Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

www.elsevier.com/locate/electstud

The importance of being first: Effects ofcandidates’ list positions in the 2003

Bavarian state election

Thorsten Faas a,�, Harald Schoen b,1

a Institut fur Politikwissenschaft, Universitat Duisburg-Essen, Campus Duisburg,

Lotharstraße 65, 47048 Duisburg, Germanyb Institut fur Politikwissenschaft, Johannes Gutenberg-Universitat, Saarstraße 21,

55099 Mainz, Germany

Abstract

Normative theories of democracy do not pay much attention to technicalities of voting,implicitly assuming that these do not influence voting behaviour and election outcomes

significantly. However, it is not clear whether this is actually the case. In this article we analysewhether one such technical detail matters for voting behaviour: the ballot position. Based onprevious research in the field, we discuss ballot position effects and deduce hypothesesconcerning list position effects in the 2003 Bavarian state election. In the empirical analysis, it

turns out that ballot positions had a considerable influence on voting behaviour in thiselection, especially, the top position on party lists rendered a large bonus of votes. Obviously,technicalities matter.

� 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Electoral systems; Ballot position effects; Bavaria; Germany; State elections

� Corresponding author. Tel.: C49 203 379 2053.

E-mail addresses: thorsten.faas@uni-duisburg.de (T. Faas), harald.schoen@politik.uni-mainz.de

(H. Schoen).1 Tel.: C49 6131 39 23450.

0261-3794/$ - see front matter � 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

doi:10.1016/j.electstud.2005.04.001

92 T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

1. Introduction

Normative theories of democracy do not pay much attention to technicalities ofvoting. More precisely, they hold that these technical features must not influencevoting behaviour and election outcomes. Otherwise, as Key (1957: p. iii) once put it,‘‘the majority will may both be influenced and distorted by the most humdrumminutiae of election procedure and administration’’. Rather, in elections voters’decisions should be primarily influenced by substantive political preferences, such aspersonal traits of candidates as well as issue positions of the competing parties and/or candidates. Consequently, elections will not be regarded as entirely fair if non-substantive factors, e.g. technicalities, influence voting behaviour and electionoutcomes. The outcome of the US presidential election in 2000 is a case in point.Analyses suggest that George W. Bush would not have won the 2000 US election ifthe butterfly ballot had not been used in Palm Beach County, Florida. Asa consequence, the outcome was discussed highly controversially (e.g. Brady et al.,2001; Wand et al., 2001).

In this paper, we will examine one technical factor the influence of which onvoting behaviour would contradict the assumptions of normative theorists: the ballotposition of candidates. After all, from the normative point of view outlined above,the ballot position of a candidate is an attribute that should not play a significantrole when voters decide whom to vote for. Voters should rather take candidates’policy positions and personal traits into account. Of course, technicalities such asballot positions could still have an effect e and whether that is the case and if so towhat extent is the question we will analyse.

Testing ballot position effects empirically is quite a challenge, though. Ballotpositions of parties and candidates usually do not vary, but are rather constant fora given election, which makes it very difficult to disentangle the uncontaminatedeffect of ballot positions from all other potentially relevant factors. Among othersthe fact that prominent politicians frequently hold top list positions contributes tothis difficulty.

It is not surprising then that the number of quantitative studies that do analyseballot position effects is rather limited. The few studies that do exist mainly comefrom the US and Australia where ballot positions are rotated randomly in certaininstances, thus allowing the testing of ballot position effects (see e.g. Byrne andPueschel, 1974; Darcy, 1986; Darcy and McAllister, 1990; Darcy and Mackerras,1993; Miller and Krosnick, 1998; Mueller, 1970; Koppel and Steen, 2004). In termsof results, some of these studies suggest that ballot positions do in fact havesignificant, though not in every case, large effects. By analysing the 2003 Bavarianstate election that also provides opportunities to analyse effects of ballot positions wewant to shed more light into this field of research, which seems promising as itexpands the range of analysed countries and electoral systems.

