Voting Patterns Research Articles

AN ANALYSIS OF THE DETERMINANTS OF FEMALE VOTING DECISIONS IN AUSTRALIA AND PAKISTAN

Voting patterns are the reflection of democratic traditions that are imbibed within the societal fabric. Pakistan and Australia are far off in case of developmental comparison but there seems to be similar barriers in the societies of both states in relation to women participation and role in politics. This article highlights the patterns which are prevalent in both societies in regards to voting decisions of female diaspora by empirical analysis and identify the similarities and contrasts in voting behaviour of two asymmetrically developed states facing the similar problems of limited role of women in politics. Based on the quantitative data analysis, this article focuses on the comparative analysis of the voting behavior of the two societies and indicates the criteria of rational decision making of the two developmentally different diaspora while advocating the basic notion of women political emancipation in the political sphere of life. Keywords: Voting behaviour, Pakistan, Australia, Women political Participation, Political Interest.

The Impact of Unemployment on Voter Turnout; a Case Study of Asokwa Constituency

Voter turnout and unemployment are major concerns in the world. The research studied how unemployment impacts voter turnout by engaging the people of some selected areas of the Asokwa constituency in the Ashanti Region of Ghana. In this study, the voting patterns of electorates were examined, with the topic of unemployment receiving the greatest attention. The Asokwa constituency in Ghana's Ashanti Region was the focus of the research, which examined how unemployment affects voting behavior. With 150 people as the sample, questionnaires and oral interviews were used in the data collection process to gather the necessary data for the study. The results showed that ethnicity plays a role in voting turnout, albeit its impact is less pronounced than that of unemployment. However, it does affect voting participation to a lesser extent than unemployment. The outcomes were shown graphically to explain the data. In order to combat voter indifference, recommendations and conclusions were made to advice that voters should pay greater attention to the other components of the possible government's manifesto. Additionally, the administration was asked to do its best to keep the promises it made throughout the campaign. Finally, the electorate were urged to actively participate in political activities in order to enhance the nation's excellent governance.

Explorations into middle class urbanites, social movements and political dynamics: impressions from Namibia’s capital, Windhoek

ABSTRACT Namibia’s National Assembly and Presidential Elections in November 2019 documented for the first time a decline in the hegemonic status of the former liberation movement, SWAPO. This culminated since then in an unforeseen loss of support in the Regional and Local Authorities Elections of November 2020. Most municipalities and towns are now under the control of new political alliances. These include agencies with social movement elements. The urban middle class deserves in this context some special attention: Has it influenced voting patterns? Can an urban middle class be of sufficient political influence to play a significant role in changes of political governance? The dramatic political shifts in Windhoek are explored: if and to what extent might a focus on urban middle-class political behaviours help to analyse current political dynamics unfolding?

The economic geography of European Union’s discontent: Lessons from Greece

The regions of the European Union are currently experiencing a period of seismic change that has transformed their established voting patterns and increased anti–European Union voting. Applying objective economic measures, spatial econometrics and municipal voting data from recent elections and a referendum, this study examines the factors shaping anti–European Union votes in Greece. The results indicate a strong link between the country’s changing economic geography and the geography of the anti–European Union vote, providing evidence not only of the ‘geography of discontent’ and the ‘left-behind hypothesis’ but also of the ‘geography of austerity’ associated with the heterogeneous effects of fiscal consolidation and austerity policies.

Embracing Donald Trump’s Big Lie and Making Voting Harder Are Republicans Sure They Know What They are Doing?

Abstract Following the 2020 presidential election Donald Trump claimed that the election had been stolen and that fraud was widespread. His voter base widely accepted that and that has prompted numerous state legislatures to enact laws creating hurdles that make voting more difficult. The presumption of most reactions to these laws is that they are directed at reducing non-white voting. This study suggests that they may also affect the white working class. The party needs their votes and they have a historical record of not voting at high levels. More hurdles may diminish their turnout. The analysis draws on voting patterns from 1952–2020.

