Motivations Of Voters Research Articles

Voter Dealignment or Campaign Effects? Accounting for Political Preferences in Ontario

Elections in Canada are rarely subject to the delays in voting counts present in the United States. For Americans, the time required to count hundreds of millions of ballots has made exit polls an attractive option to political commentators hoping to fill the void between the close of polls and the confirmation of results. Often face-to-face surveys with individuals leaving the ballot box, exit polls not only allow for a quick prediction of election results, but also allow students of voting to say something meaningful about the reasons behind ballot decisions. The speed with which election results are usually announced in Canada, and the sheer cost of mounting an exit poll for such a comparatively small voting population, has meant that exit polls are not a feature of Canadian politics. For the 2003 Ontario election, however, the Laurier Institute for the Study of Public Opinion and Policy (LISPOP), at Wilfrid Laurier University, mounted an exit poll in one of the 103 Ontario ridings to determine what lessons, if any, could be drawn from the experience. The LISPOP exercise, the first American-style exit poll conducted in Canada, provides unprecedented data on voter motivations only minutes after individuals cast their ballots. This article provides an analysis of the results of this poll. The LISPOP exit poll had two purposes. First, the project provided an opportunity to determine the feasibility of exit polls in a Canadian context, and we have published an analysis of the methodological lessons of the experiment (Brown et al. 2006). Second, the poll provides much-needed information about the provincial voting habits of Canadians. At the federal level, reports of the Canadian Election Study (CES) allow us to determine why individuals vote and why they back the parties that they do. Such studies allow us to make links among an individual's attitudes, demographic background, and political behavior. Students relying on federal electoral studies to understand sub-state voter behavior face two limitations, however. First, the act of voting and participation in the survey are separated by several days, a period in which media coverage often highlights the main themes of the campaign, and provides justifications for why voters backed the eventual winner. It is possible that in such circumstances voters could begin to blend their own reasons for voting with those highlighted by the national or local media. The timing of data collection thus presents a challenge to the reliability of the survey. The second limitation to federal election studies has nothing to do with methodology and more to do with the gaps that remain in our knowledge. Although operating since 1965 at the federal level, electoral studies at the provincial level are rare. Obviously, federal electoral studies are not meant to probe provincial political behavior. We still do not know whether the factors that lead individuals to vote one way at the federal level are also at play in provincial voting decisions. As a result, this paper addresses three research questions. First, are the predictors of support for political parties similar to those we find at the federal level? Obviously the nature of partisan competition is different in the three-party system of Ontario than in Canadian elections, where the partisan spectrum is more crowded. We are less interested to discover that predictors work in the same direction than that they are equally relevant. Second, in the context of the Ontario election, are we able to identify predictors of behavior that are consistent with past studies of voter behavior? Research has suggested that gender was a significant factor in determining support for the Conservative Party in previous provincial elections. We are interested to see whether voting behavior in the 2003 election can be explained by this and other previously identified predictors. Last, we know that the 2003 election produced a change of government, an event made possible by the existence of vote switching within the electorate. …

Class Voting in the New Political Culture

The purpose of this article is to investigate how the political cultures of 20 western countries have changed in the postwar period and how these changes are related to differences in class voting in these countries. To answer these questions, first political party manifestos are analysed in order to show that class issues have neither decreased nor increased in importance and that new - cultural and environmental - issues have risen in importance. Second, using data provided by the World Values Surveys (1990-2000), it is demonstrated that the observed changes in political cultures have led to lower levels of class voting. Third, it is demonstrated that the importance of old and new issues conditions individual voting motives. It is concluded that the rise of new issues undermines traditional class-party alignments. At the end of the article the implications of these findings for the realignment-dealignment debate are discussed.

