There are three possible answers: May's Law of Curvilinear Disparity is an answer that tries to stay within the logic of the proximity model and to account for this empirical anomaly, but with the idea that it is distance and proximity that count. 135150. Grofman introduces a central element which is the position of the status quo which is not necessarily the neutral point but the current policy. 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. Elections and voters: a comparative introduction. Prospective voting says that voters will listen to what candidates and parties have to say. [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]. 0000004336 00000 n Pp. The premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. Nevertheless, both models may be more or less correct. the translation of personal preference into a voluntary action designed to influence public policy Fiorina proposed the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates: how can voters know what the position of different parties is during an election campaign? The choice of candidates is made both according to direction but also according to the intensity of positions on a given issue. The system in the United States is bipartisan and the question asked was "Do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or otherwise? 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. This table shows that for quite some time now there has been a strong decline in partisan identification. The cause-and-effect relationship is reversed, according to some who argue that this is a problem at the empirical level when we want to study the effect of partisan identification on electoral choice because there is a problem of endogeneity; we no longer know what explains what. What voters perceive are directional signals, that is, voters perceive that some parties are going in one direction and other parties are going in another direction on certain issues. If we take into account Przeworski and Sprague's idea that there can be a mobilization of the electorate in a logic of endogenous preference and non-maximization of the utility of voters. The second criticism is the lack of an adequate theory of preference formation. Sometimes, indeed often, people combine the first two models incorporating the psycho-sociological model on the basis that the Michigan model is just an extension of the Columbia model that helps explain some things that the Columbia model cannot explain. In Person: 971 W Duval St. Ste. An important factor is the role of political campaigns in influencing the vote. The Peoples Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign. Therefore, they cannot really situate where the different parties stand. There are three actors at play in this theory: there are voters, candidates, and an intermediate group represented by activists who are in fact voters who become activists going to exercise "voice". 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. Iversena proposed a way of classifying the different explanatory theories of voting that allow to add a very important element that has been neglected until now. This idea of an issue was not invented by the proponents of the economic model of voting but was already present in the psycho-sociological model. Merrill and Grofman have proposed unified models that want to get out of this hyper-simplification with respect to spatial theories where one either makes a choice of possibilities or a choice of direction but evacuates any other element such as partisan identification, socialization, social inclusion, economic conditions as well as the role of opinion leaders as seen in the funnel model of Michigan theory. This is the proximity model. An Economic Theory of Political Action in a Democracy. Journal of Political Economy, vol. 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 model of voting behavior sees the voter as thinking individual who is able to take a view on political issues and votes accordingly. We worked with a sample of 516 Argentinean adults, aged 18 to 75. There is a whole branch of the electoral literature that emphasizes government action as an essential factor in explaining the vote, and there is a contrast between a prospective vote, which is voting according to what the parties say they will do during the election campaign, and a retrospective vote, which is voting in relation to what has been done, particularly by the government, which has attributed the successes or failures of a policy. 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. 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. As this is the first model that wanted to study empirically and test hypotheses on the basis of survey data, it was necessary to develop conceptual tools, in particular the political predisposition index, which focuses on three types of social affiliations that are fundamental in this perspective to explain electoral choices, namely social status, religion and place of residence. 43 17 Parties do not try to maximize the vote, but create images of society, forge identities, mobilize commitments for the future. 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 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. Does partisan identification work outside the United States? Merrill, Samuel, and Bernard Grofman. Maximizing utility is done in proximity to certain issues. The second question is according to which criteria to determine the individual utility of voters. 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. Bakker, B. N., Hopmann, D. N., & Persson, M. (2014). If certain conditions are present, such as good democratic functioning within the party, activists will have the opportunity to exercise "voice" and influence positions. 0000007057 00000 n There have been several phases of misalignment. Today, there is an attempt to combine the different explanations trying to take into account, both sociological determinants but also the emotional and affective component as well as the component related to choice and calculation. The idea of the directional model, and this applies to both the simple directional model and the intensity directional model, is that voters basically cannot clearly perceive the different positions of political parties or candidates on a specific issue. This paper examines two models used in survey research to explain voting behavior and finds that both models may be more or less correct. 