There are certain types of factors that influence other types of factors and that in turn influence other types of factors and that ultimately help explain the idea of the causal funnel of electoral choice. There is a direct link between social position and voting. We want to know how and why a voter will vote for a certain party. and voters who choose to use euristic shortcuts to solve the information problem. One must assess the value of one's own participation and also assess the number of other citizens who will vote. On the other hand, the political preferences are exogenous to the political process which is the fact that when the voter goes to vote which is the moment when he or she starts to think about this election, he or she already arrives with certain fixed or prefixed political preferences. The individual is subjectivity at the centre of the analysis. In other words, the voters' political preferences on different issues, in other words, in this type of theorizing, they know very well what they want, and what is more, these positions are very fixed and present when the voter is going to have to vote. So all these elements help to explain the vote and must be taken into account in order to explain the vote. as a party's position moves away from our political preferences. Webmagnitude of changes between elections. The psychological and socio-economic model are strongly opposed, offering two explanations that are difficult to reconcile, even though there have been efforts to try to combine them. The same can be said of the directional model with intensity. Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. WebThere are various major models that explain our electoral decision, and I would like to focus now on the main models of electoral behavior. WebThis voter is voting based on what is going to benefit them. The studies of voters behavior in elections showed that vote decisions do not occur in a vacuum or happen by themselves. Most voters have a sense of allegiance to a party that is inherited through the family. The 2020 election has driven home that the United States has a disparate and at times chaotic 50-state (plus D.C.) voting system. This is especially important when applying this type of reasoning empirically. (PDF) Analysis of Vote Behavior in Election - ResearchGate By finding something else, he shaped a dominant theory explaining the vote. This is called retrospective voting, which means that we are not looking at what the parties said in their platforms, but rather at what the parties did before. First, they summarize the literature that has been interested in explaining why voters vary or differ in the stability or strength of their partisan identification. WebThe Columbia model describes the influence of socialization on decision-making about whether to vote or not, and who to vote for; in this way, it highlights the importance of social integration as a motivating element for political participation. These theories are called spatial theories of the vote because they are projected. There may be one that is at the centre, but there are also others that are discussed. The theoretical criticism consists in saying that in this psychosocial approach or in this vision that the psychosocial model has of the role of political issues, the evaluation of these issues is determined by political attitudes and partisan identification. The intensity directional model adds an element that is related to the intensity with which candidates and political parties defend certain positions. The initial formation of this model was very deterministic in wanting to focus on the role of social inclusion while neglecting other aspects, even though today there is increasingly a kind of ecumenical attempt to have an explanation that takes into account different aspects. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. Among these bridges, one of the first bridges between the psycho-sociological voting theory and the rationalist theories was made by Fiorina because he considers partisan identification to be an important element in explaining electoral choice. The voters have to make that assessment and then decide which one brings more income and which one we will vote for. The idea is that this table is the Downs-Hirschman model that would have been made in order to summarize the different responses to the anomaly we have been talking about. Three notions must be distinguished: a phase of political alignment (1), which is when there is a strengthening of partisan loyalties, i.e. An important factor is the role of political campaigns in influencing the vote. Value orientations refer to materialism as well as post-materialism, among other things, cleavages but no longer from a value perspective. systematic voting, i.e. It is also possible to add that the weight of partisan identification varies from one voter to another. This model leaves little room for the ideology which is the idea that by putting so much emphasis on the emotional voter and feelings, it leaves little room for the ideology that is central to explaining the economic model of the vote. 43 0 obj <> endobj Webgain. WebTo study the expansion of voting rights. This is the proximity model. The idea is that a party is ready to lose an election in order to give itself the means to win it later by giving itself time to form an electorate. Lazarsfeld was interested in this and simply, empirically, he found that these other factors had less explanatory weight than the factors related to political predisposition and therefore to this social inking. If certain conditions are present, such as good democratic functioning within the party, activists will have the opportunity to exercise "voice" and influence positions. Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. It rejects the notion that voting behavior is largely determined by class affiliation or class socialization. Pages pour les contributeurs dconnects en savoir plus. Linked to this, it is important to look at individual data empirically as well. Using real data, the model has a predictive accuracy of 94.6% and an ROC AUC score of 96%. Another possible strategy is to rely on the judgment of others such as opinion leaders. How does partisan identification develop? The idea of the directional model, and this applies to both the simple directional model and the intensity directional model, is that voters basically cannot clearly perceive the different positions of political parties or candidates on a specific issue. Hinich and Munger take up the Downs idea but turn it around a bit. The Lazarsfeld model would link membership and voting. It is a paradigm that does not only explain from the macro-political point of view an electoral choice, but there is the other side of the coin which is to explain the choice that the parties make. One can draw a kind of parallel with a loss of importance of the strength of partisan identification and also of the explanatory power of partisan identification. There is a whole literature on opinion formation, quite consensually, that says that citizens have a limited capacity to process information. Political conditions as well as the influence of the media play an important role, all the more so nowadays as more and more political campaigns and the role of the media overlap. On the other hand, to explain the electoral choice, we must take into account factors that are very far from the vote theoretically, but we must also take into account the fact that there are factors that are no longer close to the electoral choice during a vote or an election. Political Behaviour: Historical and methodological benchmarks, The structural foundations of political behaviour, The cultural basis of political behaviour, PEOPLE'S CHOICE: how the voter makes up his mind in a presidential campaign, https://doi.org/10.1177/000271624926100137, https://doi.org/10.1177/0010414094027002001, https://baripedia.org/index.php?title=Theoretical_models_of_voting_behaviour&oldid=49464, Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0). In other words, they propose something quite ecumenical that combines directional and proximity models. In the retrospective model, some researchers have proposed an alternative way of viewing partisan identification as being determined by the position voters take on issues. A distinction is made between the sociological model of voting from the Columbia School, which refers to the university where this model was developed. The psycho-sociological model also developed a measure called the partisan identification index, since this model wanted to be an empirical model with behaviourism and the idea of studying individual behaviours empirically with the development of national election studies and survey data to try to measure the partisan identification index. however, voter turnout was below the fifty percent threshold, so the results were considered void. About a quarter of the electorate votes in this way. Several studies have shown that the very fact of voting for a party contributes to the development of a certain identification for that party. The theories that are supposed to explain the electoral choice also explain at the same time the electoral participation in particular with the sociological model. In this approach, these voters keep their partisan identification and again in the medium or long term, they will go back on the electoral choice that is identified with the partisan identification, also called the homing tendency, which is a tendency to go back on the party with which one identifies. WebNetworks in electoral behavior, as a part of political science, refers to the relevance of networks in forming citizens voting behavior at parliamentary, presidential or local The publication of The American Voter in 1960 revolutionized the study of American voting behavior. The strategic choices made by parties can also be e Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. On the other hand, preferences for candidates in power are best explained by the proximity model and the simple directional model. xref There are different types of costs that this model considers and that need to be taken into account and in particular two types of costs which are the costs of going to vote (1) but above all, there are the costs of information (2) which are the costs of obtaining this information since in this model which postulates to choose a party on the basis of an evaluation of the different propositions of information which is available, given these basic postulates, the transparency of information and therefore the costs of information are crucial. 65, no. Ideology is to be understood as a way of simplifying our world in relation to the problem of information. Sometimes, indeed often, people combine the first two models incorporating the psycho-sociological model on the basis that the Michigan model is just an extension of the Columbia model that helps explain some things that the Columbia model cannot explain. There are other theories that highlight the impact of economic conditions and how voters compare different election results in their electoral choices, which refers to economic voting in the strict sense of the term. Inking and the role of socialization cause individuals to form a certain partisan identification that produces certain types of political attitudes. Political parties can make choices that are not choices to maximize the electorate, unlike spatial theories, where parties seek to maximize their short-term electoral support in an election. This is the idea of collective action, since our own contribution to an election or vote changes with the number of other citizens who vote. It is possible to create a typology that distinguishes between four approaches crossing two important and crucial elements: "is voting spatial? In other words, they are voters who are not prepared to pay all these costs and therefore want to reduce or improve the cost-benefit ratio which is the basis of this electoral choice by reducing the costs and the benefit will remain unchanged. If we take into account Przeworski and Sprague's idea that there can be a mobilization of the electorate in a logic of endogenous preference and non-maximization of the utility of voters. In the Downs-Hirschman model, the vote is spatial in the sense of proximity and preferences are exogenous; on the other hand, in the directional theories of Rabinovirz and Macdonal in particular, we remain in the idea of the exogeneity of preferences but the vote is not spatial in the sense of proximity. IVERSEN, T. (1994). It is easier to look at what someone has done than to