8
these heuristics and produce differences in which candidates enjoy an advantage., the
lengthier the ballot and if they must make their decisions in the confines of a voting booth
(polling place elections) rather than at home (mail in ballots).
Generally, we do not have any measure of the cognitive sophistication of voters that
participated in the elections we are analyzing. Therefore, we can not test whether the use
of heuristics varies by an individual’s level of sophistication but we can examine how the
use of heuristics varies by the cognitive demands made on by the context of the election.
The time in which voters have to make a decision may influence the use of heuristics.
Decisions are more likely to reflect the use of shortcuts when time is limited. Therefore,
we expect that elections held in the polling place will show more evidence of heuristic
use than will elections where voters return ballots by post and are able to acquire and
process more information when making a decision.
Voters face greater cognitive complexity under rules where they must rank preferences
for all candidates (STV) rather than choose a number of candidates from a list in multi-
member plurality elections (MMP) (see Farrell). Cognitively, the task of ranking
candidates is more analogous to making comparisons across all candidates while
selecting a number of candidates from a list is less cognitively demanding in that it does
not require explicit comparisons or rankings.
Likewise we might expect differences in ballot position effects and the use of candidate
appearance cues across the types of elections. While we might expect shortcuts to be
related to outcomes, because the context seems to condition which cues are used, ballot
position may be a more appropriate shortcut in the absence of other information about the
candidate or in situations where the cognitive task is complex.
H
1
: Candidates with a more favorable appearance (more attractive, men, and white) will
be advantaged.
H
2
: Candidates will be advantaged by better ballot placement.
H
3
: These advantages will be more prominent under STV than MMP rules.
Convention