Replication Data for: Direct Democracy and Status Quo Bias

Is there an opposition bias in ballot initiative campaigns? While some early research suggested that the “no” side was advantaged in ballot initiative campaigns, recent work has demonstrated that both opposition and support spending in ballot measure campaigns are effective. We offer a new way to conceptualize status quo orientation in ballot measure elections. Specifically, we argue that opposition arguments are more effective than support arguments because of the well-known framing negativity bias and not because the starting position for uninformed voters is to default to no. We present the results of two survey experiments to test the impact of support and opposition arguments in ballot initiative campaigns. We find consistent evidence that opposition arguments are effective in generating more “no” votes and that support arguments are ineffective in generating more “yes” votes.

投票倡议竞选（ballot initiative campaign）中是否存在反对偏见？尽管早期部分研究指出，投票倡议竞选中“反对”方占据优势，但近期研究证实，投票提案竞选（ballot measure campaign）中反对与支持双方的竞选经费投入均能发挥有效作用。我们提出了一种全新的概念化路径，用以解析投票提案选举中的现状取向。具体而言，我们主张反对论点的效力优于支持论点，这一结论源于学界公认的框架负面偏见（framing negativity bias），而非未掌握足够信息的选民会默认以“反对”作为初始立场。我们开展了两项调查实验，用以检验投票倡议竞选中支持与反对论点的影响，并呈现其实验结果。我们得到了一致的实证证据：反对论点能够有效促使更多选民投出反对票，而支持论点则无法有效推动更多选民投出赞成票。