evaluate the promises they made. The extent to which the usefulness of voters' choices varies from candidate to candidate, but also from voter to voter. These two proximity models are opposed to two other models that are called directional models with Matthews' simple directional model but especially Rabinowitz's directional model with intensity. As part of spatial theories of the vote, some theories consider the characteristics of candidates. In the literature, we often talk about the economic theory of voting. This identification is seen as contributing to an individual's self-image. The answer to this second question will allow us to differentiate between proximity models and directional models because these two subsets of the spatial theories of voting give diametrically opposite answers to this question. Expectedly, in their function Many researchers have criticised the Downs proximity model in particular. We end up with a configuration where there is an electorate that is at the centre, there are party activists who are exercising the "voice" and who have access to the extreme, and there are party leaderships that are in between. Prospective voting says that voters will listen to what candidates and parties have to say. The utility function of the simple proximity model appears, i.e. There are a whole host of typologies in relation to issues, and we distinguish different types of issues such as position issues and issues that are more or less emotional. Finally, some studies show that high levels of education lead to weaker attachments to parties. However, this is empirically incorrect. La dernire modification de cette page a t faite le 11 novembre 2020 01:26. Voters will vote for a party but that party is not necessarily the one with which they identify. For Przeworski and Sprague, there may be another logic that is not one of maximizing the electorate in the short term but one of mobilizing the electorate in the medium and long term. It is possible to determine direction based on the "neutral point" which is the point in the middle, or it is also possible to determine direction from the "status quo". "The answer is "yes", as postulated by spatial theories, or "no", as stated by Przeworski and Sprague, for example. We speak of cognitive preference between one's political preferences and the positions of the parties. So there is an overestimation in this model with respect to capacity. The starting point is that there is a congruence of attitudes between party leaders and voters due to the possibility of exit for voters when the party no longer represents them (exit). It is a theory that makes it possible to explain both the voting behaviour of voters and the organisational behaviour of political parties. Prospective voting says that the evaluation is based on what the parties and candidates are going to say. Today, when we see regression analyses of electoral choice, we will always find among the control variables social status variables, a religion variable and a variable related to place of residence. They are both proximity choices and directional choices with intensity, since there are voters who may choose intensity and others who may choose direction. %%EOF The curve instead of the simple proximity model, or obviously the maximization from the parties' point of view of electoral support, lies in the precise proximity between voters' preferences and the parties' political programs on certain issues, in this case this remains true but with a lag that is determined by discounting from a given status quo. They try to elaborate a bit and find out empirically how this happens. 0000009473 00000 n But more generally, when there is a campaign, the issues are discussed. One must take into account the heterogeneity of the electorate and how different voters may have different motivations for choosing which party or candidate to vote for. There are other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. The psycho-sociological model says that it is because this inking allows identification with a party which in turn influences political attitudes and therefore predispositions with regard to a given object, with regard to the candidate or the party, and this is what ultimately influences the vote. 0000000929 00000 n In order to explain this anomaly, another explanation beside the curvilinear explanation beside the directional theories of the vote, a third possibility to explain this would be to say that there are some parties that abandon the idea of maximizing the vote or electoral support in order to mobilize this electorate and for this we have to go to extremes. In other words, party activists tend to be more extreme in their political attitudes than voters or party leaders. Lazarsfeld was the first to study voting behaviour empirically with survey data, based on individual data, thus differentiating himself from early studies at the aggregate level of electoral geography. The behavior results either in support for political candidates or parties or abstention from the voting process. In summary, it can be said that in the economic model of voting, the political preferences of voters on different issues, are clearly perceived by the voters themselves which is the idea that the voter must assess his own interest, he must clearly perceive what are the political preferences of voters. We are not ignoring the psychological model, which focuses on the identification people have with parties without looking at the parties. does partisan identification work outside the United States? These authors proposed to say that there would be a relationship between the explanatory models of the vote and the cycle of alignment, realignment, misalignment in the sense that the sociological model would be better able to explain the vote in phases of political realignment. And that's why it's called the Columbia School. According to Fiorina, retrospective voting is that citizens' preferences depend not only on how close they are to the political position of a party or candidate, but also on their retrospective assessment of the performance of the ruling party or candidate. A person votes for Democratic candidates based on the belief that the policies of the Democratic Party will be personally beneficial. In this approach, it is possible to say that the voter accepts