Public Opinion Quarterly Advance Access originally published online on June 16, 2009
Public Opinion Quarterly 2009 73(3):551-565; doi:10.1093/poq/nfp027
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Process Preferences and Voting in Direct Democratic Elections
Address correspondence to Joshua J. Dyck; e-mail: jdyck{at}buffalo.edu.
Direct democracy is extraordinarily popular and has become a pervasive policymaking tool at the state and local level. Repeated surveys have demonstrated that Americans strongly approve of allowing people to vote on citizen-proposed laws, a method currently allowed in about half of all states and in many municipalities across the country. This paper examines both the extent of this support and its implications. Using a battery of questions about the institution as an independent variable, we model the extent to which institutional evaluations of direct democracy influence voting behavior in ballot measure elections. Using data from California in 2005 and 2006, as well as Washington in 2006, we find support for the notion that process evaluations influence choice in ballot initiative elections, regardless of policy content. Those who favor direct democracy are more likely to vote yes, while those who are apprehensive about voting on ballot measures are more likely to vote no.
JOSHUA J. DYCK is with the Department of Political Science, University at Buffalo, the State University of New York, Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. MARK BALDASSARE is with the Public Policy Institute of California, 500 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94111, USA. The authors would like to thank Fred Boehmke, Michelle Benson, Chuck Finocchiaro, Gregg Johnson, Lynn Mather, and Jason Sorens for helpful comments and suggestions. They acknowledge the generous support of the Public Policy Institute of California, in association with the James Irvine Foundation for the California data used in this piece. They are also indebted to the University of Washington's Institute for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Sexuality (WISER), and especially Matt Barreto, John Gastil, and Todd Donovan for the use of the Washington State Poll data used in this piece. The authors bear sole responsibility for the analysis of all data, conclusions and any errors present in this manuscript. A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2006 American Political Science Association Conference, Philadelphia.