The 2022 South Korean Presidential Election and the Gender Divide among the Youth

The 2022 South Korean presidential election was the country's most closely contested election since a democratic direct electoral system was initiated in 1987, with less than a 1 percent di erence separating the two major candidates among 34 million votes cast. Despite some parallels with and continuities from previous elections, the 2022 election saw new voting alignments emerge based on one topic: gender equality. In this essay, we explain how and why gender became such a prominent issue during the 2022 election campaign, and how this a ected voting patterns, especially among male and female voters in their twenties and thirties. Specifically, we argue that gendered voter behaviour during the election arose from rising anti-feminist sentiments among young men, and that the two main presidential candidates politicized the issue to maximize support from this group. This in turn triggered the consolidation of a young female voting bloc. Using an original survey conducted in January 2022 with an approximate nationally representative sample of 1,017 respondents, we identify two possible causes of rising anti-feminist sentiments among young men: the belief that women receive preferential treatment in employment opportunities and mandatory military service for men. In addition, through an embedded survey experiment run before the election, we proposed that political candidates with pro-gender messages would be less likely to receive support from young men, while candidates with anti-gender messages would be likely to receive more support; these projections were confirmed by the actual voting breakdowns of the recent election. The results suggest that the new administration must handle gender issues with extreme care to ensure that divergent perceptions of the gender divide do not become further polarized over the next few years, since such a development could very well fuel democratic deconsolidation in South Korea.

Voting Patterns in Western European Countries. Class-Party Family Alignments and Their Mediation by Political Values

This article investigates voters' preferences for party families in Western European countries' general elections in the 2000s. According to the realignment literature, “traditional” class voting patterns have been replaced by new class-party alignments: upper-middle employee classes joined the electoral bases of left parties, whereas radical right actors introduced in the electoral competition of the most deprived strata of the population, labeled “left behind”. This article aims to answer to the research questions: do social class and political values affect voting behavior in Western European general elections? Which direction are these variables associated with the preference of party families? The first section outlines the theoretical framework, accounting for the “societal modernization” processes, which have been affecting Western societies since the late 1960s. Among the “traditional” cleavages, the literature assumes the realignment of class voting patterns, as well as alignments between value orientations and political preferences. Indeed, class-party alignments are mediated by the political supply's mobilization of voters according to their value orientations. Such appeals differ among party families, partly explaining why specific classes constitute their electoral bases or contested stronghold. The theoretical framework hypothesizes political values as clustered in three ideologies (social and economic conservatism-liberalism, and authoritarianism-libertarianism). Those political values, which do not assimilate in ideologies, constitute more proximal factors, i.e., evaluations of specific political issues close to elections (attitudes). Having defined class voting realignment and a theoretical account of value voting, the paper empirically investigates their associations with vote choices in Western Europe. The analyses ground onEuropean Social Surveydata, aggregating the responses concerning the 12 Western European countries for which data are available in all waves. The dependent variable clusters the parties, which competed in the general elections occurred in the time span considered, in party families. Fixed effects multinomial logistic regression models are performed to detect which social classes constitute party families' bases or contested stronghold and how more proximal variables based on values account for class voting patterns. The results clearly show whose social classes are more likely to have voted for radical left, center-left, center-right, and radical right party families. Political ideologies account for a portion of these preferences for mainstream political actors, whereas political attitudes partly explain the introduction of radical right parties in the competition for working classes with left families.

Descriptive over-representation, cliental accountability, and minority politics: the case of the Druze in Israel

ABSTRACT This article explores the relationship between descriptive representation, patrimonial voting, turnout, and voting patterns in small ethnic groups. It argues that the combination between patrimonial voting and descriptive representation marginalizes the importance of substantive representation, leading to a decline in turnout, but simultaneously to cliental loyalty networks among voters that shape voting preferences. It utilizes the case of the Druze in Israel and analyzes their voting patterns in order to establish the argument that the mechanism that leads to party preferences among minority voters, namely, clientalistic accountability, is the same mechanism that renders descriptive over-representation devoid of substantive impact on state policies directed towards the minority. Our aim is to enrich the literature on the affinity between minority descriptive representation, patrimonial voting, clientalist accountability, and political efficacy. We demonstrate that Druze candidates in Zionist parties, especially those close to decision-making circles by being part of the governmental coalition, establish a broad network of supporters based on family ties, personally benefiting voters by integrating them or their relatives into high-income jobs, making their cliental preferences rational. This creates the gap between mere descriptive representation of minority groups and the substantial representation of their communal interests in “patronage democracy.”

Female Candidate Performance and Gender Quotas: The Case of Ecuador

ABSTRACT Ecuador has one of the strongest electoral designs in terms of gender quotas in Latin America. However, there remains a significant gap between the number of women candidates and the number elected. To explain why a quota does not lead to an elected representation proportional to the quota we examine voter bias and elite bias in the legislative elections of 2013 and 2017. Results show gender bias toward female candidates, and not against, which is a surprising result in a country maintaining a culture of traditional gender roles on average. A breakdown of the voting patterns by gender, however, reveals that the overall voter preference for female candidates is driven entirely by stronger female same-gender voting than male same-gender voting. The lack of representation of women as frontrunners in a political party is likely to explain the gap between female candidates and elected members to the National Assembly. Elite bias against women, not voter bias, explains women’s electoral fortunes in Ecuador.

