Policy Advice and Referendum Voters: Assessing the Clarity of Party Cues

The advice provided by political parties to their electorate during referendum campaigns can influence public preferences. Earlier research analyzes how clear partisan cues look like and shows their importance for voting in referendums. However, we know little about what people consider to be clear cues. This paper addresses this gap in the literature and analyzes what drives the perception of voters in referendums about the clarity of cues. We use individual level data from original surveys conducted on voters in seven referendums organized in six East European countries between 2015 and 2019 (N = 1,825). The topics of these referendums vary greatly, which makes also the cues to differ across topics. The ordinal regression analyses test for the explanatory potential of variables such as political participation, campaign exposure, perceptions about the informative character of the campaign and trust in parties. The control variables include the incumbency status of the party, ideology and interest in politics.