Our analysis comprises four parts: First, we will discuss ballot position effectstheoretically in more detail. Second, we will describe the electoral system that wasused in the 2003 Bavarian state elections (and its peculiarities which allow for testingfor ballot position effects), followed by a description of our data, hypotheses and

93T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

operationalizations. In the third part, we will present our empirical findings andfinally we will summarize our results and put them into a broader perspective, whichis necessary and appropriate, as we e in line with previous results e findconsiderable effects of ballot positions on voting behaviour.

2. Ballot position effects

Taking technical details of the voting system and specifically the ballot intoaccount, when analysing voting behaviour has a long tradition in electoral research.The Michigan-scholars were among the first to pay attention to such technicalities.What they show is that providing opportunities to vote a ‘‘straight ticket’’ on theballot significantly reduces split-ticket voting. Accordingly, voters with a rather weakparty identification (and thus a low political motivation) are especially susceptible tosuch effects. Opting for a straight ticket with just one tick makes voting e otherwisea rather complicated and costly task for them e relatively easy (Campbell andMiller, 1957; Campbell et al., 1960: pp. 266e289).

Taking these arguments to a more abstract level, voters with a strong politicalbackground (in terms of knowledge, interest or party identification) should alwaysvote along their well-grounded preferences (and consequently should not beinfluenced by technicalities). For instance, partisans e as long as their partisanshiphelps to distinguish between political parties, candidates or issues e will always votefor their preferred party, regardless of its position. However, if such substantialcriteria do not exist (or do not apply, which is for example the case for partisanshipin the US primaries (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1978: p. 278; Bartels, 1988)), voters arefaced with a challenge and are possibly influenced by the design and form of theballot e but to what extent?

How do voters act under such circumstances? It is reasonable to assume that thesevoters who are not intrinsically motivated want to minimize the effort. But how canthey vote with a minimal effort? While they, of course, will have to start scanning theballot, they will nonetheless scan it only until they find an acceptable e ‘‘satisfying’’(Simon, 1955) e choice. As they in general are likely to have rather little information(see for the US e.g. Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996; for Germany e.g. Maier, 2000),almost every candidate (or party) should be acceptable. This is especially true underelectoral systems that use non-fixed party lists, as they require a two-staged decisionprocess: first, voters have to opt for a party; second, within the party lists, fora candidate. Given such circumstances and only given a party preference, each(party) candidate should be acceptable, which clearly favours candidates on top ofthe list (Miller and Krosnick, 1998: p. 294f; Koppel and Steen, 2004; see fora different, but related theory Kelley and McAllister, 1984: pp. 453e454; see alsoLodge et al., 1989). Another line of reasoning e more psychologically oriented eleads to similar conclusions (cf. Miller and Krosnick, 1998: pp. 213e214; Krosnick,1991). Accordingly, humans are rather good natured (i.e. they look for arguments infavour of things) and thus tend to evaluate objects positively in principle. In case ofballots, voters again start scanning the list, but their motivation to look for positive

94 T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

arguments fades as they move further down the list. As a result, they come up withmore positive arguments for the candidates on top of the list, which again benefitsexactly those candidates. Finally, it should at least be mentioned that in case ofcandidates on a party list, a vote for the first candidate on the list is most similar toa party (instead of a candidate) vote that voters would possibly prefer to cast.

In a nutshell, then, one can expect ballot position effects that favour higher-seated(and especially top-seated) candidates, even after controlling for other potentiallyrelevant factors. The question then is: to what extent? However, there is obviouslya problem in terms of research design, as ballot positions are likely to be linked toother characteristics of the candidates, e.g. their prominence.2 The research designand the data will have to cope with these hindrances appropriately.

