Personality Politics?: The Role of Leader Evaluations in Democratic Elections
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Personality Politics?: The Role of Leader Evaluations in Democratic
Elections1 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United
Kingdom
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© Oxford University Press 2015
First Edition published in 2015
Impression: 1
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v
Acknowledgements
Marina Costa Lobo would like to acknowledge that this publication
was financed by the project, ‘A Personalização da Política no
Século XXI— Um Projecto de Pesquisa sobre Eleições
Democráticas’—PTDC/CPJ- CPO/120295/2010 of the Fundação para a
Ciência e Tecnologia (FCT). In addition, the authors would like to
thank the ECPR (European Consortium of Political Research) and the
Portuguese Political Science Association, as well as Frederico
Ferreira da Silva’s research assistance.
vii
Contents
List of Figures ix List of Tables xi List of Contributors xv
Introduction 1 Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
Section 1. Political or Not? Where Do Leader Evaluations Come
From?
1. Leader Evaluations and Partisan Stereotypes—A Comparative
Analysis 17 Amanda Bittner
2. What Comes First, Character Traits or Political Assessments? An
Experimental Study 38 Sascha Huber
Section 2. Systematic or Not? When Do Leader Evaluations
Matter?
3. The Impact of Leaders in Parliamentary and Presidential Regimes
63 John Curtice and Marco Lisi
4. Personality Politics in Single-Party and Coalition Governments
87 Solidea Formichelli
5. Leader Effects and Party Polarization 105 Romain Lachat
Section 3. Sophisticates or Uninformed Electors? Who Takes
Leader Evaluations into Account?
6. Political Sophistication and Media Consumption as Factors of
Personalization 127 Guillem Rico
Contents
viii
7. Party Dealignment and Leader Effects 148 Marina Costa Lobo
Section 4. Competence or Character? What about Leaders
Matters?
8. Between Leadership and Charisma, the Importance of Leaders 169
Michael Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau
9. Determining the Components of Leader Effects in a Post-Communist
Context 191 Andrei Gheorghi
10. Emotions Towards Leaders and Voting Behaviour 215 Tatjana
Rudi
Conclusion 241 Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
Index 249
Figure 1.1. Summary Statistics: Evaluations of Three Main
Party Leaders’ Competence and Character 23
Figure 1.2. Evaluations of Leaders’ Character and
Competence: Comparing Leaders of Three Main Parties to Average
of All Leaders 26
Figure 1.3. Summary Statistics: Evaluation of Leaders of
Three Main Parties’ Character and Competence, by Level of Political
Sophistication 31
Figure 2.1. Inferring Character Traits from the Political
Issue Positions of Candidates 47
Figure 2.2. Inferring the Political Issue Positions of
Candidates from Character Traits 48
Figure 2.3. Percentages of Overall Judgements about Candidates
in the Various Conditions 49
Figure 3.1. Marginal Effects of Party, Leader Evaluations, and
Ideological Distance on Vote Choice for Presidential and
Parliamentary Elections 72
Figure 4.1. Leader’s Evaluation and Coalition Government
Effect on Probability to Vote 98
Figure 5.1. Propensity to Support the SP, by Ideological
Distance and Level of Political Sophistication 114
Figure 5.2. Propensity to Support the SP, by Sympathy for the
Party Leader and Level of Political Sophistication 114
Figure 5.3. Effect of Party System Fragmentation on the
Strength of Ideological Voting (Model 1) and Leader Voting
(Model 3) 117
Figure 5.4. Effect of Electoral System Disproportionality on
the Strength of Ideological Voting (Model 2) and Leader Voting
(Model 4) 118
Figure 6.1. Predicted Effects of Leader Evaluations on Vote
Choice, by Measures of Political Knowledge 137
Figure 6.2. Predicted Effects of Trait Perceptions on Leader
Evaluations, by Measures of Political Knowledge 139
Figure 6.3. Predicted Effects of Leader Evaluations on Vote
Choice, by Measures of Media Exposure 140
List of Figures
x
Figure 6.4. Predicted Effects of Trait Perceptions on Leader
Evaluations, by Measures of Media Exposure 142
Figure 7.1. An Index of Dealignment in Italy, Portugal, and
Spain 156
Figure 7.2. Predicted Probabilities of Voting for the
Incumbent Party by Strength of Party Identification (a Fully
Comprehensive Model) 159
Figure 7.3. Predicted Probabilities of Voting for the
Incumbent Party by Time of Voting Decision (a Fully Comprehensive
Model) 160
Figure 7.4. Predicted Probabilities of Voting for the
Incumbent Party by Type of Voter (a Fully Comprehensive Model)
161
Figure 7.5. Predicted Probabilities of Voting for the
Incumbent by Dealignment (a Fully Comprehensive Model) 162
Figure 9.1. Defining Expectations Regarding the
Personalization of Voting Decisions in Romania 198
xi
List of Tables
Table 1.1. Effects of Party Label on Evaluation of Leader’s
Traits 24
Table 1.2. Difference in Means on Evaluations of Most
Frequently Asked Traits 25
Table 1.3. Effects of Voters’ Partisanship and Leaders’ Party
on Evaluations of Personality Traits 28
Table 1.4. Effects of Voters’ Partisanship and Leaders’ Party
on Trait Evaluations, by Level of Political Sophistication 32
Table 2.1. Candidate Description in the Various Experimental
Conditions 44
Table 2.2. The Influence of the Assessment of Political
Positions on Character Evaluation 51
Table 2.3. The Influence of Character Evaluations on the
Political Assessment of Candidates: Perceived Issue-distance
52
Table 2.4. The Influence of Candidate Character on Voting
Behaviour in Different Contexts 53
Table 3.1. The Role of Leader and Party Evaluations in
Presidential and Parliamentary Elections 70
Table 3.2. The Role of Leader and Party Evaluations in
Different Types of Parliamentary Elections 74
Table 3.3. Parliamentary Elections in Presidential and
Parliamentary Systems 75
Table 3.4. Party System and Larger Parties 77
Table 3.5. How the Role of Leadership Evaluations Varies by
Type of Electorate 79
Appendix A: Elections Analysed 85
Appendix B: Coding of Variables 86
Table 4.1. Data Sources 92
Table 4.2. Parameter Estimates for the Full Multi-level Model
of Socialist and Conservative Vote 96
Table A4.1. National Parties and Leaders of the Socialist Party
Family 102
List of Tables
xii
Table A4.2. National Parties and Leaders of the Christian
Democratic Party Family 103
Table 5.1. Impact of Left-Right Ideology and Leader
Evaluations on the Electoral Utilities, National Level 113
Table 5.2. Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Ideological
Voting 116
Table 5.3. Effect of Electoral Competitiveness on Leader
Voting 117
Table A5.1. Descriptive Statistics, Individual-level Variables
123
Table A5.2. Descriptive Statistics, Contextual-level Variables
123
Table 6.1. Homogenous Models: Leader Effects and Trait
Perception Effects 135
Table 6.2. Political Sophistication and Leader Effects on Vote
Choice 136
Table 6.3. Political Sophistication and Trait Perception
Effects on Leader Evaluations 138
Table 6.4. Media Exposure and Leader Effects on Vote Choice
139
Table 6.5. Media Exposure and Trait Perception Effects on
Leader Evaluations 141
Table 7.1. The Dealigned vs. the Aligned in Italy, Portugal,
and Spain 154
Table 7.2 Correlations between Strength of Party ID, Swing
Voters, and Late Deciders 155
Table 7.3. The Importance of Leader Effects in Different Types
of Electorate (a Simple Model) 157
Table 7.4. The Importance of Leader Effects in Different Types
of Electorate (a Comprehensive Model) 158
Table 7.5. The Relationship between Dealignment and Political
Knowledge 163
Table 8.1. Correlation of Feeling Thermometers and Leadership
Images in Four French Presidential Elections (2007, 2002, 1995,
1988) 172
Table 8.2. Leader Effects in Four French Presidential
Elections (Binomial Logits, Full Specification; 2007, 2002, 1995,
1988) 176
Table 8.3. Changes in Probabilities: Impact of Feeling
Thermometers on the Vote in Four French Presidential Elections
(Second Round; 2007, 2002, 1995, 1988) 181
Table 8.4. Feeling Thermometer Determinants in Four French
Presidential Elections (OLS Models, Full Specification; 2007, 2002,
1995, 1988) 182
Table 8.5. Jean-Marie Le Pen: Leader Effect and Feeling
Thermometer Determinants in Four French Presidential Elections
(1988, 1995, 2002, 2007) 184
Table 9.1. Explanatory Models of Voter Evaluation for the
Social Democratic Party (PSD) and the ‘Justice and Truth’ PNL-PD
Alliance (ADA). Standardized Beta Coefficients with Standard
Errors, OLS Regression 202
List of Tables
xiii
Table 9.2. Explanatory Models of Vote Intention for the
National Union PSD+PUR and the ‘Justice and Truth’ PNL-PD Alliance
(ADA). B Coefficients with Standard Errors, exp(b), Binary Logit
Regression 203
Table 9.3. Determinants of Popularity Scores for Adrian
Nastase [Refer to the spelling on p. 207] (PSD+PUR) and Traian
Basescu [Refer to the spelling on p. 207] (ADA) 207
Appendix: Explanatory Variables Controlled For in the Regression
Models 213
Table 10.1. Directional Effects of Emotional Reactions to
Leaders on Vote Choices 226
Table 10.2. Directional Effects of Emotional Reactions to
Leaders on the Probability of Voting for Different Vote Choices
227
Table 10.3. Mediating Effects of Anxiety on Vote Choices
(Anxious Citizens) 230
Table 10.4. Mediating Effects of Anxiety on Vote Choices
(Non-Anxious Citizens) 230
Table A10.1. Directional Effects of Aversion on Vote Choices
(Without Enthusiasm and Anxiety) 238
Table A10.2. Directional Effects of Anxiety on Vote Choices
(Without Enthusiasm and Aversion) 239
Table A10.3. Directional Effects of Emotional Reactions to Leaders
on Vote Choices (Without Party Evaluations) 240
xv
List of Contributors
Amanda Bittner is Assistant Professor of Political Science at
Memorial University, Canada. She is the author of Platform or
Personality? The Role of Party Leaders in Elections (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2011).
