Vote Choice under Certainty, Risk, and Ambiguity

• In Event: Ambiguity and Issues

Abstract

Spatial models devise actors to be averse to risk and ambiguity. Voters are allegedly repelled both by exogenous party unclarity and endogenous uncertainty about spatial positions adopted by (strategic) candidates or parties. This analysis builds upon a series of survey experiments within divergent states of the world: choice under risk means that electoral platforms are unclear, but potential positions and their respective probabilities are common knowledge. We find that these scenarios neither attract nor repel voters. In contrast, choice under ambiguity is given when potential outcomes or their respective probabilities are unknown to the voters. We demonstrate that these scenarios tend to drive away voters. Moreover, our analysis considers both spatial and non-spatial determinants of vote choice to arrive at a more realistic scenario.

This paper contributes to the experimental literature on party unclarity and voter uncertainty. While we find many key findings of the published record to be robustly supported by our data, we offer three substantive additions to their conceptual premises and empirical results. First, we provide a more systematic differentiation among party unclarity and voter uncertainty and are thus in a position to discriminate between choice under exogenous risk and choice under endogenous uncertainty. Secondly, we apply a set of survey vignettes in an RCT that more precisely characterizes the sources of party unclarity. These divergent treatments are supposed to affect the spatial and the non-spatial components of voter utility. Thirdly, we link our survey experiments with a set of observational items on hypothetical vote choice in German parliamentary elections. Both the experimental and the observational data were inquired within the same survey so that we can bridge and connect experimental evidence with conventional survey data.

Author

• Guido Tiemann, University of Klagenfurt