Op Weg Naar een Nieuwe Politieke Cultuur: Klasse en Stemgedrag in Laatmoderne Samenlevingen

textabstractThe purpose of this article is to understand why the traditional pattern of a leftist working class and a rightist middle class has declined over the years in many Western countries. Two explanatory theories are put forward. The material explanation suggests that because Western countries have become richer over the years, issues tied to class conflict have become less salient while new, cultural issues of individual freedom versus order have become more salient. The second explanation, focusing on the process of secularization, suggests that cultural issues have become more salient as church membership has declined in these countries. It is studied whether the emergence of a new political culture has weakened economic voting motivations for the working class to vote left and the middle class to vote right, whereas it has strengthened cultural voting motives leading members of the working class to vote right and members of the middle class to vote left. Hypotheses are tested using party-manifesto data and World Values Survey Data. It is concluded that as societies become more secular cultural issues become more salient, causing cultural voting motives to undermine the conventional pattern of a left-wing working class and right-wing middle class.

Inside the Black Box of Negative Campaign Effects: Three Reasons Why Negative Campaigns Mobilize

The debate over the effect of negative campaigns on vote turnout has not been settled. At present, studies demonstrating a mobilization effect seem to have the upper hand. However, neither side has offered a compelling theory of the causal mechanisms that connect negative campaigns and voter turnout. This paper identifies three mechanisms of voter motivation—republican duty, candidate threat, and perceived closeness of the election—and tests the influence of negative ads on each. The findings suggest that each works to plausibly translate exposure to negative advertisement into increased participation.

Het spook van de rechtse arbeidersklasse

textabstractThe traditional class approach to politics maintains that the working class 'naturally' votes for left-wing parties because those represent their economic interests. This traditional working class voting pattern has however become less typical, giving rise to today's 'Death of Class Debate' in political sociology. Against this background, we study why so many people, working and middle class alike, today vote for parties that do not represent their 'real class interests'. Critically elaborating on Lipset's work on working-class authoritarianism and Inglehart's on post -materialism, we first confirm that 'natural' voting perfectly complies with the logic of class analysis. 'Unnatural' voting, however, is not driven by economic voting motivations and class, but by cultural voting motivations and cultural capital. Right wing working class voting is thus caused by its cultural conservatism that stems from its limited cultural capital. Voting for the two small leftist parties in Dutch politics underscores the significance of this cultural explanation: those with limited cultural capital and culturally conservative values vote for the Socialist Party ('old left') rather than the Greens ('new left'). The spectre of the rightist working class that haunts today's political sociology can thus be dispelled by breaking the traditional monopoly of the one-sided class approach and give a complementary cultural approach its proper place in the explanation of voting.

Seperated Powers, Divided Government, and Turnout in U. S. Presidential Elections

Theory: Turnout is determined in part by the motivations of voters to affect the course of public policy. Institutional arrangements that condition the link between the vote and its policy consequences impact these motivations. One such institutional arrangement is the separation of powers. Countries with separated powers should see lower turnout, and anything that causes the extent of separation to vary should give rise to corresponding variations in turnout. Hypotheses: Divided government, by temporarily increasing the extent to which powers are separated, will reduce the motivations of voters to participate in subsequent elections. Methods: A time-serial model of turnout is developed and tested on data for U.S. presidential elections from 1840 to 1992. Findings: Divided government does influence turnout, controlling for changes in electoral laws and the closeness of elections. Moreover, the effects are cumulative, with turnout declining by about 2% for each consecutive presidential election conducted under conditions of divided government. This finding may help to explain declining U.S. turnout in recent years. More importantly, it validates the conjecture that the separation of powers itself has a depressing effect on turnout, which helps to explain why turnout is lower in the U.S. than elsewhere.

Long-term tendencies in the electoral behavior and the geography of voting in St. Petersburg: 1989–1995

This paper studies the basis and nature of the long-term factors that may have influenced the electoral behavior of St. Petersburgers between 1989 and 1995 from the perspective of geography. Our analysis shows two distinct periods in St. Petersburg's recent electoral history marked by differing behavioral motivations of voters in the city. The first period was marked by only one ideological cleavage between ‘marketers’ and ‘hard-liners’. In 1993 protest motivation managed to erode the predominance of ideology as the determining variable in voting behavior, and began to act as a new independent variable. This marked the beginning of the second period. Four major groupings of St. Petersburg electorate are described in terms of the basic ideological cleavages, party affiliations and geographical gravity centers.