Communicating about Energy Policy in a Resource-Rich Jurisdiction during the Climate Crisis: Lessons from the People of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia

There is a high degree of expert consensus that anthropogenic climate change will be catastrophic if urgent and significant measures to reduce carbon emissions are not undertaken worldwide. Australia is a world-leading exporter of coal and gas, and does not have an effective emissions reduction strategy. Though many Australians support action on climate change, this has not affected voting patterns. In this qualitative study, we aimed to explore the attitudes of Australian voters in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia towards potential environmental policies. We approached people in public spaces, and invited them to participate in interviews. Six of the thirty-five interview participants who voted for the two main political parties or were undecided voters agreed with the transition to 100% renewables and/or no new coal mines in Australia. Many thought that renewables were not reliable enough and/or the economy was too dependent on coal to make the transition. There was strong support for political leadership in order to regulate mining and pollution, and for a transition plan for fossil-fuel-dependent communities. Participants were most concerned about tangible environmental issues, such as waste and pollution, and also described needing clear solutions in order to engage with the issues. Some described feeling ‘shouted at’ by protests and messaging about climate change and environmental issues. Our findings suggest that solution-based messaging may increase levels of engagement about climate change, and that waste and pollution can be entry-points for discussions about climate change. It is important to have conversations with people about this important issue.

The nationalization of school superintendent elections

AbstractObjectiveScholars have demonstrated that the U.S. presidential vote is increasingly correlated with voting patterns in House, Senate, gubernatorial, state legislative, and state judicial elections, a phenomenon called nationalization. In this article, I examine the relationship between vote share in presidential and school superintendent elections.MethodsI conduct correlation and regression analyses using an original data set containing county‐level election results from 2000 to 2021 for all states that hold statewide school superintendent elections.ResultsI find that there is a statistically significant relationship between presidential and superintendent voting in both partisan and nonpartisan elections even after accounting for incumbency, although the relationship is appreciably stronger in states that hold partisan school superintendent elections. In addition, there has been an uptick in the strength of the relationship between presidential and state superintendent vote patterns over time in both partisan and nonpartisan states, although the increase is more pronounced in nonpartisan states.ConclusionsThe results indicate that even some of the most low‐salience, down‐ballot elections have nationalized.

Does Incumbency Matter?

During the 2018 House of Representatives elections, the United States saw a larger influx of minority candidates than elections in recent years. Many of these candidates were non-incumbents who ran successful campaigns against long-standing incumbents. Using the 2018 Cooperative Election Study data (CCES), we analyze the likelihood of Black voters to support White candidates over minority candidates, with a focus on incumbency status. Previous research has found that Black voters tend to display a larger affinity to support minority candidates due to theories such as group identity and racial voting. Given what is known from the literature about Black voting patterns, our study sets out to determine the extent to which incumbency matters for Black voters in the 2018 Congressional House of Representative (HOR) elections. The findings of our analysis reveal that Black voters are significantly more likely to support Democratic POC candidates, and significantly less likely to support Democratic white incumbents as compared to white voters. The findings of our study illuminate that both the affinity to support minority candidates and incumbency matter to Black voters.

Beyond Roll-Call Voting: Sponsorship Dynamics at the UN General Assembly

AbstractResearch on the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has often privileged analyses on voting patterns, that is, how countries position themselves whenever a resolution is brought to a vote in each plenary session. However, voted resolutions comprise only a fraction of UNGA output, and much is still unknown about how countries behave before casting any votes. What takes place prior to and leading up to the adoption of resolutions? Even though the study of draft sponsorship remains underdeveloped, it can comprise a more valid empirical strategy to infer state preferences. This research note introduces the UN General Assembly Sponsorship Dataset, which encompasses the sponsorship behavior of every UNGA member from 2009 to 2019. We develop two novel empirical indices, priority and ownership, in order to ascertain draft relevance for each member state. We also use the new data to test longstanding arguments over vote-buying and North versus South coalitions in the UNGA. Our findings confirm mainstream conclusions for the former but challenge prevailing assumptions on the latter.