Marina Costa Lobo is a Political Science Researcher at the Social
Sciences Institute of the University of Lisbon. Her research has
focused on leader effects in new democracies. She has been
co-director of the Portuguese Election Study since 2001. Recent
publications include Portugal at the Polls (with A. Freire and
P. Magalhães) and academic articles in Political Research
Quarterly, European Journal of Political Research, Electoral
Studies, and Party Politics.
John Curtice is Professor of Politics at the University of
Strathclyde, Glasgow. He was co-director of the British Election
Study from 1983 to 1997, is a former member of the steering
committee of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Project,
and has been a co-editor of the British Social Attitudes series
since 1994. Other publications include The Rise of New Labour (with
A. Heath and R. Jowell, 2001) and Has Devolution Delivered? (edited
with C. Bromley, D. McCrone, and A. Park, 2001).
Solidea Formichelli holds a PhD on leader effects in Europe from
the University of Siena, Italy.
Andrei Gheorghi is Professor of Sociology at Sibiciu University,
Romania.
Sascha Huber is a Lecturer in Political Science at the University
of Mannheim, Germany. He has published several articles on leader
effects. His latest publication is Faas, Thorsten, and Huber (2010)
‘Experimente in der Politikwissenschaft: Vom Mauerblümchen zum
Mainstream’, Politische Vierteljahresschrift 51: 721–49.
Romain Lachat is Visiting Professor at the Political and Social
Sciences Department of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Spain. His
publications include Romain Lachat and Peter Selb (2010).
‘Strategic Overshooting in National Council Elections’, Swiss
Political Science Review 16(3): 481–498; and Peter Selb and
Romain Lachat (2009). ‘The More, the Better? Counterfactual
Evidence
List of Contributors
xvi
on the Effect of Compulsory Voting on the Consistency of Party
Choice’, European Journal of Political Research
48(5): 573–597.
Michael Lewis-Beck is Professor Emeritus F. Wendell Miller
Distinguished Professor at the University of Iowa, United States.
Professor Lewis-Beck is one of today’s most important political
scientists. Some of his most rel- evant publications include The
American Voter Revisited (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan
Press (with W. Jacoby, H. Norpoth, and H. Weisberg), 2008);
Economics & Elections: The Major Western Democracies (Ann
Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1988); Forecasting
Elections (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press (with T.
Rice), 1992); and Applied Regression: An Introduction (Beverly
Hills, CA: Sage Publications, 1980).
Marco Lisi is Assistant Professor in the Department of Political
Studies, Nova University of Lisbon. He is the author of several
books and articles on political parties, and electoral behavior and
he recently co-edited Transformations of the Radical Left in
Southern Europe (London: Routledge, 2014).
Richard Nadeau is Associate Professor of Political Science at the
University of Montreal, Canada. He has published widely on
electoral behaviour. His most important publications include
Elisabeth Gidengil, André Blais, Neil Nevitte, and Richard Nadeau
(2004). Citizens (Vancouver: UBC Press); André Blais, Elisabeth
Gidengil, Richard Nadeau, and Neil Nevitte (2002). Anatomy of a
Liberal Victory: Making Sense of the Vote in the 2000 Canadian
Election (Peterborough: Broadview Press); and Neil Nevitte, André
Blais, Elisabeth Gidengil, and Richard Nadeau (2000). Unsteady
State: The 1997 Canadian Federal Election (Don Mills, Canada:
Oxford University Press).
Guillem Rico holds a PhD in Political Science from the Universitat
Pompeu Fabra, Spain. His recent publications include Guillem Rico
(2009), Líderes políticos, opinión pública y comportamiento
electoral en España (Madrid: CIS).
Tatjana Rudi holds a PhD in Political Science from the University
of Mainz, Germany. She is currently one of the researchers
responsible for the German Longitudinal Election Study Team at
GESIS, the Leibniz Institute for Social Sciences.
1
Introduction
Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
Whenever elections are fought, it is often the case that the media
attribute to leaders and leadership a key role in the outcome. Be
it in presidential elec- tions in the United States or a
parliamentary election in Britain, journalists and pundits alike
debate at considerable length the relative merits of differ- ent
candidates, their personal characteristics, and the importance of
the TV debates for clinching the election. Yet, the ubiquity of
leaders in the public discourse on politics and elections contrasts
considerably with the role that has been attributed to leaders in
the field of political behaviour, and political science more
generally. To a significant extent, the study of democracy, be it
from the perspective of institutions or individuals, has been
implicitly about the study of how to constrain abuses of power, as
well as excessive concentra- tion of power in the hands of one
leader (Ruscio 2008). As a result, the role of leaders has not been
at the centre of political studies. In the electoral studies
literature, it is often assumed that electors’ behaviour should
depend mainly on their political outlook, and/or that they concern
themselves exclusively with social identities and political issues,
rather than on leaders as cues for voting, presumably because
social anchors and issues are seen as political cues, whereas
leaders are not. Yet, a long standing tradition of the study of
leadership in political studies does exist, ranging from Weber’s
definition of charismatic leadership to Burns’ distinction between
transactional vs. trans- formational leadership (Weber 1968; Burns
1978).
More recently, the study of leaders’ impact has been growing, as
well as the debate on the importance which they have in European
democracies. Studies of the relationship between leaders, their
parties, and political institutions have argued that European
democracies have become increasingly personlized, that is, that
irrespective of the formal constitutional position, party leaders
rather than political parties are now the decisive actors in the
political system. Inter alia, this has been documented through the
increasing personalization of political campaigns, the growing
control of political parties exercised by
Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
2
leaders, and the increased power of prime ministers within
governments (Poguntke and Webb 2005; McAllister 2007; Karvonen
2010).
