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State and the Institutions in Africa Working Group
January 10, 2023 @ 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Does Election Quality Shape Voter Confidence? Evidence from Kenya’s 2022 General Election.
Date & Time
Tuesday, January 10, 3-4:30PM
How to Attend
This is a hybrid event. Attend on Zoom (link below) or attend in person (Grinter 471). Participation in person is strongly encouraged.
The Working Group on Institutions and the State in Africa is pleased to invite all interested faculty and graduate students to
Talk Abstract:
Does an election’s quality affect voters’ confidence in the electoral process? This study studies this question in the context of Kenya’s 2022 General elections. We present results from a face-to-face election-day survey and mobile phone follow-up designed around a policy discontinuity that provided exogenous variation in election quality. Relative to the control group, voters experiencing better material election quality report better election day experiences and more positive election day assessments of electoral integrity and political legitimacy (particularly among government partisans). While these effects attenuate for partisan voters after the election results are announced, unaffiliated voters’ downstream evaluations of election quality significantly strengthen, as do (to a lesser degree) voter confidence measures. These results demonstrate how partisanship conditions the relationship between election quality and voter confidence, and suggest that improvements in election quality may be of limited use in durably improving voter confidence, particularly in highly partisan contexts.
Andrew Harris, Assistant Professor of Political Science, New York University – Abu Dhabi.
Winnie V. Mitullah, Director & Associate Research Professor, Institute for Development Studies, University of Nairobi
Abel Oyuke, East Africa survey manager, Afrobarometer
Use the link below:
https://ufl.zoom.us/j/93649083993?pwd=ZXlSV2dOY3ZEcU9zT0tvYmt3eXRHQT09#success