The role of policy and party information in direct-democratic campaigns

Dermont, Clau; Stadelmann-Steffen, Isabelle (2019). The role of policy and party information in direct-democratic campaigns. International journal of public opinion research, 32(3), pp. 442-466. Oxford University Press 10.1093/ijpor/edz030

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Existing research has repeatedly discussed how citizens make up their minds when voting on direct-democratic proposals. While previous studies have emphasized the role of policy information and party cues on opinion formation, we explore the mechanisms behind policy and party effects in greater detail. We conceptualize vote decisions as multidimensional choices, and use a three-wave conjoint analysis to observe if and how policy preferences change over the course of a campaign. We find that preferences towards a policy proposal remain consistent, but may change if an issue is intensively discussed during the campaign and does not already rally strong support or opposition. Moreover, the effect of party information is only tangible for voters with an explicit party affiliation, while larger coalitions of parties in support or in opposition of the proposal do not inherently gather more support.

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