Ballot propositions provide a unique instance of direct democracy in which voters have a say in a state’s legislative process. However, voters vary in how they understand and evaluate these measures, many of which can be relatively complicated and comprised of multiple provisions. When multiple provisions exist within a single proposition, how do voters aggregate their potentially varying support across the provisions in their calculus of overall support for the proposition? Are all provisions weighted equally or do some matter more? To examine these questions, we construct novel survey questions on three real ballot measures under consideration during the 2022 midterm election cycle. By randomly assigning how we ask respondents for their support of a given ballot proposition, we garner insight into how voters approach voting on ballot measures and their greater decision-making process. We find evidence of a provision-based negativity bias, which is strongest on the most complex and least polarized issue.

Education, and mandatory schooling in particular, is a central mechanism for governments to improve life outcomes and prevent the accumulation of disadvantage across generations. Yet educational sociology research suggests that education can also entrench patterns of inequality, with children from immigrant backgrounds facing barriers to equal opportunity. Policy reforms to reverse such disadvantage include delaying the tracking age and offering free or subsidised daycare places to immigrant children. However, we know little about public support for such policies. In this article, we argue that one’s own experience of educational equality impacts micro-level preferences for equality-enhancing policies (EEPs). Using a survey experiment fielded in 2024 in Switzerland, our findings suggest that support for EEPs is a function of the one’s satisfaction with equal opportunities at school: Those who did not perceive their schooling to be fair and who attended school in less egalitarian cantons show the strongest support for reforming the system to become more egalitarian. We conclude that negative experience of schooling may have an, albeit indirect, effect on support for policies that reduce educational inequality. .

How society views the welfare deservingness of migrants significantly impacts their welfare rights. However, little attention has been paid to the welfare deservingness of domestic migrants in developing countries. Drawing on the theory of deservingness criteria, this study constructs an analytical framework for the welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants in China based on five key factors: hukou status, length of urban residence, employment status, migration patterns, and homeownership. This study constructed thirty-two vignettes based on the above five factors, collected a set of experimental data through an online survey and used multilevel modelling to analyse factors affecting the perceived welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants. The results show that hukou status is the most significant factor affecting the perceived welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants. In addition, there are significant differences between locals and non-locals in the views on welfare deservingness of rural-to-urban migrants in terms of identity, need and attitude, but not in reciprocity and control. Moreover, the five deservingness criteria have no significant differences in their impact on the different dimensions of welfare deservingness. This study contributes to the understanding of the social underpinnings of the welfare system in China.

People’s perceptions of others, particularly those from other countries, can shape their attitudes and willingness to offer solidarity. We study public beliefs about the gender composition of forcibly displaced populations in a large online survey experiment. Participants (n = 13,008) representative of the adult population of six EU countries, consistently underestimated the share of women among the people displaced by the Russian war on Ukraine. We show that a belief-correction intervention effectively prompted updates in public beliefs, aligning them more closely with actual numbers. The source of information matters: updates were greater when the intervention cites official statistics rather than other people’s opinions. Although female migrants are typically preferred, the intervention did not change perceptions regarding current refugees’ impact on crime and economy or policy preferences (family reunification). While all these measures correlate with beliefs about gender composition, the intervention did not significantly affect any of them.

Voters’ perceptions of election candidates are known to be shaped by stereotypes about candidates’ characteristics and social identities, including gender and disability. More recently, scholars have started paying attention to how the intersection of politicians’ identities shapes citizens’ perceptions of them, recognizing that identities do not simply “add up” but give rise to distinct stereotypes and expectations. This paper explores how candidate gender and disability affect voter perceptions through a survey experiment with a conjoint design in the UK and the US. The findings reveal a complex picture in which candidate gender and disability interact in shaping some, but not the majority, of voters’ perceptions of candidates’ traits, competences, beliefs, as well as voter support. The study underlines that intersectional approaches are fundamental to advancing our understanding of voter attitudes and behavior, candidate competition, and the representation of social groups.

This paper examines how information about individuals’ income position and national inequality shape preferences for redistribution, addressing the puzzle of rising inequality alongside stagnant redistribution. Using a survey experiment in South Korea, we find that individuals systematically misperceive their place in the income distribution, and that correcting these misperceptions significantly alters their policy preferences. Specifically, respondents who overestimate (underestimate) their income position become more supportive of (opposed to) redistribution when given accurate information, compared to those who remain uninformed. By contrast, providing information about national-level inequality has no impact on redistribution preferences, even among those previously unaware of the extent of inequality. This null effect persists across subgroups defined by income, trust in government, and belief in meritocracy. Our findings suggest that egocentric, rather than sociotropic, considerations drive support for redistribution.

This article examines whether the effectiveness of three justification framings for a road traffic emission trading system (ETS) in increasing public acceptance depends on political party preference and levels of political trust. The framings emphasized increased energy independence, economic resilience, and efficient climate mitigation. Data were collected via an online survey experiment in Finland, March 2024 (n = 1,485). Although the justification effects were generally limited, the energy independence framing increased policy acceptance among supporters of the populist radical right Finns Party. Moreover, justification effects were minimal among individuals with high political trust but tended to trigger backlash among those with low trust. Our findings contribute to the literature on climate policy communication by showing that framing effects on policy acceptance depend not only on political preferences but also on political trust.

