Does electoral violence affect vote choice and willingness to vote? Conjoint analysis of a vignette experiment
| Author | Adrienne LeBas,Roxana Gutiérrez-Romero |
| Published date | 01 January 2020 |
| Date | 01 January 2020 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319892677 |
| Subject Matter | Research Articles |
Does electoral violence affect vote choice
and willingness to vote? Conjoint
analysis of a vignette experiment
Roxana Gutie
´rrez-Romero
School of Business and Management, Queen Mary University of London
Adrienne LeBas
Department of Government, American University
Abstract
Across many new democracies, voters routinely elect candidates associated with violence. Though electoral violence is
common, there is little understanding of how it affects voting behaviour. This article examines how electoral violence
affects turnout and vote choice. To this end, a vignette experiment is set in a nationally representative survey in
Kenya, where electoral violence has been present since the 1990s. In the experiment, voters choose between two rival
politicians. The experiment randomizes candidates’ attributes, their rumoured use of electoral violence and their
record of reducing poverty. Conjoint analysis is used to isolate the effects of the candidates’ randomized attributes on
turnout and vote choice. In contrast to the assumptions made in the literature on electoral violence, voters are less
likely to vote for candidates rumoured to have used electoral violence, even when the candidate is a coethnic or a
copartisan. This sanctioning effect, however, is not consistent across all voters. Victims of electoral violence and the
poorest respondents are less likely to sanction candidates rumoured to have used violence, especially when these
candidates have a good record of reducing poverty. The results show that voting turnout decreases when participants
are asked to choose between candidates who are rumoured to have used electoral violence. These results are robust to
including respondent and interviewer characteristics that might have affected participation in the experiment and
how respondents voted. These findings explain why candidates using violence can win elections and why electoral
violence has been difficult to eradicate in settings characterized by clientelism and instances of political discourse
justifying the use of violence.
Keywords
electoral violence, ethnicity, Kenya, turnout, voting
Introduction
Electoral violence affects many new democracies. An esti-
mated 60% of African elections were marred by violence
between 1990 and 2008 (Straus & Taylor, 2013). Even
when electoral violence has not resulted in regime change,
it has caused thousands of casualties, population displace-
ment and protracted political crises, as in Kenya, Nigeria
and Zimbabwe. Electoral violence has also imposed sub-
stantial economic costs by displacing workers, disrupting
transport networks, exports and imports, and increasing
food prices (Dercon & Gutie
´rrez-Romero,2012). Despite
these costs, voters in many new democracies routinely
elect candidates who are associated with election violence
or who have criminal pasts (Banerjee et al., 2014).
In Kenya, for instance, President Uhuru Kenyatta and
Deputy President William Ruto were elected in 2013
with the overwhelming support of their coethnics,
despite being under indictment by the International
Criminal Court (ICC). Both candidates were accused of
Corresponding authors:
r.gutierrez@qmul.ac.uk; lebas@american.edu
Journal of Peace Research
2020, Vol. 57(1) 77–92
ªThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0022343319892677
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orchestrating the violence around the 2007 election,
which claimed 1,200 lives and displaced a quarter of a
million people. India, the world’s biggest democracy, is
another case where voters often elect politicians facing
criminal charges (Vaishnav, 2017). More broadly, using
data on 786 electionsin 155 countries, Collier & Hoeffler
(2009) show thatpoliticians who use illegal electoral prac-
tices – includingelectoral violence – remain inoffice three
times longer than their clean counterparts. Why do pol-
iticians with violent or criminal reputations get elected?
The literature on new democracies has argued that
voters might be willing to vote for violent candidates
with whom they share affective ties, such as ethnicity
or partisan affiliation, expecting that these candidates
might bring benefits if elec ted (Chandra, 2004). The
theoretical literature argues that politicians who use
pre-electoral violence often aim at weakening opponents’
support (Collier & Vicente, 2012). Violence is assumed
by this literature not to trigger sanctioning by the violent
politicians’ core constituents, even if these voters may
disapprove of the use of violence in the abstract (de
Figueredo & Weingast, 1999; Chaturvedi, 2005; Collier
& Vicente, 2012). The assumption of ‘electorally cost-
less’ violence when it comes to core supporters is also
reflected in empirical studies. For instance, Hafner-
Burton, Hyde & Jablonski (2014) argue that incum-
bents’ use of pre-electoral violence is effective in reducing
opposition support but ignore any effect on the incum-
bent support. In fact, Wilkinson & Haid (2009) and
Lynch (2014) suggest violence may boost ethnic solidar-
ity and increase the support of core constituencies for
politicians who use this strategy. Despite the significance
of these issues, there is limited evidence on the extent to
which voters sanction candidates that use electoral
violence.
This article contributes to the empirical literature on
electoral malpractice by testing the assumptions com-
monly made by theories on the use of violence. First,
is violence ‘electorally costless’ for politicians when it
comes to their core supporters – coethnic or copartisan
– or does rumoured involvement in violence reduce sup-
port even among these voters? Second, are poor or pre-
viously victimized voters more or less likely to support
candidates rumoured to have used electoral violence?
These vulnerable groups may be more susceptible to
clientelism and to politicians’ justifications of the use
of violence, so we might expect them to be less likely
to punish politicians for violence.
Since electoral violence occurs amid other irregulari-
ties, such as rigging and vote-buying, it is difficult to
isolate its effects on voting behaviour using observational
data.Toovercomethischallenge,weuseavignette
experiment set in a nationally representative survey in
Kenya. Specifically, the experiment presents each
respondent with two rival candidates and randomly var-
ies each candidate’s rumoured use of electoral violence
and their record of reducing poverty, which we view as
signalling some of the benefits the candidate might
deliver if elected. This randomization allows us to assess
these cues as well as whether respondents’ affective ties,
such as ethnicity or partisan affiliation, affect vote choice.
Finally, respondents also have the choice of refusing to
vote, allowing us to test whether rumours of electoral
violence affect turnout and vote choice.
The experiment offers three key findings. First, using
conjoint analysis, we find that core and non-core con-
stituents are less likely to vote for candidates rumoured
to have used electoral violence. This sanctioning is not
sufficient to guarantee electoral defeat, however, since
the violent candidate might still get sufficient support
to win the (imaginary) election if his coethnic and copar-
tisan support base is sufficiently large. One reason for
this second finding is that victims of electoral violence
and poor voters compose a considerable percentage of
the population, and we find that these voters are less
likely to sanction candidates rumoured to have used
electoral violence. This is especially the case when can-
didates are reported to have a good record of reducing
poverty. Vulnerable populations, it seems, prioritize
other factors when evaluating violent politicians. These
performance-based trade-offs have not previously been
discussed in the literature on vote choice and violence.
Third, we find that respondents are more likely to
decline to cast a ballot when they face a choice between
candidates rumoured to have used electoral violence.
This suggests that perceived violations of democratic
norms dampen willingness to vote in the absence of
potential victimization.
The article makes significant contributions to the
emerging literature on electoral violence. Our findings
shed light on why violent politicians may continue to
win elections, even as they face the loss of core constitu-
ents due to their use of violence. In the next sections, we
develop our hypotheses, and discuss the country setting,
the experiment and results. The last section presents our
conclusions.
Mobilizing voters
In this section, we develop hypotheses about how voters
might react to electoral violence in settings characterized
78 journal of PEACE RESEARCH 57(1)
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