Papers by Stefano Camatarri
International Journal of Public Opinion Research
Nonresponses to vote intention questions notoriously impact the quality of electoral predictions.... more Nonresponses to vote intention questions notoriously impact the quality of electoral predictions. This issue has gained visibility in the US due to the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election. Indeed, the failure of many major pollsters in predicting election results in several key states stimulated a renewed attention for the so-called shy Trump supporter hypothesis, according to which Trump supporters would be more likely to hide their vote preference in electoral surveys due to social desirability bias. Interestingly, extant studies generally overlook the role that the socio-political environments could play in respondent decisions to disclose one’s own political preferences. In this research note, we test the effect of local political climate on survey respondents’ willingness to express their vote intentions, conditional on their ideological orientations. We test our hypotheses by means of logistic regressions on data from the 2020 Cooperative Election Study, matched with p...
Oxford University Press eBooks, Jul 6, 2023
Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 2024
While the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the lives of many people worldwide, it is curr... more While the COVID-19 pandemic significantly affected the lives of many people worldwide, it is currently unclear whether it led to the defeat of incumbent Donald Trump in the 2020 American presidential election. We address this issue by testing different factors of Trump’s support, including both pandemic-related considerations and other mainstream explanations of the vote choice. Using a counterfactual strategy, we also investigate how aggregate support for Trump would have looked like if the coronavirus pandemic had lower or no influence in citizens’ electoral decision-making compared to real world conditions. For the analysis, we use the ANES 2020
Exploratory Testing Survey. Results show that Trump’s electoral defeat depended on multiple factors, including the spread of partisan feelings in the electorate and voters’ evaluation of the president’s record in various areas. Moreover, aggregate-level analyses also suggest that Trump would have received more support had the health crisis not been relevant to voters.
Politics of the Low Countries, 2022
His research interests mostly concern the study of political behaviour from a comparative and tra... more His research interests mostly concern the study of political behaviour from a comparative and transnational perspective. Pierre Baudewyns is Professor of Political Science at the Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. His research interests regard attitudes and behavior among citizens and elites in Belgium and Europe.
Parliamentary Candidates Between Voters and Parties, 2020
Scholars have long been debating whether people tend to run in elections because they are mainly ... more Scholars have long been debating whether people tend to run in elections because they are mainly policy-oriented or whether they primarily aim to enjoy the perks of office. Despite the many formal and empirical models proposed, however, poor evidence has been provided so far as to whether and how candidates rely on any of these two motivations to explain their choice to run for a party. In light of this gap, this chapter aims to test whether and under what conditions different types of considerations play a motivating role in candidates’ reasoning. The analyses, based on regression models applied to Comparative Candidates Survey data reshaped in the so-called stacked form, show that both policy and office-related ambitions have a say in the candidates’ decisions. Moving on to contextual factors, both parties’ ideological profiles and country-level dynamics of party competition appear to have an effect on how strongly candidates are moved by specific motives.
European Union Politics
The 2014 European elections were characterized in many countries by growing support for Euroscept... more The 2014 European elections were characterized in many countries by growing support for Eurosceptic parties. This growth was not uniform and not clearly associated with the economic performance of ...
Regional & Federal Studies, 2021
The literature on the nationalization of party systems has found that decentralization of authori... more The literature on the nationalization of party systems has found that decentralization of authority leads to increasing territorial heterogeneity of voting behaviour. In this article, we intend to ...
PS: Political Science & Politics, 2021
Parliamentary Affairs, 2020
The role orientation of political representatives and candidates is a longstanding concern in stu... more The role orientation of political representatives and candidates is a longstanding concern in studies of democratic representation. The growing trend in countries to allow citizens abroad to candidate in homeland elections from afar provides an interesting opportunity for understanding how international mobility and context influences ideas of representation among these emigrant candidates. In public debates, emigrant candidates are often portrayed as delegates of the emigrant constituencies. However, drawing on the paradigmatic case of Italy and an original data set comprising emigrant candidates, we show that the perceptions of styles of representation abroad are more complex. Systemic differences between electoral districts at home and abroad are relevant for explaining why and how candidates develop a trustee or delegate orientation.
