On the other hand, the intensity directional model better explains the electoral choices of candidates who are not currently in power. The further a party moves in the other direction, the less likely the voter will choose it because the utility function gradually decreases. Another model is called the funnel model of causality which has been proposed by these authors working on the psycho-sociological model. We have to be careful, because when we talk about political psychology, we include that, but we also include the role of cognitions and rationality. There are several responses to criticisms of the proximity model. 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. 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 limitations are the explanation of partisan identification, which is that the model has been criticized because it explains or does not explain too much about where partisan identification comes from except to say that it is the result of primary socialization. it is an element of direction and not an element of distance or proximity that counts. 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. What is interesting is that they try to relate this to personality traits such as being open, conscientious, extroverted, pleasant and neurotic. Fiorina reverses the question, in fact, partisan identification can result from something else and it also produces electoral choices. Many researchers have criticised the Downs proximity model in particular. On the other hand, preferences for candidates in power are best explained by the proximity model and the simple directional model. Parties do not try to maximize the vote, but create images of society, forge identities, mobilize commitments for the future. The idea is that the extremist attitudes of those former voters who become party activists push strategic positioning in a direction that takes them away from their constituents. 0000008661 00000 n Ideal point models assume that lawmakers and bills are represented as 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. For the sociological model we have talked about the index of political predisposition with the variables of socioeconomic, religious and spatial status. 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. There is a small degree of complexity because one can distinguish between attitudes towards the candidate or the party, attitudes towards the policies implemented by the different parties and attitudes about the benefits that one's own group may receive from voting for one party rather than another. This is an alternative way which is another answer to the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates. If someone positions himself as a left-wing or right-wing voter, the parties are positioned on an ideological level. The initial formation of this model was very deterministic in wanting to focus on the role of social inclusion while neglecting other aspects, even though today there is increasingly a kind of ecumenical attempt to have an explanation that takes into account different aspects. The idea is to see what are all the factors that explain the electoral choice. Has the partisan identification weakened? 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. It is multidimensional also in the bipartisan context of the United States because there are cleavages that cut across parties. Finally, there is an instrumental approach to information and voting. What interests us is that the idea of issue voting is fundamental to spatial theories of voting. Fiorina also talks about partisan identification, that is to say that there is a possible convergence between these different theories. 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. 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. Voters will vote for a party but that party is not necessarily the one with which they identify. There are a whole bunch of individual characteristics related to the fact that one is more of a systematic voter of something else. The political consciousness of individuals is based on social experiences and has little weight outside these experiences. 0000001124 00000 n The utility function of the simple proximity model appears, i.e. A rather subjective and almost sentimental citizen is placed at the centre of the analysis. Here, preferences are endogenous and they can change. There has also been the criticism of abstention as the result of rational calculation. 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. Print. changes in voting behaviour from one election to the next. In the study of electoral behaviour, there is a simple distinction between what is called prospective voting and retrospective voting. The basic assumption is that voters decide primarily on the basis of ideologies and not on the basis of specific positions on issues. Prospective voting is the one that has been postulated by Downs and by all other researchers who work in proximity models but also in two-way models. Moreover, retrospective voting can also be seen as a shortcut. 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. This theory presupposed that the voter recognizes his or her own interest, assesses alternative candidates, and on the basis of this assessment, will choose for the candidate or party that will be most favourably assessed in the sense of best serving his or her own political interests and interests. These three models diverge in methodology and application of research, but each has provided important data regarding the factors that influence voter choice. Gelman, A, Hill, J (2007) Data Analysis using Regression and Multilevel Hierarchical Models. We see the kinship of this model with the sociological model explaining that often they are put together. WebA strong supporter of a party usually votes a straight party ticket. 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. 0000000016 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. Ideology is a means of predicting and inferring political positions during an election campaign. 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. 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 basic assumptions of the economic model of the vote are threefold: selfishness, which is the fact that voters act according to their individual interests and not according to their sense of belonging to a group or their attachment to a party. There are different strategies that are studied in the literature. The first one Is what we call the sociological model that was presented in the 1940s by a group of scholars from Columbia. WebVoting Behavior. Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. On the other hand, in rationalist approaches, shortcuts are cognitive shortcuts. It was this model that proposed that abstention can be the result of a purely rational calculation. 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. The relationship between partisan identification and voting is that the model postulates that partisan identification is the explanatory variable and that voting for the electoral choice is the explained variable. The psychological and socio-economic model are strongly opposed, offering two explanations that are difficult to reconcile, even though there have been efforts to try to combine them. In other words, they propose something quite ecumenical that combines directional and proximity models. it is easier to change parties from one election to the next; a phase of realignment (3), which consists of creating new partisan loyalties. 