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Ballot Initiatives and Status Quo Bias

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Joshua J. Dyck  and
Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz
Joshua J. Dyck
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts Lowell, Lowell, MA, USA
Shanna Pearson-Merkowitz
Affiliation:
Department of Political Science, The University of Rhode Island, Kingston, RI, USA
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Abstract

Is there an opposition bias in ballot initiative campaigns? While some early research suggested that the “no” side was advantaged in ballot initiative campaigns, recent work has demonstrated that both opposition and support spending in ballot measure campaigns are effective. We offer a new way to conceptualize status quo orientation in ballot measure elections. Specifically, we argue that opposition arguments are more effective than support arguments because of the well-known framing negativity bias and not because the starting position for uninformed voters is to default to no. We present the results of two survey experiments to test the impact of support and opposition arguments in ballot initiative campaigns. We find consistent evidence that opposition arguments are effective in generating more “no” votes and that support arguments are ineffective in generating more “yes” votes.

Keywords

direct democracypolitical behaviorcampaignsabortion policypublic policyelectionspolitical communication
Type
Research Article
Information
State Politics & Policy Quarterly , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 2019 , pp. 180 - 207
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2018

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