left-right disagreement among voters compared to elite uniformity. Since left-right is
still one of the major cleavages in Swiss politics it might be more complex for voters if
an other cleavage overlaps the left-right cleavage: opposed to the major left wing party,
the Social democrats, there are three strong centre-right parties. I assume that the likeli-
hood of bias is biggest if there is a disagreement not among the left-right axis but be-
tween the centre-right parties.
Table 6
Correlation between degree of a information and a turnout effect on the outcome
and various institutional and political factors.
Size of information effect
on outcome
Size on turnout effect
on outcome
Self reported complexity
0.43***
0.27*
Number of issues
0.08 0.08
Importance of issue
-0.33**
-0.25*
Overall level of information
-0.58***
-0.47***
Overall level of participation:
-0.34***
-0.46***
Institutional complexity:
compulsory referendum (dummy)
0.17
0.28**
optional referendum (dummy)
-0.13
-0.12
initiative (dummy)
-0.07
-0.16
Elite disagreement
No elite disagreement (dummy)
-0.07
0.11
Left-right disagreement (dummy)
-0.01
-0.12
Disagreement within centre-right parties (dummy)
0.08
0.02
N 59
50
*** significant at the 0.01 level (two tailed), ** significant at the 0.05 level (two tailed),
* significant at the 0.1 level (two tailed)
Table 6 reports the correlation coefficient between the effects on turnout/information and
the different independent variables in the cases where there have been significant cognitive or
turnout effects.
There is a strong correlation between self reported complexity and information effects: the
more citizens find an issue complex the higher the possible information effect. High subjec-
tive complexity seems to increase the risk of a bias in the outcome when there is information
effect. A strong negative relation is between bias due to information and how important citi-
zens rate an issue, the overall level of information and the overall level of turnout. This means
that the less important citizens rate an issue and the less they know about the issue the higher
the likelihood of a biased outcome.
18
Convention