Browsing by Author "Larsson, Ylva"

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    THE IMPLICATION OF POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE ON AGGREGATE ELECTION RESULTS
    (2022-10-03) Larsson, Ylva; Göteborgs universitet/Statsvetenskapliga institutionen; University of Gothenburg/Department of Political Science
    Political knowledge is a key concept in research on democracy, elections, and political behavior.1 While several studies that examine political knowledge’s effects on the aggregate election results have been conducted, none of them compare knowledge effects across types of elections. In this thesis the aim was to examine whether political knowledge affects the aggregate election results, both party-choice and turnout, differently depending on electoral contexts in terms of national parliamentary elections (first order elections) or EP elections (second order elections). I am also interested to see whether the increased politicization of the EU after 2009 registers significant knowledge effects. I use multinomial logistic regression and simulations for the 2010 and 2014 parliamentary elections and the EP elections of 2009 and 2014. The results show an increased level of political knowledge in line with the normative ideal of ‘fully informed’ voters does not affect the Swedish aggregate election result (party-choice) in the EP elections to a greater extent than in the parliamentary elections. Additionally, the results indicate that an increased level of political knowledge in line with the normative ideal of ‘fully informed’ voters does affect the Swedish aggregate election result (party-choice and turnout) in the EP elections after 2009 to a lesser extent. This result points to an increase in political knowledge about the EU, potentially as a result of the increased politicization after the euro crisis.
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    INFORMATION OCH VALDELTAGANDE En analys av det svenska Europaparlamentsvalet 2019
    (2020-06-25) Larsson, Ylva; Göteborgs universitet/Statsvetenskapliga institutionen; University of Gothenburg/Department of Political Science
    The gap between turnout in national parliamentary elections and European Parliament elections are not particularly large in most EU member states. Sweden, on the other hand, has one of the biggest differences between voting participation in the European Parliament elections and national elections. Previous research has suggested that this may be due to a lack of knowledge about the EU, the European Parliament and/or the European Parliament elections. Several studies have shown that information has a considerable influence on the likelihood to vote and this thesis examines the relationship between information and turnout in European Parliament elections, by examining what type of sender, dissemination method and information that has the greatest connection with turnout. The hypotheses are tested using two types of regression analyses on the European Parliament Election Study 2019. The results show that there is a strong significant positive relationship between voter participation and the consumption of information from political parties and personal conversations with friends and family that the recipient actively seek out or take part in. Moreover, the thesis has not been able to find any correlation between turnout and overall news media consumption or between turnout and Europe/EU specific information from news media consumption.