the arguments of a certain party because he or she feels close to a party and not the opposite which would be what the economic model of the vote postulates, that is to say that we listen to what the party has to say and we will choose that party because we are convinced by what that party says. We leave behind the idea of spatial theories that preferences are exogenous, that they are pre-existing and almost fixed. In other words, the homing tendency that is the explanation that the model postulates is much less true outside the United States. There is the idea of the interaction between a political demand and a political offer proposed by the different candidates during an election or a vote. But there are studies that also show that the causal relationship goes in the other direction. In Switzerland, the idea of an issue is particularly important because there is direct democracy, which is something that by definition is based on issues. One possible strategy to reduce costs is to base oneself on ideology. So, we are going to the extremes precisely because we are trying to mobilize an electorate. 43 17 By Jill Suttie November 5, 2018 Mindfulness Research element5/Unsplash Read More Focus Why We Talk to Ourselves: The Science of Your Internal Monologue The idea is to create a party that forges ideologies and partisan identities. The original measurement was very simple being based on two questions which are a scale with a question about leadership. This has created a research paradigm which is perhaps the dominant paradigm today. We must also take into account other socializing agents that can socialize us and make us develop a form of partisan identification. There is a small degree of complexity because one can distinguish between attitudes towards the candidate or the party, attitudes towards the policies implemented by the different parties and attitudes about the benefits that one's own group may receive from voting for one party rather than another. preferences and positions. Information is central to spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model, information is much less important. WebThe choice of candidates is made both according to direction but also according to the intensity of positions on a given issue. It was this model that proposed that abstention can be the result of a purely rational calculation. For Lazarsfeld, we think politically how we are socially, there is not really the idea of electoral choice. We see the kinship of this model with the sociological model explaining that often they are put together. The premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. If we look at it a little more broadly, partisan identification can be seen as a kind of shortcut. For Fiorina the voter does not do that, he will rather look at what has happened, he will also look at the state of affairs in a country, hence the importance of the economic vote in the narrower sense of the word. 30 seconds. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. Mitt Romney's gonna lower their taxes, so they're gonna vote for them, and to be clear, it's not that everyone's behavior The second explanation refers to the directional model, i.e. Others have criticized this analogy between the economic market and the political market as being a bit simplistic, saying that, basically, the consequences of buying a consumer product have a certain number of consequences, but they are much more limited compared to what buying a vote can have in terms of choosing a party. Hinich and Munger say the opposite, saying that on the basis of their idea of the left-right positioning of the parties, they somehow deduce what will be or what is the position of these parties on the different issues. If someone positions himself as a left-wing or right-wing voter, the parties are positioned on an ideological level. 0000008661 00000 n Certain developments in the theory of the psycho-sociological model have in fact provided answers to these criticisms. There has been the whole emergence of the rational actor, which is the vote in relation to issues, which is not something that comes simply from our affective identification with a party, but there is a whole reflection that the voter makes in terms of cost-benefit calculations. the maximum utility is reached at the line level. Since the economic crisis, there has been an increasing focus on the economic crisis and economic conditions and how that can explain electoral volatility and electoral change. The choice can be made according to different criteria, but they start from the assumption that there are these voters who arrive in an electoral process that refers to the idea of the hexogeneity of voters' preferences. For most theories, and in particular Matthews' Simple Directional Model theory, the neutral point determines direction. endstream endobj 44 0 obj <> endobj 45 0 obj <> endobj 46 0 obj <>/ProcSet[/PDF/Text]>> endobj 47 0 obj <> endobj 48 0 obj <> endobj 49 0 obj <> endobj 50 0 obj <> endobj 51 0 obj <>stream These criticisms and limitations are related to the original model. Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as In the literature, spatial theories of voting are often seen as one of the main developments of the last thirty years which has been precisely the development of directional models since the proximity model dates back to the 1950s. A unified theory of voting: directional and proximity spatial models. The economic model has put the rational and free citizen back at the centre of attention and reflection, whereas if we push the sociological model a bit to the extreme, it puts in second place this freedom and this free will that voters can make since the psycho-sociological model tells us that voting is determined by social position, it is not really an electoral choice that we make in the end but it is simply the result of our social insertion or our attachment to a party. In the spatial theories of the vote, we see the strategic link between a party's supply and a demand from voters or electors. Partisan identification becomes stronger over time. According to Merril and Grofman, one cannot determine whether one pure model is superior to another because there are methodological and data limitations. How was that measured? 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