Loyal Voters Research Articles

Who are the ‘real’ people? The concept of relational popular identity and the self-identification of populist voters in Poland

Research on national, political, and social identities in the study of populism is typically limited to analysing populist identity framing in political and media discourses and measuring its effects on individual populist attitudes. Thus, the self-identification of populists’ supporters, i.e. how they relate to populist identity framing when reflexively constructing their identities, remains largely unexplored. To address this issue, the article introduces the concept of relational popular identity, capturing the complexities of late-modern political identities, and the relational identity mapping technique used to investigate the web of relations forming these identities. The article also presents a case study of loyal voters of the Law and Justice party in Poland and discusses how a relational right-wing popular identity may serve as an ‘intermediary identity’ that articulates elements of other identities to maintain their integrity and a ‘community of last resort’ that unites the ‘real’ people through an immunitarian mechanism of exclusion.

Kto jest szczupakiem w czeskim stawie? Metafora pojęciowa polityka to staw w czeskim dyskursie politycznym

In this article, the author analyzes the conceptual metaphors politics is a pond, a politician is a carp and a politician is a pike in Czech political discourse. The investigation is based on the theory of conceptual metaphor and follows the principles of ethnolinguistics and cognitive linguistics. The author shows how the specific features of these conceptual metaphors relate to the Czech linguistic worldview and proposes metaphorical mapping that conveys salient features of the target domain (politics and politicians). The conceptual metaphor politics is a pond helps the speaker to depict a problematic domestic political situation that needs to be changed. The metaphors a politician is a carp and a politician is a pike are usually used to create the “friend-foe” opposition in political discourse. The conceptual metaphor a politician is a carp discloses the passivity and laziness of politicians and their inability or unwillingness to change the current situation. On the other hand, the conceptual metaphor a politician is a pike can be used to indicate both the positive qualities of a politician (activity, energy, initiative) and the negative ones (greed, selfishness, cruelty). The use of culturally specific conceptual metaphors allows a politician to establish close contact with the audience to increase the number of loyal voters.

PENGARUH PEMASARAN POLITIK MEDIA SOSIAL DAN KUALITAS INFORMASI TERHADAP NIAT MEMILIH DENGAN KEPERCAYAAN DAN LOYALITAS PEMILIH SEBAGAI MEDIASI

This study seeks to determine how political marketing social media and information quality impact generation Z's voting intentions, using voter trust and loyalty as mediators. This study employed a quantitative approach, with 100 respondents selected by purposive selection. Data analysis shows that political marketing on social media increases voter trust and loyalty. The quality of information also has a positive impact, as greater quality information increases voters' confidence and trust, which can result in loyal voters. In addition, voter trust and loyalty influence voting intentions. The more voters trust politicians, the more likely they are to vote in elections.

Until another party do us part? Party members’ electoral disloyalty in Portugal

ABSTRACT This article investigates whether and why party members sometimes vote for other parties. Although often taken as parties’ most loyal voters, recent evidence suggests that members’ vote is not unconditional. Using novel survey data from Portugal, we examine rates of defection by members, test the validity of existing explanations and assess the extent to which traditional theories of party membership can account for such behavior. We argue that ideological incongruence, satisfaction with intra-party functioning, incentive structure and party activism play a key role in explaining why a member casts a vote for another party while maintaining a formal connection with their own party. Findings support the impact of internal discontentment and engagement in party activities, as well as instrumental motivations for members of smaller parties. We also explore how motivations relate to strategic considerations in driving defection. Results differ across parties, suggesting the importance of of party models and legacy. They have important implications for party membership and mobilization, as well as for future research on membership decline and the consequences of party cohesion and factionalism.

Political brand experience and voting intention: Is there a relation?

The current study reveals that Indian voters' political brand experiences positively influence their engagement and trust in a political party. Voters' addiction to political parties mediates the relationship between their party engagement and voting intentions. Thus, political marketers should increase voters' party brand addiction for proper conversion of party engagement in the ballot box. Although voters' political brand trust directly influences their voting intentions, interestingly, their political brand addictions indirectly influence the relationship between brand trust and voting intentions. The findings advocate that political marketers should ensure positive political party experiences to ensure voters' engagement with the party. Positive party experiences increase voters' trust in the party further. Another critical input for political marketers is the role of political brand addiction, which the study findings corroborate. Political brand addiction develops a set of loyal voters for a party and guarantees those voters' support for the party.

