Some have another way of talking about convergences and showing how the theories explaining the vote can be reconciled with the process of political misalignment. This is related to its variation in space and time. 65, no. But more generally, when there is a campaign, the issues are discussed. The utility function of the simple proximity model appears, i.e. Ideology is to be understood as a way of simplifying our world in relation to the problem of information. Another model is called the funnel model of causality which has been proposed by these authors working on the psycho-sociological model. The utility function of this model is modified compared to the simple model, i.e. We speak of cognitive preference between one's political preferences and the positions of the parties. Hence the creation of the political predisposition index which should measure and capture the role of social insertion or position in explaining electoral choice. The distance must be assessed on the basis of what the current policy is. It is a theory that makes it possible to explain both the voting behaviour of voters and the organisational behaviour of political parties. The second criterion is subjectivity, which is that voters calculate the costs and benefits of voting subjectively, so they make an assessment of the costs and benefits. These studies model individual utility from the election of a preferred party or candidate as decreasing as the alternative deviates from one's ideal point, but differ as to whether this loss should be modeled linearly or quadratically. In Person: 971 W Duval St. Ste. It also proposes a reconceptualization of the concept of partisanship in order to integrate all relevant contributions of the . The Logics of Electoral Politics. The premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. Another strategy is the so-called "shortcut" that voters take within the rationalist framework of voting, since they are confronted with the problem of information and have to choose on the basis of this information. Today, this may be less true, but until a certain point, there were relatively few empirical analyses based on the economic model of the vote. The concept and measurement of partisan identification as conceived by these researchers as applying to the bipartite system and therefore needs to be adapted to fit the multiparty and European system. It is a theory that is made in the interaction between supply and demand, that is, between parties offering something and voters asking for something. startxref This creates a concern for circularity of reasoning. Bakker, B. N., Hopmann, D. N., & Persson, M. (2014). This jargon comes from this type of explanation. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. 0000007057 00000 n 0000006260 00000 n The 'funnel of causality' provided a convenient framework within which to pursue both a comprehensive program of electoral accounting and a more selective strategy of explanation. This study presents an automated and accurate . The basic assumption is that voters decide primarily on the basis of ideologies and not on the basis of specific positions on issues. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy, vol. The psycho-sociological model initiated the national election studies and created a research paradigm that remains one of the two dominant research paradigms today and ultimately contributed to the creation of electoral psychology. Voting requires voters to know the candidates' positions on issues, but when there are several candidates or several parties, it is not very easy for some voters in particular. 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. Voters calculate the cost of voting. Print. 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. Harrop, Martin, and William L. Miller. There are other models and economic theories of the vote, including directional theories that have a different perspective but remain within the framework of economic theories of the vote. What determines direction? Inking and the role of socialization cause individuals to form a certain partisan identification that produces certain types of political attitudes. 0000001213 00000 n Often, in the literature, the sociological and psycho-sociological model fall into the same category, with a kind of binary distinction between the theories that emphasize social, belonging and identification on the one hand, and then the rationalist and economic theories of the vote, which are the economic theories of the vote that focus instead on the role of political issues, choices and cost-benefit calculations. The reference work is The People's Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. 102 Lake City, FL 32055 OR 17579 SW State Road 47 Fort White, FL 32038. The anomaly is that there is a majority of the electorate around the centre, but there are parties at the extremes that can even capture a large part of the preferences of the electorate. The government is blamed for the poor state of the economy. Here we see the key factors, namely electoral choice and, at the centre, the identification variable for a party, which depends on two types of factors, namely primary socialization and group membership. So there are four main ways. it is easier to change parties from one election to the next; a phase of realignment (3), which consists of creating new partisan loyalties. The explanatory factors and aspects highlighted by these different models are always taken into account. Economic theories of voting explain both voter turnout (1) and electoral choice (2). Symbols evoke emotions. Voters try to maximize the usefulness of the vote, that is, they try to vote for the party that makes them more satisfied. in what is commonly known as the Columbia school of thought, posited that contextual factors influence the development . The initial formulation of the model is based on the Downs theory in An Economic Theory of Democracy publi en 1957. There are also studies that show that the more educated change less often from one party to another. A rather subjective and almost sentimental citizen is placed at the centre of the analysis. Voters vote for the candidate or party closest to their own position which is the proximity model. There is a kind of heterogeneity of voters. According to Downs, based on the prospective assessment that voters make of the position that voters have and their position on various issues, voters arrive at and operate this shortcut by situating and bringing parties back to an ideological dimension that may be a left-right dimension but may also be another one. Distance is understood in the sense of the proximity model for whom voter preference and party position is also important. Finally, they can vote for the candidate who is most likely in the voters' perception to change things in a way or in a way that leaves them the most satisfied. As part of spatial theories of the vote, some theories consider the characteristics of candidates. This has created a research paradigm which is perhaps the dominant paradigm today. One important element of this model must be highlighted in relation to the others. This identification is seen as contributing to an individual's self-image. The original measurement was very simple being based on two questions which are a scale with a question about leadership. This is the idea that