The long shadow of attitudes:differential campaign effects and issue voting in EU referendums
Can voters be persuaded by referendum campaigns? This article develops a theoretical model that synthesises the existing literature on campaign effects and issue-voting by arguing that the strength of pre-existing attitudes conditions voter receptivity to campaign arguments, thereby also determining their eventual vote choice. Using original panel data for the 2015 Danish opt-out referendum, there is evidence that attitude strength matters for whether voters are responsive to persuasion during campaigns. The article finds that voters with the most strongly-held attitudes felt well informed and... Mehr ...
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Dokumenttyp: | Artikel |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2021 |
Reihe/Periodikum: | Beach , D & Finke , D 2021 , ' The long shadow of attitudes : differential campaign effects and issue voting in EU referendums ' , West European Politics , vol. 44 , no. 7 , pp. 1482-1505 . https://doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2020.1780829 |
Schlagwörter: | CHOICE / COMMUNITY / DUTCH / EU referendums / EUROPEAN-UNION / PARTIES / PUBLIC-OPINION / SKEPTICISM / campaign effects / issue-voting / motivated reasoning |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26669281 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | https://pure.au.dk/portal/da/publications/the-long-shadow-of-attitudes(5b967090-138a-481b-822c-c5e99b9340e1).html |
Can voters be persuaded by referendum campaigns? This article develops a theoretical model that synthesises the existing literature on campaign effects and issue-voting by arguing that the strength of pre-existing attitudes conditions voter receptivity to campaign arguments, thereby also determining their eventual vote choice. Using original panel data for the 2015 Danish opt-out referendum, there is evidence that attitude strength matters for whether voters are responsive to persuasion during campaigns. The article finds that voters with the most strongly-held attitudes felt well informed and certain about the consequences of the vote even before the start of the campaign, whereas voters with moderately-held attitudes are found to be more prone to believe those campaign arguments that are consistent with their EU attitudes, changing their vote intentions accordingly. Finally, voters with weakly-held attitudes were equally persuadable for the No and the Yes side of the campaign, but they are also the least pre-disposed to pay attention to campaign messages. The conclusions discuss the broader implications of the findings for our understanding of EU referendum campaigns.