Books by Carolina Plescia
Why do voters support different parties at elections when given the opportunity of casting two vo... more Why do voters support different parties at elections when given the opportunity of casting two votes to elect the same representative body?
This book relaxes common assumptions in the voting behaviour literature to provide an in-depth study of split-ticket voting across ten established and non-established democracies. It proposes an original framework and combines a theoretical investigation with a purely methodological analysis to test the reliability of the predictive models.
The broader picture that emerges is the one of a ‘simple’ voter with ‘sophisticated’ preferences. Parties still function as the principal cue for voting, but voters appear sophisticated in that they often like more than one party or choose candidates regardless of their party affiliation.
Despite mixed-member systems being one of the most complicated electoral systems of all, there is no evidence supporting the conclusion that voters are not able to cope with the complexity of the electoral rules.
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Le elezioni europee del 22-25 maggio 2014 sono apparse, già alla vigilia, tanto rilevanti da esse... more Le elezioni europee del 22-25 maggio 2014 sono apparse, già alla vigilia, tanto rilevanti da essere potenzialmente candidate a divenire le prime “vere” elezioni europee. La crisi economica scoppiata nell’autunno del 2008 ha fatto emergere in questi anni le istituzioni dell’Unione Europea come il principale centro decisionale in materia di politica economica degli stati membri e come attore capace di incidere fortemente sulla vita dei cittadini europei. Inoltre, l’entrata in vigore del Trattato di Lisbona ha rafforzato il legame tra il voto popolare e l’elezione del Presidente della Commissione, spingendo così verso una maggiore rilevanza di queste elezioni europee. Sulla base di questi presupposti molti commentatori hanno messo in discussione il consolidato framework teorico che inquadra le elezioni europee come second order elections. In particolare, ci si attendeva una maggiore centralità delle tematiche europee e un successo dei partiti euroscettici, i più abili a politicizzare – in chiave negativa – i temi legati all’Europa e all’euro. Con specifico riferimento al caso italiano, invece, queste elezioni rappresentavano un cruciale banco di prova per i partiti all’indomani del terremoto elettorale del 2013 e soprattutto per il nuovo governo di Matteo Renzi, arrivato al potere senza il vaglio delle urne. Qual è stato l’esito delle elezioni europee? Si è trattato delle prime first order elections? Quali fattori spiegano il successo territorialmente differenziato dei partiti euroscettici? E come interpretare il successo del PD di Matteo Renzi in Italia? Questo sesto Dossier CISE, oltre a contenere le analisi pubblicate sul sito web CISE prima e dopo le elezioni (riguardanti sia il contesto italiano che quello europeo) raccoglie i contributi di studiosi italiani e stranieri sulle elezioni in ognuno degli altri 27 paesi dell’Unione Europea. Il risultato è un lavoro comparato di fatto unico in ambito internazionale, prodotto rapidamente all’indomani del voto con l’obiettivo di suggerire i primi spunti di interpretazione sugli esiti di queste cruciali elezioni europee.
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The European Parliament elections of 22-25 May 2014 had already been anticipated, before the vote... more The European Parliament elections of 22-25 May 2014 had already been anticipated, before the vote, as potentially so relevant to become the first “true” European elections. Not only because of the economic crisis – which in recent years has seen the emergence of EU (and international) institutions as key players of economic policy for Euro member states, with relevant effects for the everyday life of citizens – but also due to the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty, which has reinforced the link between the popular vote and the election of the President of the EU Commission. In this context, several commentators had anticipated a potential inadequacy of the consolidated theoretical framework that conceptualizes EP elections as second-order elections. In particular, European issues could be expected to gain a substantial importance in electoral campaigns, with a potential success of Eurosceptic parties due to their ability to politicize – in a negative direction – issues related to Europe and the Euro. A further question is then related to Italy: the third Eurozone economy, on the eve of assuming the Presidency of the EU, and with a government led by a young and energetic Matteo Renzi, but lacking an electoral legitimation. Also, a country that in 2013 saw the largest success of an anti-establishment party ever recorded in Europe. This leads to the main questions behind this book. What were electoral outcomes across Europe? Are we observing the first true first-order European elections? What factors might explain the heterogeneous electoral fortunes of Eurosceptic parties? And how should we interpret the success of the Renzi government in Italy? This book addresses these questions by presenting analyses performed by a large, international research group: for the first time, the CISE has expanded beyond its core group of Italian researchers, by assembling an additional research group of 26 young, brilliant electoral scholars from all across Europe. This allowed us to publish on the CISE website – few days after the elections – concise electoral reports about all 28 EU countries, which are now collected in this book, together with other analyses by the CISE core group. The result is a unique effort, providing – few weeks after the vote – fresh and detailed data, along with first interpretations of electoral results in all EU countries, in order to help practitioners, citizens and scholars develop a first impression – and overall interpretation – of these crucial European elections.
