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DeVOTE research is both scientifically and practically relevant.
Scientifically, DeVOTE sets out a new direction of research, aiming to capture and categorize the different meanings citizens may (or may not) have of voting, study their systematic variation, and on this basis contribute to the public understanding of elections. A such, it provides brand new evidence on citizen views that can challenge long-standing conclusions in political science about political participation and electoral behaviour, in political psychology about people understanding of and competence with politics, and in political communication about how election narratives structure citizen views.
The project has also practical implications on how elections are run and administrated. First, because DeVOTE analyses how citizen meanings relate to their visions of elections and preferences on electoral reforms. Second, because the broad geographical scope of DeVOTE, spanning both consolidated and non-consolidated democracies, offers an unparalleled insight into the legitimizing qualities of elections and afford the opportunity to study under what conditions citizens perceive election choices to be meaningful. Third, the election observatory that will be created during the runtime of the project has an unprecedented political significance since it provides a resource containing information about the meanings given to elections by citizens themselves that can be used as a basis to refine and challenge the constructed interpretations commonly assigned to elections by the media and politicians.
To realize its agenda, DeVOTE innovates both in data collection - combining a unique citizen-science website and open-ended enquiry with panel data and survey experiments -, and in data analysis - combining an inductively generated categorization of voting meanings with deductively driven hypotheses testing.
See below to find out more about the project's aims and objectives, learn about the project's work packages, and other research activities!
DeVOTE aims to provide first time evidence on what voting means for ordinary citizens and examine the variations of the ‘meanings’ between individuals and across types of democracies.
WP1: The meanings of 'voting'
The DeVOTE team engaged in several data collection efforts in the past years. Since the beginning of the project in 2021, data was collected in 13 countries from about 25.000 individuals. Countries were covered in Europe, Africa, the Americas and Oceania: Australia, Brazil, Colombia, Estonia, Hungary, Italy, Kenya, Nigeria, Serbia, Sweden, Tunisia, Türkiye and the United States of America. From the open-ended answers alone, we gathered nearly a million words about the meanings of voting. We are glad to announce that some publications are underway and you will find the latest publications here. The aim is to publish Open Access, so that you can access our research insights easily.
Published
In-person or convenience voting? The role of the direct costs in explaining preferences for voting modalities
By M. Belén Abdala, published in Electoral Studies. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2024.102851
High turnout is crucial for political legitimacy. By reducing the direct costs of voting in person, such as queuing and taking time off work, convenience voting modalities are expected to increase turnout. Yet, little is known about the role these costs play in explaining how citizens want to vote. This paper investigates whether perceptions of the direct costs of voting influence individual preferences for in-person compared to convenience forms of balloting such as voting by mail, or absentee voting. Using original cross-sectional data and a preregistered survey experiment encompassing the 2022 US midterm elections, I find that higher direct costs reduce individual preferences for in-person voting. Importantly, this reduction is not compensated by higher preferences for convenience modalities.
In press
The Meanings of Voting for Citizens: A Scientific Challenge, a Portrait, and Implications
Comparative Politics series
By Carolina Plescia
with M. Belén Abdala, André Blais, Ming M. Boyer, Anna Lia Brunetti, Cal Le Gall, Sylvia Kritzinger, Carolina Plescia, Petro Tolochko, Markus Wagner and Elizabeth J. Zechmeister.
Soon to be published by the Oxford University Press.
Working papers
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Meanings and action: are meanings of voting the heartbeat of political participation?
By Anna Lia Brunetti
The goal of the paper is to link the meanings of voting with the different patterns of political participation in contemporary societies. Most importantly, I find that the meanings of voting matter not only for electoral participation, but also for non-electoral participation.
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In It to Win It? The Role of Citizen Meanings of Voting in the Winner-Loser Gap of Diffuse Political Support
By Ming M. Boyer, Anna Lia Brunetti, Carolina Plescia
We explore different individual differences between election winners and losers regrding their satisfaction with democracy. The results show that the winner-loser gap is amplified when it comes to instrumental voters, while it is reduced for voters with ethics meanings.
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Election integrity, electoral participation and the meanings of voting
By M. Belén Abdala, Anna Lia Brunetti
We look closer at the relationship between perceptions of election integrity and electoral participation and argue that the meanings of voting can act as intervening variables. We show that a high level of perceived election integrity drives citizens with non-meanings and anti-voting meanings to the polls, while citizens with a meaning are actually discouraged from participating.
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Voting as if your rights depend on it: The role of strife in the political motivations of marginalized voters
By M. Belén Abdala
Previous studies have highlighted that gender, ethnicity, and sexuality influence voter turnout, with contradicting theoretical expectations. Some argue that marginalized groups face structural obstacles that reduce turnout. Others indicate that strife instead increases turnout by compelling marginalized individuals to defend their group and vote ‘as if their rights depended on it’. This paper tests the latter by examining what motivates women, LGB individuals and ethnic minorities to vote.
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Trust in government or in technology? What really drives internet voting
By M. Belén Abdala, Carolina Plescia, Ming M. Boyer and Anna Lia Brunetti
Internet voting is considered a crucial potential technological innovation, and scholars agree that trust plays a key role for its adoption and use by citizens. But which type of trust is essential, trust in government or trust in technology? We leverage on a cross-sectional analysis and a preregistered online experiment in Estonia to test a multidimensional trust framework.
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Why do people run for office? Exploring the political motivations of first-time candidates
By M. Belén Abdala and Carolina Plescia
Descriptively, office holders tend to represent a select few, often missing the broader diversity of the population. This raises a crucial question in the study of political representation: why do (some) individuals decide to run for office? While prior research has extensively examined political ambition and candidate emergence, most studies have focused on those already in the race or relied on hypothetical scenarios using convenient samples. To advance the discussion on what motivates people to run for office, we examine the political motivations of first-time candidates in the context of a real election campaign.
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Outgroup Vote Delegitimization: Making Sense of Outgroup Voting Behaviour
By Carolina Plescia, Ming M. Boyer and M. Belén Abdala
Partisans live in different areas, consume different sources of information, and often disagree on the very facts that they base their political opinions on. As a result, they are likely to misunderstand the political choices of opposing party supporters, including their votes. This paper introduces "outgroup vote delegitimization" to describe how partisans make sense of the voting behavior of opposing party supporters, and tests it in Brazil, Italy, and the USA, finding that it correlates with affective polarization and affects citizens' satisfaction and acceptance of election outcomes, potentially threatening democratic stability.
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Expressivity or instrumentality, what drives negative voting?
By Clara Faulí Molas, Carolina Plescia, Diego Garzia, Frederico Ferreira Da Silva
This paper investigates what it means to vote negatively, by analysing whether this is more linked to expressive or instrumental motives. The analysis focuses on the last European Parliament elections, but it also establishes a comparison with two national elections. This allows us to assess how the governance level influences the meanings of party choice.
