Can voters make informed decisions? Congruence between voters and political parties on the issue of nuclear energy

Political elites have to take decisions on complex technological issues, which are characterized by uncertainty (e.g. whether or not to continue using nuclear reactors to produce electricity). This requires the general public... [ view full abstract ]

Political elites have to take decisions on complex technological issues, which are characterized by uncertainty (e.g. whether or not to continue using nuclear reactors to produce electricity). This requires the general public to elect representatives who can make such decisions. This study explores whether laymen are capable to make informed vote decisions on substantive representation regarding the issue of nuclear energy production. To what extent are they able to assess which political parties have congruent issue preferences? With this research we hope to improve current understanding of how people take decisions related to political representation on issues characterized by high complexity, uncertainty and risk. We study this puzzle in the Belgian context, where the issue saliency of nuclear energy was high in 2015, due to political debate on the role of nuclear energy in the energy mix and the safety of nuclear energy production. Making it a most likely case to find congruent issue preferences. We do this by looking at 1) knowledge of the position of political parties on the nuclear energy issue and 2) vote intention. The data used for this study come from a large-scale opinion survey collected in 2015 using CAPI. Sample of respondents (n= 1028) is representative for the Belgian adult population with respect to the following variables: province, region, level of urbanization, gender, age and professional status. Results indicate that although nuclear energy production is a salient issue, voters’ knowledge of the parties’ positions on this issue is rather low. On the other hand low knowledge does not hinder people in their intention to vote for a party whose position on the use of nuclear energy is in line with their own. People with more knowledge of party positions in general also have a higher chance to vote for a party whose position on nuclear energy is congruent with their own. Further multivariate analysis will be conducted to explain influential factors for decision making on this issue. We discuss the results based on the literature on representation and responsiveness and situate them in the political context.