3. The Bavarian electoral system and the 2003 Bavarian state election

The Bavarian electoral system is a unique feature of electoral politics in Germany(cf. James, 1988). Like in German federal elections, it is a mixed-member PR systemwith two votes. The Bavarian voter is asked to cast his first vote for a directly-electedcandidate in each of the 92 local constituencies (Stimmkreis). In each constituency,one MP is directly elected through these first votes by simple majority rule. Thoughthis procedure parallels the federal electoral system, the Bavarian system differs fromthe federal system in terms of the second vote. Here, the voter is faced with party listscomprising individual candidates of the respective parties and is asked not to vote fora party, but rather to cast a preferential vote for an individual candidate on sucha party list.3 In other words, it is a non-blocked list of (party) candidates. These listsdiffer within Bavaria; parties present a different list for each of the sevenadministrative districts (Bezirke) of Bavaria.

Another peculiarity of the electoral system has to be mentioned, as it is crucial forour analysis: Candidates running in a local constituency (i.e. competing for firstvotes) have to be members of the corresponding district party list, too (i.e. competefor second votes on the regional level as well).4 However, in ‘‘their’’ localconstituency, they do not appear on their party’s candidate list for second votes,because otherwise, voters could allocate two votes for one candidate in thatconstituency which is said to violate the principle of fairness among candidates.5

Hence, they are omitted from the list in that constituency which alters the rank orderof candidates on the party list. Candidates following the candidate competing for thedirect seat in the constituency move up one spot. To give an example, if the leader ofthe party list is the local constituency candidate in a given constituency, all other

2 Prominence (i.e. name recognition) is often said to influence the outcome of US primaries (Fishbein

and Ajzen, 1978: p. 278; Bartels, 1988).3 The procedure of seat allocation is remarkable, too, but not directly related to our research question,

see e.g. James (1988), Schultze and Ender (1991), Zeh (1992), Schuster et al. (2003) for details.4 On average, each administrative district comprises about 13 local constituencies.5 This is especially the case, since the number of first and second votes determines the final order of the

candidates.

95T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

candidates move up one place on the party list, i.e. candidate #2 becomes the leaderof the list in that particular constituency, candidate #3 moves to #2 and so on. Asa consequence, the list position of individual candidates is not constant but it varies(by one) among the local constituencies, which provides us with a quasi-experimentalsetting to test for ballot position effects.

The 2003 Bavarian state election was run under this electoral system. The focus ofour attention is on the distribution of second votes within regional party lists, i.e. wedo not pay any attention either to first votes or to the distribution of seats inparliament. Our expectation is that within the regional lists of individual parties,candidates on top of the list, especially the top-seated candidates, considerably benefitfrom their ballot positions compared to other candidates on the list, even aftercontrolling for other potentially relevant factors. Why do we expect that? Generallyspeaking, Germany’s turnout is still rather high in comparative perspective,6 which isto a large extent due to a perceived social desirability of voting. Voters do cast a voteeven if they are not motivated by genuine political (policy) preferences. Morespecifically and given the specific electoral system, party-based criteria for votingdecisions are only valuable in the first step (when deciding which party to vote for);the second step requirede a choice between candidates of the samepartywithin a listecannot be rooted in party-based criteria. One can doubt that voters have a profoundknowledge about the electoral system in use e empirical studies about the federalelectoral system come to the conclusion that many voters do not even know aboutessential features of this considerably simpler system (see Schmitt-Beck, 1993) e andhence do not expect to vote for candidates. As a consequence, they will not havewell-formed candidate preferences in advance, which is reinforced by the fact thatthe campaign is essentially party-focused. Taken together, Bavarian voters should bequite susceptible to ballot position effects, which in turn should cause candidates ontop of the lists to gain considerably because of their position.

