Abstract
Direct democracy is a form of political participation that allows individual citizens to make decisions about policy that will have an impact on the larger population. Direct democratic elections place a great deal of power and responsibility within the hands of voters, because the process bypasses the institutional lawmaking arena. Much research on direct democracy focuses on whether individual citizens have the capacity to yield so much power and assume such responsibility. The majority of research in this area has focused on individual level measures, such as: demographic and background data; level of knowledge about an issue; how voters make policy decisions; and how voters become informed. However, until recently the external factors that frame a political election cycle, and levels of voter awareness about ballot propositions have not been accounted for. This analysis takes the assessment of voter awareness one step further. First, by re-testing the importance of the political environment during proposition elections. Second, by measuring the effect of elite endorsements on voter awareness of specific ballot propositions. Both of these are important for understanding the context of an election and how this shapes how voters become informed of ballot propositions. This analysis utilized data collected from a variety of sources. The dependent variable, ballot proposition awareness, was measured by using survey data from the California Field Poll, years 1956-2008. Newspaper articles and editorials from the Los Angeles Times provided an assessment whether a ballot proposition received an elite endorsement. The Fair Political Practices Commission, the California Historical Archives and the California Secretary of State provided the reported total campaign spending for each ballot measure. All other aggregate data were collected from the California Secretary of State. The findings of this analysis substantiate the importance of the political environment during an election. The political environment provides an important context to an election cycle. The context of an election should be considered along with individual-level measures when attempting to gauge voter awareness of political issues, as wells as efforts directed toward predicting voter behavior in elections. While this analysis confirmed the impact of the political environment, there was insufficient evidence to support the thesis that endorsements made by political elites increase ballot proposition awareness during an election cycle.