Fairness of elections, voter turnout and clientelism under authoritarianism: A Theoretical Essay

The purpose of the article is to analyze the declaration of voters under authoritarianism. A study of the impact of perceptions of election integrity. The comparative qualitative study of monographs and scientific articles published on this topic was chosen as the research methodology. Along with the results of official parties and candidates, the high declaration is no less important component of electoral success, than the main indicator of the quality of democracy. The introduction explains that political science today knows a lot about the factors influencing voter turnout in democracies (old and new). But much less attention has been paid to the question: How do electoral fairness and integrity affect voter turnout in authoritarian settings? In the main part of the article, it is justified that both in democracies and under authoritarian regimes, participation in elections is positively related to integrity. Autocrats' interest in increasing voter turnout means they have good reason to care about the integrity of elections. However, the benefits of election integrity are secondary to them. Even when the election results pose minimal threat to them, they can easily ignore them. In addition, alternative mechanisms can be employed to increase disclosure rates, and strict authoritarian regimes have a whole arsenal of more powerful mechanisms to do so than liberalized regimes. It is also important that the combination of relatively honest elections with strict authoritarianism pushes opposition-oriented voters to strategic absenteeism. According to research, the most rational strategy for autocrats is one in which the public perceives the counting of votes as relatively honest, but at this time the emphasis is placed on the mobilization of loyal voters through the influence of party and/or media mechanisms. The concluding section notes that if the optimal balance between these elements is achieved, autocrats can take into account that different electoral irregularities affect voter turnout in different ways. Some aspects of dishonest elections—for example, unfair electoral laws—will have a significant impact on election results but have almost no effect on turnout.

When Parties Move to the Middle: The Role of Uncertainty

AbstractPolitical parties face a crucial trade-off between electoral and partisan goals: should they put electoral goals first, pursuing the policies they think will win them the most votes in the next election, or should they put partisan goals first, pursuing the policies their members, activists, and most loyal voters prefer? In this paper we argue that main political parties make different choices depending on the information environment they are in. They have strong incentives to follow the median voter when the median voter's position is well known, but when there is more uncertainty they have strong incentives to adopt policies they prefer for partisan reasons, since uncertainty makes party leaders more willing to bet that the party's preferred policies are also vote winners. We develop an empirical analysis of how the main parties on the left and the right in twenty democracies have changed their platforms from election to election since the 1960s.

Buying loyalty: Volatile voters and electoral clientelism

Electoral volatility and clientelism were traditionally analysed through the lenses of clientelistic behaviour by political actors. However, we know very little about the importance of volatility for the formation of attitudes towards clientelism within the electorate. This article addresses that gap by analysing the extent to which volatile voters are more likely to accept electoral clientelism as a political practice. We bring evidence from Romania, which is a crucial case due to its extensive use of clientelism in elections over time and high electoral volatility. The analysis uses individual-level data from a survey conducted on a national representative sample of 4316 respondents in 2021. Contrary to the theoretical expectations, the findings illustrate that loyal voters accept clientelism easier, which holds when controlling for variables such as targeting awareness, political interest, income, or education. These results have important implications for the study of elections and voting behaviour.

Beyond the binary: examining dynamic youth voter behaviour in South Africa

ABSTRACT The 2021 South African local government elections continued a trend of dissipating turnout among young voters. The youth, aged 18–34, constitute nearly a third of SA's adult population, and their voting decisions could have a decisive influence on electoral politics. Youth voter behaviour - including that of the ‘born-free’ generation - has been an area of critical interest. However, this interest has mostly yielded an image of young people as disillusioned, consistent abstainers. We argue that youth electoral behaviour should be approached not as a binary of voter/abstainer, but be placed along a voting-behavioural continuum. Our analysis of UJElection Survey and the South African Social Attitudes Survey data, supports concepts that function as markers along this continuum, including ‘loyal voters', ‘casual voters', ‘party-loyal abstainers' and ‘consistent abstainers', each with different underlying motivations. Ultimately, this dispels static notions, providing a more nuanced and complex picture of youth voter behaviour.

