Ideological vs. Issue Voting: Evidence from a Conjoint Experiment in Chile

• In Event: Voting Behavior for and in Parliament

Abstract

Would a left-wing pro-immigration voter prioritize ideology or policy when making electoral decisions? Would they prefer a left-wing anti-migration or a right-wing pro-migration candidate? Answering this question is complicated because ideology and policy preferences correlate. We use a conjoint experiment to disentangle both by creating candidates with different ideological and policy stances. We implemented this survey experiment in Chile during the runoff of the 2021 presidential election, where left and right-wing politicians were flexible on their policy positions. Our results show that voters clearly prefer ideology. Concretely, a left-wing pro-migration voter would choose a left-wing anti-migration presidential candidate rather than a right-wing pro-migration one. These results hold with alternative issues, such as crime and feminism, when people are faced with two issues that go against their positions and when using an alternative definition of ideology. These insights are essential to understanding ideology as an identity informing voting decisions, which goes beyond taking positions on a set of issues.

Authors

• Pablo Francisco Argote Tironi, University of Southern California

• Giancarlo Visconti, University of Maryland, College Park