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Papers by Carolina Plescia
West European Politics, 2017
It is normatively desirable that parties' policy positions match the views of their supporters, a... more It is normatively desirable that parties' policy positions match the views of their supporters, as citizens in Western democracies are primarily represented by and through parties. Existing research suggests that parties shift their policy positions, but as of today, there is only weak and inconsistent empirical evidence that voters actually perceive these shifts. Using individual-level panel data from Germany, United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands, this paper tests the proposition that voters perceive parties' policy shifts only on salient issues while remaining oblivious to parties' changing positions on issues that they do not consider important. The results demonstrate that issue saliency plays a fundamental role in explaining voters' perceptions of parties' policy shifts: according to this logic, democratic discourse between the elites and the electorate appears to take place at the level of policy issues that voters care about.
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This paper examines issue ownership as a mechanism for understanding how voters' expectations of ... more This paper examines issue ownership as a mechanism for understanding how voters' expectations of parties' issue competence impact retrospective voting. On the one hand, issue ownership can represent a stock of credit for parties to draw on, which may help incumbent parties escape punishment for poor performance. On the other hand, prior issue competence associations may set certain expectations in voters' minds. This lends to the idea that parties might be even more severely punished for poor performance when they own the issue. This contribution sets out to test these two propositions. Our results suggest that since voters expect the party to perform well, especially on the issue it owns, positive performance reaps no reward, while negative performance is more severely punished. There are, however, differences across parties, with the chancellor party in government held as the main actor responsible for positive or negative economic developments.
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Recent research on political attitudes has emphasized that coalition preferences determine electo... more Recent research on political attitudes has emphasized that coalition preferences determine electoral choices, prompting
scholars to investigate the sources of coalition preferences. While it is not surprising that coalition preferences are
strongly informed by spatial considerations, several studies have drawn attention to additional nonideological factors.
Relying on this insight, the present study aims to systematically investigate the nonideological or valence component of
coalition preferences. In order to decompose attitudes into their principal ideological and nonideological components, we
apply a Bayesian unfolding model to coalition sympathy ratings. We find that coalitions differ strongly with regard to their
valence component. This surplus cannot be reconstructed as a linear combination of the coalitions’ constituent party
valences and is predominantly structured by campaign valence.
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An expanding literature indicates that in multiparty systems with coalition governments, citizens... more An expanding literature indicates that in multiparty systems with coalition governments, citizens consider the post-electoral bargaining process among parties when casting their vote. Yet, we know surprisingly little about the nature of voters’ coalition preferences. This paper uses data from the Austrian National Election Study to examine the determinants as well as the independence of preferences for coalitions as political object. We find that coalition preferences are strongly informed by spatial considerations; but additional non-ideological factors, such as party and leader preferences, also play a fundamental role. We also find that coalitions enjoy a certain degree of independence from other objects of vote choice and they do not always represent a simple average score on the feeling thermometer of the constituent parties. There are, however, substantial differences among voters, with party identifiers and those with extreme ideology being less likely to consider coalitions as separate entities from their component parties.
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Retrospective voting is arguably one of the most important mechanisms of representative democracy... more Retrospective voting is arguably one of the most important mechanisms of representative democracy, and whether or not the public holds the government accountable for its policy performance has been extensively studied. In this paper, we test whether retrospective voting extends to parties in the opposition, that is whether and how parties’ past performance evaluations affect their vote, regardless of whether they were in government or in opposition. Taking advantage of a rich set of questions embedded in a
representative German national elections panel, we update our knowledge on the retrospective voting mechanism by modeling retrospective voting at the party level. The findings indicate that the incumbent status is not the only
criterion for retrospective voting, ultimately suggesting that both government and opposition parties can expect credit and blame for their conduct and this should provide some impetus for responsive performance of all parties.