Discretionary Grants and Distributive Politics: Evidence from Spain

We study empirically whether the allocation of discretionary grants across Spanish regions is related to the number of swing voters and loyal voters of the ruling party. We estimate the number of swing and loyal voters from survey data. When estimating the number of swing voters, we account in a novel way for the two-dimensional ideological space and multiparty competition. We find that regions with more loyal voters of the ruling party received more grants per capita. Partisan alignment of regional governments also matters over a part of the studied period since the regions where the socialist party of the central government was a member of the regional government received more grants.

LATAR BELAKANG KEMENANGAN PARTAI KONSERVATIF (BORIS JOHNSON) PADA PEMILU INGGRIS TAHUN 2019

The victory of the Conservative party (Boris Johnson) in the 2019 British election was very interested case. By considering that the chairman of the Conservative party before, that has resigned from the position of Prime Minister of the UK twice in 2017 and 2019, its surprised fenomena. In addition, the chairman of the party, Boris Johnson, was known as an controversial figure, racist, and rumors of infidelity. But in the 2019 election the Conservative party (Boris Johnson) shown still could managed to get a majority of the vote. For this reason, this journal aims to explored any factors that support the victory of the Conservative party (Boris Johnson) by the theory of voter behavior and with qualitative descriptive methods. As a result, the Conservative party's succeed was motivated by party management and party leaders in responding to and processing issues currently being faced by British society, such as Brexit, health, and crime. In addition, the Conservative party also had loyal voters who come from middle class and also the support of swinged voters. Johnson's success in offering policies on these issues, especially Brexit, has caused working class voters to also choose Conservative party.

Whither the Daang Matuwid?: Overconfidence in Benigno S. Aquino III’s Perception of Survival (2010–2016)

Abstract The study of political decision-making cannot exclude the actors involved in the process. Neither can it disregard the interplay between decision-makers and political institution where they operate. This article aims to explain how perception of survival affects decision-making by focusing on leaders, specifically by analysing Benigno S. Aquino III’s leadership (2010–2016). Built on political psychology, I will show that motivation to maintain power may bias leaders’ reasoning leading to suboptimal decision. Accountability can help leaders mitigate bias, or de-bias, by stimulating their use of cognitive complexity. But the same effort may backfire and make leaders resort to heuristics instead. Where leaders end up in the cognitive spectrum depends on the types of audiences to whom they feel accountable: core (the ruling elites and loyal voters) and external (the opposition and its supporters) audiences. Preoccupation with core audiences can make leaders downplay the opposition challenge. Furthermore, leaders’ perceived understanding of their support base may be erroneous. The result is overconfidence in their perception of survival. I argue that President Aquino’s misperception of survival was rooted in his belief that (1) Filipinos would like to have his legacy continued and that (2) his popularity would help his successor Manuel Araneta Roxas II win the 2016 presidential race. This overconfidence turned out to be detrimental. Roxas’s electoral loss to Rodrigo Duterte put an end to the Daang Matuwid, President Aquino’s good governance platform.

Electoral volatility of the 2019 presidential election: A study in Jakarta and Depok, Indonesia

In democratic countries around the world, electoral volatility is a challenge for political actors. Because one vote is significant, political parties and candidates are increasingly difficult to predict the preferences of citizens. This study aimed to analyze motivational factors that make voters change their choice of votes. This study employed a quantitative method and proposed three variables, including political sophistication, candidate evaluation, and exposure to media campaigns. The results of the logistic regression show that voters who positively evaluate candidates become loyal voters (p-value £ 0.001). Meanwhile, voters who consume political information from social media and the internet intensively, as well as those who are interested in politics are non-volatile voters (p-value £ 0.001 and p-value £ 0.01, respectively). These findings contrast with studies in parliamentary countries where interest in politics motivates voters to change their votes. In these analyzes, this study focuses on examining the inter-election volatility of 2014-2019 in the context of the presidential election in Indonesia. The data were obtained from a post-2019 election survey (non-probability sampling), for respondents in South Jakarta, East Jakarta, and Depok City, who had elected the president in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

