Replication Data for: \"The effects of party labels on vote choice with realistic candidate differentiation\"

In this paper we test how much party labels influence vote choices between candidates when voters have access to realistically distributed information about candidate positions and demographics. We do not seek to adjudicate a long-running debate about the role of party labels, but present some nuances on the two archetypal theoretical views on vote choices. We use data from the Representative Audit of Britain (RAB) and the British Elections Study (BES) to generate electoral match-ups between randomly selected Conservative versus Labour candidates, with only half of respondents seeing party labels in addition to candidates' positions and demographics. For our experiment fielded in October 2021, we find negligible to moderate effects of party labels on vote choices. Our results suggest the information on candidate positions and party labels largely act as substitutes for one another, with only modest changes when party labels are made explicit.

本研究旨在探究：当选民能够获取关于候选人立场与人口统计属性的现实分布信息时，政党标签（party labels）对选民在不同候选人间做出投票选择的影响程度。本文并不试图厘清围绕政党标签作用的长期学术争议，而是针对投票选择领域的两类经典理论视角，阐释其细微差异与补充性观点。我们采用英国代表性审计调查（Representative Audit of Britain, RAB）与英国选举研究（British Elections Study, BES）的数据，构建随机选取的保守党与工党候选人之间的选举对决场景；实验设置中仅让半数受访者在查看候选人立场与人口统计属性的同时，额外获取政党标签信息。针对2021年10月开展的本次实验，我们发现政党标签对选民投票选择的影响仅处于可忽略至中等程度。研究结果显示，候选人立场信息与政党标签在很大程度上可相互替代；仅当政党标签被明确展示时，投票选择结果才会出现小幅变动。