The effects of institutions on correct voting.

摘要

Previous research in Political Science has focused on individual and institutional factors that increase voter turnout within democratic countries. Voter turnout is seen as an indicator to measure the health of a democracy, therefore increasing voter turnout will lead to a healthier democracy. I argue that voter turnout is an inadequate measure because it only represents the percentage of eligible citizens who cast their vote on election day. By definition, a democracy is a form of government that allows citizens to elect officials that best represent their views, which is not successfully measured by voter turnout. Accordingly, a better measure for the health of a democracy should also include whether citizens choose the right candidate or party based on their views and preferences. Correct voting, a binary individual level indicator, compares citizen preferences to the vote choice. Citizens whose preferences match their vote choice are said to vote correctly, and citizens whose preferences do not match their vote choice are said to vote incorrectly. This dissertation examines which democratic institutional factors increase the levels of correct voting using surveys from eight established democracies and fifteen different elections. Various individual and institutional level hypotheses are tested using hierarchical generalized linear modeling for a dichotomous dependent variable. In order to test the reliability of the correct voting measure and the findings, the same hypotheses are tested using two different measures of correct voting. These two correct voting measures are extracted from two different surveys for each election. The findings show, for both measures of correct voting, that a smaller number of parties increases levels of correct voting in majority/plurality systems. In proportional representation systems, an increase of ideological differences among political parties and an increase in party age increase the likelihood of voting correctly.