Issue Voting Under Uncertainty
An Empirical Test
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6231104 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Larry M Bartels (0009-0006-1260-1593, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1986 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 709 |
| Publication date | 1986-11-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Journal of Political Science (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0092-5853 • E-ISSN: 1540-5907 |
| Publisher | JSTOR (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2111269 |
| OpenAlex | W2033946243 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 167 |
| References cited | 13 |
Enelow and Hinich (1981) proposed a simple model of issue voting for the case in which voters are uncertain about candidates' issue positions. This paper adds an equally simple model of survey responses for issue placement questions that makes it possible to estimate respondents' uncertainty indirectly from existing National Election Study (NES) data. An empirical test of Enelow and Hinich's model based on voting behavior in the 1980 presidential election indicates that voters dislike uncertainty, as suggested by the model. Indeed, uncertainty about candidates' issue positions appears to have been sufficiently pervasive and important to rival issue distances as a determinant of electoral choices
Econometrics · Economics · Empirical research · Epistemology · Political science · Positive economics · Presidential election · Simple (philosophy · Statistics · Test (biology · Voting · Electoral Systems and Political Participation · Game Theory and Voting Systems · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Law · Mathematics
New Perspectives and Evidence on Political Communication and Campaign Effects
Democracy
Political Perception
Inside the Mental Voting Booth
Psychohistory and Political Psychology
Nonverbal Behavior and Leadership
Political Information Processing
The Poly-Psy Relationship
Cognitive Structural Analysis of Political Rhetoric
Affect and Political Judgment
Information and Electoral Attitudes
An Overview of the Field of Political Psychology
The Drunkard’s Search
The Psychological Underpinnings of Political Behavior
Decision Making in Presidential Primaries
Europe in Question
Symbolic Politics
Mecro‐Economic Voting
Does Public Reason Liberalism Rest on a Mistake? Democracy’s Doxastic and Epistemic Problems
Coded Appeals and Political Gains
Choice vs. Action
Personalization, gender, and social media
The Psychology of Group Conflict and the Dynamics of Oppression
The space between
Bad Judges
Information and Heterogeneity in Issue Voting
Perceived Political Polarization and its Differential Impact on Political Participation
An Estimate of Risk Aversion in the U.S. Electorate
Public Opinion, Risk Assessment, and Biotechnology
Hierarchical Bayesian Prediction Methods in Election Politics
Political Advertising in Greek Municipal and Prefecture Elections of 2002
Who refuses ambiguity? Voters’ issue salience and the electoral effect of party position ambiguity
The uncertain first-time voter
The limits of inequality
The Space between Worlds
The two faces of issue polarisation and their impact on party competition in Western Europe
How do voters seek political information during real-world election campaigns
Projection Effects and the Role of Political Ambiguity
Issue Engagement on Congressional Candidate Web Sites, 2002—2006
Polls and Elections
Vote choice under certainty, risk, and uncertainty
The revelation incentive for issue engagement in campaigns
Competence and ambiguity in electoral competition
Supersized votes
Imperfect information and the Meltzer-Richard hypothesis
Gradual de-idealisation and progress in political science
Following the Crowd or Thinking Outside of the Box? Saliency and Issue Consistency
Knowing What You Don't Know
Why moderate voters choose extreme candidates
Press Coverage and Political Accountability
Accountability with Large Electorates
Radical right success and mainstream parties’ position ambiguity on immigration
Do the Vote Test’
Ideological uncertainty and investment of the self in politics
Ideological perceptions and party support in central and Eastern Europe
When Extremism Pays
How Parties Affect Vote Choice in European Integration Referendums
Motivating the European voter
News matters
Still blurry? Economic salience, position and voting for radical right parties in Western Europe
The second-order election model revisited
Voters’ Response to Candidate Ambiguity in U.S. House Elections
Sobre la incertidumbre en las elecciones España 2000
Don’t Know What You Got
Representative Communication
Public Opinion Reaction to Repeated Events
Issue avoidance
Another Issue Comes Out
Eschewing Obfuscation? Campaigns and the Perception of U.S. Senate Incumbents
The Influence of Oral Arguments on the U.S. Supreme Court
Ambiguity in the Campaign, and in Office
Why is Trade Reform So Popular in Latin America
Progressive Ambition among United States Senators
Voter Uncertainty Can Produce Preferences with More Than One Peak, but Not Preference Cycles
Closing the Gap
Theoretical and Empirical Implications of Attitude Strength
Measuring Public Uncertainty about Candidate Ideology
The Simplest Shortcut of All
Made in Congress? Testing the Electoral Implications of Party Ideological Brand Names
Partisan Bias and the Bayesian Ideal in the Study of Public Opinion
Citizens’ Policy Confidence and Electoral Punishment
Too Important to Ignore? Why Ambiguity and Broad Appeals Fail with Rising Issue Salience
The Impact of Personalized Information on Vote Intention
Better the Devil You Know Than the Saint You Don't? Risk Propensity and Vote Choice in Mexico
The Pandering Politicians of Suspicious Minds
Uncertainty and Political Perceptions
Choosing the Risky Option
Mediated Uncertainty
Risk Attitudes, Candidate Characteristics, and Vote Choice
Young Citizens’ Party Support
Strategic Ambiguity of Party Positions in Multi-Party Competition
Predicting Ambiguity
It's Not Easy Being Green
Ambivalence, Uncertainty, and Processes of Candidate Evaluation
The Contingency of Voter Learning
How Much Is Too Much? Media Attention and Popular Support for an Insurgent Party
Tweets That Matter
Heterogeneity and Certainty in Candidate Evaluations
Risk Attitudes and Independence Vote Choice
Being Certain Versus Being Right
Linear Probability, Logit, and Probit Models
Advances in the spatial theory of voting
An economic theory of democracy
The Responsible Electorate
Issues, Party Choices, and Presidential Votes
Ambiguity in the Issue Positions of Presidential Candidates
A New Approach to Voter Uncertainty in the Downsian Spatial Model
A Dynamic Simultaneous Equation Model of Electoral Choice
The Theory of Political Ambiguity
The Strategy of Ambiguity
Attitude Attribution
Reciprocal Effects of Policy Preferences, Party Loyalties and the Vote
| Unique citing works | 167 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4,28 |
| Citation span | 1987 - 2026 (40) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | Yes |
| Citation types | Neutral: 167 |