Authors who stress that the presidentialization of politics is
happening argue that this phenomenon is a corollary of several
factors. First, moderniza- tion and the consequent
individualization of society have led to a loosening of social
structures that used to bind individuals to a preordained set of
social and political attitudes and behaviours. The increasing
patterns of social fluid- ity mean that parties find it difficult
to perform a linkage function between electors and institutions. In
such a context, it is sometimes argued that vot- ers have become
dealigned with voting choices based on issues and leaders rather
than relying on party as heuristics (Dalton, Wattenberg, and
McAllister 2000). Accordingly, this decline in structures and
long-term forces that shape electors’ loyalties to political
parties has had a large impact in raising the importance of leaders
both for party organization and for the way elections are
fought.
Secondly, the continuous and growing mediatization of the political
pro- cess, which is especially pronounced during the campaign
periods, has been established (Swanson and Mancini 1996). This
trend is seen as a factor in the rising importance of leaders in
elections, namely, an emphasis on the candi- date, and their
personal campaign organization, and is happening both in the United
States and across Europe (Farrell 2006, 123). The widespread use of
televised debates among the main party candidates has arguably
contributed to the centrality of leaders during campaigns (LeDuc,
Niemi, and Norris 1996; Garzia 2011).
Thirdly, the overall downsizing of the state since the late 1980s,
and glo- balization, has paradoxically led to a more central and
visible role for leaders, as they act as states’ representatives
across the globe in international forums (Poguntke and Webb 2005,
16).
Fourthly, internal party change has furthered personalized
politics. Parties have responded to exogenous pressures for more
visibility to candidates with reforms that further reinforce the
role of leaders, for example, the introduc- tion of direct election
of leaders (Cross and Blais 2012). Nonetheless, the evi- dence
which has been gathered on the importance of leaders in the field
of electoral behaviour has been less consensual, as we will present
here.
If leader effects are found to matter, how should we interpret this
devel- opment for the future of democracy? The answer to that
question hinges on the nature of leader effects per se, as well as
the degree to which the electorate is sophisticated. If we find
that leader effects are a proxy for party identification, then by
and large, attachment to a leader reflects prior party
identification. It is simply party identification by other means,
in an age of TV democracy. Liking a leader is a reflection of the
electors’ perceptions of that leader’s political views, their
political choices, and their competence for
Introduction
3
office. Proper research which carefully models for endogeneity and
considers multicausality should make it possible to measure the
degree to which leader effects are in effect explained by prior
party identification.
Using the leader as a cue for voting may not be a negative
development for democracy, even if we consider a dealigned
electorate. Provided the elec- torate is sophisticated, this could
even be welcomed as a positive change. An informed electorate will
seek information on leaders’ political views and policy preferences
before making a choice. Such a change would thus be representative
of a new relationship between the electorate and politicians,
whereby the latter are much more closely monitored. They cannot
expect the electorate’s loyal vote one election after the next,
simply because they stand for a given party. It is a model of
voting which approximates the rational choice model (Dalton and
Klingemann 2007, 11).
On the other hand, of course, if it is found that leader effects
are contin- gent on media displays of the candidates, that is, the
extent to which they appear on television, the way they look, and
their personal characteristics, then it is likely that leader
effects are a worrying sign of negative changes in the nature of
democracy. In such a context, the rise of leader effects would have
to be seen as a sign of a depoliticization of elections, which
would cease being about issues and political choices, and instead
become a ‘beauty contest’ between politicians. Naturally, if the
electorate using leader effects has very little information on
political issues, the likelihood that leaders are being used as
proxies for political issues declines, and the chances that they
are being chosen for their looks and charm on television
increases.
What We Know So Far
We start from the premise that, as has been amply shown elsewhere,
how people vote is decreasingly determined by their location in the
social structure (such as their social class or religious
membership) or by a long-term sense of loyalty to a political party
(Dalton et al. 2000; Dalton 2002; Thomassen 2005). Whereas in the
1960s social cleavages explained 30% of the variance in electoral
choice, in the mid-1980s that value had declined to 10%. Recent
studies (Franklin 2009; 2010) find the set of Western countries to
have ended the twentieth century with variance in party choice
explained by social structure in single digits (in the United
States, the corresponding variance explained reaches 12%
only).
Correspondingly, short-term factors, such as issue positions (Borre
2001; Knutsen and Kumlin 2005) and evaluations of the economy
(Kiewiet and Rivers 1984; Lewis-Beck and Paldam 2000), have become
more important.
Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
4
As part of this process, evaluations of party leaders have
supposedly become more important too.
There has been no consensus in attempts to measure the impact of
leaders. Some authors contend that supposedly parliamentary
elections are now effec- tively presidential contests (Clarke et
al. 1979; Graetz and MacAllister 1987; Bean and Mughan 1989; Glaser
and Salmon 1991; Stewart and Clarke 1992; Mughan 1995; Mughan 2000;
Clarke et al. 2004). However, this claim is far from uncontested.
Some studies cast doubt on whether evaluations of leaders have ever
had much impact on either individual voters or election outcomes
(Bartle 2002; Bartle and Crewe 2002, King 2002; for an overview,
see Barisione 2009 and Karvonen 2010). The trend of
presidentialization implies the growing importance of leaders, and
thus can only be tested through a longitudinal anal- ysis of voting
behaviour. The few such studies that have actually empirically
tested the claim that leader evaluations have become more important
over time reach quite cautious conclusions (Curtice and Holmberg
2005; Brettschneider et al. 2006). Two recent additions to the
literature have been published most recently. An edited volume by
Aarts, Blais, and Schmitt, Political Leaders and Democratic
Elections, uses election surveys over the past fifty years to
under- stand the impact of political leaders on voting decisions in
nine democra- cies (the United States, Britain, Canada, Germany,
the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Australia). It covers
topics such as the impact of the rise of TV politics, and
investigates the relationship between institutional varia- tion and
leader effects. Due to its longitudinal dataset, the authors are
able to test the ‘presidentialization’ hypothesis and conclude that
the characteristics of political leaders, parties, and indeed,
voters themselves, are actually not important for voting patterns.
These findings are contrary to those of another recent study by
Bittner (2011), where the author—also using a longitudinal dataset
with election studies between 1968 and 2006 in Australia, Britain,
Canada, Germany, New Zealand, Sweden, and the United States—reaches
the conclusion that leader effects matter. Using character traits
as independent variables in the large pooled dataset, in a fully
comprehensive model of vot- ing behaviour, it is found that leaders
are systematically a relevant factor for vote choice. Not only
that, but leaders also have a relevant impact on party success and
electoral outcomes. Thus, even with the more recent studies, the
controversy over the presidentialization thesis has not been
resolved.
Not least of the reasons for this dispute are the methodological
challenges that surround any attempt to study leader effects,
especially the issue of endo- geneity (Andersen and Evans 2003;
Clarke et al. 2004; Evans and Andersen 2005). Part of the reason
for the disagreement on the magnitude of leader effects seems to
stem from the differences in the way in which authors esti- mate
leader effects, and how they attempt to isolate those from party
iden- tification, ideological effects, and other short-term
factors. Meanwhile, if
Introduction
5
party leaders have indeed become more influential in shaping the
electoral appeal of their parties, attempts to ascertain their
impact independently of the appeal of their parties might simply be
misguided.
In any event, it is doubtful whether sweeping claims about the
presiden- tialization of elections should be made without any
regard to the political and social context within which elections
take place. For example, most past research has focused on
consolidated democracies, largely ignoring the expe- rience of
younger democracies.1 However, partisanship is generally lower in
newer democracies (van Biezen and Mair 2002). So, if short-term
forces such as leader evaluations matter more where the electorate
is less socially anchored or partisan, we might expect leaders to
have a greater impact on voting behaviour in such democracies.
Certainly, where the role of leader evaluations has been examined
in studies of newer democracies, their impact emerges as not
insubstantial (Gunther and Montero 2001; Lobo 2006; Rudi
2009).