To test this hypothesis we use the relative vote shares of individual candidates (i.e.the votes of a candidate relative to all the votes that all candidates from the sameparty received) on the local constituency level. It should again be emphasized that theparty lists are generally fixed at the regional level. However, the advancing ofcandidates in those constituencies, where a higher-seated candidate is directlycompeting for first votes and which we use for our quasi-experimental approach,occurs at the local constituency level. Hence, that is our level of analysis. To analysethese vote shares, we use a twofold approach e one rather ‘‘statistical’’, and the other‘‘experimental’’. For the quasi-experimental approach, we compare the vote sharescandidates receive if they are at their default position on the ballot with those theyreceive if they advance by one slot on the ballot (because a higher-seated candidatecompetes for first votes in that constituency). In other words, we control for (almost)all factors except for the ballot position of candidates, which differs by one.7 For our

6 The turnout in the 2003 Bavarian state election was 57.1%.7 A factor which is not controlled for in this quasi-experimental approach is, of course, the distribution

of political preferences in local constituencies.

96 T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

statistical approach, we explain the vote shares candidates receive in a regressionmodel. As independent variables, we use the ballot position of candidates (that westandardize to a range from 0 to 1 in order to be able to compare lists of differentlength) as well as a dummy variable that captures whether a candidate is top-seatedon the list or not. Besides these key variables, we add further control variables,namely the gender of the candidates as well as dummy variables capturing whetherthe candidates hold academic titles (PhD or Professor) or are already serving as anMP, secretary, prime minister, party leader or party group leader. These variables,which can be assumed to capture the prominence of candidates to a certain extent, arelikely to be correlated positively with both ballot position and relative vote shares; asa consequence, if they were not controlled for the effect attributed to list positionswould be inflated.8

Before we turn to the empirical analyses, it seems necessary to provide some finalinformation about the 2003 Bavarian state election. A total of 13 parties ran in theelection, three of them, namely the conservative party CSU, the social democraticparty SPD and the Green Party, were represented in the state parliament before andafter the election. We subsumed the other parties under the label of ‘‘minor parties’’.The total number of candidates amounts to 1527, 166 for the CSU, 180 for the SPDand 179 for the Greens. Seven hundred and seventy-six of these candidates alsocompeted in one (and only one) constituency for first votes (for a detailed analysis ofthe election see Rieger, 2003).

4. Empirical results

We start out with the ‘‘statistical’’ approach. If we regress the vote share ofcandidates on their (standardized) ballot position and add only a dummy variablethat captures whether a candidate is on top of the list or not, we find strong supportfor ballot position effects (see Fig. 1 and the first half of Table 1).9 Looking at allparties combined, we find that the top position on a party’s list renders an increase ofthe vote share by 44.2 percentage points. Apart from that, the vote shares ofcandidates further decrease as candidates are positioned worse on the list. Put moreprecisely, the loss amounts to 3.6 percentage points from best- to worst-seatedcandidates. Overall, this model fits the data very well, almost 60% of the variance areexplained by these two factors only.

Things do not change if we move to the level of individual parties. Although thereis some variation among parties (the models work better for the CSU and the Greens

8 We do not assume that these factors do capture all aspects which might inflate the effect attributed to

ballot position. For example, candidates on top of the list might take popular policy stances which might

boost their vote shares. As a result, the ballot effect measured in our regression analysis could be slightly

inflated even after introducing the control variables listed.9 Data are weighted by the absolute numbers of votes the parties receive in the local constituencies. In

addition, the advancing of candidates from position #2 to #1 is reflected in the data, other advances are

not. As we are not using a sample, but the entire population, we do not show any significance levels.

97T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

than for the SPD and other parties), the pattern nonetheless remains unchanged.Top-seated candidates on an average gain 27 (minor parties) to 50 percentage points(CSU); furthermore, candidates at the very rear of a list lose 2e4 percentage pointscompared to top-seated candidates.