Donald Trump and changing rural/urban voting patterns

In 2016, Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election by securing a very large share of the rural vote. In the 2020 election, his margin of victory in rural America was even greater. This time, however, voter turnout in urban areas was much higher, an even larger share of these urban voters cast their ballot for Biden, and Trump lost the election. Analysis revealed that two variables were especially important predictors of county-level voting behavior. Counties that Trump won had a large proportion of non-Hispanic white residents and a low proportion of college graduates. When controlling for other independent variables, the effects of rural/urban residence largely disappeared. Thus, Trump's dominance in rural counties is explained by the fact that rural counties have large numbers of non-Hispanic white residents and lower levels of educational attainment than urban counties. These same variables were important in explaining the vote in five key battleground states. The relevance of these findings for the future of U.S. democracy in an era of deep political division is discussed.

WHY YOU MUST VOTE IN AN AFRICAN DEMOCRACY

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to draw attention of election managers in Africa to the negative impact of voter apathy on poll outcomes. It encourages all eligible voters to cast their vote in democratic elections. The instances of contested elections, poor governance, election of ineffective leadership and civic violence could be avoided if the electorate came out in full to give voice to the will of the people. 
 Methodology: The researcher reviewed published literature discussing the performance of postcolonial democracy of independent nations across Africa. With specific reference to academic journals, electoral documents capturing voting patterns and historical records, the researcher uses descriptive statistics and thematic analyses of texts to highlight the effects voter apathy has on national leadership and governance.
 Findings: Voter apathy compromises the expression of the will of the people and causes an erosion of citizen commitment to social responsibility. It also leads to the emergence of apathetic leadership and weak accountability of government institutions following general elections. The researcher suggests that voter apathy is one of the reasons for civil unrest, passage of unpalatable legislation and election of ineffective leaders.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The researcher calls for democratic governments and electoral bodies in Africa to note, examine and act to preempt the negative impact of voter apathy on election outcomes. Voters are called upon not to presume that a democratic election process will automatically guarantee effective governance outcomes without their participation. The paper also recommends that the process of voter empowerment should be formalized in electoral practice, policy and procedure.

The time course of reactivity to social acceptance and rejection feedback: An examination of event-related potentials and behavioral measures in a peer interaction task.

Measurement of social processes is of interest across areas of research. Event-related potentials (ERPs) measured using electroencephalography (EEG) offer high temporal resolution, but little work has leveraged this strength to characterize the time course of social feedback processing. The present study aimed to replicate and extend previous research by systematically identifying the temporal dynamics of responses to both social acceptance and rejection feedback relative to neutral feedback, examining internal consistency of ERPs, and exploring correspondence with behavioral measures elicited during a peer interaction task. Emerging adults (N=118) completed a computerized peer interaction task in which they made decisions to accept or reject peers and received rejection, acceptance, and neutral feedback while EEG data were recorded. Principal component analysis was used to derive temporally and spatially distinct ERP components sensitive to positive and negative social feedback. Participant voting patterns and post-task liking ratings for computer-controlled peers were also examined. Replicating prior work, components consistent with N1, P2, reward positivity (RewP), and P3 emerged, but distinct patterns of modulation by acceptance and rejection relative to neutral feedback were observed. Most components showed acceptable internal consistency. Sensitivity to peer feedback assessed through participant voting patterns and liking ratings for peers was correlated with RewP and P3 components. Results highlight the complexity of social feedback processing observable in a computerized peer interaction task and offer promising neural and behavioral measures that can be used to examine individual differences in sensitivity to both social acceptance and rejection feedback.

People's History in the Age of Populism

Why write people's histories in our age of populism? Much of the original appeal of the genre derived from the marginality its subject once occupied in public life. Ordinary lives were hardly mentioned in school textbooks; popular culture was assigned to the bottom of the nation's hierarchy of values; and popular politics was either criminalised or disciplined to fit national voting patterns in states ruled by bullet and ballot alike. Defining the people naturally set the fault lines between liberal, conservative and socialist practitioners of the genre. J.R. Green's late nineteenth-century prototype – A Short History of the English People – presented a liberal story of social change, from the landing of Hengist to the battle of Waterloo. It incorporated the entirety of social life mushrooming beneath the deeds of kings, in all its evolutionary splendor. On the continent, notably in Central and Eastern Europe, the people would often feature in ethnic garb, in histories of national liberation or imperial projection. Yet it was Marxism, broadly conceived, that provided the most enduring template for people's histories, at least in the Anglosphere, from A.L. Morton's pioneering A People's History of England onwards. Extended beyond strictly national boundaries to topics such as modern Europe or even the world, two recent people's histories written in this vein, both taking their motto from Brecht's Fragen eines lesenden Arbeiters, filter their subject through class struggle and offer a narrative of freedom from want in which a vast labouring multitude toils, suffers and rebels across ages. However, political outlook and epistemological commitments aside, for the past century people's history has claimed to restore to the people its own past, often one of misery at the hands of elites yet one all the more dignified for that reason. Do any of these coordinates still obtain today? Is not the current glorification of ordinary lives, popular culture and politics the bread and butter of populism?