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Political Studies
Although it is theoretically relevant, the effect of pre-electoral coalitions on vote choice rema... more Although it is theoretically relevant, the effect of pre-electoral coalitions on vote choice remains a largely unexplored area in the field of party strategy. The article addresses this gap by focusing on the Italian regional elections, where the electoral rules allow parties to run alone, and, at the same time, to present pre-electoral coalitions on the ballot paper. This setting allows investigating under what conditions citizens vote for their preferred party and the coalition that this party indicated to coalesce with. The results suggest that ideological congruence and the size of the parties entering a pre-electoral agreement are decisive factors. Findings also reveal that the time elapsed since the establishment of a coalition has no effect on vote choice.
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Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2016
Do voters behave strategically in local elections? Does democratic experience
influence voters’ c... more Do voters behave strategically in local elections? Does democratic experience
influence voters’ capacity to behave strategically? Is there a relation between education and voters' capacity to anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral statutes and adapt their behavior accordingly? Using an original dataset covering the complete democratic period, this paper studies strategic voting at the local level in Portugal. Using an ecological inference approach, we contribute to a vast body of literature on strategic voting by testing whether theories developed for national contexts travel to local contexts. Our findings suggest that (1) voters consistently defect non-viable lists to support viable lists; (2) democratic experience helps voters to learn how to maximize their utility; and (3) education is important for voters' ability to identify a strategic setting.
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International Journal of Public Opinion Research, 2016
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Irish Political Studies, 2015
This paper explores the sources of weak party–voting patterns in Irish elections,
conceptualising... more This paper explores the sources of weak party–voting patterns in Irish elections,
conceptualising this as split–ticket voting. Ireland provides a context where election
results show split–ticket voting is common, but the strategic interpretations of such
behaviour that have been very prominent elsewhere are not generally applicable. We
employ data from the Irish national election studies to explore the behaviour of
individuals embedded in a variety of contexts. The results demonstrate the prevalence of split–ticket voting, and they support the validity of non-strategic explanations. One
source of explanation for the patterns we find lies in differences between individuals:
partisanship, and the extent to which voters are attracted to candidates rather than
parties are important. A second source is contextual: the factors connected with the
complexity of the choice decision have to make have a powerful influence on split–
ticket voting.
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This paper presents a comparative investigation of the link between the social background of immi... more This paper presents a comparative investigation of the link between the social background of immigrant national politicians and their political attitudes in the contexts of Great Britain and Italy. Several attitude studies of national legislators have been conducted but they have not led to a generalised theory (Esaiasson and Heider, 2000). Moreover, it is only in recent years that politicians with an immigrant background have begun to be elected to European legislatures and Bird (2004) has highlighted the importance of isolating an “immigrant effect� in political science. Immigrant MPs are defined here as born abroad deputies with at least one parent born abroad. Attitudes are an important concept to consider if one is constructing a causal mechanism between social background and behaviour as they frame an individual’s decision-making processes (Allport, 1935). This paper tests whether the attitudes of legislators with an almost immediate immigrant heritage significantly vary...
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Books by Carolina Plescia
This book relaxes common assumptions in the voting behaviour literature to provide an in-depth study of split-ticket voting across ten established and non-established democracies. It proposes an original framework and combines a theoretical investigation with a purely methodological analysis to test the reliability of the predictive models.
The broader picture that emerges is the one of a ‘simple’ voter with ‘sophisticated’ preferences. Parties still function as the principal cue for voting, but voters appear sophisticated in that they often like more than one party or choose candidates regardless of their party affiliation.
Despite mixed-member systems being one of the most complicated electoral systems of all, there is no evidence supporting the conclusion that voters are not able to cope with the complexity of the electoral rules.
Papers by Carolina Plescia
scholars to investigate the sources of coalition preferences. While it is not surprising that coalition preferences are
strongly informed by spatial considerations, several studies have drawn attention to additional nonideological factors.
