IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/cup/polals/v26y2018i02p190-209_00.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Measuring Voters’ Multidimensional Policy Preferences with Conjoint Analysis: Application to Japan’s 2014 Election

Author

Listed:
  • Horiuchi, Yusaku
  • Smith, Daniel M.
  • Yamamoto, Teppei

Abstract

Representative democracy entails the aggregation of multiple policy issues by parties into competing bundles of policies, or “manifestos,” which are then evaluated holistically by voters in elections. This aggregation process obscures the multidimensional policy preferences underlying a voter’s single choice of party or candidate. We address this problem through a conjoint experiment based on the actual party manifestos in Japan’s 2014 House of Representatives election. By juxtaposing sets of issue positions as hypothetical manifestos and asking respondents to choose one, our study identifies the effects of specific positions on the overall assessment of manifestos, heterogeneity in preferences among subgroups of respondents, and the popularity ranking of manifestos. Our analysis uncovers important discrepancies between voter preferences and the portrayal of the election results by politicians and the media as providing a policy mandate to the Liberal Democratic Party, underscoring the potential danger of inferring public opinion from election outcomes alone.

Suggested Citation

  • Horiuchi, Yusaku & Smith, Daniel M. & Yamamoto, Teppei, 2018. "Measuring Voters’ Multidimensional Policy Preferences with Conjoint Analysis: Application to Japan’s 2014 Election," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 26(2), pages 190-209, April.
    • Handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:26:y:2018:i:02:p:190-209_00
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.cambridge.org/core/product/identifier/S1047198718000025/type/journal_article
    File Function: link to article abstract page
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Simon Munzert & Sebastian Ramirez-Ruiz & Başak Çalı & Lukas F. Stoetzer & Anita Gohdes & Will Lowe, 2022. "Prioritization preferences for COVID-19 vaccination are consistent across five countries," Palgrave Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 9(1), pages 1-10, December.
    2. Henrik S Christensen & Marco S La Rosa & Kimmo Grönlund, 2020. "How candidate characteristics affect favorability in European Parliament elections: Evidence from a conjoint experiment in Finland," European Union Politics, , vol. 21(3), pages 519-540, September.
    3. MIWA Hirofumi & KASUYA Yuko & ONO Yoshikuni, 2022. "Voters' Perceptions and Evaluations of Dynastic Politics in Japan," Discussion papers 22113, Research Institute of Economy, Trade and Industry (RIETI).
    4. Chris Hanretty & Benjamin E. Lauderdale & Nick Vivyan, 2020. "A Choice‐Based Measure of Issue Importance in the Electorate," American Journal of Political Science, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 64(3), pages 519-535, July.
    5. Nguyen, Quynh & Malesky, Edmund, 2021. "Fish or steel? New evidence on the environment-economy trade-off in developing Vietnam," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 147(C).
    6. Smith, E. Keith & Kolcava, Dennis, 2024. "Measuring Absolute and Relative Levels of Policy Support using Conjoint Choice Experiments," OSF Preprints 837ws, Center for Open Science.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cup:polals:v:26:y:2018:i:02:p:190-209_00. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Kirk Stebbing (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cambridge.org/pan .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.