The effect of the secret ballot on voter turnout rates

Secrecy in the voting process eliminated an important motivation for voting. No longer able to verify the voters' choices, political parties stopped offering payments in return for votes. Within the rational voter framework, it will be shown that these payments were a prime impetus for people to vote. Without a vote market to cover their voting costs, many voters were rational to stay away from the polls.

L'écologie : une nouvelle culture politique?

Ecology : a new political culture ? Daniel Boy. While the motivations of voters who declare temselves sympathizers of the ecologist movement seem to show a certain lack of precision, it appears that the militants rally behind more structured references and themes, such as the refusal of productivism, support for the notion of autonomy and the desire to "act differently in politics". It may thus be considered that in France a developing ecologist culture is slowly crystallizing.

The Undecided Respondent in Mandatory Voting Settings: a Venezuelan Exploration

.jOLITICAL SCIENTISTS have devoted great energies to understanding individual choices in presidential elections.' Studies, usually involving survey methods, have taught us a great deal about how people who report their choices reach their decisions. In contrast, we little about respondents who report themselves undecided, except as indecisiveness has been analysed in the context of nonvoting (Hadley 1978; Wolfinger and Rosenstone 1980). This treatment is not surprising as earlier American evidence suggested that individuals who report themselves undecided in the middle of an intense political campaign are unlikely to vote (Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes 1960). With the focus on who is going to vote for which candidate and why, undecided respondents become relegated to missing data. In the small but significant number of democracies with compulsory voting (Crewe 1981: 240), undecided respondents deserve serious attention. Since in mandatory voting systems undecided individuals eventually must cast their ballots, undecided respondents do become voters. This is recognized by pollsters and campaign strategists who devote great time and energy attempting to uncover the political motivations and preferences of the undecided. Campaign consultants assume that understanding undecided respondents is a key to winning elections. Political scientists concerned with electoral choice in obligatory voting systems have not matched the political consultants' concern with undecided respondents. This oversight may be explained in part by the methodological difficulty in dealing with subjects who respond I don't know to the quintessential question of most psephological research. The purpose of this paper is to examine the voting behavior and motivations of voters who report themselves undecided in preelection days surveys. We propose to show how undecided respondents can be studied and to demonstrate that a focus on the undecideds enhances the

On the Inference of Voter Motivation: A Comparison of the Subjective Class Vote in Canada and the United Kingdom

On the Inference of Voter Motivation: A Comparison of the Subjective Class Vote in Canada and the United Kingdom

Race as a Salient Factor in Nonpartisan Elections

T HE POLITICAL bias of nonpartisan electoral systems has been described extensively.1 By imposing differential information costs, nonpartisan electoral settings are viewed as reinforcing the political importance of the class differences which exist in the ability to process and to structure incoming political cues and information. As Hawley has pointed out, by eliminating the party symbol nonpartisan electoral settings make the connection between candidate choice and personal interest very difficult, and as a result, such elections require higher levels of voter motivation and interest as a prerequisite to voting participation.2 Ethnicity has been observed as a factor acting to lessen the informational biases of nonpartisan electoral settings. Ethnic affiliations become, according to a number of observers, an important means of organizing political behavior when the party label is absent.3 This point has been well established insofar as black ethnic identification is concerned. In municipal mayoral elections held in a nonpartisan setting, black political participation has been observed to increase significantly in those races where one of the candidates is black.4 The purpose of this note is to observe whether or not race acts uniformly as a salient factor across different types of municipal elections held in a nonpartisan setting.

