Values and Voting

Abstract

We examined relations of the 10 types of values in Schwartz's (1992) theory of voting. Hypotheses were generated by relating the core motivations of each value type to the ideological messages conveyed by party policies and symbols. Eight parties that ran in the 1988 Israeli elections were arrayed by judges on three ideological dimensions: classical liberalism, economic egalitarianism, state and religion. Discriminant analyses yielded a function whose coefficients for value types corresponded to hypotheses for the state and religion dimension and ordered party supporters on this dimension. After dropping religious parties, another value‐based function ordered party supporters on the classical liberalism dimension, as predicted. Both functions significantly improved the party classification of voters in a representative national sample (N=769). Economic egalitarianism, a nonsalient dimension in Israeli politics, was unrelated to values. Results suggest that all types of values may be politically relevant depending on context.