Anke Tresch

Political surveys are subject to nonresponse bias, leading to overestimated voter turnout and, at times, underestimated support for far‐right parties. This study examines whether altering the salience of a survey's topic at the recruitment stage affects survey participation and nonresponse bias, and with what trade‐offs. Using the panel survey of the Swiss Election Study (Selects 2023), respondents were randomly assigned to a high‐salience condition emphasizing federal elections or a low‐salience condition referring more broadly to societal and political issues. Low‐salience framing modestly altered the composition of respondents in the first wave, increasing the share of non‐voters and Swiss People's Party (SVP) voters, but also led to higher dropout in the second wave. Recruitment framing thus shapes who enters and remains in the survey: while it broadens initial participation, it reduces retention over time. Topic framing is therefore a relevant but constrained tool for addressing nonresponse bias in political surveys.

Research shows that many voters ascribe stereotypical traits and issue competences to male and female politicians – such as viewing women as more compassionate and honest, and men as more competent and decisive – and use these perceptions when evaluating candidates. However, little is known about whether politicians themselves also hold such gender stereotypes. This paper uses data from both a candidate and a citizen survey conducted as part of the Swiss Election Study (SELECTS) in 2019 and 2023 to compare the prevalence of gender stereotypes among political elites and citizens, as well as their individual‐level correlates. Our findings show that such stereotypes are not only present among politicians but are even more widespread than among ordinary citizens. The correlates of gender stereotypes are not uniform: they differ between political elites and citizens, vary across trait‐ and issue‐based stereotypes, and affect male‐ and female‐typed stereotypes in distinct ways.

This study analyses the success of populist radical right (PRR) parties in the 2023 Swiss elections using reference group theory. While existing literature emphasizes the influence of objective and subjective group membership on electoral choice, it often overlooks voters' feelings toward groups they do not belong to and their perceptions of parties' associations with these groups. We argue that this framework is key to understanding PRR voting. Like their European counterparts, Swiss PRR parties – particularly the Swiss People's Party – mobilized group‐based resentment through a campaign stigmatizing asylum seekers and migrants, and by promoting an anti‐gender agenda. Using data from the Swiss Election Study (Selects), we show that negative feelings toward migrants and feminists influenced PRR voting, beyond political preferences and socio‐structural factors. This resentment also helped attract new voters who had initially leaned toward centre‐right parties. The study highlights the importance of group feelings in electoral behaviour.

Recent research demonstrates that voters who change their perceptions of parties’ reputation on specific issues (issue ownership) are also more likely to change their party choice accordingly. This article deals with the sources of such instability, with an emphasis on the accessibility of voters’ perceptions as measured by survey response times. We contend that more accessible perceptions are more stable, but that this stabilizing effect decreases over time. Panel data from the 2019 Swiss Election Study strongly suggest that voters who are quick to assess parties’ competence and associative ownership are more likely to stick to their judgment, both in the short-term context of an election campaign (which in turn heightens the likelihood that they end up voting for the party they identified as the issue owner) and in the longer run. Hence, political parties may have incentives to continuously reinforce voters’ issue ownership perceptions throughout the electoral cycle.

To what extent are negative election campaigns “tailored” to the personality of the candidates? And with what electoral consequences? In this article we tackle these questions by focusing on the 2019 Swiss federal election. We estimate the presence of negativity as a function of the personality profile of competing candidates (Big Five) and the presence of professional consultants. Analyses based on data from a candidate survey (Selects 2019) suggest that campaign consultants are likely to take stock of the character of their candidate, and tailor the content of their campaigns accordingly ‐ more aggressive for more energetic candidates (higher plasticity) and for less stable candidates (lower stability). These results, we argue, support our central claim that the role of consultants is to provide the most adequate campaign for the candidate they are promoting (“tailoring hypothesis”). We fail however to find any convincing evidence that such tailoring is electorally successful.

According to the issue ownership theory of voting, voters cast their ballot for the party that they consider to be most competent and most committed to handle an issue of importance to them. This article offers a theoretical expansion of this model, arguing that the effect of issue ownership on vote choice is conditioned by the accessibility of voters' ownership perceptions, as measured by response latencies. Through individual‐level analyses of voting in the 2019 Swiss federal election, we demonstrate that the effect of voters' issue ownership perceptions on their voting decisions is strongest when their ownership attributions are highly accessible and when the issue at stake is considered important. Our results also reveal that the effects of accessibility are largely driven by voting decisions for parties that own the issue in the eyes of a large part of the electorate, such as the Greens in the case of the environment.

A growing body of studies shows that the reasons for competing candidates to “go negative” on their opponents during elections—that is, attacking their opponents instead of promoting their own programs or ideas stem from strategic considerations. Yet, existing research has, at this stage, failed to assess whether candidates’ personality traits also play a role. In this article, we bridge the gap between existing work in political psychology and political communication and study to what extent the personality traits of competing candidates are linked with their use of negative campaigning strategies. We rely on candidate survey data for recent elections in three countries—Germany (2017), Switzerland (2019), and Finland (2019). The data includes self-reported measures for candidates’ “Big Five” personality traits (extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, openness) and the the use of attacks towards their opponents during the campaign. Controlling for the usual suspects driving the use of negative campaigning we show that this latter is associated with low agreeableness and (marginally) with high extraversion and low conscientiousness. The role of personality for the focus of an attack (issue vs. character attacks) is somewhat less clear-cut. All in all, kinder and more stable candidates tend to go less negative; when they do, they tend to stay away from character-based attacks and somehow focus on issues.