A new UC Berkeley study has uncovered a possible solution to reduce low voter turnout among people who dislike their choices on the ballot by changing the way voting decisions are framed. The research shows that encouraging voters to vote against the worst options, rather than voting for the best one, could significantly reduce the number of people opting not to vote, especially in elections between unpopular candidates.
Berkeley Psychology Professor Amitai Shenhav and Psychology researcher Yi-Hsin Su explored the issue of "double haters" — voters who dislike all available candidates — in their new paper, titled “Rejection-based choices discourage voters from opting out”. Study participants were shown pairs of hypothetical candidates, each one designed to be either well-aligned or poorly-aligned with the political positions held by that participant. As a result, participants were sometimes faced with two candidates they liked, and other times faced with two candidates they disliked.
For each of these pairs of candidates, participants could choose to vote for a candidate or opt not to vote at all. When asked which candidate they would vote for, participants faced with two candidates they did not like opted out of voting more than 75% of the time. However, when another group was asked which candidate they would vote against – which one they would reject – only 25% chose not to vote. This significant drop in non-voters suggests that reframing the voting decision as rejection, rather than selection, could encourage more participation, particularly when the options are unfavorable.
The research builds on previous studies of consumer choice showing that people have an easier time choosing the product they want most when faced with a set of options they like, compared to when they are faced with a set of options they don’t like. The opposite is true when people are asked to choose the product they want least.
“By reframing the decision as rejecting the worse of two candidates rather than selecting the better one, we enabled participants to channel the negative feelings they have about a given option towards a response that was more natural in that situation,” Professor Shenhav said. “Knowing which candidate a person likes less provides just as much information as knowing which one they like better, but our work shows that people who are unhappy with their options have an easier time answering the first question than the second one.”
Shenhav and Su went on to apply this approach to real political candidates. In two polls of 1,000 Independent voters, one taken while President Joe Biden was the Democratic nominee and one when Vice President Kamala Harris was the nominee, respondents were asked to choose between the two major presidential candidates for president. Across the two polls, among those who were asked which candidate they would vote for, up to 28% of voters said they were undecided. Among those who were asked which candidate they would vote against, that number dropped to just 17%.
“The outcome of any election depends not only on who people choose to vote for but also on whether they decide to vote at all,” Su said, “It’s therefore important to understand who it is that is least likely to vote, and how to encourage them to do so.”
By changing how voting decisions are framed, the researchers believe that the results from studies like this can shed light on possible interventions to engage voter participation, and to better reveal preferences of those undecided voters in polls. Shenhav’s team hopes to collaborate with political scientists and polling agencies to further explore these possibilities.
As the research progresses, Shenhav remains optimistic that the study could offer a new way to think about elections — one that helps voters engage with the process even when they dislike their ballot options. “Even if people don’t love their options, they may still have a preference for one over the other. We’re showing that simply thinking about the decision differently can make it easier for people to turn that preference into a vote. ”