Parties do not try to maximize the vote, but create images of society, forge identities, mobilize commitments for the future. The fit of a measurement model that differentiates between the various degrees of suicidal severity was verified. This model predicts a convergence of party program positions around two distinct positions, there are two types of convergence. Finally, some studies show that high levels of education lead to weaker attachments to parties. This is the idea of collective action, since our own contribution to an election or vote changes with the number of other citizens who vote. emotional ties between voters and parties; a phase of political misalignment (2), which may be the one we are currently in in Europe since the economic crisis, which is a weakening of partisan loyalties resulting in increased electoral volatility, i.e. 43 0 obj <> endobj There are several responses to criticisms of the proximity model. Maximizing utility is done in proximity to certain issues. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 261(1), 194194. There are other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. 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. We must also, and above all, look at the links between types of factors. It is a theory that makes it possible to explain both the voting behaviour of voters and the organisational behaviour of political parties. Some parties have short-term strategies for maximizing voting and others have long-term strategies for social mobilization. There are a whole bunch of individual characteristics related to the fact that one is more of a systematic voter of something else. Voters try to maximize their individual utility. 5. Psychology and Voting Behavior In the same years that behaviorism (of various forms) came to dominate the Voters try to maximize the usefulness of the vote, that is, they try to vote for the party that makes them more satisfied. 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. This is called the proximity model. The scientific study of voting behavior is marked by three major research schools: the sociological model, often identified as School of Columbia, with the main reference in Applied Bureau of Social Research of Columbia University, whose work begins with the publication of the book The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) 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. 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. These two proximity models are opposed to two other models that are called directional models with Matthews' simple directional model but especially Rabinowitz's directional model with intensity. 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. 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. Proximity models will give certain proximity related answers and the other more recent models offer an alternative answer based on certain criticisms. The idea of intensity can also be seen as the idea that there are certain issues, that there are certain political positions that put forward symbols and some of these symbols evoke making these two issues more visible to voters but in the sense of making voters say that this particular party is going in that direction and with a high intensity. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education, 1987. The intensity directional model adds an element that is related to the intensity with which candidates and political parties defend certain positions. 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. There are different strategies that are put in place by voters in a conscious or unconscious way to reduce these information costs, which are all the costs associated with the fact that in order to be able to evaluate the utility income given by one party rather than another, one has to go and see, listen, hear and understand what these parties are saying. It is necessary to distinguish between two types of voters and to make a distinction between a literature that has become increasingly important in recent years on opinion formation in an election or voting context. . 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. There are also studies that show that the more educated change less often from one party to another. The role of the media and campaigns simplifies information by summarizing it. The choice can be made according to different criteria, but they start from the assumption that there are these voters who arrive in an electoral process that refers to the idea of the hexogeneity of voters' preferences. 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 the basic motivation for the development of these directional models. The theory of partisan competition was completely eliminated by the other types of explanations. 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. 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. Within the ambit of such a more realistic, limited-rational model of human behavior, mitigation outcomes from . Grofman introduces a central element which is the position of the status quo which is not necessarily the neutral point but the current policy. There is this curvilinear disparity because the three actors position themselves differently. One must assess the value of one's own participation and also assess the number of other citizens who will vote. [14] They try to answer the question of how partisan identification is developing and how partisan identification has weakened because they look at the stability over time of partisan identification. There have been attempts to address this anomaly. The voters choose the candidate whose positions will match their preferences. 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. There are two important issues in relation to the spatial theory of voting. The presupposition is that voter preferences are not exogenous but are endogenous - they change within the framework of an electoral process. Although the models rely on the same data they make radically different predictions about the political future. A unified theory of voting: directional and proximity spatial models. In this case, there may be other factors that can contribute to the voter choice; and all parties that are on the other side of the neutral point minimize the voter's utility, so the voter will not vote for that party all other things being equal. Positioning on a left-right scale is related to this type of theory. What is interesting is that they try to relate this to personality traits such as being open, conscientious, extroverted, pleasant and neurotic. Numerous studies examine voting behavior based on the formal theoretical predictions of the spatial utility model. In Personality traits and party identification over time published in 2014 by Bakker, Hopmann and Persson, the authors attempt to explain partisan identification. 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. 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 other words, there is the idea of utility maximization which is a key concept in rational choice theory, so the voter wants to maximize his utility and his utility is calculated according to the ratio between the cost and the benefit that can be obtained from the action, in this case going to vote (1) and going to vote for that party rather than this one (2). It is possible to determine direction based on the "neutral point" which is the point in the middle, or it is also possible to determine direction from the "status quo". %%EOF The Neighborhood Model. 43 17 So there is this empirical anomaly where there is a theory that presupposes and tries to explain the electoral choices but also the positions of the parties in a logic of proximity to the centre of the political spectrum, but on the other hand there is the empirical observation that is the opposite and that sees parties and voters located elsewhere. Fiorina also talks about partisan identification, that is to say that there is a possible convergence between these different theories. There have been several phases of misalignment. We project voters' preferences and political positions, that is, the positions that parties have on certain issues and for the preferences that voters have on certain issues. This economic theory of the vote, this rationalist theory, has a great advantage over the other models, which is that it does not only focus on voters, that is to say, it does not only focus on political demand, but it also looks at supply and especially at the interaction between supply and demand. 0000005382 00000 n 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. They find that conscientious and neurotic people tend not to identify with a political party. Reinforcement over time since adult voters increasingly rely on this partisan identification to vote and to face the problems of information, namely partisan identification seen as a way of solving a problem that all voters have, which is how to form an idea and deal with the abundance and complexity of the information that comes to us from, for example, the media, political campaigns or others in relation to the political offer. In this representation, there are factors related to the cleavages, but also other factors that relate to the economic, political or social structure of a country being factors that are far removed from the electoral choice but that still exert an important effect in an indirect way the effect they have on other variables afterwards. Ideology is to be understood as a way of simplifying our world in relation to the problem of information. Is partisan identification one-dimensional? It rejects the notion that voting behavior is largely determined by class affiliation or class socialization. The premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. In summary, it can be said that in the economic model of voting, the political preferences of voters on different issues, are clearly perceived by the voters themselves which is the idea that the voter must assess his own interest, he must clearly perceive what are the political preferences of voters. In the psychological approach, the information problem is circumvented by the idea of the development of partisan identification, which is an emotional shortcut that voters operate. These criticisms and limitations are related to the original model. 59 0 obj <>stream 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. If we accept this premise, how will we position ourselves? the translation of personal preference into a voluntary action designed to influence public policy From the perspective of the issue vote, there are four main ways to explain how and why voters are going to vote a certain way and why parties are going to position themselves. 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. In Person: 971 W Duval St. Ste. There are also intermediate variables that relate to loyalties to a certain group or sense of belonging. 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. 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. Therefore, they cannot really situate where the different parties stand. Ideology is a means of predicting and inferring political positions during an election campaign. Some have criticized this model saying that it puts forward the one-dimensional image of the human being and politics, that is, that it is purely rational, hypercognitive in a way without taking into account sociological but also psychological elements. There has also been the criticism of abstention as the result of rational calculation. Psychological theories are based on a type of explanation that does not focus on the issues discussed during a political campaign, for example. 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. 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