EAGER: Behavior under Open List Proportional Representation Systems

William Marsh Rice University, Houston TX

Investigators

Abstract

This research has implications on the functioning of democracy not only for the Honduran case but for all the region. Most of Latin American countries share some of the feature present in Honduras: multiparty systems, low institutionalization of political parties, weak programmatic links between parties and voters, which makes the vote choices very volatile and hence the information available at the time of the election has a prominent role. This is all against a backdrop of eroded confidence in the electoral system, which is to a certain extent shared across the region. Deepening the understanding of the electoral process through individual-level data is key to better understand voter behavior and how this impacts and shapes representation, influences parties? decisions and legislative outcomes. Ideological identification, candidate issue position and party identification (Campbell et al 1960) can help voters make their voting choice. However, when voters have to choose among parties and candidates within them (i.e. open list systems with panachage), party ideology or issue position may not provide enough information to the voter. In this context, some voters may rely on information cues such as name recognition, incumbency, gender and race among others, while others will simply deploy satisficing strategies to deal with voter fatigue phenomena. In addition to this, ballots may not be presenting all alternatives equally or may demand a different amount of resources for the choices available. Or some candidates can be favored given their placement in the ballot, or by physical attributes visible thought the picture in the ballot. Although it is reasonable to assume all these factors can affect voter behavior, we know very little about voters? decision under these set of rules. In this project we use a stratified sample of actual votes cast randomly selected out of the more than 18.103 ballot boxes across the Honduras, where six million Hondurans were registered to vote. Analyzing actual votes cast in open list systems may provide the means to deepening our understanding of the electoral process and how voters use the provisions offered by the electoral rules. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.