Political Issues and Liberal Support in the February 1974, British General Election

This article examines the motivations of voters who supported the Liberal Party in the February, 1974, General Election. The analysis consists of two major sections. In the first, the role of the Party in the election campaign is outlined with special emphasis on the part played by the polls and by Jeremy Thorpe in encouraging Liberal support. The second, and major section, analyses polling data to ascertain the motivations of Liberal supporters. It is argued that Liberal voters chose that party in order to express dissatisfaction with the policy stands and office performance of the major parties. Such voters are shown to have had specific policy disagreements with the major parties and were not simply voicing diffuse discontent in a period of serious crisis.

Ethno-Cultural Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century American Voting Behavior

Beginning in the early 196os, and especially within the past half-dozen years, historians have offered strong evidence that the most important determinants of voting behavior in the American past have been the ethnic and religious identifications of citizens. Indeed, an ethno-cultural school of American political history has emerged, and its members have produced an impressive body of historical research and writing.1 In search of a grass-roots understanding of past politics, the ethno-culturalists have applied quantitative methods and behavioral theory to the political history of the United States. They have studied the complex relations between local and national orientations in politics, between leaders and masses, and between economic and cultural issues. More broadly, they have asked and answered questions about political salience: What are the sources of voter motivation? How do issues become politicized?

American Political Parties as a Conservative Force

N CLASSICAL democratic theory political parties, when mentioned at all, were treated as one-way transmission belts between the electorate and those persons voted into office. The role of the parties was seen in extraordinarily passive terms. The parties were considered, at least ideally, to be essentially mechanisms through which the will of the citizenry could be canalized and turned into positive law. Today, in contrast to the view held half-a-century or more ago, parties are also viewed as social groups. To some extent, persons who identify themselves with parties share some common expectations, or values, or goals. As the Survey Research Center has shown, it is a ticklish business to pin down the exact ingredients of identification and to measure precisely the factors in voter motivation.' Yet enough insight has been gained so that it may be stated categorically that parties are social groups or, to put it differently, that they have lives of their own. They are to some degree an independent variable in the total political process. Foreign observers of the American political scene the names of Laski, Brogan, Siegfried, and Duverger come readily to mind have often commented upon the conservative nature of American politics. Without embarking on a safari into cultural anthropology, the thesis can be defended that the parties themselves are partly the cause of the conservatism so frequently noted in our political life. For purposes of the discussion, it is not necessary to give a technical definition of conservative; the term is used in its ordinary common-sense meaning, as will become apparent. It will also be assumed that there is general agreement on a few basic propositions, e.g., that the national parties are rather decentralized, that constitutional factors have strongly shaped the development of the parties, etc., so that there will be no need to quibble over the obvious. Each of the ways in which the parties are believed to contribute to conservatism is summarized below, and the evidence tending to substantiate the proposition is dealt with briefly. While the reader familiar with the literature on parties might have chosen different illustrations, it is hoped that those which are given are sufficiently representative to carry conviction.

American Jews and the Presidential Vote

It has been generally agreed since the publication of Professor Holcombe's The New Party Politics that the urbanization of American society has tended to produce class differences in our politics. The sectional alignments of the 19th century gave way to class and urban-rural politics in considerable measure as Americans continued to move to the cities. By the 1932 and 1936 elections there was a marked tendency for wealth and high prestige to be associated with Republican choice.Paradoxically, the most urban of all our citizens, American Jews, have not divided their presidential vote along class lines. As a group they rapidly improved their jobs, extended their incomes, and became highly educated during the 1930's and 1940's. At the same time, they drastically switched their predominant major party choice from the Republican party to the Democrats. And within the group itself differences in income or occupational prestige appear to have been of practically no significance in the formulation of presidential vote preference since 1936.The purpose of this article is threefold: first, to trace briefly the shifts in Jewish vote preference in recent decades through the use of aggregate election statistics; second, to probe the significant motivations of Jewish voters in 1952, primarily by analyzing the results of a sample survey conducted after the 1952 election in the city of Boston; and third, to suggest some of the basic reasons for Jewish resistance to class influences at the polls.