Designing preference voting

Electoral systems in which voters can cast preference votes for individual candidates within a party list are increasingly popular. To the best of our knowledge, there is no research on whether and how scale used to evaluate affect electoral behavior results. In this paper, we analyze data from an original voting experiment leveraging real-life political preferences embedded nationally representative online survey Austria. We show that by makes differences. For example, possibility give up two points advantages male because more likely ‘zero points’ female candidates. Yet pattern does not exist system positive negative seem reluctant actively withdraw thus encourage constitution makers think carefully about design voting.