columbia model of voting behavior

The spatial theory of the vote postulates that the electoral choice is made in the maximization of individual utility. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. Finally, the results of this test are discussed and conclusions drawn. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 261(1), 194194. Several studies show that the impact of partisan identification varies greatly from one context to another. 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. The government is blamed for the poor state of the economy. 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. Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. it takes a political position that evokes the idea of symbolic politics in a more salient way. We talk about the electoral market in the media or the electoral supply. Contenu disponible en Franais Contenido disponible en espaol Contenuto disponibile in italiano, The distinction between the three main explanatory models of voting is often found. The idea of prospective voting is very demanding. 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. The directional model also provides some answers to this criticism. The economic model of the vote puts the notion of electoral choice back at the centre. 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. (1949). 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. 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. xref 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. Beginning in the late 1980s and early 1990s, there has been a strong development of directional models. We leave behind the idea of spatial theories that preferences are exogenous, that they are pre-existing and almost fixed. In both The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) and Voting (Berelson et al., 1954), the authors That discounting depends on where the policy is right now in relation to what the party is promising, and that is the directional element. Fiorina reverses the question, in fact, partisan identification can result from something else and it also produces electoral choices. the difference in the cost-benefit ratio that different parties give. The degree of political sophistication, political knowledge, interest in politics varies from voter to voter. There are several theories emphasizing different factors which may shape citizens' voting behavior. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. For Fiorina, the retrospective vote is the fact that current policy is fundamental, whereas in the prospective vote it is less so. The influence of friends refers to opinion leaders and circles of friends. For Lazarsfeld, we think politically how we are socially, there is not really the idea of electoral choice. The idea is to create a party that forges ideologies and partisan identities. New York: Columbia University Press, 1948. carried out by scholars at Columbia. Therefore, they cannot really situate where the different parties stand. Voters vote for the candidate or party closest to their own position which is the proximity model. 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. 65, no. However, we see that this is not always true and that there are parties that propose more extreme policies that receive considerable electoral support. 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. From that point on, there has been the development of a whole body of literature on political psychology. They are both proximity choices and directional choices with intensity, since there are voters who may choose intensity and others who may choose direction. This study presents an automated and accurate . Print. This is something that remains difficult in theory, we don't know how much the voter will discount. In other words, if we know the partisan identification of voters, we can make a prediction about what the normal vote will be, which is a vote that is not or should not be influenced by other situational factors in a given electorate. 0000003292 00000 n Even more plausibly, election campaigns are built around several issues. This model of directional proximity with intensity illustrates what is called symbolic politics which is related to the problem of information. It is the idea of when does one or the other of these different theories provide a better explanation according to periods of political alignment or misalignment. Directional model with intensity: Rabinowitz, Four possible answers to the question of how voters decide to vote, Unified Voting Model: Merrill and Grofman, Responses to criticisms of the proximity model, Partisan Competition Theory: Przeworski and Sprague, Relationship between voting explanatory models and realignment cycle. By Phone: (386) 758-1026 ext. 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. Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. 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. 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". 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. 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 is a whole literature on opinion formation, quite consensually, that says that citizens have a limited capacity to process information. We speak of cognitive preference between one's political preferences and the positions of the parties. It is in this sense that the party identification model provides an answer to this criticism that the sociological model does not highlight the mechanisms that make a certain social inking influence a certain electoral choice. 0000007057 00000 n In the sociological and psycho-sociological model, there was no place for ideology, that's another thing that counts, on the other hand, in economic theories, spatial theories and Downs' theory of the economic vote, ideology is important. The theoretical account of voting behavior drew heavily upon the metaphor of a 'funnel of causality'. Models of Voting Behavior Models of Voting Behavior Dr. Bradley Best Asst. Thus, voters find it easier to assess performance than declared plans during an election campaign. [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. 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. It can be defined as lasting feelings of attachment that individuals develop towards a certain party. 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. The idea is to see what are all the factors that explain the electoral choice. 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. . The sociological model obviously has a number of limitations like any voting model or any set of social science theories. 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. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan Education, 1987. The vote is seen here as an instrument, that is to say, there is the idea of an instrumental vote and not an expressive one. 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. 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. Voting is an instrument that serves us to achieve an objective. What is partisan identification? There are two variations. social determinism On the other hand, in rationalist approaches, shortcuts are cognitive shortcuts. The importance of symbolic politics is especially capitalized on by the intensity directional models. This is more related to the retrospective vote. offers a behavior analysis of voting behavior. how does partisan identification develop? 1.2 Psychology and behavior 9 1.3 Voting behavior and action 13 1.4 Strategies of explanation 14 1.5 Research questions and outline 16 2 The empirical analysis of voting action 19 2.1 Introduction 21 2.2 The Wrzburg school 21 2.3 Lazarsfeld and the empirical analysis of action 23 2.4 The Columbia approach to voting action 26 Has the partisan identification weakened? For some, this model overestimates the capabilities that voters have. Much of the work in electoral behaviour draws on this thinking. A distinction is often made between two types of voters and votes between the: There are these two types and a whole literature on the different types of euristics that can be set up. 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. 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. On the other hand, ideologically extreme voters try to influence party policies through party activism (voice). 0000000016 00000 n Personality traits and party identification over time. 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. In essence, those studies provided the core concepts and models used in contemporary voting research. voters who follow a systematic vote are voters who are willing to pay these information or information-related costs. Does partisan identification work outside the United States? In the study of electoral behaviour, there is a simple distinction between what is called prospective voting and retrospective voting. This article reviews the main theoretical models that explain the electoral behavior sociological model of voting behavior, psychosocial model of voting behavior and rational. In the spatial theories of the vote, we see the strategic link between a party's supply and a demand from voters or electors. 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. 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. 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. Then they evaluate their own position in relation to the issues and they do the same operation positioning themselves on this left-right axis. 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 voters have to make that assessment and then decide which one brings more income and which one we will vote for. 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. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. This is an alternative way which is another answer to the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates. Parties do not try to maximize the vote, but create images of society, forge identities, mobilize commitments for the future. That is what is called the proximity vote, that is, having a preference over a policy. On the basis of this, we can know. 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. There has been the whole emergence of the rational actor, which is the vote in relation to issues, which is not something that comes simply from our affective identification with a party, but there is a whole reflection that the voter makes in terms of cost-benefit calculations. The reference work is The People's Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. 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 premise of prospective voting is too demanding for most voters. The initial formulation of the model is based on the Downs theory in An Economic Theory of Democracy publi en 1957. In other words, they are voters who are not prepared to pay all these costs and therefore want to reduce or improve the cost-benefit ratio which is the basis of this electoral choice by reducing the costs and the benefit will remain unchanged. There are other cleavages that cut across Republicans and Democrats that should be taken into account to explain the pattern. 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. 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. Prospective voting says that the evaluation is based on what the parties and candidates are going to say. Otherwise, our usefulness as voters decreases as a party moves away, i.e. The psycho-sociological model, also known as the Michigan model, can be represented graphically or schematically. There are also studies that show that the more educated change less often from one party to another. Proximity means the closeness of the voter's interests to the political proposals that are made with the parties. This model relies heavily on the ability of voters to assess and calculate their own interests and all the costs associated with the action of going to the polls. 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. All parties that are in the same direction of the voter maximize the individual utility of that voter. For example, a strongly conservative voter who votes Democratic may vote Republican because he or she feels more in tune with the party. Voters calculate the cost of voting. 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.
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