Citizen satisfaction
In this set of projects, I leverage mostly originally collected data and survey experiments to explore voters’ views and satisfaction with both election outcomes and the election rules that shape these outcomes.
Published papers
Blais, André, Semra Sevi, and Carolina Plescia. 2022. "Are voters’ views about proportional outcomes shaped by partisan preferences? A survey experiment in the context of a real election." Political Science Research and Methods 10(1): 445-451.
Article Supplemental Information Replication material
Plescia, Carolina, Jean-François Daoust, and André Blais. 2021. "Do European elections enhance satisfaction with European Union democracy?" European Union Politics 22(1): 94–113.
Working papers
Praprotnik, Katrin and Carolina Plescia. "Why do some voters prefer one electoral rule to the other?"
Paper in preparation for presentation at the 2023 World Association for Public Opinion Research (WAPOR) meeting, Salzburg, Austria.
Electoral rules shape both electoral outcomes and voter satisfaction with them. Much research has been done on the question of what voters prefer in terms of electoral rules. Less is known, however, on why voters prefer one electoral rule over the other. To narrow this research gap, we develop a new theoretical argument on the link between affective polarization and voter preferences for specific voting systems. We argue that voters with more polarized views should prefer voting systems such as rank vote that allow them to express their dislike for political opponents. The effect, we further hypothesize, will be mitigated by a party’s loss in an election. In order to test our argument, we designed and implemented an online 2x2-survey experiment in Austria (N=2.000 residents). Respondents were asked to take part in a fictious mayoral elections using either a single vote or a ranked vote system. Having rated their satisfaction with the electoral rule, respondents either learned that their preferred party had won or lost the election. Respondents were then asked to rate their satisfaction with the electoral rule one more time. Our results have important implications for the literature on voters’ preferences for specific voting systems and affective polarization.