Voting Behavior Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

Voting behavior is the primary determinant of political outcomes in democratic politics, and has been studied extensively in political science literature. It is considered not only an individual act but also a collective phenomenon, since it involves aggregating individual choices into an overall electoral result. The analysis of voting behavior focuses on decisions that include whether to vote or not, whom to vote for, and how to vote. Thus, voters need to consider whether it is worthwhile to vote based on the associated perceived costs and benefits, and their attitudes toward voting. The decision to vote for a specific candidate (or party) usually involves evaluation of candidates on the basis of voters’ preferences. Making this evaluation is complex and is influenced by factors such as voters’ socioeconomic characteristics and attitudes, candidates’ policies, as well as electoral institutions in a polity. Voters also need to deter mine whether to vote sincerely, by choosing their most preferred candidate, or strategically, by choosing a candidate who is more likely to win so that their vote is not wasted.

Social Cleavages

M. Lipset and S. Rokkan observed in the 1960s that once a social cleavage structure was established, it served as a frozen base for electoral competition and voting behavior. The main social cleavage studied in the literature is class, although scholars also acknowledge the influence of religion and gender-based cleavages on voting behavior. A prominent view in the literature is that voters vote for a party that naturally caters to their class interests. Thus, the working class, which favors redistribution of income, is expected to vote for leftist parties, while the middle class prefers voting for rightist parties. Opponents of this view argue that the importance of class on voting has diminished over the years, leading to class and partisan dealignment. Thus, due to growing affluence, the working class often has reasons to vote for a rightist government, and similarly, being often employed in the public sector, large sections of the middle class can “unnaturally” support leftist parties. Accordingly, it has been noted that the valence of issues, and not class, has become the principal determinant of voting behavior.

Scholars on the other side of the debate, however, contend that claims of declining social influence on voting behavior are overstated, and that class dealignment is a result of partisan dealignment rather than its cause. While research on the impact of gender on voting is relatively limited, studies have found evidence of a gender gap where women voters are more supportive of leftist parties than men in the United States and Scandinavian countries. The effect of religion on voting, though still relevant, has declined due to a general trend of secularization—especially in Europe—and affluence brought about by economic growth. Although the debate on the effect of social cleavages on voting behavior is sharply polarized, it is difficult to deny that these continue to be an important determinant of voting behavior in democratic elections.

Rational Choice Explanations

Anthony Downs’s rational voter model is an important theory of voting behavior, which finds an “instrumental” basis for voting. However, with instrumental costs of voting (i.e., time and resources) being higher than its instrumental benefits, and the probability of a single vote making a difference to the election outcome being very low, voting becomes an “irrational decision. «The reality is that voters do vote in large numbers, and this paradox is explained by rational choice theory by adding an experiential element to voting behavior. Accordingly, voting behavior is also affected by factors such as sense of duty; fear of social stigma for abstention; and general social, political, and moral satisfaction individuals derive from voting.

Spatial models of electoral competition predict voting behavior based on voters’ and candidates’ ideal points on a two-dimensional policy space. Downs’s proximity model predicts that voters vote for candidates whose “ideal point” is the closest to theirs, while George Rabinowitz and Stuart Elaine MacDonald’s directional model predicts that voters also consider candidate’s intensity on issues while evaluating candidates. Scholars have also developed mixed spatial models that combine elements of proximity and directional models to improve their predictive power regarding voting behavior and electoral competition. Thus, rational choice theories contribute to understanding incentives faced by voters while deciding to vote or abstain from voting. Furthermore, spatial models of electoral competition provide a framework to understand how voters evaluate candidates’ policy positions and choose their preferred candidates. This in turn influences the way parties compete in the electoral arena and frame their policy agenda.

Electoral Systems And Strategic Voting

In simple plurality elections, candidates’ ability to win drives voter expectations, which encourages strategic voting. However, as Gary Cox demonstrates, when the size of the voting district is small enough, voters in proportional representation (PR) systems, too, are concerned with the prospects of their preferred candidate being left out of the newly formed legislative body. Furthermore, in PR elections, if voters perceive certain coalitions as more likely to form than others, they might vote strategically for a party other than their most preferred one. Thus, strategic voting can happen both in plurality and PR-based electoral systems, which suggests that voters ultimately focus on the policy consequences of their behavior, and on which parties are likely to have influence on policy outcomes after the election.

Other Explanations

According to the resource model, resources such as time, money, and civic skills facilitate voters’ participation in elections. The mobilization model complements the resource model and focuses on how parties, interest groups, and candidates mobilize and influence people to vote. Voting behavior can be based on habit; that is, it depends on whether the individual voted in the previous election. Kevin Denny and Orla Doyle point out that persistence in voting behavior is also driven by characteristics such as gender or parental background— observed heterogeneity, unobserved characteristics such as personality traits, or an intrinsic motivation to vote. Authors who write on the topic of party identification (e.g., Morris Fiorna) argue that partisan preferences, based on socialization experience early in life, can lead to stability in voting behavior, although some argue this identification can change based on voters’ evaluation of parties’ performance. Access to information, including print and electronic media, also affects one’s propensity to vote and to support a certain party or candidate. There can also be contextual factors specific to country and election that influence voting behavior and this can cause voter turnout and nature of party competition to vary across countries and elections.

Conclusion

The study of voting behavior is an important subfield of political science, and scholars use many different approaches to analyze and explain what affects voting behavior. It is a complex process and has important consequences in terms of political representation and government formation in democratic politics. Voting behavior determines the level of political participation and voter turnout, and can lead to meaningful representation, depending on the extent to which the perceived positions of the parties actually reflect the true policy positions.

Bibliography:

Cox, Gary. Making Votes Count. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
Denny, Kevin, and Orla Doyle. “Does Voting History Matter? Analysing Persistence in Turnout.” American Journal of Political Science 53, no. 1 (2009.): 17–35.
Dowding, Keith M. “Is It Rational to Vote? Five Types of Answers and a Suggestion.” British Journal of Politics and International Relations 7, no. 3 (2005): 442–459.
Downs, Anthony. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper and Row, 1957.
Duverger, Maurice. Political Parties. New York: Wiley, 1955.
Fiorina, Morris P. Retrospective Voting in American National Elections. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981.
Lipset, S. M., and S. Rokkan. “Cleavage Structures, Party Systems, and Voter Alignments: An Introduction.” In Party Systems and Voter Alignments, edited by S. M. Lipset, 1–64. New York: Free Press, 1967.
Rabinowitz, George, and Stuart Elaine Macdonald. “A Directional Theory of Issue Voting.” American Political Science Review 83, no. 1 (1989): 93–121.
Riker, William H., and Peter C. Ordeshook. “A Theory of the Calculus of Voting.” American Political Science Review 62, no. 1 (1968): 25–42.
Verba, Sidney, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady. “Beyond SES: A Resource Model of Political Participation.” American Political Science Review 89, no. 2 (1995): 271–294.

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