Rolling in the Deep: How Values and Personality Traits affect Perceptions of Electoral Integrity

This contribution investigates the deep individual underpinnings of individual perceptions of electoral integrity. More specifically, our aim is to uncover how values and the personality traits affect how citizens perceive the conduct of elections, and their integrity, in their country. No existing research has provided empirical evidence in this sense; compensating this gap is paramount for a full understanding of electoral dynamics, given that both values and personality traits have been shown to matter greatly for attitudes, opinions and perceptions. We rely on the sixth wave of the WVS (2014), which provide information simultaneously on values, personality traits and perceptions of electoral integrity. The dataset allows us to compare results across 13 countries, thus controlling for differences across party and electoral systems, and foremost for varying levels of measured electoral integrity: rather high (Germany, Netherlands, Rwanda, South Africa, Thailand), average (Colombia, Ecuador, India, Kuwait, Pakistan), rather low (Algeria, Iraq, Jordan).