While this strongly suggests that ballot position effects do exist, it does not provetheir existence, as the ballot position is likely to be linked to other potentiallyrelevant factors that have to be controlled for (second half of Table 1). As it turnsout, the control variables do affect the results, but only marginally. Having a ‘‘PhD’’increases a candidate’s vote share (except for Green PhDs), while being a professordoes not (unless you are professor in a minor party). Unlike in other analyses (seeRule, 1987; Matland and Taylor, 1997; but see also Moser, 2001), the sex ofcandidates does not matter and e more interestingly e neither does already being anMP (with the Greens again being a minor exception, Green MPs on an averagereceive a benefit of around 3 percentage points from already serving as an MP).Being a prominent politician e in line with the concept of ‘‘name recognition’’ ematters more. The prime minister as well as his secretaries, but also party andparty group leaders do better on election day.

Most importantly though, the model fit improves only slightly and the effects ofthe ballot position and the top-seat are still powerful predictors of the vote share.

Fig. 1. Candidate vote shares and standardized ballot position in the 2003 Bavarian state election (by

party). Note: The dots represent individual candidates in single constituency, the grey line represents the

regression model (including the bonus for top-seated candidates), the black line is a locally weighted

scatterplot (lowess) smoother.

Table 1

Effects of (st ate election, with and without control variables (OLS regression)

Greens Minor parties

b b b b b

Constant .037 0.040 0.038

Top position .391 0.688 0.347 0.730 0.265 0.577

Ballot positio .036 �0.107 �0.042 �0.156 �0.020 �0.069

Adjusted R2 .0 62.3 36.4

Constant .030 0.028 0.036

Top position .258 0.454 0.361 0.759 0.229 0.498

Ballot positio .030 �0.089 �0.029 �0.107 �0.020 �0.068

Sex .001 0.007 0.001 0.009 0.006 0.030

PhD .012 0.035 �0.000 �0.000 0.007 0.023

Professor .035 �0.035 e e 0.112 0.064

MP .005 0.032 0.029 0.091 e e

Prime Minist e e e e eParty leader .186 0.105 �0.066 �0.086 0.188 0.170

Party group .358 0.358 0.075 0.115 e e

Adjusted R2( .8 66.0 39.3

N (weighted) 2771 15 749

98

T.Faas,H.Schoen

/Electo

ralStudies

25(2006)91e102

andardized) ballot position on candidate vote shares in the 2003 Bavarian st

All parties CSU SPD

b b b b B

0.037 0.037 0

0.442 0.737 0.501 0.778 0

n (standardized) �0.036 �0.098 �0.038 �0.095 �0

(!100) 59.8 66.1 53

0.029 0.032 0

0.375 0.627 0.415 0.644 0

n (standardized) �0.023 �0.065 �0.029 �0.072 �0

0.000 0.000 0.001 0.003 0

0.017 0.052 0.014 0.044 0

�0.022 �0.029 �0.012 �0.018 �0

�0.003 �0.023 �0.004 �0.033 0

er (or Secretary) 0.041 0.053 0.023 0.055 e0.186 0.163 0.224 0.200 0

leader 0.064 0.053 �0.003 �0.003 0

!100) 63.2 69.7 61

23 843 2543 2780

99T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

Although the size of the effects is somewhat smaller than before, the top-seat stillrenders an additional vote share of 38 percentage points (over all parties), rangingfrom 23 percentage points (minor parties) to 42 percentage points (CSU). Also, thenegative effect of a back-position on the list remains.

The final, quasi-experimental part of our analysis further supports the existence ofballot position effects. It confirms both observations already made. It is especiallythe top position on the list that matters most, but effects are also observable for otherballot positions. Apparently, the effect of the ballot position is itself a function of theballot position, the lower the position, the smaller the effect.