Representation - Journal of Representative Democracy, 2020
Within the framework of the current democratic crisis, the electoral success of the so-called ant... more Within the framework of the current democratic crisis, the electoral success of the so-called anti-establishment parties has been repeatedly and often associated with protest voting. Several scholars have tried to deal with this topic in the past, focusing particularly on the psychological dimension of the matter, i.e. on whether individual support for these actors was actually characterised by protest motivations. Yet, in so doing, they have almost completely overlooked the issue of how protest actually contributes to the electoral performance of apparent protest actors. The aim of this paper is precisely to fill this gap. Indeed, by looking at three Southern European countries (i.e. Greece, Italy and Spain), it aims to test the common-sense hypothesis that a higher strength of protest motivations in voters’ minds implies an increasing success of anti-establishment parties at the electoral level. Methodologically, this is accomplished by a series of counterfactual regression models on data from the 2014 European Election Voter Study (EES).
Political Studies Review, 2019
After several decades of debate on the so-called protest vote, the extant literature in this fiel... more After several decades of debate on the so-called protest vote, the extant literature in this field is still far from consistent in conceptualization and analytical perspectives. Yet, at a time of increasing democratic stress, it becomes crucial for political studies to take stock of current research on this topic and assess its general state of health. In the light of this, aim of the present contribution is to piece together the puzzle of analytical perspectives from which scholars and pundits have approached the matter over the years. First, this article will do so at a conceptual level, disentangling different conceptualizations of protest voting. In parallel, it will do so at the technical and empirical level, categorizing both operationalization strategies and findings into alternative strands of research. As a last step, it will summarize the still open issues, organizing them within a unified platform and identifying possible lines of development for future research.
Contemporary Italian Politics, 2016
The huge success of the Democratic Party at the last European
Parliament (EP) election in Italy h... more The huge success of the Democratic Party at the last European
Parliament (EP) election in Italy has been widely interpreted as due
to the unusual ability of its new leader Matteo Renzi to mobilize
support for his party in an era of candidate-oriented and valence
politics in which political leaders’ personal characteristics are crucial
for vote choices and party performances. Framing the last EP elections
as a sign of the overwhelming importance of personalized
politics and personalized voting, however, does not tell us everything,
there is to know about the role of leaders in voters’ decisions.
According to the literature, in fact, leaders are not only a collection of
personal traits and characteristics exerting short-term effects on voting
behaviour, but also cognitive shortcuts that help decision-making
by simplifying the complexity of the political environment. Within
this framework, we investigate whether leader evaluations, in the
form of confidence ratings, provide information about how Italian
voters perceived the structure of political debate at the 2014 EP
elections. Our results confirm that judgments of leaders imply specific
representations of political competition, of which we try to outline
some general features.
Book Chapters by Stefano Camatarri
The Politicization of the European Union. From Processes to Consequences., 2022
Since the acceleration of the European integration, scholars have studied how this process might ... more Since the acceleration of the European integration, scholars have studied how this process might have affected both political competition and voters’ attitudes. Yet, apart from individual-level explanations of party choice, there is still little evidence about how EU politicisation affects the overall outcomes of an election. This chapter wants to shed light on this issue by exploring whether a higher EU party polarisation – as perceived by voters – increases the aggregate success of Eurosceptic parties, vis-à- vis their mainstream alternatives. We do this by means of a survey-based simulation strategy, where respondents’ electoral choices are estimated under different scenarios in which the perceived divergence between parties on EU integration is statistically manipulated. Thanks to this strategy, it will be possible to observe whether stronger polarisation results in a wider success of actors that are radically critical of EU policies at the aggregate level. Analyses will rely on linear regressions on data from the 2019 European Election Voter Study (EES) reshaped in stacked format.
L. De Winter, R. Karlsen and H. Schmitt (eds), Parliamentary Candidates Between Voters and Parties: A Comparative Perspective, 2020
Scholars have long been debating whether people tend to run in elections because they are mainly ... more Scholars have long been debating whether people tend to run in elections because they are mainly policy-oriented or whether they primarily aim to enjoy the perks of office. Despite the many formal and empirical models proposed, however, poor evidence has been provided so far as to whether and how candidates rely on any of these two motivations to explain their choice to run for a party. In light of this gap, this chapter aims to test whether and under what conditions different types of considerations play a motivating role in candidates’ reasoning. The analyses, based on regression models applied to Comparative Candidates Survey data reshaped in the so-called stacked form, show that both policy and office-related ambitions have a say in the candidates’ decisions. Moving on to contextual factors, both parties’ ideological profiles and country-level dynamics of party competition appear to have an effect on how strongly candidates are moved by specific motives.
This chapter analyses the triggers of preferential voting in Belgium. Combining both contextual a... more This chapter analyses the triggers of preferential voting in Belgium. Combining both contextual and candidate level information, the authors first test how features of the electoral and political competition (i.e. position on the list, district and party magnitude) influence preferential votes. Then, they focus on the role of individual characteristics of candidates, taking into account not only their socio-demographic background, but also their attitudinal and behavioural attributes. In particular, candidates’ ties with their own local constituencies, previous political experience, as well as the resources and tools they employed during the campaign are widely explored in the chapter.
