of nonvoting that subsequently became an important campaign issue during the 2008 presidential elections. In this article, I examine the use of Present votes in the Illinois state senate. I find evidence that Present votes can largely be characterized as protest votes used as a legislative tool by the minority party. Incorporating information from Present votes into a Bayesian polytomous item-response model, I find that this information increases the efficiency of ideal point estimates by approximately 35%. There is little evidence of significant moderation by Obama when Present votes are accounted for, though my results suggest that Obama’s voting record may have moderated significantly before his subsequent election to the U.S. Senate. My results also suggest that because legislative nonvoting may occur for a variety of reasons, naive inclusion of nonvoting behavior into vote choice models may lead to biased results.

Suggested Citation

  • James Lo, 2013. "Voting Present," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(4), pages 21582440135, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:sagope:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:2158244013515684
    DOI: 10.1177/2158244013515684
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/2158244013515684
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/2158244013515684?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Abdul Noury, 2004. "Abstention in Daylight: Strategic Calculus of Voting in the European Parliament," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 121(1), pages 179-211, October.
    2. Treier, Shawn, 2010. "Where Does the President Stand? Measuring Presidential Ideology," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 18(1), pages 124-136, January.
    3. Londregan, John, 1999. "Estimating Legislators' Preferred Points," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(1), pages 35-56, January.
    4. Abdul Ghafar Noury, 2004. "Abstention in the daylight: strategic calculus of voting in the EP," ULB Institutional Repository 2013/7754, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    5. Rothenberg, Lawrence S & Sanders, Mitchell S, 2000. "Legislator Turnout and the Calculus of Voting: The Determinants of Abstention in the U.S. Congress," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 103(3-4), pages 259-270, June.
    6. Riker, William H. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1968. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 25-42, March.
    7. L. S. Rothenberg & M. Sanders, 1999. "Rational Abstention and the Congressional Vote Choice," Economics and Politics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(3), pages 311-340, November.
    8. Poole, Keith T., 2000. "Nonparametric Unfolding of Binary Choice Data," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 8(3), pages 211-237, March.
    9. Clinton, Joshua & Jackman, Simon & Rivers, Douglas, 2004. "The Statistical Analysis of Roll Call Data," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 98(2), pages 355-370, May.
    10. John M. Carey, 2007. "Competing Principals, Political Institutions, and Party Unity in Legislative Voting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 51(1), pages 92-107, January.
    11. Enelow,James M. & Hinich,Melvin J., 1984. "The Spatial Theory of Voting," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521275156.
    12. Anthony Downs, 1957. "An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 65, pages 135-135.
    13. Riker, William H. & Ordeshook, Peter C., 1968. "A Theory of the Calculus of Voting," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 62(1), pages 25-42, March.
    14. Royce Carroll & Jeffrey B. Lewis & James Lo & Keith T. Poole & Howard Rosenthal, 2013. "The Structure of Utility in Spatial Models of Voting," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 57(4), pages 1008-1028, October.
    15. Sven‐Oliver Proksch & Jonathan B. Slapin, 2012. "Institutional Foundations of Legislative Speech," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 56(3), pages 520-537, July.
    16. Mark P. Jones & Wonjae Hwang, 2005. "Party Government in Presidential Democracies: Extending Cartel Theory Beyond the U.S. Congress," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 49(2), pages 267-282, April.
    17. David Andrich, 1978. "A rating formulation for ordered response categories," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 43(4), pages 561-573, December.
    18. Voeten, Erik, 2001. "Outside Options and the Logic of Security Council Action," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 95(4), pages 845-858, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Zoltán Fazekas & Martin Ejnar Hansen, 2022. "Incentives for non-participation: absence in the United Kingdom House of Commons, 1997–2015," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 191(1), pages 51-73, April.
    2. Cloléry, Héloïse, 2023. "Legislators in the crossfire: Strategic non-voting and the effect of transparency," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
    3. Muro, Sergio & Chehtman, Alejandro, 2020. "Law or strategic calculus? Abstention in the Argentine Supreme Court," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    4. Jacobi, Tonja & Kontorovich, Eugene, 2015. "Why judges always vote," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 43(C), pages 190-199.
    5. Alexander A. Schuessler, 2000. "Expressive Voting," Rationality and Society, , vol. 12(1), pages 87-119, February.
    6. Monika Mühlböck & Nikoleta Yordanova, 2017. "When legislators choose not to decide: Abstentions in the European Parliament," European Union Politics, , vol. 18(2), pages 323-336, June.
    7. Shane Singh, 2014. "Linear and quadratic utility loss functions in voting behavior research," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 26(1), pages 35-58, January.
    8. Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde & João V. Ferreira, 2020. "Conflicted voters: A spatial voting model with multiple party identifications," Post-Print hal-02909682, HAL.
    9. Friedel Bolle & Philipp E. Otto, 2022. "Voting behavior under outside pressure: promoting true majorities with sequential voting?," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 58(4), pages 711-740, May.
    10. Orestis Troumpounis, 2009. "Suggesting an alternative electoral proportional system. Blank votes count," Working Papers 2009/30, Institut d'Economia de Barcelona (IEB).
    11. Robbett, Andrea & Matthews, Peter Hans, 2018. "Partisan bias and expressive voting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 157(C), pages 107-120.
    12. León, Gianmarco, 2017. "Turnout, political preferences and information: Experimental evidence from Peru," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 127(C), pages 56-71.
    13. Lirong Xia, 2020. "How Likely Are Large Elections Tied?," Papers 2011.03791, arXiv.org, revised Jul 2021.
    14. Ming Li & Dipjyoti Majumdar, 2010. "A Psychologically Based Model of Voter Turnout," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 12(5), pages 979-1002, October.
    15. Schnellenbach, Jan & Schubert, Christian, 2015. "Behavioral political economy: A survey," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 40(PB), pages 395-417.
    16. Alastair Smith & Bruce Bueno de Mesquita & Tom LaGatta, 2017. "Group incentives and rational voting1," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 29(2), pages 299-326, April.
    17. Battaglini, Marco, 2005. "Sequential voting with abstention," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 445-463, May.
    18. Assar Lindbeck & Jörgen Weibull, 1987. "Balanced-budget redistribution as the outcome of political competition," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 52(3), pages 273-297, January.
    19. Francesca Acacia & Maria Cubel Sanchez, 2014. "Strategic voting and happiness," Chapters,in: A Handbook of Alternative Theories of Public Economics, chapter 7, pages 160-176 Edward Elgar Publishing.
    20. Orla Doyle & Patrick Paul Walsh, 2005. "Did political constraints bind during transition? Evidence from Czech elections 1990 - 2002," Trinity Economics Papers 2000515, Trinity College Dublin, Department of Economics.

    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:sae:sagope:v:3:y:2013:i:4:p:2158244013515684. 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: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.