Relying on this insight, the present study aims to systematically investigate the nonideological or valence component of
coalition preferences. In order to decompose attitudes into their principal ideological and nonideological components, we
apply a Bayesian unfolding model to coalition sympathy ratings. We find that coalitions differ strongly with regard to their
valence component. This surplus cannot be reconstructed as a linear combination of the coalitions’ constituent party
valences and is predominantly structured by campaign valence.
representative German national elections panel, we update our knowledge on the retrospective voting mechanism by modeling retrospective voting at the party level. The findings indicate that the incumbent status is not the only
criterion for retrospective voting, ultimately suggesting that both government and opposition parties can expect credit and blame for their conduct and this should provide some impetus for responsive performance of all parties.
influence voters’ capacity to behave strategically? Is there a relation between education and voters' capacity to anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral statutes and adapt their behavior accordingly? Using an original dataset covering the complete democratic period, this paper studies strategic voting at the local level in Portugal. Using an ecological inference approach, we contribute to a vast body of literature on strategic voting by testing whether theories developed for national contexts travel to local contexts. Our findings suggest that (1) voters consistently defect non-viable lists to support viable lists; (2) democratic experience helps voters to learn how to maximize their utility; and (3) education is important for voters' ability to identify a strategic setting.
conceptualising this as split–ticket voting. Ireland provides a context where election
results show split–ticket voting is common, but the strategic interpretations of such
behaviour that have been very prominent elsewhere are not generally applicable. We
employ data from the Irish national election studies to explore the behaviour of
individuals embedded in a variety of contexts. The results demonstrate the prevalence of split–ticket voting, and they support the validity of non-strategic explanations. One
source of explanation for the patterns we find lies in differences between individuals:
partisanship, and the extent to which voters are attracted to candidates rather than
parties are important. A second source is contextual: the factors connected with the
complexity of the choice decision have to make have a powerful influence on split–
ticket voting.
This book relaxes common assumptions in the voting behaviour literature to provide an in-depth study of split-ticket voting across ten established and non-established democracies. It proposes an original framework and combines a theoretical investigation with a purely methodological analysis to test the reliability of the predictive models.
The broader picture that emerges is the one of a ‘simple’ voter with ‘sophisticated’ preferences. Parties still function as the principal cue for voting, but voters appear sophisticated in that they often like more than one party or choose candidates regardless of their party affiliation.
Despite mixed-member systems being one of the most complicated electoral systems of all, there is no evidence supporting the conclusion that voters are not able to cope with the complexity of the electoral rules.
scholars to investigate the sources of coalition preferences. While it is not surprising that coalition preferences are
strongly informed by spatial considerations, several studies have drawn attention to additional nonideological factors.
Relying on this insight, the present study aims to systematically investigate the nonideological or valence component of
coalition preferences. In order to decompose attitudes into their principal ideological and nonideological components, we
apply a Bayesian unfolding model to coalition sympathy ratings. We find that coalitions differ strongly with regard to their
valence component. This surplus cannot be reconstructed as a linear combination of the coalitions’ constituent party
valences and is predominantly structured by campaign valence.
representative German national elections panel, we update our knowledge on the retrospective voting mechanism by modeling retrospective voting at the party level. The findings indicate that the incumbent status is not the only
criterion for retrospective voting, ultimately suggesting that both government and opposition parties can expect credit and blame for their conduct and this should provide some impetus for responsive performance of all parties.
influence voters’ capacity to behave strategically? Is there a relation between education and voters' capacity to anticipate the mechanical effects of electoral statutes and adapt their behavior accordingly? Using an original dataset covering the complete democratic period, this paper studies strategic voting at the local level in Portugal. Using an ecological inference approach, we contribute to a vast body of literature on strategic voting by testing whether theories developed for national contexts travel to local contexts. Our findings suggest that (1) voters consistently defect non-viable lists to support viable lists; (2) democratic experience helps voters to learn how to maximize their utility; and (3) education is important for voters' ability to identify a strategic setting.
conceptualising this as split–ticket voting. Ireland provides a context where election
results show split–ticket voting is common, but the strategic interpretations of such
behaviour that have been very prominent elsewhere are not generally applicable. We
employ data from the Irish national election studies to explore the behaviour of
individuals embedded in a variety of contexts. The results demonstrate the prevalence of split–ticket voting, and they support the validity of non-strategic explanations. One
source of explanation for the patterns we find lies in differences between individuals:
partisanship, and the extent to which voters are attracted to candidates rather than
parties are important. A second source is contextual: the factors connected with the
complexity of the choice decision have to make have a powerful influence on split–
ticket voting.