giCentre, School of Informatics, City University London.
IEEE Trans Vis Comput Graph. 2011 Dec;17(12):2384-91. doi: 10.1109/TVCG.2011.174.
The relationship between candidates' position on a ballot paper and vote rank is explored in the case of 5000 candidates for the UK 2010 local government elections in the Greater London area. This design study uses hierarchical spatially arranged graphics to represent two locations that affect candidates at very different scales: the geographical areas for which they seek election and the spatial location of their names on the ballot paper. This approach allows the effect of position bias to be assessed; that is, the degree to which the position of a candidate's name on the ballot paper influences the number of votes received by the candidate, and whether this varies geographically. Results show that position bias was significant enough to influence rank order of candidates, and in the case of many marginal electoral wards, to influence who was elected to government. Position bias was observed most strongly for Liberal Democrat candidates but present for all major political parties. Visual analysis of classification of candidate names by ethnicity suggests that this too had an effect on votes received by candidates, in some cases overcoming alphabetic name bias. The results found contradict some earlier research suggesting that alphabetic name bias was not sufficiently significant to affect electoral outcome and add new evidence for the geographic and ethnicity influences on voting behaviour. The visual approach proposed here can be applied to a wider range of electoral data and the patterns identified and hypotheses derived from them could have significant implications for the design of ballot papers and the conduct of fair elections.
本文探讨了候选人在选票上的位置与投票排名之间的关系，研究对象为 2010 年英国大伦敦地区地方选举中的 5000 名候选人。本设计研究使用分层空间排列图形来表示两个影响候选人的不同尺度的位置：他们寻求选举的地理区域和选票上名字的空间位置。这种方法可以评估位置偏差的影响，即候选人名字在选票上的位置对候选人获得的选票数量的影响程度，以及这种影响是否存在地域差异。结果表明，位置偏差足以影响候选人的排名顺序，在许多边缘选区，甚至影响谁将当选政府。位置偏差在自由民主党候选人中最为明显，但所有主要政党都存在这种情况。对候选人姓名按族裔分类的视觉分析表明，这也会对候选人获得的选票产生影响，在某些情况下，甚至克服了字母名偏差。研究结果与一些早期研究相矛盾，这些研究表明，字母名偏差不足以影响选举结果，并为投票行为的地理和族裔影响提供了新的证据。本文提出的可视化方法可应用于更广泛的选举数据，从中识别出的模式和推导出的假设可能对选票设计和公平选举的进行产生重大影响。
