Most of the time, I write about public, civil and, or planning law. This subject may look more political, but it is still close to law. Elections are not merely contests between parties. They are moments in which democratic authority is renewed. For that reason, the way voters form their opinion should matter not only to politicians, but also to lawyers.
This blog, therefore, is not written to side with Labour or PN. It is not an argument for the party which is ahead, nor against the party which is behind in current surveys. The same effect can help one party today and harm it tomorrow. The issue is democratic, not partisan.
That is where the bandwagon effect enters the picture.
A poll looks like a number. It appears scientific, neutral and detached. But once it is published, it becomes more than data. It becomes a headline, a discussion, a sign of strength or weakness. In politics, perception is often part of reality. A party shown as rising may begin to look more credible simply because it is shown as rising.
Political campaigns are not only fought through manifestos and speeches. They are also fought through confidence. A party which appears to be gaining ground may energise its supporters, unsettle its opponents and attract undecided voters. This is the bandwagon effect: the tendency of some voters to move towards what appears to be the growing side.
It would be wrong to treat the bandwagon effect as proof that voters are weak-minded. Voters are human. They read signals. They look at what others are doing. If many people appear to be moving in one direction, some may think there must be a reason. The problem, one might say, is not that citizens observe political movement. The problem begins when the appearance of movement becomes a substitute for judgment.
There is also research support for this concern. In How Election Polls Shape Voting Behaviour, Jens Olav Dahlgaard, Jonas Hedegaard Hansen, Kasper Møller Hansen and Martin Vinæs Larsen examined whether opinion polls can influence voting intention, rather than merely record it. The article was published in Scandinavian Political Studies in 2017.
The authors conducted a survey experiment in Denmark. Respondents were randomly split into five groups. Four groups were shown newspaper-style articles containing a poll about either the Social Democratic Party or the Conservative Party; one group saw no article. The experiment used a YouGov web survey of Danish voters, with 3,011 completed responses.
The result was politically significant.
Those shown a poll indicating that a party was gaining support were more likely to say they would vote for that party than those shown that the party was losing support. The authors state that this provides evidence for the bandwagon hypothesis and summarise the point by saying that voters “flock towards parties that show electoral strength.”
Even so, the bandwagon effect is not bribery, intimidation or fraud. It is subtler. It concerns the atmosphere in which political choice is formed. Electoral law should therefore not only ask whether votes are counted properly. Some argue that it should also ask whether voters are being exposed to political information in a fair and responsible way. Others contend that a democracy must not only protect the secrecy of the vote but it must also care about the climate before the voter reaches the ballot box.
Having said all this, a democracy will never prevent people from voting for a party simply because they believe it is winning.
