When Voters Care About What They Don't Care
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9 Nov 2022
14:00-15:00, Clay Room, Nuffield College
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University of Oxford
Abstract
Political science literature has documented that the electoral behaviour of voters with opposing preferences across dimensions (i.e., culturally progressive and economically conservative, or vice versa) is highly dependent on the importance they attach to each dimension. This study aims to expand our knowledge of this phenomenon in two ways. First, it explores the degree of separability of voters’ preferences, understanding to which extent individuals are willing to turn a blind eye to the less important dimension – especially when their position contrasts significantly with that of their preferred party or candidate. Second, this work analyses whether candidates’ personal and demographic traits – particularly, occupation, ethnicity, and sexual orientation – help break this spatial logic, inducing voters to better tolerate policy disagreements with their preferred party/candidate.
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