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. The importance of symbolic politics is especially capitalized on by the intensity directional models. We leave behind the idea of spatial theories that preferences are exogenous, that they are pre-existing and almost fixed. What are the criteria for determining the individual usefulness of voters? The presupposition for spatial theories of voting has already been mentioned, namely the stake vote. One must assess the value of one's own participation and also assess the number of other citizens who will vote. One possible strategy to reduce costs is to base oneself on ideology. In the spatial theories of the vote, we see the strategic link between a party's supply and a demand from voters or electors. The utility function of the simple proximity model appears, i.e. does partisan identification work outside the United States? 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. If we take into account Przeworski and Sprague's idea that preferences are exogenous and not endogenous, it is possible to create a typology as Iversen did. 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. 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. But there are studies that also show that the causal relationship goes in the other direction. According to Fiorina, identification with a party is not necessarily the result of a long phase of socialization, but it is also the result of evaluations of a certain party, it is the fact of voting for that party that makes it possible to develop a partisan identification. 0000001124 00000 n While in the United States, several studies have shown that partisan identification is an important explanatory power on electoral choice, in other contexts this is less true. The psycho-sociological model, also known as the Michigan model, can be represented graphically or schematically. Many researchers have criticised the Downs proximity model in particular. According to them, it is necessary to combine different types of explanations and in particular, in the electoral choice, the components related to proximity, leadership, and also the rather "intensity" leadership, all of which play a significant role in the positioning of candidates and parties. What is partisan identification? With regard to the question of how partisan identification develops, the psycho-sociological model emphasizes the role of the family and thus of primary socialization, but several critics have shown that secondary socialization also plays a role. 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. Candidate choices are made towards parties or candidates who are going in the same direction as the voter, this being understood as the voters' political preferences on a given issue. All of these factors and their relationships have to be taken into account, but at the centre is always the partisan attachment. In their view, ideology is a means of predicting political positions on a significant number of issues and also a basis for credible and consistent engagement by the party or candidate that follows it. In other words, there is a social type variable, a cultural type variable and a spatial type variable. They are voters who make the effort to inform themselves, to look at the proposals of the different parties and try to evaluate the different political offers. Ecological regression represents one extreme: the presumption that voting behavior changes systematically across groups but only changes randomly, if at all, within groups. Others have criticized this analogy between the economic market and the political market as being a bit simplistic, saying that, basically, the consequences of buying a consumer product have a certain number of consequences, but they are much more limited compared to what buying a vote can have in terms of choosing a party. Studies have shown that, for example, outside the United States, a much larger proportion of voters who change their vote also change their partisan identification. Curiously, the intensity directional model that adds an element to the simple directional model chronologically precedes the simple directional model. The idea is that this table is the Downs-Hirschman model that would have been made in order to summarize the different responses to the anomaly we have been talking about. _____ were the first widespread barriers to the franchise to be eliminated. McClung Lee, A. This article reviews the main theoretical models that explain the electoral behavior sociological model of voting behavior, psychosocial model of voting behavior and rational choice theory , stressing the continuity and theoretical complementarity between them. Thus, voters will vote for candidates who are in the direction (1) and who are going in that direction in the most intense way (2), that is, who propose policies going in that direction in the strongest and most intense way. %%EOF 0000002253 00000 n Voters who vote against the party with which they identify keep their partisan identification. Four questions can be asked in relation to this measure: For the first question, there are several studies on the fact that partisan identification is multi-dimensional and not just one-dimensional. In both The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) and Voting (Berelson et al., 1954), the authors A corollary to this theory is that voters react more to the government than to the opposition because performance is evaluated and a certain state of the economy, for example, can be attributed to the performance of a government. In Personality traits and party identification over time published in 2014 by Bakker, Hopmann and Persson, the authors attempt to explain partisan identification. Thus, voters find it easier to assess performance than declared plans during an election campaign. Today, when we see regression analyses of electoral choice, we will always find among the control variables social status variables, a religion variable and a variable related to place of residence. 