Election vote buying

Quick info
Data type	Numeric
Scale	Metric
Value labels	Not applicable
Technical name	polnat_election_vote_buying_vdem
Category	Political factors
Label	Corruption: Vote/turnout buying at national election
Related indicators	Corrupt activities of members of legislature

Aggregated V-Dem country expert ratings whether there was evidence of vote and/or turnout buying at the focal election whereby "[v]ote and turnout buying refers to the distribution of money or gifts to individuals, families, or small groups in order to influence their decision to vote/not vote or whom to vote for. It does not include legislation targeted at specific constituencies, i.e., 'porkbarrel' legislation" (Coppedge et al. 2020b, 64). Lower values indicate extensive vote and/or turnout buying, higher values suggest less corruption.

Coding rules

Ordinal ratings were aggregated to intervall scale applying V-Dem's measurement model (Pemstein et al. 2020). The ordinal wordings of the question are:

• 0: Yes. There was systematic, widespread, and almost nationwide vote/turnout buying by almost all parties and candidates.
• 1: Yes, some. There were non-systematic but rather common vote-buying efforts, even if only in some parts of the country or by one or a few parties.
• 2: Restricted. Money and/or personal gifts were distributed by parties or candidates but these offerings were more about meeting an ‘entry-ticket’ expectation and less about actual vote choice or turnout, even if a smaller number of individuals may also be persuaded.
• 3: Almost none. There was limited use of money and personal gifts, or these attempts were limited to a few small areas of the country. In all, they probably affected less than a few percent of voters.
• 4: None. There was no evidence of vote/turnout buying.

Data is available for election years only.

Bibliographic info

Citation:

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Luhrmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Steven Wilson, Agnes Cornell, Nazifa Alizada, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Garry Hindle, Nina Ilchenko, Laura Maxwell, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2020a. "V-Dem [Country–Year/Country–Date] Dataset v10". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds20

Related publications:

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Lührmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Agnes Cornell, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Valeriya Mechkova, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundtröm, Eitan Tzelgov, Luca Uberti, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2020b. "V-Dem Codebook v10" Varieties of Democracy". Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project.
• Pemstein, Daniel, Kyle L. Marquardt, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Juraj Medzihorsky, Joshua Krusell, Farhad Miri, and Johannes von Römer. 2020. "The V-Dem Measurement Model: Latent Variable Analysis for Cross-National and Cross-Temporal Expert-Coded Data". V-Dem Working Paper No. 21. 5th edition. University of Gothenburg: Varieties of Democracy Institute.

Misc

Project manager(s): Nils Düpont (A01)

Data release: Not yet applicable

Revisions: Not yet applicable

Sources

• Coppedge, Michael, John Gerring, Carl Henrik Knutsen, Staffan I. Lindberg, Jan Teorell, David Altman, Michael Bernhard, M. Steven Fish, Adam Glynn, Allen Hicken, Anna Luhrmann, Kyle L. Marquardt, Kelly McMann, Pamela Paxton, Daniel Pemstein, Brigitte Seim, Rachel Sigman, Svend-Erik Skaaning, Jeffrey Staton, Steven Wilson, Agnes Cornell, Nazifa Alizada, Lisa Gastaldi, Haakon Gjerløw, Garry Hindle, Nina Ilchenko, Laura Maxwell, Valeriya Mechkova, Juraj Medzihorsky, Johannes von Römer, Aksel Sundström, Eitan Tzelgov, Yi-ting Wang, Tore Wig, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2020. ”V-Dem [Country–Year/Country–Date] Dataset v10”. Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project. https://doi.org/10.23696/vdemds20