gave rise to the development of directional models, which is that, according to Downs and those who have followed him, because there is transparency of information, voters can very well see what the political platforms of the parties or candidates are. (1949). He wanted to see the role of the media in particular and also the role of opinion leaders and therefore, the influences that certain people can have in the electoral choice. What explains historical variation in voter turnout? In other words, if we know the partisan identification of voters, we can make a prediction about what the normal vote will be, which is a vote that is not or should not be influenced by other situational factors in a given electorate. Voting for a party and continuing to vote for such a party repeatedly makes it possible to develop an identification with that party which, in a way, then reinforces the electoral choice. The concept and this theory was developed in the United States by political scientists and sociologists and initially applied to the American political system with an attachment to the Democratic Party rather than the Republican Party. They find that conscientious and neurotic people tend not to identify with a political party. Understanding voters' behavior can explain how and why decisions were made either by public decision-makers, which has been a central concern for political scientists, [1] or by the electorate. Therefore, they cannot really situate where the different parties stand. However, we see that this is not always true and that there are parties that propose more extreme policies that receive considerable electoral support. When the voter is in the same position, i.e. 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. 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. Although the models rely on the same data they make radically different predictions about the political future. In this theory, we vote for specific issues that may be more or less concrete, more or less general, and which form the basis for explaining electoral behaviour. The initial research saw three major factors to voting behaviour: Personal identification with one of the political parties, concern with issues of national government policy and personal attraction to the presidential candidates. How does partisan identification develop? 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. the earlier Columbia studies, the Michigan election studies were based upon national survey samples. Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. The voters have to make that assessment and then decide which one brings more income and which one we will vote for. La dernire modification de cette page a t faite le 11 novembre 2020 00:26. xref The idea is that each voter can be represented by a point in a hypothetical space and this space can be a space with N dimensions and each dimension represents an election campaign issue, so that this point reflects his or her ideal set of policies, i.e. If someone positions himself as a left-wing or right-wing voter, the parties are positioned on an ideological level. 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. Psychological Models of American Voting Behavior* DAVID KNOKE, Indiana University ABSTRACT A path model of the presidential vote involving social variables, party identification, issue orientations, . There is a small bridge that is made between these two theories with Fiorina on the one hand and the Michigan model of another party that puts the concept of partisan identification at the centre and that conceives of this concept in a very different way, especially with regard to its origin. 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. 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). Later, their analysis saw that party identification and attachment was the most common factor. is premised on the assumption that elections connect the will of the people to the actions of government. The simple proximity model is that the voter will vote for the party or parties that are in the same direction. The book's focus was sociological, mainly considering socio-demographic predictors, interpersonal influence, cross-pressures, and the effects of social groups, as well as analyzing voter activation, reinforcement, and conversion across the election year. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948. The external factors would be the factors that, in the basic theory of the psycho-sociological approach, it would seem that this is what can do but if we have a certain partisan attachment to vote for another party because we are influenced by one or other of these factors but, basically, we keep our partisan attachment and the next time when these factors change, we return to the normal vote corresponding to the partisan attachment. By Web: Vote-By-Mail Web Request. Distance must be taken into account and the idea of mobilizing the electorate must be taken into account. Nevertheless, both models may be more or less correct. This approach would be elitist, this assumption that voters have the ability to know what is going on which is the idea of information and this ability that voters have to look at that information and process it. For some, these are theories that offer reflections on the proper functioning of democracy, on presuppositions, the role of information or the role of citizens for the proper functioning of democracy and the role of parties. 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. The choice of candidates is made both according to direction but also according to the intensity of positions on a given issue. 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. The goal of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the measurement of suicide severity based on the Columbia suicide severity rating scale. It is a model that is very close to data and practice and lends itself very easily to empirical testing through measures of partisan identification and different measures of socio-demographic factors among others. voters who follow a systematic vote are voters who are willing to pay these information or information-related costs. They try to elaborate a bit and find out empirically how this happens. 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. In other words, in this retrospective assessment, the economic situation of the country plays a crucial role. McClung Lee, A. Hirschman wanted to explain what happens in organizations when they enter a situation of crisis or decline. The main explanatory factors have been sought in socio-economic status and socio-demographic variables such as "age," "gender," and "education. We see the kinship of this model with the sociological model explaining that often they are put together. It is possible to create a typology that distinguishes between four approaches crossing two important and crucial elements: "is voting spatial? The advantage of the intensity directional model is that it goes in a more intense direction, i.e. A distinction is made between the sociological model of voting from the Columbia School, which refers to the university where this model was developed. For example, there is Lazarsfeld's theory with the idea that opinion leaders can be seen as people to whom we attribute a strong trust and maybe even an esteem in relation to the political judgment they may have and therefore, by discussing with these people, it is possible to form an electoral choice and therefore there is no need to go and pay these costs of gathering information. A distinction must be made between the affective vote of the psycho-sociological model and the cognitive vote of the theories of the economic model. In other words, they propose something quite ecumenical that combines directional and proximity models. 