Follow mainly the leader? An experimental study of the relative impact of parties on opinion formation Fernando Feitosa (McGill University) Jennifer Oser (Ben-Gurion University) Nir Grinberg (Ben-Gurion University) Prior work convincingly demonstrates that Americans follow the policy positions of parties with whom they identify. However, not much research investigates the relative impact of parties on opinion formation. More specifically, are parties […] Read more

You can Sort but don’t Polarize: How Elite Polarization Shapes Opinion Formation Semih Cakir (Université de Montréal) A great deal of scholarly attention is given to whether political parties shape citizens’ opinions to which they subsequently respond. These works show that citizens indeed follow party cues and adjust their issue opinions even when they go against […] Read more

The Expertise Paradox: How Policy Expertise Can Hinder Responsiveness Miguel M. Pereira (University of Southern California)Patrick Ohberg (University of Gothenburg) We argue that policy expertise constrains the ability of politicians to act on voter preferences. Legislators with more knowledge and experience in a given domain have more confidence in their own issue-specific positions. Enhanced confidence, in turn, […] Read more

The Effectiveness of Symbolic Group Appeals Ruth Dassonneville (Université de Montréal) Citizens’ socio-demographic characteristics shape their political preferences, resulting in systematic differences in how social groups vote. These group-differences emerge when there are clear associations between social groups and specific parties. Recent work has shown that one way in which parties can create such linkages […] Read more

Voters’ Preferences for Parties’ Moral Rhetoric Jae-Hee Jung (University of Houston) Moral rhetoric in party messages reflect parties’ attempts to represent voters’ moral values. It is unclear, however, how voters feel about such messages of moral representation. Do voters want parties to use moral rhetoric? Based on insights about the link between morality and politics, […] Read more

Les clivages politiques et le système partisan du Québec au XXIe siècle Eric Bélanger (McGill University) Jean-François Godbout (Université de Montréal) Depuis quelques années, le Québec semble en proie à une transformation significative sur le plan politique. L’exemple le plus frappant de cette évolution tient au fait que les débats qui occupent la scène politique […] Read more

Positivity breeds Positivity: Evidence that Positive In-party Affective Evaluations Predict Positive Out-party Evaluations in Western Publics James Adams (UC Davis) Noam Gidron (Hebrew University in Jerusalem)Will Horn (Princeton University)Yair Amitai (Hebrew University in Jerusalem) Political observers voice growing concerns over cross-party distrust and hostility in western publics, commonly labeled affective polarisation. Scholars typically measure affective polarisation […] Read more

Inequality and voting: How widening socio-economic gaps explain mainstream party decline  David Weisstanner (University of Oxford)Sarah Engler (University of Zurich)  The political landscape of Western democracies has changed substantively over the past decades; mainstream parties have lost ground to radical left and radical right parties. Previous studies focusing on socio-structural transformations, such as occupational change or globalization, […] Read more

Does bottom-up spillover effect exist for radical right party? Evidence from Germany Chan Ka-Ming Previous literature suggests that a party’s electoral result can shape its vote share and voters’ calculus in a subsequent election. Yet, can this information-updating process help explaining the success of radical right party (RRP) in a multi-level system? To answer this […] Read more

Voting for Disabled Candidates: The Roles of Voter Preferences and Belief Stereotypes Stefanie Reher (University of Strathclyde) Despite important advances in the rights of disabled people over the past decades, stigma and prejudice against them remain widespread. Given ample evidence that voters use group stereotypes when evaluating candidates and casting their votes, we might expect […] Read more