MELAKA DALAM GEOPOLITIK MALAYSIA PADA PRA PRU-14, PRU-14 DAN PASCA PRU-14

Malacca is a state that has a mix of voters of 58 percent of voters are ethnic Malays. Malay voters in the state known for its rigid and fanatical supporters of UMNO makes the majority of Malays in the country contributed to a major victory for the BN/UMNO in the general election. The state is known for its legendary Hang Tuah with the slogan "Tak Melayu Hilang Di Dunia" has loyal voters who support UMNO is also a sacred Malay party since before independence. But since the 2008 general election, Chinese voters who originally also supported BN have turned to DAP and other opposition component parties. Urban areas and the majority of ethnic Chinese voters continue to be dominated by DAP and its allied opposition parties. The culmination of the 14th General Election (GE), 2018, finally the state fell to the opposition party pact, Pakatan Harapan (PH) with a slim majority with 15 DUNs won by PH compared to 13 DUNs controlled by BN. Therefore, the purpose of writing this article is to analyze the State of Melaka in Malaysian geopolitics in the pre-GE-14, GE-14, and post-GE-14. Based on the analysis of GE 2018 results data, field observations and analysis of secondary sources such as journal articles and conference papers, the findings show that PH's success in capturing the Melaka from BN is an amazing event and beyond the expectations of all parties. However, the political change was due to national issues and the determination to bring down BN by voters, especially the young or first-time voters. Although PH managed to capture the Melaka PH only won with a slim majority of only 2 DUNs. PH win in urban areas and the majority of ethnic Chinese and the BN/UMNO continues to excel in the rural areas and the majority ethnic Malays. Then when BERSATU left PH and formed the National Alliance (PN) together with BN/UMNO, PAS, GPS, and GBS which controlled the Federal Government in March 2020 then the Melaka State Government also fell from PH to PN led by BN as a result of the party jump by two BERSATU assemblymen, one PKR assemblyman and one DAP assemblyman made PN controls 17 DUN seats while PH only has 11 DUN seats left. Such is the science of politics, nothing is impossible and politics itself is dynamic, artistic, and sometimes difficult to anticipate. Therefore, all parties must accept the political decision of the people of Melaka and give the opportunity to the leadership of the State Government to carry out their responsibilities as rulers in this state to implement the manifesto or 'commitment' during the five years of their rule in this historic state.

Left-Wing Xenophobia in Europe.

Given rising populist nationalism and multiplying meanings of “right” and “left,” this paper assesses whether Europeans who identify as extremely left-wing on the political spectrum hold anti-immigrant attitudes. In contrast to right-wing xenophobes, we further examine whether the political left, who conventionally emphasize class conflict, oppose immigrants less for cultural reasons and more for materialist reasons. We also consider whether socioeconomic status and values traditionally associated with the political left—favoring redistributive policies, egalitarianism, or social rights to benefits and services for immigrants—temper left- more than right-wing xenophobia. We find that a surprisingly large share of those who identify as far left do express extremely xenophobic attitudes, and we profile them in contrast to far right xenophobes. With logistic regression analysis of nine waves of the European Social Survey (2002–2018), we find that, all things equal, socioeconomic status influences far left xenophobia more than far right xenophobia, but inegalitarian values, less support for redistributive policies, and welfare chauvinism can only partially account for far left xenophobia and unexpectedly do not distinguish it from far right xenophobia. This implies that far left parties might adopt anti-immigrant policies to try to retain their loyal voters, even though such policies do not comport with broader left-wing values and may increase racial and ethnic inequality. Controlling for demographic and attitudinal differences reduces the probability of xenophobia among the far left by about sixty percent, but there remains some residual anti-immigrant attitudes among this group still to be explained.

What Drive Marketization and Professionalization of Campaigning of Political Parties in the Emerging Democracy? Evidence from Indonesia in the Post-Soeharto New Order

This work is directed to examine what drive marketization and professionalization of campaigning of political parties in the emerging democracy of Indonesia. Focusing on such issue, this work adopts Strömbäck’ (2007, 2010) and Strömbäck et al.’ (2012) conceptual models of marketization and campaign professionalization of political parties and deploys a case study method. The findings are as follows. Following factors encourage these parties to adopt such practices. They include democratization of politics, establishments of the democratic political, government, media and election systems, declines of Indonesian electorates’ partisanship and number of loyal voters, the emergence of rational voting behaviors, ICT development and increasing influence of the media logic in political news productions, domination of the media agenda over the political agenda and numbers of media consumers and the Internet and social media users who strongly engaged in political consumerism and activism. This work offers an analytical model that visualizes the structural factors and conditions, which stimulate political parties in the emerging democracy of Indonesia to take up such practices. We could consider this model as we want to evaluate developments of marketization and professionalization of campaigning of political parties in the emerging democracies, especially those shared similarity with Indonesian politics.

