Education and interest in politics

It is often claimed in popular debate that education is a "public good". This is generally invoked to justify public funding for education. What "public good" means exactly is usually undefined but there seems to be a general notion that higher levels of education somehow make people better citizens. For this reason economists and political scientists have looked at whether education makes people more likely to vote: it does.
One could also ask does education make people more interested in politics? The graph uses ESS data for Ireland to show a measure of interest in politics by education level completed. There is a correlation with those who have completed tertiary education being significantly more interested. Whether this is a causal link, of course, is a harder question.

The happiness of Irish voters

Happiness may seem to be in short supply in Ireland at the moment. But in general when Irish people are asked to ranked their happiness on a scale of 0-10 we average close to 8. Many predictors have been studied. Given the forthcoming election it is interesting to know if happiness differs according to how people vote. The European Social Survey asked people how they voted. Only one party is recorded so it is presumably their first choice.
Graphing happiness by party shows that Fianna Fail voters are the happiest of the lot followed by Fine Gael. Sinn Fein voters are the most miserable of the lot. These differences are statistically significant & are robust to controlling for age, sex and education. Of course this data was not collected recently and a contemporary survey might show a different pattern.

ESRI Seminar: Stability of Economic Voting in Ireland

ESRI Seminar: "Stability of Economic Voting in Ireland"

Venue: The ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson’s Quay, Dublin 2
Date: 16/09/2010
Time: 4 p.m.
Speaker: Michael Marsh (TCD)

This paper takes a long run perspective to examine the stability of a popularity function and possible contextual reasons for that stability/instability. It uses new data to estimate a popularity function for the dominant Irish party, Fianna Fail, (FF) for the period 1974-2010, a much longer period than is covered in any previous analysis.

While FF has remained the dominant party over this period, the economy has run the full gamut from bust to boom and back again. The authors find that the effect of objective economic indicators and subjective perceptions of the economy is differential over whether FF is in government or in opposition.

More Details

Evidence on the goodness of economists

Does economics make you a nicer, better person? I know what you are thinking and I am inclined to agree but there is nothing like some good evidence. This paper looks at the association between economics study and pro-social behaviour including voter turnout and volunteering.

Is economics coursework, or majoring in economics, associated with different civic behaviors?
S Allgood, W Bosshardt,W an der Klaauw,M Watts
Studies regularly link levels of educational attainment to civic behavior and attitudes, but only a few investigate the role played by specific coursework. Using data collected from students who attended one of four public universities in our study, we investigate the relationship between economics coursework and civic behavior after graduation. Drawing from large samples of students in economics, business, or general majors, we compare responses across the three groups and by the number of undergraduate economics courses completed. We find that undergraduate coursework in economics is strongly associated with political party affiliation and with donations to candidates or parties, but not with the decision to vote or not vote. Nor is studying economics correlated with the likelihood (or intensity of) volunteerism.
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:fip:fednsr:450&r=edu

Polling location and voter choice

Somewhat in the spirit of Caplan, a new paper in Political Psychology suggests the location of polling booths may affect voter behaviour.

Voting is perceived as free and rational. Citizens make whatever choices they wish, shielded from external influences by the privacy of the voting booth. The current paper, however, suggests that a subtle source of influence—polling places themselves—can impact voting behavior. In two elections, people voting in churches were more likely to support a conservative candidate and a ban on same-sex marriage, but not the restriction of eminent domain. A field experiment found that people completing questionnaires in a chapel awarded less money (relative to people in a secular building) to insurance claimants seeking compensation for abortion pills, but not to worker’s compensation claimants.

Like a large number of Irish people, my polling centre is where I went to primary school. (Incidentally, the last time around we elected a relatively unknown school-teacher on the first count.)

(HT: BPS.)

How beautiful are our politicians?

Since the competence of our politicians is increasingly in doubt, people might like to ask are they good looking? See this paper for the answer, at least for Australia.

Beautiful Politicians
Amy King, Andrew Leigh
Are beautiful politicians more likely to be elected? To test this, we use evidence from Australia, a country in which voting is compulsory, and in which voters are given ‘How to Vote’ cards depicting photos of the major party candidates as they arrive to vote. Using raters chosen to be representative of the electorate, we assess the beauty of political candidates from major political parties, and then estimate the effect of beauty on voteshare for candidates in the 2004 federal election. Beautiful candidates are indeed more likely to be elected, with a one standard deviation increase in beauty associated with a 1½ – 2 percentage point increase in voteshare.
http://d.repec.org/n?u=RePEc:auu:dpaper:616&r=cbe

Wanted: Boat Captain

Via Andrew Leigh

Predicting Elections: Child’s Play!
John Antonakis and Olaf Dalgas

from Science

"In two experiments, children and adults rated pairs of faces from election races. Naïve adults judged a pair on competence; after playing a game, children chose who they would prefer to be captain of their boat. Children’s (as well as adults’) preferences accurately predicted actual election outcomes."