These theories are the retrospective voting theories and the theories of ideological space. Another possible strategy is to rely on the judgment of others such as opinion leaders. It is because we are rational, and if we are rational, rationality means maximizing our usefulness on the basis of the closeness we can have with a party. There is in fact the idea that the choices and preferences of voters in the centre will cause the parties, since they are aiming in this model, to try to maximize their electoral support. The intensity directional model adds an element that is related to the intensity with which candidates and political parties defend certain positions. There are other theories that highlight the impact of economic conditions and how voters compare different election results in their electoral choices, which refers to economic voting in the strict sense of the term. What are the criteria for determining the individual usefulness of voters? The premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. There are also intermediate variables that relate to loyalties to a certain group or sense of belonging. The idea is that it is in circles of interpersonal relations even if more modern theories of opinion leaders look at actors outside the personal circle. For some, this model overestimates the capabilities that voters have. There are several reasons that the authors of these directional models cite to explain this choice of direction with intensity rather than a choice of proximity as proposed by Downs. The curve instead of the simple proximity model, or obviously the maximization from the parties' point of view of electoral support, lies in the precise proximity between voters' preferences and the parties' political programs on certain issues, in this case this remains true but with a lag that is determined by discounting from a given status quo. When you vote, you are taking your personal time and effort to advance the collective good, without any guarantee of personal rewardthe very heart of what it means to be altruistic. Prospective voting is based on election promises and retrospective voting is based on past performance. Voting is an instrument that serves us to achieve an objective. - What we're going to do in this video is start to think about voting behavior, and in particular, we're going to start classifying motivations for why someone votes for a particular candidate, and I'm going to introduce some terms that will impress your political science friends, but you'll see that they map two things that . Lazarsfeld's book created this research paradigm. The spatial theory of the vote postulates that the electoral choice is made in the maximization of individual utility. The psycho-sociological model, also known as the Michigan model, can be represented graphically or schematically. Three notions must be distinguished: a phase of political alignment (1), which is when there is a strengthening of partisan loyalties, i.e. The psycho-sociological model says that it is because this inking allows identification with a party which in turn influences political attitudes and therefore predispositions with regard to a given object, with regard to the candidate or the party, and this is what ultimately influences the vote. According to Merril and Grofman, one cannot determine whether one pure model is superior to another because there are methodological and data limitations. In both The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) and Voting (Berelson et al., 1954), the authors There are different types of individuals who take different kinds of shortcuts or not, who vote systematically or not, and so on. The ideological space can be defined as a left-right ideological space but can also be defined more precisely in relation to certain issues. They are both proximity choices and directional choices with intensity, since there are voters who may choose intensity and others who may choose direction. The second criticism is the lack of an adequate theory of preference formation. how does partisan identification develop? There is an opposite reasoning. 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. The specified . We want to know how and why a voter will vote for a certain party. This is more related to the retrospective vote. In short, it is an explanatory model that emphasizes the role of political attitudes. 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. 0000000016 00000 n The voters have to make that assessment and then decide which one brings more income and which one we will vote for. On the other hand, in rationalist approaches, shortcuts are cognitive shortcuts. In this model, importance is given to primary socialization. This is called the proximity model. xxxiii, 178. One must take into account the heterogeneity of the electorate and how different voters may have different motivations for choosing which party or candidate to vote for. It is an explanation that is completely outside the logic of proximity and the spatial logic of voting. There is also a literature on whether certain parties have certain issues, which voters believe are the parties that are better able to deal with a certain issue. is partisan identification one-dimensional? His conclusion is that the vote is explained both by elements of leadership, partly by an element of proximity and distance, but also, for some parties, it must also be taken into account that there are parties that act according to a mobilization of the electorate according to the approach of Przeworski and Sprague. As the authors of The American Voter put There has been a lot of criticism that has allowed the idea of issue voting to develop in a rationalist context and models. We often talk about economic theory of the vote in the broadest sense in order to designate a rationalist theory based on rational choice theory and spatial theories of the vote. It is a moment when social cleavages directly influence the vote in this approach and therefore the sociological model, perhaps, at that moment, better explains the vote. The psycho-sociological model is intended as a development that wants to respond to this criticism. Nevertheless, both models may be more or less correct. Partisan identification becomes stronger over time. The Logics of Electoral Politics. The idea is that a party is ready to lose an election in order to give itself the means to win it later by giving itself time to form an electorate. 0000006260 00000 n For Lazarsfeld, we think politically how we are socially, there is not really the idea of electoral choice. Three Models of Voting Behavior. Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. Hirschman contrasts the "exit" strategy with the "voice" strategy, which is based on what he calls "loyalty", which is that one can choose not to leave but to make the organization change, to restore the balance between one's own aspirations and what the organization can offer. A lawmaker's (stochastic) voting behavior is characterized by the relationship between her position in this space and the bill's position [1 . Ecological regression represents one extreme: the presumption that voting behavior changes systematically across groups but only changes randomly, if at all, within groups. The first question is how to assess the position of the different parties and candidates, since we start from the idea of projecting voters' political preferences and party projections onto a map. The system in the United States is bipartisan and the question asked was "Do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or otherwise? In a phase of alignment, this would be the psycho-sociological model, i.e. The extent to which the usefulness of voters' choices varies from candidate to candidate, but also from voter to voter. We worked with a sample of 516 Argentinean adults, aged 18 to 75. IVERSEN, T. (1994). 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. This is linked to a decrease in class voting and a loss of traditional cleavages. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. It can be defined as lasting feelings of attachment that individuals develop towards a certain party. Inking and the role of socialization cause individuals to form a certain partisan identification that produces certain types of political attitudes. There are a whole bunch of individual characteristics related to the fact that one is more of a systematic voter of something else. This is an alternative way which is another answer to the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates. We are not ignoring the psychological model, which focuses on the identification people have with parties without looking at the parties. So, we are going to the extremes precisely because we are trying to mobilize an electorate. Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. Political conditions as well as the influence of the media play an important role, all the more so nowadays as more and more political campaigns and the role of the media overlap. 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. 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. The law of curvilinear disparity takes up this distinction. The role of the centrality of partisan identification has been criticized, especially today, because partisan identification plays a role that is still important but much less important than it used to be and may be much less important than some researchers within this paradigm have postulated. 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. [10], The third model is called the economic model of the vote or the Rochester School of Economics, developed by Downs in the book An Economic Theory of Democracy published in 1957.[11]. In this way, parties can offer relatively extreme political platforms that are not optimal in the short term, but that generate higher levels of support in the medium and long term. One of the answers within spatial theories is based on this criticism that voters are not these cognitively strong beings as the original Downs theory presupposes. systematic voting, i.e. A symbol is evaluated on the basis of two parameters, namely direction (1), a symbol gives a certain direction in the policy and in addition a certain intensity (2) which is to what extent is one favourable or unfavourable to a certain policy. There are also external factors that also need to be considered, such as the actions of the government, for example, voters are influenced by what the government has done. There is a whole literature on opinion formation, quite consensually, that says that citizens have a limited capacity to process information. On the other hand, ideologically extreme voters try to influence party policies through party activism (voice). It is no longer a question of explaining "why" people participate but "how", that is, in terms of voter turnout, what choice is made and what can explain an electoral choice. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. Symbolic politics says that what is important in politics are not necessarily the rationally perceived positions or the political positions of the parties but what the political symbols evoke in relation to certain issues. Nowadays, the internet is the most used communication environment, and therefore it becomes very important to try to determine the behavior of users regarding internet use. Prospective voting says that the evaluation is based on what the parties and candidates are going to say. The third criterion is rationality, which is that based on the theory of rational choice, voters mobilize the limited means at their disposal to achieve their goals, so they will choose the alternative among the political offer that costs them the least and brings them the greatest possible benefit. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. There has also been the criticism of abstention as the result of rational calculation. It is possible to create a typology that distinguishes between four approaches crossing two important and crucial elements: "is voting spatial? There have been several phases of misalignment. That is what is called the proximity vote, that is, having a preference over a policy. European Journal of Political Research, 54(2), 197215. . Voters try to maximize the usefulness of the vote, that is, they try to vote for the party that makes them more satisfied. The theory of partisan competition was completely eliminated by the other types of explanations. The answer to this second question will allow us to differentiate between proximity models and directional models because these two subsets of the spatial theories of voting give diametrically opposite answers to this question. Models of Voting Behavior Models of Voting Behavior Dr. Bradley Best Asst. We must also, and above all, look at the links between types of factors. Voters try to maximize their individual utility. Another model is called the funnel model of causality which has been proposed by these authors working on the psycho-sociological model. 135150. So, voters evaluate the positions of the parties and from these positions, this party is a left-wing party and this party is a right-wing party. The organization is in crisis and no longer reflects our own needs. Merrill, Samuel, and Bernard Grofman. The Neighborhood Model. Then they evaluate their own position in relation to the issues and they do the same operation positioning themselves on this left-right axis. More specifically, the costs that the voter has to take into account according to the different parties and candidates must be evaluated, which is the partisan differential, i.e. The directional model also provides some answers to this criticism. Voters who rely on strong partisan identification do not need to go and do systematic voting or take one of the shortcuts. Of course, there have been attempts to assess the explanatory power of directional models, but according to these researchers, these spatial models were designed to be purely theoretical in order to highlight on a purely theoretical level what motivations voters may have for their electoral choice. Voting behavior is a form of electoral behavior. All of these factors and their relationships have to be taken into account, but at the centre is always the partisan attachment. 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