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. This refers to the Michigan model, the psycho-sociological model. Some parties have short-term strategies for maximizing voting and others have long-term strategies for social mobilization. The Logics of Electoral Politics. There are two variations. It is by this configuration that May tries to explain this anomaly which is due to the fact that there is a group of voters who become activists within the party and who succeed in shifting the party's positioning towards the extremes. [8][9], The second very important model is the psycho-sociological model, also known as the partisan identification model or Michigan School model, developed by Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes in Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes, among others in The American Voter published in 1960. A distinction can be made between the simple proximity model, which is the Downs model, and the proximity model with Grofman discounting. Voters vote for the candidate or party closest to their own position which is the proximity model. We end up with a configuration where there is an electorate that is at the centre, there are party activists who are exercising the "voice" and who have access to the extreme, and there are party leaderships that are in between. The economic model has put the rational and free citizen back at the centre of attention and reflection, whereas if we push the sociological model a bit to the extreme, it puts in second place this freedom and this free will that voters can make since the psycho-sociological model tells us that voting is determined by social position, it is not really an electoral choice that we make in the end but it is simply the result of our social insertion or our attachment to a party. According to Merril and Grofman, one cannot determine whether one pure model is superior to another because there are methodological and data limitations. On the other hand, this is true for the directional model; they manage to perceive a policy direction. Today, in the literature, we talk about the economic vote in a narrower and slightly different sense, namely that the electoral choice is strongly determined by the economic situation and by the policies that the government puts in place in particular to deal with situations of economic difficulty. Mitt Romney's gonna lower their taxes, so they're gonna vote for them, and to be clear, it's not that everyone's behavior The individual is subjectivity at the centre of the analysis. Yes, voted; no. We are not ignoring the psychological model, which focuses on the identification people have with parties without looking at the parties. Lazarsfeld was interested in this and simply, empirically, he found that these other factors had less explanatory weight than the factors related to political predisposition and therefore to this social inking. We can talk about two major theories or two major models or even three models. Misalignment creates greater electoral volatility that creates a change in the party system that can have a feedback on the process of alignment, misalignment or realignment. Expectedly, in their function It rejects the notion that voting behavior is largely determined by class affiliation or class socialization. The main explanatory factors have been sought in socio-economic status and socio-demographic variables such as "age," "gender," and "education. 0000000929 00000 n The sociological model is somewhat the model that wants to emphasize this aspect. By Jill Suttie November 5, 2018 Mindfulness Research element5/Unsplash Read More Focus Why We Talk to Ourselves: The Science of Your Internal Monologue 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. In this model, importance is given to primary socialization. Moreover, there are analogies that are made even explicitly with the idea of the market. In other words, when we are interested in trying to explain the vote, we must already know what type of voter we are talking about. In the Michigan model, the idea of stakes was already present but was somewhat underdeveloped, and this perspective on the role of stakes in the psychosocial model lent itself to both theoretical and empirical criticism from proponents of rationalist models. The economic model makes predictions and tries to explain both the participation but also, and above all, the direction of the vote, which is the electoral choice. it takes a political position that evokes the idea of symbolic politics in a more salient way. There is an opposite reasoning. It's believed that the social class was the most accurate indicator of likely voting intention Often identified as School of Columbia, it focuses on the influences of social factors and voting. About a quarter of the electorate votes in this way. Downs, Anthony. In other words, in this retrospective assessment, the economic situation of the country plays a crucial role. 0000001213 00000 n The distance must be assessed on the basis of what the current policy is. Its weak explanatory power has been criticized, and these are much more recent criticisms in the sense that we saw when we talked about class voting in particular, which from then on saw the emergence of a whole series of critics who said that all these variables of social position and anchoring in social contexts may have been explanatory of participation and voting at the time these theories emerged in the 1950s, but this may be much less true today in a phase or period of political misalignment. Three elements should be noted. 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. 0000006260 00000 n The extent to which the usefulness of voters' choices varies from candidate to candidate, but also from voter to voter. 0000010337 00000 n It is a rather descriptive model, at least in its early stages. 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. These are possible answers more to justify and account for this anomaly. The model integrates several schools of thought that have tried to explain voter behavior; it is tested by predicting the behavior of respondents based on the model, and then validating the results with the actual behavior of the respondents. If that is true, then if there are two parties that are equally close to our preferences, then we cannot decide. In prospective voting, Grofman said that the position of current policy is also important because the prospective assessment that one can make as a voter of the parties' political platforms also depends on current policy. It is a small bridge between different explanations. 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. This is a very common and shared notion. Even more plausibly, election campaigns are built around several issues. The presupposition for spatial theories of voting has already been mentioned, namely the stake vote. All of these factors and their relationships have to be taken into account, but at the centre is always the partisan attachment. What determines direction? maximum proximity, as the party, his or her utility increases, and when the voter moves away from the party, his or her utility decreases. 43 0 obj <> endobj One can draw a kind of parallel with a loss of importance of the strength of partisan identification and also of the explanatory power of partisan identification. There may be one that is at the centre, but there are also others that are discussed. Finally, in a phase of misalignment, this would be the economic model, since there is a loss of these partisan loyalties, so these voters become more and more reactive to political events and therefore may be more rational in their decision-making process. In other words, there is a social type variable, a cultural type variable and a spatial type variable. Model ; they manage to perceive a policy direction about a quarter of the country plays a crucial.... 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