Project description
A closer look at what voters think on election day
What do ordinary citizens think of elections and their right to vote? What motivates them to cast their ballot or to abstain from voting? How does this vary from country to country? How are high rates of abstention explained? What can explain a distrust in election administration? The ERC-funded DeVOTE project will try to answer these questions. Gathering views via a citizen science website, the project will provide first-time evidence on what voting means for citizens across different types of democracies. The results are expected to challenge conventional wisdom and provide groundbreaking understanding of citizen conceptualisations of representation and the psychology of voting.
Objective
On Election Day, citizens are usually asked to vote by placing a mark besides one party and/or candidate on a ballot paper. What meanings do citizens attribute to that mark? Frequently it is assumed that citizens share the view that the mark is substantively meaningful. Yet high rates of abstention, rejection of politics as usual, distrust in election administration and integrity, and democratic backsliding now challenge this assumption. This project aims not only to provide first-time evidence on what ‘voting’ means for ordinary citizens, but also to examine variation in such meanings between individuals and across types of democracies; study how elections create and modify these meanings; and investigate their attitudinal and behavioural consequences. ‘Meaning’, in this project, refers to both the significance of voting for citizens as well as what is meant by voting for citizens, which may encompass citizen definitions or understandings of voting and/or the motivations they have for voting or not. Looking at what voting means for citizens in a variety of countries promises to provide a ground-breaking understanding of citizen-conceptualizations of representation and the psychology of voting that can challenge conventional wisdom about participation and voting as well as lead to practical implications for how elections are run and administered. In addition, the project agenda will result in an observatory devised for systematic data collection on the meanings of elections on Election Day. In the long run, this will provide a resource containing information about the political meanings given to elections by citizens themselves and can be used as a basis to refine and challenge the constructed interpretations commonly assigned to elections by the media and politicians. Citizen views are gathered via a novel approach based on a citizen-science website and inductive reasoning combined with panel data, vignette experiments and topic modelling to test causal mechanisms.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- social sciences political sciences political transitions elections
- social sciences political sciences government systems democracy
- social sciences psychology
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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H2020-EU.1.1. - EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
ERC-STG - Starting Grant
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2020-STG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
1010 Wien
Austria
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.