Equally, even amongst consolidated democracies themselves, the
impact of leader evaluations seems to vary according to the
political context. At the macro level, leaders matter more in
presidential and semi-presidential regimes than in parliamentary
ones. In a parliamentary context, however, as might be expected,
leadership evaluations appear to matter more where a majoritarian
electoral system is in place, where the battle for power is focused
on two parties (Curtice and Holmberg 2005; Curtice and Hunjan
2007), or on the type of parties which exist as catch-all vs.
electoralist (Lobo 2008). Indeed, the political context may matter
considerably for leader effects. In this area, there is still a lot
of untested hypotheses, some of which are dealt with in this book,
especially in what concerns the impact of coalition vs. single
party gov- ernments on leader effects (Formichelli) and the
relationship between degree of party system polarization and leader
effects (Lachat).
At the micro level, there have been considerable advances in the
field of political psychology researching the way in which electors
make politi- cal choices, and the way that preferences on leaders
are formed and influ- ence voting decisions (Lau and Redlawsk
2006), whether candidates’ traits trump political platforms
(Bittner 2011), and the extent to which emotion and reason are
independent and influence political attitudes towards leaders
(Redlawsk, Civettini, and Lau 2007). In electoral studies, there
has been sub- stantial research carried out on the link between
media (and especially TV) exposure and leader effects, as well as
on the link between political sophisti- cation and the importance
attributed to leaders. The advent of mass media
1 Even Aarts et al. (2011) is only a partial exception to this
rule. It includes just one younger democracy, Spain, alongside the
US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Sweden, the Netherlands,
and Norway.
Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
6
communication has placed television at the centre of political
campaigns. From the 1950s and 1960s onwards, beginning in the
United States, television has led to a personalization of the
parties’ images. Related to this hypothesis is one which connects
degree of political sophistication and leader effects. However,
there has yet been little consensus on the degree to which high
levels of TV exposure or low levels of political sophistication
magnify leader effects (Gidengil et al. 2000; Kroh 2004), although
most studies point to rela- tively small effects.
On the issue of political sophistication, the initial hypothesis
posited that those with little information on the issues at stake
in a campaign would be more inclined to vote according to their
sympathies towards a given can- didate. However, recent research
has begun to show that, on the contrary, it is those with most
political knowledge that tend to be more sensitive to leader
effects (Gidengil et al. 2000; Kroh 2004; Bittner 2011). An
interesting hypothesis was put forward by Clarke et al. (2004,
174–176), which nonethe- less could not be fully proven: that
leader effects might follow a curvilinear pattern, with voters with
moderate levels of political expertise experiencing the largest
effect. Leader effects would be lowest for voters with low levels
of expertise, since they are unhinged and no type of political cues
would affect them. Effects would also be lower at the high end of
voter sophistication, since these rely on other sources of
information that require higher levels of expertise.
Our Goals
This book assesses the role that voters’ perceptions and
evaluations of lead- ers play nowadays in democratic elections. We
will present evidence from an array of countries with diverse
historical and institutional contexts, and employ innovative
methodologies, in order to assess the importance of lead- ers in
democracies worldwide. Careful consideration of leader effects in
differ- ent contexts will enable us to respond to a series of
interconnected questions which have been left largely unanswered in
the existing studies: Do leader effects make a relevant
contribution to variance explained in a multicausal model of
voting? Where do leaders effects come from? In which institutional
contexts are leader effects more important? To which kinds of
voters are lead- ers a more prominent factor for voting behaviour?
And what do leader effects stand for? Taken together, we will be
able to answer the fundamental ques- tion about leader effects in
old and new democracies: namely, to what extent are they a sign of
a new, more rational, relationship between the electorate and the
political realm, or whether they symbolize the debasing of politics
in the contestation of elections.
Introduction
7
We therefore propose to analyse the impact of evaluations of
European leaders on voting behaviour and election outcomes across
different contexts, over time, and amongst different kinds of
voters, paying attention to the younger democracies of Southern,
Central, and Eastern Europe, as well as consolidated industrial
democracies. In so doing, we seek to move the goal- posts of debate
on leader effects from the question of magnitude to the ques- tion
of contexts. Ultimately, we will determine whether the role leaders
play enhances or damages the electoral process, and so we will be
able to contrib- ute to the debate on the quality of democracy in
electoral democracies today.
The breadth of countries and periods being analysed in this book
should be considered as one of its main strengths. Taking all the
chapters together, leader effects in the following countries are
analysed in a comparative per- spective: Australia, Belarus,
Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany,
Great Britain, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Israel, Italy,
Japan, Lithuania, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway,
Peru, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Slovenia, South Korea,
Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Ukraine, and the United States.
Individual chapters focus exclusively on one country, normally from
a longitudinal perspective, namely, Croatia, France, and
Switzerland. The period covered ranges from the 1980s until the
first decade of the twenty-first century, thus covering circa three
decades of electoral politics. In what follows, we describe each
Section in the book and provide a brief account of each chapter’s
goals.
Political or Not? Where do Leader Evaluations Come from?
In this Section, chapters will unpack the meaning of leader
evaluations. Are leader evaluations a proxy for ideology or party
identification? Or are they derived from other sources? Extant
literature on the topic is scarce and often non-comparative. In the
first chapter, Amanda Bittner analyses the origins of personality
traits. The main goal is to answer the question of where do the
perceptions on leaders actually come from? How are they
formed?
Drawing on existing research on the US case, the author builds a
hypothe- sis that links partisan stereotypes to personality traits.
For the American voter, it has been determined that Democrats are
perceived as more compassionate and empathetic, while Republicans
are considered to be tougher and stronger leaders. If party labels
are traditionally associated with certain personality traits, then
we would expect these stereotypes to feed back into perceptions of
political candidates. The main goal of the chapter is to apply this
hypothesis in a comparative context. To that end, the author built
a database includ- ing thirty-five election studies from seven
countries spanning three decades (’80s, ’90s, ’00s), pooled
together to look at the evaluations of leaders’ traits across a
number of institutional environments. Thus, not only is the
analysis
Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
8
across countries, but it is also across time, with several
elections per coun- try included. This gives the research both
enormous breadth and depth. The chapter ends by testing whether
partisan stereotypes are a cue primarily for less sophisticated
voters.
The second chapter has a similar focus on the ‘origins’ of
perceptions of leaders. Sascha Huber explores the interdependency
of personal and political factors in explaining judgements on
politicians. To assess the causality of fac- tors, the author
carried out an experimental study—considered ideal because it
enables the manipulation of the information that is accessible to
each sample group in order to determine which factors are causal,
and preclude endogeneity. The experiments were conducted with two
objectives: the first was to disentangle the relationship between
political and apolitical factors in the formation of judgements on
political leaders. In this part of the chapter, the questions asked
are the following: First, do voters infer character traits from the
political positions of leaders or vice versa? Second, do voters
adjust their judgements about character traits to their political
assessment of lead- ers or vice versa? Answering these questions
allows for a better understand- ing of the thought processes which
characterize electors’ views on policies. The second objective of
the chapter is to analyse the institutional effects of
parliamentary and presidential elections on the influence of
character assess- ments on vote choices. To this end, three
experiments were conducted with 286 subjects in Germany, 313
subjects in France, and 347 subjects in Sweden. Sascha Huber takes
us through the experiments, where specific types of infor- mation
are given or withheld to groups of respondents before they are
asked to make a character judgement, or simulate a vote choice.
Such innovative methodology allows for strong causal inferences on
the meaning of percep- tions of leaders.
Systematic or Not? When do Leader Evaluations Matter?
In this Section, the relationship between leader evaluations and
the institu- tional setting in which they occur is examined. It has
been shown that leader- ship evaluations matter more where a
majoritarian electoral system is in place or where the battle for
power is focused on two parties (Curtice and Holmberg 2005).
However, other institutional variables may be included which may be
considered relevant mediators of leader effects. Candidates for
inclusion as macro variables include: political institutions,
electoral rules, and party systems; age of democracy; single and
coalition government; and party polarization.
In chapter 3 John Curtice and Marco Lisi investigate how
institutional designs shape the impact of leaders on party choice.
Using the CSES data- set, it includes thirty-seven election studies
held in twenty-nine countries. The first and most important
proposition that they test is whether leadership
Introduction
9
evaluations now have just as much influence on the way that people
vote in parliamentary elections as they do in presidential ones.