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 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. 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. The reference work is The Peoples Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. Voters try to maximize their individual utility. From this point of view, parties adopt political positions that maximize their electoral support, what Downs calls the median voters and the idea that parties would maximize their electoral support around the center of the political spectrum. The Lazarsfeld model would link membership and voting. 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. 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. There is the important opposition between an economic vote based on a choice, which is the idea that the voter makes a real choice based on a cost-benefit calculation, a choice that is rational in the end according to Weber's typology, while the psycho-sociological vote is rather based on a concept of loyalty that often makes the opposition between choice and loyalty. Linked to this, it is important to look at individual data empirically as well. The first answer is that basically, they vote according to their position, according to their social characteristics or according to their socialization, which refers to the sociological model. 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. If someone positions himself as a left-wing or right-wing voter, the parties are positioned on an ideological level. What determines direction? Another possible strategy is to rely on the judgment of others such as opinion leaders. 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, . Downs already put ideology at the centre of his explanation. Numerous studies examine voting behavior based on the formal theoretical predictions of the spatial utility model. 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. 0000009473 00000 n maximum proximity, as the party, his or her utility increases, and when the voter moves away from the party, his or her utility decreases. Psychological theories are based on a type of explanation that does not focus on the issues discussed during a political campaign, for example. In other words, the homing tendency that is the explanation that the model postulates is much less true outside the United States. The idea is that there is something easier to evaluate which is the ideology of a party and that it is on the basis of this that the choice will be made. Radical approach regards class-based (structural) model as outdated and insufficient to explain . On the basis of this, we can know. In other words, in this retrospective assessment, the economic situation of the country plays a crucial role. 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. Proximity can be calculated on the basis of the programmes and actual positions declared by the parties or on the basis of a discount factor, a perception factor or a difference factor according to the discount model. 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. Voters are more interested in political results than in political programmes, and the choice is also made from this perspective. This is a very common and shared notion. This ensures congruence and proximity between the party and the electorate. There may be one that is at the centre, but there are also others that are discussed. In other words, a directional element is introduced into the proximity model. There are different types of individuals who take different kinds of shortcuts or not, who vote systematically or not, and so on. We are not ignoring the psychological model, which focuses on the identification people have with parties without looking at the parties. The theoretical criticism consists in saying that in this psychosocial approach or in this vision that the psychosocial model has of the role of political issues, the evaluation of these issues is determined by political attitudes and partisan identification. %PDF-1.3 % We need to find identification measures adapted to the European context, which the researchers have done. 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. 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. The spatial theory of the vote postulates that the electoral choice is made in the maximization of individual utility. These are voters who proceed by systematic voting. It is easier to look at what someone has done than to evaluate the promises they made. 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. 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. We talk about the electoral market in the media or the electoral supply. It has often been emphasized that this model and approach raises more questions than answers. These are some of the criticisms and limitations often made by proponents of other approaches. 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. Four questions around partisan identification. By Phone: (386) 758-1026 ext. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. Distance must be taken into account and the idea of mobilizing the electorate must be taken into account. The strategic choices made by parties can also be explained by this model since, since this model postulates an interdependence between supply and demand, we address the demand but we can also address the supply. The main explanatory factors have been sought in socio-economic status and socio-demographic variables such as "age," "gender," and "education. There is a direct link between social position and voting. The concept of electoral choice does not belong to the sociological model but rather to rationalist theories. This is central to spatial theories of voting, that is, voters vote or will vote for the candidate or party that is closest to their own positions. - 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 . As the authors of The American Voter put There may be a vote that is different from partisan identification, but in the medium to long term, partisan identification should strengthen.