Voters with greater political knowledge are more likely to participate and to make judgements that advance their own interests. This raises a vital question about how such knowledge is distributed across citizens. In particular, how large is the gender gap in political knowledge among Japanese voters? Does measurement influence the observed gap? Using two large-scale online surveys conducted in 2024 and 2025 and fifteen face-to-face surveys fielded between 2000 and 2018, we first show that Japanese women answer questions on political institutions and leaders correctly at rates 10 to 15 percentage points lower than men. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems data Modules 2–4, we also show that the gender gap in Japan is comparable to that in other countries. We then demonstrate that the magnitude of the gender gap depends on how political knowledge is measured. Women are more likely to select DK, and the gap shrinks substantially when DK responses are excluded or when knowledge items related to women are included. Overall, the findings are consistent with those from other countries. While a gender gap in political knowledge is non-trivial in Japan, its size is strongly shaped by the measurement context.

While the right to practice one’s religion is considered a fundamental value in Western European democracies, there is considerable debate about government employees wearing religious symbols. In this study, we test whether disapproval of civil servants wearing religious symbols originates from a general opposition against the expression of religion in public settings or from prejudice, specifically Islamophobia and Antisemitism. We test this by analyzing a split ballot experiment, which assesses the acceptance of government employees wearing three different religious symbols: the Christian cross, the Muslim headscarf, and the Jewish yarmulke. On the one hand, we find that an endorsement of the right to publicly express one’s religion predicts support for government employees wearing any religious symbol. Yet, prejudice, particularly Islamophobia, predicted opposition against both the Muslim headscarf and the Jewish yarmulke, overturning the abovementioned effect, indicating that these attitudes are closely aligned with attitudes regarding the place of Islam in societies.

Obtaining portfolios is one of the most important pay-offs that parties receive from getting into office. Accordingly, we know a lot about how portfolios are distributed between coalition partners, but surprisingly little about how voters react to these distributional outcomes. We address this research gap both theoretically and empirically. Theoretically, we argue that voters use cues from the quantitative and qualitative portfolio distributions to evaluate coalition partners’ competence in negotiations, which in turn shapes party support. Empirically, we use original experimental and panel survey data from the 2022 Danish general election. We find that voters infer negotiation competence from the number, power, and party-specific salience of the portfolios a party obtains. We also demonstrate that many voters paid attention to the real-world negotiation outcome and withdrew their support for the parties they perceived handled the negotiations less competently.

Sectarian cleavages are widely seen as central to Middle Eastern conflict, and Iran-backed armed non-state actors (ANSAs)—Hezbollah, the popular mobilization units, and the Houthis—are often portrayed as sectarian militias. Yet there is little empirical evidence that public support for these actors systematically varies along sectarian lines. Drawing on original survey experiments conducted in Lebanon, Iraq, and Yemen during the 2023–2025 Gaza war, this study uses a list experiment to mitigate social desirability bias and measure whether citizens view their domestic ANSA as a source of instability. Nearly half of respondents in each country expressed criticism. Sectarian affiliation alone does not explain variation. Instead, favorable attitudes toward Iran are associated with reduced criticism of ANSAs. This effect is not reducible to co-sectarian identity: perceptions of Iran as a regional power confronting Israel provide a more consistent explanation. The findings highlight the limits of static sectarian accounts and underscore the importance of geopolitical evaluations.

Can survey experiments replicate real-world behavioral intent and behavior? I study a population in rural Bangladesh (N ∼ 1600) along the banks of the Jamuna River, at risk of riverbank erosion and flooding. I compare their responses to questions about hypothetical movement behavior in vignette-experimental natural disaster scenarios (pre-monsoon, May–June 2021) with their migration intentions and actual migration 2–6 months later, following quasi-experimental real-world exposure. My results show that hypothetical as well as actual affectedness and risk shape migration intent and behavior in structurally similar ways, indicating sign-generalization over both treatments and outcomes. However, the vignette experiment approximates actual behavioral intent more closely than behavior, suggesting that real-world intention–behavior gaps can complicate external validity. Given a slim evidence base for generalizability over treatments and outcomes, this study contributes a crucial comparison from a rarely studied developing-country context on what we can learn from survey experiments.

Parties frequently target campaign promises on specific social groups, yet we lack evidence on whether such targeting yields greater electoral pay-offs than broad-based universalistic pledges. We address this gap with a pre-registered survey experiment fielded in Germany in 2024 (N = 3,500). We expose respondents to a fictional electoral campaign scenario featuring posters promising additional public spending either to the general population (broad-based pledge), or to a specific group – parents, pensioners, or rural residents (group-targeted pledge) – and examine how voters respond. We theorize that group targeting should raise the salience of party-group linkages and therefore boost support among voters who (1) belong to the target group, (2) identify with this group, and/or (3) view it as deserving. At the same time, it may alienate others who perceive such pledges as unfair. We find no consistent evidence that group-targeted pledges outperform broad-based ones in generating electoral support – even among intended beneficiaries. Instead, responses to targeted appeals are strongly moderated by group belonging and perception: support remains stable or slightly lower among intended beneficiaries, but drops substantially among other respondents. These patterns suggest that rather than securing net electoral gains, group-targeted promises can provoke exclusion-driven losses that outweigh limited ingroup appeal. More broadly, the study highlights how identity and deservingness perceptions shape voter reactions to realistic campaign pledges – and how even appeals to normatively ‘deserving’ or majoritarian groups may risk narrowing rather than broadening electoral support.