Next, the authors test the sub-hypothesis that in certain types of
parliamentary elections—namely, those using a majoritarian
electoral system or those where a two-party system exists—leaders
will matter as much as in presidential elections. They further
distinguish between parliamentary elections held in parliamentary
systems and those held in semi-presidential regimes. In the last
section of the chapter, the authors test the relationship between
the strength of party identification and leader effects.
In the next chapter Solidea Formichelli investigates the importance
of party system format for the strength of leader effects, across
eighteen European Member States, in a period of time that ranges
from 1990 to 2006. Two inter- related hypotheses are tested,
namely, that moving from a two-party system to a multiparty system,
the leaders’ impact on voting behaviour will increase, and that
moving from a one-party to a coalition government, a similar impact
occurs. The analysis proceeds in the following way: first, a model
is built to compare the explanatory power of an exclusively
sociopolitical model of voting behaviour with one where the
leaders’ impact on voting behaviour is added to the model to
determine the significance of leader effects in the model. Then,
the previous analysis is rerun, this time, controlling for the
effects of the party system. This chapter breaks new ground, not
only due to the theoretical question which is asked, often assumed
but never tested thor- oughly, and also due to the size of the
database which was constructed, which is also thoroughly
representative of the European voter.
Roman Lachat’s chapter focuses on the 2007 Swiss parliamentary
elections and researches the effects of ideology and leader effects
on voting propensi- ties, controlling by political sophistication
and electoral competitiveness. At the micro level he test the
hypotheses that the importance of ideology should vary negatively
with the importance of leaders on voting propensities and that
political sophistication should vary positively with the impact of
ideo- logical distances. At the macro level, Lachat expects
competitiveness to vary negatively with leader effects.
Sophisticated or Uninformed Electors? Who Takes Leader Evaluations
into Account?
This Section of the book addresses the issue of which voters are
more prone to use leaders in their vote calculus. There is good
reason too to anticipate that evaluations of leaders affect the
behaviour of some voters more than others. Past research has
suggested that candidates may matter more for voters with low
levels of political sophistication (Gidengil et al. 2000; Bartle
2002). Using a variety of country cases and innovative
methodologies, the chapters in this
Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
10
Section analyse the profile of voters who are influenced by
leaders, namely, in terms of political sophistication, type of
media exposure, and degree of party identification.
Guillem Rico’s chapter seeks to understand the relationship between
degree of political sophistication and media exposure on the one
hand, and leader evaluations and party choice on the other hand.
Those who have relatively little political sophistication would be
expected to rely more on trait charac- teristics for their
judgement on leaders, rather than sophisticates, who would rely
more on party cues or other political factors both for party and
vote choice. Similarly, the less sophisticated would be expected to
use leaders as a cue for voting to a greater extent. The analysis
is longitudinal, using indi- vidual data from four Spanish general
elections between 1982 and 2008, thus allowing the author not only
to test the importance of individual char- acteristics on the
components of leader evaluations and vote choice, but also to test
whether these effects have increased over time.
The next chapter, by Marina Costa Lobo, investigates the importance
of leader effects for the dealigned electorate. The goal of the
chapter is to test whether those who have no party identification,
individuals who decided who to vote for during the campaign, and
also those who switch party vote from one election to the next,
tend to give more importance to leaders. The assumption is that
leaders will be more important for electors with only a weak
relation to parties. The data used to test these interrelated
hypotheses are gathered from recent election studies in Italy,
Spain, and Portugal, countries chosen due to their differences in
the aggregate level of dealignment: Italy is a case of modest
dealignment, Spain is an intermediate case, and Portugal is a
democracy wherein a large percentage of the electorate is
dealigned.
Competence or Character? What about Leaders Matters?
The fourth and final Section of the book explores the dimensions of
affect for leaders. Are leader effects synonymous with personality
traits or are they a heuristic device for prime ministerial
performance abilities? Do they epito- mize the debasing of
politics, the end of the importance of issues, and the
transformation of politics into ‘beauty contests’? Previous studies
have not been completely decisive on these issues. We will seek to
present evidence using diverse methodological techniques and
different countries which illu- minate this aspect of the
importance of leaders.
Michael Lewis-Beck and Richard Nadeau investigate leader effects in
the French presidential elections between 1988 and 2007. As the
authors note, the importance of the presidential figure in France
‘stands as a given’, but has seldom been systematically addressed.
The French case has been very rarely included in edited volumes on
leader effects. In this chapter, the
Introduction
11
authors start by assessing the magnitude of leader effects across
the three decades of presidential voting, in the first- and
second-round of the presi- dential contest, for the mainstream
parties of French politics. The particu- larities of this two-round
election system, with only the two most voted candidates in the
second-round, justify the analysis: it is expected that leaders’
effects increase from the first- to the second-round. Next,
Lewis-Beck and Nadeau use the leader thermometers as dependent
variables in order to establish what explanatory factors lay behind
these attitudes towards lead- ers. Are these mostly proxies for
ideology or issue positioning, or do char- acter traits actually
bear on the importance of leaders? The last section of the chapter
deals with Le Pen, the leader of the extreme-right wing Front
National party, who reached the second-round of presidential
elections in 2002. The leader effects for the Le Pen voters are
presented as a test of whether these effects are stronger in this
type of party.
Gheorghi analyses leader effects in Romania across two decades. In
Central and Eastern Europe, party systems tend to be weakly
anchored in society, and leaders have traditionally assumed a
prominent role in politics. There are lower levels of political
involvement, weak party identification, and high electoral
volatility. Together, these factors constitute favourable ter- rain
for the personalization of politics. The data employed are of two
types: the Public Opinion Barometers which measure vote intention
for legislative and presidential elections, declared confidence in
the political leaders, and several sociodemographical variables;
and a pre- and post-election panel car- ried out during the 2004
legislative elections. The analysis is conducted first from a
longitudinal perspective using the Barometer data, testing the
asso- ciation between leaders, political events, and voting
intention. For the 2004 survey data, a model was built in order to
measure the magnitude of leader effects. In the last part of the
chapter, Gheorghi employs a strategy very similar to the one
adopted by Nadeau and Lewis-Beck in order to understand the
importance of candidate traits vis-à-vis other factors in the
leader scales. These models are rerun, distinguishing between
electors’ political knowledge.
The last chapter in the volume is an investigation of the role of
emotions in leadership effects. Tatjana Rudi starts from the
premise, similar to the one Gheorghi presents, that in Central and
Eastern European democra- cies, due to the relatively unanchored
nature of the electorate, leaders mat- ter quite substantially for
vote choices. Her research distinguishes between the affective vs.
cognitive nature of perceptions of leaders, with the author
expecting a combination of those types of factors to explain the
leader ther- mometers. The chapter proposes to test several
hypotheses. At a basic level, it seeks to test the importance of
emotions about leaders for vote choice. The enthusiasm scale is
expected to be more important as a predictor for parties which are
well known to the electorate, that is, the government
Marina Costa Lobo and John Curtice
12
and main opposition parties. Conversely, the anxiety scale should
be more relevant for parties whose leaders are relatively unknown.
A vote model is constructed in order to determine the importance of
these emotions, con- trolling for other intervening variables,
namely, sociodemographic factors and ideology.
In the Conclusion, we will provide a systematic overview of the
book’s findings. As will be demonstrated, we will be able to draw
significant con- clusions on the specificities of leader effects,
both in terms of whether its nature and origins are mostly personal
or political, and in which contexts they matter more, both in
consolidated and newer democracies. A whole section is devoted to
the issue of the types of electorate (viewed from the perspective
of media exposure, political sophistication, and party dealign-
ment) which are more liable to use leader perceptions as cues. This
is a major concern that cross-cuts several chapters of other
Sections. Ultimately, it will also serve as a crucial test to
understand the significance of leaders for the quality of
democracies in the twenty-first century.
Finally, we would like to express our gratitude to the persons and
institu- tions which have, in one way or another, supported our
efforts. We wish to thank the Institute of Social Sciences at the
University of Lisbon, as well as the University of Strathclyde, for
financially supporting the project.
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Section 1 Political or Not? Where Do Leader Evaluations Come
From?