Nel momento in cui questo testo viene scritto, solo poche settimane sono trascorse dall'atteso we... more Nel momento in cui questo testo viene scritto, solo poche settimane sono trascorse dall'atteso weekend elettorale del 24 -25 febbraio, eppure nessuno, tra commentatori e analisti, sembra aver dubbi: le elezioni politiche del 2013 costituiscono una svolta storica tanto inattesa quanto traumatica per l'intero sistema politico italiano. Il risultato che gli elettori hanno consegnato alla propria classe dirigente rappresenta infatti una vera e propria sfida sia per le culture politiche presenti in Parlamento, oggi chiamate a tradurre il clamoroso maelström fuoriuscito dalle urne in una stabile maggioranza parlamentare, sia per l'intero sistema dei partiti, il quale, con la clamorosa ascesa del Movimento 5 Stelle (un partito che con il suo 25,6% dei voti raccolti alla sua prima prova elettorale rappresenta un unicum nell'intera storia dell'Europa occidentale), ha visto modificarsi radicalmente la propria struttura portante, passata dalla logica del bipolarismo propria della Seconda Repubblica a quella di un vero e proprio tripolarismo. Alcuni esperti hanno fin da subito segnalato come alcune evidenze che si accompagnano a tale modificazione strutturale siano tanto il drastico abbassamento dell'indice di bipartitismo, che calcola la percentuale dei voti (o dei seggi) raccolti dalle due liste maggiori (sceso al 51% dal 70,6% del 2008), quanto il forte innalzamento del livello di volatilità aggregata del nostro sistema elettorale, il quale non è altro che il cambiamento aggregato netto di voti tra due elezioni successive, ottenuto aggregando le differenze nelle percentuali di voti ottenute dai partiti fra un'elezione e la precedente.
Working Papers by Stefano Camatarri
Book Reviews by Stefano Camatarri
Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica
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Papers by Stefano Camatarri
Exploratory Testing Survey. Results show that Trump’s electoral defeat depended on multiple factors, including the spread of partisan feelings in the electorate and voters’ evaluation of the president’s record in various areas. Moreover, aggregate-level analyses also suggest that Trump would have received more support had the health crisis not been relevant to voters.
Parliament (EP) election in Italy has been widely interpreted as due
to the unusual ability of its new leader Matteo Renzi to mobilize
support for his party in an era of candidate-oriented and valence
politics in which political leaders’ personal characteristics are crucial
for vote choices and party performances. Framing the last EP elections
as a sign of the overwhelming importance of personalized
politics and personalized voting, however, does not tell us everything,
there is to know about the role of leaders in voters’ decisions.
According to the literature, in fact, leaders are not only a collection of
personal traits and characteristics exerting short-term effects on voting
behaviour, but also cognitive shortcuts that help decision-making
by simplifying the complexity of the political environment. Within
this framework, we investigate whether leader evaluations, in the
form of confidence ratings, provide information about how Italian
voters perceived the structure of political debate at the 2014 EP
elections. Our results confirm that judgments of leaders imply specific
representations of political competition, of which we try to outline
some general features.
Book Chapters by Stefano Camatarri
Working Papers by Stefano Camatarri
Book Reviews by Stefano Camatarri
Exploratory Testing Survey. Results show that Trump’s electoral defeat depended on multiple factors, including the spread of partisan feelings in the electorate and voters’ evaluation of the president’s record in various areas. Moreover, aggregate-level analyses also suggest that Trump would have received more support had the health crisis not been relevant to voters.
Parliament (EP) election in Italy has been widely interpreted as due
to the unusual ability of its new leader Matteo Renzi to mobilize
support for his party in an era of candidate-oriented and valence
politics in which political leaders’ personal characteristics are crucial
for vote choices and party performances. Framing the last EP elections
as a sign of the overwhelming importance of personalized
politics and personalized voting, however, does not tell us everything,
there is to know about the role of leaders in voters’ decisions.
According to the literature, in fact, leaders are not only a collection of
personal traits and characteristics exerting short-term effects on voting
behaviour, but also cognitive shortcuts that help decision-making
by simplifying the complexity of the political environment. Within
this framework, we investigate whether leader evaluations, in the
form of confidence ratings, provide information about how Italian
voters perceived the structure of political debate at the 2014 EP
elections. Our results confirm that judgments of leaders imply specific
representations of political competition, of which we try to outline
some general features.