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. Finally, some studies show that high levels of education lead to weaker attachments to parties. As for the intensity model, they manage to perceive something more, that is to say, not only a direction but an intensity through which a political party defends certain positions and goes in certain political directions. The basic idea is somewhat the same, namely that it is a way that voters have at their disposal, a euristic and cognitive shortcut that voters have at their disposal to deal with the problem of complex information. 0000005382 00000 n There are a whole bunch of individual characteristics related to the fact that one is more of a systematic voter of something else. Three Models of Voting Behavior. From that point on, there has been the development of a whole body of literature on political psychology. Most voters have a sense of allegiance to a party that is inherited through the family. %PDF-1.3 % Voters try to maximize their individual utility. Since the idea is to calculate the costs and benefits of voting for one party rather than the other, therefore, each party brings us some utility income. In other words, a directional element is introduced into the proximity model. 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. This table shows that for quite some time now there has been a strong decline in partisan identification. the maximum utility is reached at the line level. Has the partisan identification weakened? Finally, there is an instrumental approach to information and voting. There are other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. There have been several phases of misalignment. Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. 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. In the spatial theories of the vote, we see the strategic link between a party's supply and a demand from voters or electors. As the authors of The American Voter put There is no real electoral choice in this type of explanation, but it is based on our insertion in a social context. It is the state of the economy that will decide who will win the election or not. The individual is subjectivity at the centre of the analysis. It is a rather descriptive model, at least in its early stages. The law of curvilinear disparity takes up this distinction. Regarding the causal ambiguity, there are also critics who say that this approach is very strongly correlational in the sense that it looks for correlations between certain social variables and electoral choices, but the approach does not explain why this variable approach really has a role and therefore what are the causal mechanisms that lead from insertion, positions, social predispositions to electoral choice. is partisan identification one-dimensional? Political scientists have defined several models of voter behavior in an attempt to explain the different motivations of voters: Rational choice theory describes someone voting in their best interest, supporting the candidate whose platform will give them the most favorable outcomes. The political position of each candidate is represented in the same space, it is the interaction between supply and demand and the voter will choose the party or candidate that is closest to the voter. There is a whole literature on opinion formation, quite consensually, that says that citizens have a limited capacity to process information. This is the median voter theory. European Journal of Political Research, 54(2), 197215. 0000001124 00000 n Voters who want their ballot mailed to an address that is not their address on record will be required to submit their request in writing. Personality traits and party identification over time. Professor Political Science Buena Vista University Two basic concerns: Turnout ("Who votes?") Key questions: What are the characteristics and attitudes of voters vs. nonvoters? The importance of symbolic politics is especially capitalized on by the intensity directional models. to 1/n,and thus the expected utility of voting is proportional to N/n, which is approximately independent of the size of the electorate.3 In the basic rational-choice model of voting and political participation (see Blais 2000 for an overview and many references), the relative util-ity of voting, for a particular eligible voter, is: U = pB . There are two variations. In this perspective, voting is essentially a question of attachment, identity and loyalty to a party, whereas in the rationalist approach it is mainly a question of interest, cognition and rational reading of one's own needs and the adequacy of different political offers to one's needs. 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. 1948, Berelson et . On this basis, four types of voters can be identified in a simplified manner: It is possible to start from the assumption that the characteristics of these different voters are very different. This approach has often been criticized as a static approach since socio-economic or even socio-demographic characteristics do not change in the short term and yet the vote increasingly changes in the short term, what is called in electoral volatility, i.e. Basic Idea What you are vote choice ; Key foundational studies ; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, Gaudet (1944) The Peoples Choice Berelson, Lazarsfeld, McPhee (1954) Voting A distinction is often made between two types of voters and votes between the: There are these two types and a whole literature on the different types of euristics that can be set up. Fiorina also talks about partisan identification, that is to say that there is a possible convergence between these different theories. It has often been emphasized that this model and approach raises more questions than answers. These are models that should make us attentive to the different motivations that voters may or may not have to make in making an electoral choice. These are some of the criticisms and limitations often made by proponents of other approaches. This is called prospective voting because voters will listen to what the parties have to say and evaluate on the basis of that, that is, looking ahead. A third criticism of the simple proximity model is the idea of the median voter, which is the idea that all voters group around the centre, so parties, based on this observation, will maximize their electoral support at the centre, and therefore if they are rational, parties will tend to be located more at the centre. Then decide which one brings more income and which one brings more income and which one brings more and!, M. ( 2014 ) see the kinship of this model and the cognitive vote of the economic situation crisis. Is also important first two theories and cognitive voting for the party parties! Created a research paradigm which is perhaps the dominant paradigm today by,. 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