17
1
Amanda Bittner
1.1 Introduction
Both campaign organizers and the media appear to agree that voters’
percep- tions of party leaders have an important impact on the
vote: substantial effort is made to ensure that leaders look good,
that they speak well, and that they are up in the polls. Media
reports during election campaigns focus on the horse race and how
leaders are perceived in the public eye. In contrast, the academic
literature is much more divided. Some suggest that leaders play an
important role in the vote calculus, while others argue that in
comparison to other factors (such as partisanship and the economy),
perceptions of leaders have only a minimal effect.
There is also substantial disagreement about how it is that voters
actually evaluate candidates in the first place. Scholars have
reached very different conclusions about the types of factors that
influence voters’ evaluations of leaders. Existing studies point to
divergent sets of factors, including voter demographics (Cutler
2002), partisanship and ideology (Bartels 2002; Graetz and
McAllister 1987), and policy/issue related factors (Rusk and
Weisberg 1972; Weisberg and Rusk 1970).
In addition to these ‘background’ factors, some scholars have noted
that the party label itself provides cues to voters when they lack
information, and that even when other types of information are
available, voters continue to rely upon a ‘partisan stereotype’ in
inferring candidates’ issue positions. Recent US research (Goren
2007; Hayes 2005) suggests that the impact of the parti- san
stereotype extends beyond issue positions to impressions of
candidates’ personality traits as well. Individuals’
characteristics are judged in the light of a partisan stereotype,
as Democrats are perceived to be more compassionate
Amanda Bittner
18
and empathetic, while Republicans are considered to be tougher and
stronger leaders. While these findings are specific to the United
States, it is reasonable to expect that the existence and reliance
upon a partisan stereotype extends to candidate evaluation beyond
US borders.
In order to determine the potential cross-national effects of a
partisan ste- reotype, comparative analysis is required. This
chapter thus incorporates data from thirty-five election studies
across seven countries with varying insti- tutional
environments: Australia, Britain, Canada, Germany, New
Zealand, Sweden, and the United States. By pooling these data and
examining the impact of leaders on a larger (comparative) basis,
this study takes both a broad and in-depth look at evaluations of
party leaders.
Both cognitive psychology and economics have influenced political
sci- ence understandings of how voters cope with both cognitive
limits and the necessities of efficiency to make reasoned
decisions. Some suggest that because of their limited capabilities
in dealing with information, people use information that is already
stored to arrive at their decisions. Many scholars suggest that
individuals are able to make use of information shortcuts, or
heuristics, to come to reasoned decisions (Brady and Sniderman
1985; Lau and Redlawsk 1997).
Among the many heuristics that individuals may use (see Lau 2003
for a detailed description of different types of heuristics), two
are particularly per- tinent in the evaluation of party leaders.
First is the application of partisan and ideological schemata—in
which individuals categorize candidates with whom they are
relatively unfamiliar according to categories that already exist in
their minds. Effectively, individuals assume that new information
is con- sistent with existing information, and they apply a
‘category-based affect’, deciding how they feel about the
individual candidate based on how they feel about the category as a
whole (Lau 2003). Second, individuals may also apply person
stereotypes, in which factors such as age, gender, race, and the
way that a person looks will inform an individual’s impression of
candidates. Thus, ‘since women are traditionally seen as more
compassionate than men, women candidates are often seen to be more
competent on, or more con- cerned with, compassion issues such as
helping the poor or advocating for children’ (McDermott
1998).
Rahn suggests that ‘our notions about what groups are like strongly
influ- ence how we appraise individual members of these groups’
(1993), and that ‘in partisan elections, the most powerful cue
provided by the political envi- ronment is the candidate’s
membership in a particular political party. Even if voters know
nothing else about a candidate, the ballot provides them with one
important piece of information’ (1993). The party label, therefore,
provides information to voters that will assist in the
decision-making process. This ‘partisan stereotype’ is different
from the effect of a voter’s own partisanship,
Leader Evaluations and Partisan Stereotypes
19
which may also influence his or her perceptions of a candidate.
Conover and Feldman (1989) note that voters will rely upon their
own partisanship to make inferences about candidates’ positions,
for example. According to their research, this projection effect
occurs in extremely low information settings: due to a lack of
‘real’ information, voters will project their own issue positions
(and/or partisanship) onto their preferred candidate.
The effect of the partisan stereotype is different from a
projection effect, in that the label of the candidate provides
information to the voter, information that the voter then uses to
ascribe issue positions to that candidate. Thus, the idea is that
in low-information settings, that is, where voters lack the infor-
mation that would allow them to wade through competing candidates’
issue positions and platforms in order to decide who to vote for,
they will rely upon readily available cues (including the party
label of the candidate) in order to be able to assign issue
positions and make decisions (Conover and Feldman 1989; Kinder
1978; McDermott 1997, 1998, 2005; Rahn 1993). Rahn suggests that
the use of partisan stereotypes may be a fairly reliable way to
‘simplify the political environment’ (1993) because parties differ
in what are largely predictable ways.
Hayes notes that party leaders are perceived to have strengths in
certain personality traits in the American context (Hayes 2005),
and puts forth a theory of ‘trait ownership’, much like theories of
‘issue ownership’ that have emerged in voting behaviour literature
both inside and outside the United States (Budge and Farlie 1983;
Petrocik 1996; Petrocik et al. 2003; Rabinowitz and MacDonald
1989). The idea is that certain executive characteristics have
policy content, and as much as parties tend to ‘own’ issues, their
party lead- ers tend to ‘own’ related traits. Petrocik (1996)
describes the division of issue ownership in the United
States:
Democrats are seen as better able to handle welfare problems.
Perceptions of the parties on social issues (e.g. crime and
protecting moral values) favor the GOP. The data also document the
GOP’s hold on foreign policy and defense through the late 1980s.
Opinions were mixed on economic matters, but were generally a GOP
asset (by an average of about 13 points). Government spending,
inflation, and taxation were also Republican issues (Petrocik 1996,
831).
Because parties have an advantage in their issue areas, candidates
will emphasize their party’s issues (Petrocik 1996; Petrocik
et al. 2003; Sides 2006; Simon 2002), and because of the
heavy focus on leaders in the media (Gidengil and Everitt 2000;
Mendelsohn 1993, 1994, 1996), issue ownership is translated into
the ownership of related personality traits. Unless shown
otherwise, ‘voters will usually assume that a Democratic candidate
is more liberal than conservative, that he/she favours social
programs over defence programs, while Republicans are, for the most
part, defence ‘hawks’ who
Amanda Bittner
20
support lower taxes and smaller government’ (McDermott 1998).
Brought to the level of specific personality traits, ‘Republicans
appear to own leadership and morality, while Democrats own
compassion and empathy’ (Hayes 2005).
Based on theories of issue ownership, generally speaking (not
solely in the American context), right-of-centre parties ought to
be seen as more con- servative than liberal, and more supportive of
lower taxes and smaller gov- ernment. Taking this argument one step
further, then, we ought to expect right-of-centre party leaders to
have perceived strengths in leadership and morality, while
left-of-centre leaders should possess traits like compassion and
empathy. There is no reason to believe that the partisan stereotype
should apply only in the United States. Parties play up their
strengths in election campaigns around the world, and thus a
similar effect ought to exist across national boundaries. Finally,
we ought to expect that less sophisticated voters are the most
likely to evaluate leaders according to the partisan stereotypes:
‘since this information is readily available while other political
information is costly, we would expect voters in low information
conditions to use these cues when voting’ (McDermott 1998).
Less informed voters, who lack the knowledge or political
sophistication required to make voting decisions based on policy,
may decide whether or not they like the party’s leader, and vote
for the party largely on that basis. This mirrors the notion put
forth by Sniderman et al. (1991), who suggest that people can
figure out what they oppose or support if they can simplify their
options, and that among the less educated, affect (or how you feel
towards something or someone) plays a significant role in
explaining policy preferences. Essentially, you may not know a lot
about a candidate, but with relative ease, you can decide whether
or not you like him or her, and you can therefore simplify your
vote choice by acting on that feeling.