Fig. 2 proves the point. Advancing to the top position on the list boosts the voteshares of candidates. Looking at all parties combined, candidates on ballot position#2 receive an average vote share (measured by the median as to not be affected byoutliers) of 2.8% if they actually appear on position #2. However, if the default top-seated candidate runs as the direct candidate in a constituency (and thus does notappear on the list of candidates that compete for second votes), candidate #2 isactually candidate #1 and receives a (median) vote share of 27%, almost 10 times asmuch. If we move further down the list, advancement-induced gains still exist, butconsiderably decrease in size: advancing from #3 to #2 means receiving 4.1 instead of2.2% of the vote on average; from #4 to #3 means receiving 2.5 instead of 1.1%.Advancing from a position further down the list renders increases of vote shares ofless than 1 percentage point.

Fig. 2. Effects of advancing by one slot on the ballot in the 2003 Bavarian state election (by default ballot

position).

100 T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

Again, things do not change if we move to the level of individual parties (seeTable 2). Advancing from #2 to #1 on a party list of the CSU renders a gain of 17.9percentage points on average, relevant gains are also observable for the followingtwo positions (1 percentage point each). On social democratic party lists, therespective figures are 30.8, 2.1 and 1 percentage points, on party lists of the Greenparty, the figures amount to 24.5, 5.0 and 0.7 percentage points.

5. Conclusion

The analysis shows that in the 2003 Bavarian state election ballot positions doinfluence voting behaviour: candidates on top of the list are favoured, and especiallythe candidate on the very first position gets a sizeable bonus of votes. Hence, electionoutcomes do not only mirror political preferences in the electorate, they reflect theballot position of candidates to a considerable extent. Compared to findings in othersettings (e.g. Miller and Krosnick, 1998; Koppel and Steen, 2004), in Bavaria theeffect is quite strong. To put it bluntly, an easy rule applies: the first will be the first;to put in a more prosaic way: ‘‘The importance of being first’’ can hardly beovererstimated. Thus, the notion that electoral outcomes are perfect mirror-imagesof the distribution of political preferences in the electorate is not well-grounded inempirical results.

What does the analysis imply for possible electoral reform? Obviously, theopportunity to cast a vote for a single candidate in the Bavarian state electionsfosters ballot position effects because some voters are not able to form politicalpreferences as sophisticatedly as the electoral system requires. More generallyspeaking, a party list system restricts voters’ influence on the selection ofrepresentatives, but at the same time, it reduces the influence of accidental factorslike ballot positions on voting behaviour. Put in a nutshell, there is a trade-offbetween reducing constraint on voter’s decision and voter’s ability to makea reasonable decision. Electoral reform cannot simply relax electoral constraints; it

Table 2

Effects of advancing by one slot on the ballot in the 2003 Bavarian state election (by default ballot

position, entries are the differences between their shares received on the advanced position and the default

position)

All parties CSU SPD Greens Others

2 24.2 17.9 30.8 24.5 18.4

3 1.9 1.0 2.1 5.0 1.2

4 1.4 1.0 1.0 0.7 0.1

5 0.2 0.2 0.5 0.6 �0.1

6 0.3 0.1 0.3 0.3 0.0

7 0.5 0.4 0.2 �0.9 �0.7

8 0.2 0.5 0.3 �1.4 0.5

9 0.3 �0.1 0.5 �1.8 0.2

10 0.1 �0.1 0.3 �1.0 0.3

101T. Faas, H. Schoen / Electoral Studies 25 (2006) 91e102

also has to take into account whether electoral rules demand too much of voters (seeFarrell, 2001: pp. 146e148).

Rotating candidates’ ballot positions randomly could be a possible means tomaintain personal votes for candidates without having technical features (like ballotpositions) influence the final outcome of elections systematically. Though used insome elections, e.g. in Australia, it is questionable whether this actually applies to theBavarian electoral system that is currently in use. After all, ballot positions in thiscase are legitimized through processes of intra-party democracy (and are notdetermined by administrative arbitrariness). Hence, only a major reform of theBavarian electoral system could eliminate ballot position effects. As long as thecurrent system is used, however, rational candidates have an incentive to putmaximum effort into obtaining the top seat on lists.

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