Swing Voters’ Vote Choice Prediction Using Multilevel Logit Model to Improve Election Survey Accuracy

Public opinion surveys are often used to predict an election result. However, the predictions are not always accurate due to many factors. The presence of swing voters at the time of survey is one of the sources of the inaccuracy. On the other hand, election surveys are also often conducted by using multi-stage random sampling method so that ordinary models such as logit model generally do not provide satisfactory results. The data, hence, is complex and may be approached by multilevel models. The study is conducted to assess the extent to which a prediction of swing voters’ vote choice through a multilevel logit model can improve survey accuracy. The data used in this study was the result of a survey conducted using stratified multistage random sampling method two weeks before the 2019 presidential election. The model with 15 predictors and random effects for villages and neighborhood providing 96.3% accuracy and AUC reached 99.1% in the validation process. Based on the final model, the swing voters in this survey were predicted to vote more for Candidate B (10.4%) than Candidate A (7.5%). The direction of the swing voters’ support different from the loyal voters who prefer Candidate A (49.1%) than Candidate B (33.0%). The prediction of swing voters’ vote choice using multilevel logit model significantly improved the survey accuracy. Before the swing voters’ support was predicted the absolute deviation between the survey result and the election result was quite large, around 6.4%-11.5%. After swing voters’ support was predicted the absolute difference shrank to 1.1%.

Incomplete Political Contracts with Secret Ballots: Reciprocity as a Force to Enforce Sustainable Clientelistic Relationships

Abstract Clientelism is frequently observed in our societies. Various mechanisms that help sustain incomplete political contracts (e.g., monitoring and punishment) have been studied in the literature to date. However, do such contracts emerge in elections with secret ballots when the interactions are one-shot? How does repetition affect the evolution of incomplete political contracts? Using an incentivized experiment, this article finds that even during one-shot interactions where monitoring is not possible, candidates form incomplete contracts through vote buying and promise-making. The candidates’ clientelistic behaviors are heterogeneous: some target swing voters, whereas others offer the most to loyal voters, or even opposition voters. These tactics distort voting behaviors as well as election outcomes. Repeated interactions significantly magnify candidates’ offers and deepen clientelistic relationships. These results underscore the possibility that clientelism evolves due to people’s strategic behaviors and interdependent preferences, without relying on alternative mechanisms (JEL C92, D72).

Political Ideology: Cause or Consequence of One's Vote? Evidence from Multiple Countries

This paper addresses voting decisions and their rationalization ex post. It uses survey data from seven different general elections in Germany, New Zealand, the Netherlands and Israel. Results uncover the following patterns: all voters place themselves very close in ideological terms to the party they vote for. Once we control for education, we find that less educated voters place themselves systematically close to the party they vote for, regardless of how far they are from it objectively. This suggests that some voters may suffer from cognitive dissonance once the voting decision is made, and overcome it by adjusting their own position with respect to the party position. Panel data from New Zealand further suggests that loyal voters of a party also tend to perceive themselves ideologically much closer to that party than what they really are, regardless of their education levels. Furthermore, it shows that they minimize ideological distance by placing themselves in the ideological position of their chosen party, instead of choosing to believe that the party holds their own views. Finally, this paper proposes a decision making model that accounts for these patterns, and discusses the medium and long run implications that this kind of behavior may have regarding the polarization of voters in a country.

Perception of survival and overconfidence: The case of Najib Razak (2009–2018)

This article aims to examine political decision-making by focusing on how leaders’ motivation to maintain power affects their perception of political survival. Such motivation however is susceptible to judgment bias. Built on political psychology, accountability may help leaders improve their cognitive complexity or make them resort to cognitive shortcuts. Where leaders end up in the cognitive spectrum depends on the type of audiences to whom they feel accountable: core (i.e. ruling elites and loyal voters) and external (i.e. the opposition and its supporters) audiences. Preoccupation with the former may prompt leaders to downplay the latter’s challenges. Moreover, leaders’ understanding of their support base may be mistaken—that core audiences may shift their allegiance to the opposition. The result is overconfidence. Analysing Najib Razak’s leadership (2009–2018), I argue that Najib’s perception of survival stemmed from his perceived unwavering loyalty towards core audiences, invulnerability as the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO) standard-bearer and the weakness of the opposition. Unfortunately, his overconfidence resulted in Barisan Nasional’s (BN) defeat in GE14.