1.2 Method
To better understand the role of leaders in elections, a
comparative analysis is necessary. I argue that, in large part, the
reason for the lack of agreement in the literature is the nature of
the studies that have been conducted to date— for the most part,
they have been based on single election studies which often examine
distinct survey questions. I suggest that, by looking at a common
set of variables across countries and over time, we will be able to
obtain more conclusive evidence about the origins of evaluations of
leaders’ traits and the impact of those perceptions on
elections.
Early in the study of person perception and leadership candidates,
Kinder et al. (1980) suggested that the presidential prototype
consists of two main types of qualities: personality and
performance. Since this time, a number of
Leader Evaluations and Partisan Stereotypes
21
scholars have expended a substantial amount of time to determine
the extent to which these categories or dimensions of traits
actually structure the way voters think about traits, or whether
traits more realistically fit into other, dif- ferent, dimensions.
Over the years, scholars have suggested that voters evalu- ate
traits in categories numbering anywhere from two to twelve (see,
e.g., Bean 1993; Bean and Mughan 1989; Brettschneider and Gabriel
2002; Brown et al. 1988; Glass 1985; Johnston 2002; Kinder 1983,
1986; Kinder et al. 1980; Miller et al. 1986; Stewart and Clarke
1992), with the majority suggesting that traits fall into
substantially fewer than twelve, usually somewhere between two and
four dimensions.
Building on this past research on the dimensionality of traits,
recent, in-depth, longitudinal analysis of cross-national data
suggests that traits fall within two main ‘umbrella’
dimensions: competence and character (Bittner 2011).1 Traits
in the competence dimension include traits such as leadership,
knowledgeable, intelligent, and inspiring, while the character
dimension includes traits such as cares, honest, trustworthy, and
compassionate.
This analysis is based on thirty-five election studies from a total
of seven countries with useable closed-ended questions about
leaders’ traits.2 Concatenating these studies results in a dataset
with over 186,000 respond- ents, and over 400 variables, all coded
in a similar format. Crucial variables to this analysis include
evaluations of leaders’ traits, and in addition to trait
evaluations, the dataset incorporates variables such as party and
leader ther- mometers, demographic variables, attitudes towards
issues, vote choice, partisanship, media exposure, and political
sophistication. All traits were coded on a 0–1 scale, with 1
representing the most positive evaluation of the leader on a given
trait, and 0 representing the most negative evaluation of the
leader on the trait. These evaluations were then combined to create
an index for each of the two trait dimensions (character and
competence). By doing this for each of the main party leaders in
each of the elections in question, we are able to compare voters’
perceptions of the party leaders along the two different trait
dimensions.3 The following section assesses the results of the
analyses.
1 These dimensions were identified through a series of stacked
correlation analyses, based on the evaluations of party leaders in
35 different election studies. For details about analyses, as well
as complete list of all traits in each dimension, see Bittner
(2011).
2 The complete list of studies includes: the Australian
Election Study (including 1987, 1993, 1996, 1998, 2001, and 2004);
the British Election Study (including 1983, 1987, 1992, 1997, and
2001); the Canadian Election Study (including 1968, 1984, 1988,
1993, 1997, 2000, 2004, and 2006); the German Election Study
(including 1980 and 1987); the National Election Study (from the
US, including 1972, 1976, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, 1996, 2000, and
2004), the National Annenberg Election Study (US, 2000); the New
Zealand Election Study (including 1999 and 2002); and the Swedish
Election Study (including 1988 and 1991).
3 Comparing evaluations of party leaders across countries comes
with considerable methodo- logical challenges, first and foremost,
in terms of grouping parties into ‘types’. Because, e.g., the
German FDP does not exist in Canada, and because the British Labour
Party does not exist in the
Amanda Bittner
1.3 Results
1.3.1 Conservative Leaders Are More ‘Competent,’ Left Leaders Have
More ‘Character’
The data indicate that indeed, individuals do perceive leaders
through a parti- san lens, and that this is not merely an American
phenomenon. Voters perceive the leaders of Conservative and Left
parties as having party-specific personality strengths, and these
perceptions are based solely on the party label of the leader.
Conservative leaders are rated more positively on the Competence
dimension, while Left party leaders are rated more positively on
the Character dimension. This partisan stereotype exists, even when
we control for the partisanship of the voter, thus it is not simply
a projection effect where those feeling an affinity to the Left
party imagine that their leaders must display these
characteristics. Partisans of different parties see the leaders in
the same stereotypic way.
Figure 1.1 illustrates this trend through the use of box plots: the
upper graph in the figure depicts evaluations of competence of the
leaders of the three main party types, while the lower graph in the
figure depicts evalua- tions of character. The line in the middle
of each box represents the median evaluation of the leaders’
competence or character.
As the figure makes clear, there are distinct differences in how
respondents perceive leaders on the two dimensions. Conservative
leaders are perceived to hold particular strengths on the
Competence dimension, with median rat- ings of 0.667, while Left
leaders obtain a median rating of 0.5 on this dimen- sion. On the
Character dimension, Conservative leaders obtain a median rating of
0.556, while the median for Left leaders is 0.667. Centre-Left
leaders fall in between the two on both dimensions.
US, using each country’s party label for cross-national analysis is
not feasible. However, there are commonalities among parties from
different countries, and scholars have expended considerable effort
to develop cross-national comparisons between parties based on
party policies and platforms. Examples include expert surveys
(Benoit and Laver 2007) and the Comparative Manifesto Project
(Budge et al. 2001). See McDonald, Mendes, and Kim 2007 for a
review of these efforts. My analysis makes use of Benoit and
Laver’s (2007) extensive work, which maps parties along two
dimensional lines: stances on social liberalism and on taxes versus
spending. I categorized parties according to their placement along
these two dimensions, grouping parties with similar locations into
the same group or category. Party categories included
‘Conservative’ (including the Canadian Conservatives, the American
Republicans, the British Conservatives, the German CDU and CSU, the
Australian Liberals, and the Swedish Moderate Party); ‘Centre-Left’
(including the Canadian Liberals, British Labour, New Zealand
Labour, Australian Labour, the German SPD, and the US Democratic
party); ‘Left’ (which includes the Canadian NDP, the Swedish Left
Party, the New Zealand Alliance, the British Liberal Democrats, and
the Australian Democrats); ‘Centre-Right’ (which includes the
Swedish Centre Party, the New Zealand National Party, New Zealand
ACT, the Swedish Peoples Party, and the German FDP); ‘Right’ (which
includes New Zealand First, Australian ONE, Australian Nationals,
Swedish Christian, Swedish NDP, and the Canadian Reform Party);
‘Green’ (which includes the Swedish, Canadian, New Zealand,
Australian, and German Green Parties); and ‘Sectional’ (which
includes the Canadian Bloc Quebecois, the Scottish National Party,
and the Welsh Plaid Cymru). By aggregating parties into these
groups, it was then possible to analyse evaluations of the leaders
of these different parties en masse, because of the new common
nomenclature.
Leader Evaluations and Partisan Stereotypes
23
These differences may not seem important as basic summary
statistics, but when slightly more sophisticated analyses are
performed, the effect of the party label becomes clearer. Table 1.1
expands on the trends in Figure 1.1. The table depicts the results
of a stacked regression analysis, in which evalu- ations of the
character and competence of leaders of the three main party types
were regressed on dummy variables indicating the party label of the
leader.4
1
0.8
0.6
0.667
Conservative Centre-Left Left
Conservative Centre-Left Left
Figure 1.1. Summary Statistics: Evaluations of Three Main Party
Leaders’ Competence and Character. *Median values marked by
horizontal bar inside of block.
4 Stacking the data involved changing the nature of the data
matrix. The original format reflected a set-up in which each
observation was one respondent, and evaluations for each indi-
vidual leader on each individual trait were separate variables. By
stacking the data, individual
Amanda Bittner
24
That the coefficients are statistically significant is not
particularly note- worthy, given the large sample size. More
important is that the data illus- trate that Conservative leaders
are rated more negatively than Centre-Left leaders on the Character
dimension, while Left leaders are rated substan- tially more
positively than Centre-Left leaders on this same dimension. At the
same time, Conservative leaders are rated more positively on the
Competence dimension, and Left leaders are rated more negatively
than Centre-Left leaders on this dimension. The pattern of the
partisan stereo- type is evident, and persists beyond the simple
summary statistics presented in Figure 1.1.