Association of County-Level Prescriptions for Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin With County-Level Political Voting Patterns in the 2020 US Presidential Election

This cross-sectional study examines whether an association exists between US county-level prescription rates of hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin and how people voted in the 2020 US presidential election.

Lauck and Stock, eds., The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest

Reviewed by: The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest ed. by Jon K. Lauck and Catherine McNicol Stock Emily Suzanne Johnson The Conservative Heartland: A Political History of the Postwar American Midwest Edited by Jon K. Lauck and Catherine McNicol Stock (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2020. Pp. ix, 390. Index. Clothbound, $60.00; paperbound, $29.95.) Historical studies of American conservatism have tended to focus on either the Sunbelt South or white ethnic communities in the Northeast, and this volume provides an important contribution to the field by focusing on conservatism in the Midwest. As the editors point out in their introductory essay, the Midwest has witnessed a significant and contested conservative resurgence in the decades since the end of World War II, a resurgence which deserves further attention from political historians. The volume is premised on the compelling contention that "a revived midwestern history—with a focus on the region's varied social, cultural, economic, and political landscapes—can help us understand American culture more completely" (p. 3). In service of this goal, each of the volume's seventeen extraordinarily detailed and meticulously researched essays spotlights a "discrete episode" in midwestern political history since 1945. They also do an excellent job of exploring the nuances of political alignment and identity, which are always much more complex than binaries of "liberal/conservative" or "Republican/Democrat." Discussions of economic class, Christian affiliation, white ethnic identity, and regional diversity are also richly textured. The introductory essay makes an argument for the significance of midwestern political history by highlighting the region's absence from current scholarship on American conservatism and exploring "four major [End Page 72] developments that spurred conservatism in the Midwest in the postwar era": backlash against the 1960s "New left"; the attraction of Catholics to the New Right and the growing willingness of conservative Protestants and Catholics to work together politically; the economic downturn of the 1970s and 1980s; and "changing racial demographics" in the Midwest and in the national Republican Party (pp. 5–8). Each of these trends was also national in scope, and the editors could have further developed arguments about their particular salience in the Midwest. An explicit definition of the Midwest (or a discussion of how and why such a definition might be contested) would have helped to ground these arguments and provide a stronger rationale for thinking about the region in terms of a distinct, shared identity and history. The first three chapters in the volume stand out as more expansive in regional scope and periodization than the rest of the essays. Each offers a broad view of key developments in midwestern voting patterns and political identity, beginning as early as 1787 and ending as late as 2016. As such, they provide valuable data for understanding political changes in this region. Most of the remaining essays closely examine key moments in midwestern political history since 1945, from debates over reapportionment in Illinois in the 1950s and 1960s to the surprising pro-choice politics of Republican feminists in Michigan from the 1960s to the 1980s. Other key themes include electoral politics and campaigning, white working-class politics and the rise of the Rust Belt, and local debates over issues including same-sex marriage and the use of Native American caricatures as sports mascots. Each chapter is reasonably short (most are twenty pages or fewer, including notes), making them easy to assign as case studies. While they are probably too specific and intricate for introductory courses, they would work well in upper-level or graduate seminars, particularly if paired with other sources that offer broader national or historiographical contexts. This volume fills a real gap in the history of American conservatism. Its essays offer a variety of meaningful ways for thinking about the significance of the Midwest in shaping and responding to the rise of the New Right since the mid-twentieth century. [End Page 73] Emily Suzanne Johnson Ball State University Copyright © 2022 Trustees of Indiana University

An analysis of the relationships between religious orientation, authoritarianism, cross‐cultural interactions, and political views

AbstractThis study investigated the connections between religious ideology, authoritarianism, intergroup relations, and political orientation. Building from the psychological literature on religious belief, the current study sought to explore the extent of these relationships using a university sample from the American South. The Diverse Learning Environments survey was administered to undergraduate students, with 2582 responding. Variables of interest were religious belief, authoritarianism, intergroup relation views, diversity‐related actions, and political views. Results suggest that while general religious orientation did not correlate positively with authoritarianism, Christians, specifically those associated with Evangelical groups, displayed greater authoritarianism than non‐believers and reported fewer diversity‐related interactions. While results indicated that more salient religious identity was associated with right‐leaning political beliefs, an unexpected finding was that non‐belief was associated with greater political involvement. These results suggest patterns of ingroup favoritism among conservative Christians which may lead to outgroup derogation and influence voting patterns.