Furthermore, analysis of the traits within these two dimensions
suggests that these relationships are not simply the result of
perceptions of leaders on a particular trait within the dimension.
Table 1.2 lists the results of analy- ses performed to determine
the difference in means between leaders on the ten most frequently
asked personality traits (five in the Character dimension and five
in the Competence dimension).5 The coefficients indicate that not
only do voters assess leaders within a partisan stereotype on
dimensions as a whole, but that they do so with regards to specific
traits as well.
The table compares evaluations of Conservative leaders with
evaluations of Left leaders and displays perceptions of the
stereotypes quite clearly. That
Table 1.1. Effects of Party Label on Evaluation of Leader’s
Traits
Competence Character
Conservative leader 0.028 (0.001) −0.004 (0.001) Left leader −0.040
0.109 Centre-Left leader (reference) — — Number of observations
299463 301649 Clusters 137816 138079 R-squared 0.11 0.12
Stacked Ordinary Least Squares Regression Analysis. Robust Standard
errors in parentheses (clustered on the individual). Fixed Effects
(Dummy Variables for each Election Study) included in the model.
Coefficients significant at minimum 5% level in bold.
trait evaluations for individual leaders were no longer separate
variables. So e.g., a respondent’s individual ratings of
Centre-Left, Left, and Conservative leaders on the ‘character’
dimension were stacked one on top of another under the variable
name ‘character,’ and thus each respondent was associated with
three separate observations instead of just one. This facilitated
the analysis of the variable ‘character’ as a single entity, rather
than three separate variables: ‘conservative character,’
‘centre-left character,’ and ‘left character’. This methodological
choice was not essential for the analysis presented in
Table 1.1, but made more sense when controlling for voters’
partisanship, as presented in Tables 1.3 and 1.4. For the sake
of continuity, the data were stacked for all analyses.
5 A total of 55 traits are included across the two dimensions.
Only the ten most frequently asked traits are included in
Table 1.2 for ease of presentation. The patterns identified
are consistent across most of the individual traits, as well as
being consistent across the two dimensions as a whole.
Leader Evaluations and Partisan Stereotypes
25
is, Conservative leaders score substantially higher than Left
leaders on the five most frequently asked ‘competence’ traits:
leadership, knowledgeable, intelligent, inspiring, and arrogant;
while the negative coefficients at the bottom of the table indicate
that Left leaders are rated more highly than Conservative leaders
on the five most frequently asked ‘character’ traits: cares,
honest, compassionate, trustworthy, and moral. That the perceived
strengths of Conservative and Left leaders emerge in specific
traits, as well as in the aggregated dimensions, provides further
support for the notion that the partisan stereotype has an enduring
influence over voters’ perceptions of party leaders.
The pattern whereby Left leaders are perceived more positively on
the char- acter dimension and Conservative leaders are perceived
more positively on the competence dimension is not simply a pattern
of one or two elections in one or two countries. Indeed, generally
speaking, where respondents were asked to evaluate leaders from all
three party types, the pattern holds for nearly all elections, as
evidenced by Figure 1.2.
The lower chart depicts average evaluations of the competence of
leaders of the three main party types, compared to all other party
leaders, while the upper chart does the same for evaluations of the
leaders’ character. Elections are ordered in relation to the extent
to which the ratings of the leaders fit the partisan stereotype;
that is, moving towards the far right of the first graph,
Conservative leaders are perceived most strongly on the Competence
dimension in comparison to all other leaders. As we move to the
right of the second graph, Left leaders are perceived most strongly
on the Character dimension in comparison to all other leaders. The
graphs illustrate that evaluations of the leaders of the Left and
Conservative leaders
Table 1.2. Difference in Means on Evaluations of Most
Frequently Asked Traits
Conservative Leaders vs. Left Leaders
Competence Leadership 0.150 Knowledgeable 0.043 Intelligent 0.062
Arrogant 0.152 Inspiring 0.015
Character Compassionate −0.139 Trustworthy −0.057 Cares −0.254
Moral −0.165
0
Comparing Major Parties: Ratings of Character by Level of Political
Sophistication
Comparing Major Parties: Ratings of Competence by Level of
Political Sophistication
0.621 0.549 0.573
Conservative Centre-Left Left
Conservative Centre-Left Left
Figure 1.2. Evaluations of Leaders’ Character and Competence:
Comparing Leaders of Three Main Parties to Average of All Leaders.
*Median values marked by horizontal bar inside of block.
Leader Evaluations and Partisan Stereotypes
27
generally fit the partisan stereotype, when respondents are asked
to evalu- ate all three. When Left leaders are not included in the
choice set, the pat- tern is not quite as stark.6 It appears that
the act of comparison itself might play a crucial role in
activating respondents’ perceptions of the partisan
stereotype.
According to Conover (1981), comparison is an explicit part of the
activa- tion of cues. She suggests that voters will look at a field
of candidates and note the obvious differences between them,
including differences of partisanship. She states: ‘contextual
factors such as the minority status of one candidate as compared to
others—be it ideological, partisan, racial, or sexual in nature—
may encourage voters to apply the stereotype associated with the
minority group to the individual. . . the “conservative label”, for
example, should be a more salient cue in a field of candidates in
which one is a conservative and the rest are moderates and
liberals’ (1981, 433). These findings support others who suggest
that the act of comparison is key. Rahn et al. (1990) run their
candidate models in two ways: first, separately for each candidate;
and sec- ond, using comparative scores for judgements. They find
that the compara- tive model is more accurate and suggest that ‘the
entire judgemental process appears to be comparative’ (1990,
119).
It is not entirely clear what exactly is activating this partisan
stereotype. What is clear, however, is that this partisan
stereotype is not simply partisan- ship by another name. In fact,
when we control for the partisanship of the voter, the extent to
which individuals perceive leaders within the partisan stereotype
framework becomes even more evident. Table 1.3 lists the results of
a stacked regression analysis, in which evaluations of the
character and competence of the three main party leaders were
regressed on a series of ‘par- tisan’ dummy variables. A dummy
variable was created for the party label of each leader, and this
variable was interacted with dummy variables for the partisanship
of the voter. There are five groups of partisans—Centre-Left,
Conservative, Left, Non-Partisans (those claiming to be either
Independents or to have no partisan affiliation), and Partisans of
‘Other’ Parties. The coef- ficients in the table represent the
ratings of the leaders of each of the three main party types,
across different groups of partisans.
A number of noteworthy effects emerge. First, there is an
overwhelm- ing effect of individual-level partisanship. That is,
all partisans view the leader of their own party most positively.
Individuals identifying with a Conservative party view Conservative
leaders most positively on both dimensions, those claiming an
affiliation with a Centre-Left party rate Centre-Left leaders most
positively on both dimensions, and Left partisans
6 Results not shown.
28
perceive their own party leaders most positively on both
dimensions. After their own leader, however, partisans of the three
main parties rate Conservative leaders more highly on competence,
and Left leaders more highly on character. So, while voters still
perceive the leader of their own party most positively, they rate
the remaining leaders according to the par- tisan stereotype.
Among both non-partisans and ‘other’ partisans, perceptions of
leaders fol- low the stereotype most clearly. Non-partisans rate
Left leaders more posi- tively on the Character dimension, and
Conservative leaders more positively on the Competence dimension.
Partisans of other parties do the same. That this dynamic exists
among non-partisans and ‘other’ partisans provides the greatest
indication that voters really do perceive leaders according to a
parti- san stereotype, and that this is not simply about voters
perceiving the leaders of their own parties in a positive light.
Furthermore, these models include
Table 1.3. Effects of Voters’ Partisanship and Leaders’ Party
on Evaluations of Personality Traits
Character Competence
Centre-Left Partisans Centre-Left PID & Conservati