The organization is in crisis and no longer reflects our own needs. Voters calculate the cost of voting. We must also, and above all, look at the links between types of factors. 0000002253 00000 n 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, . There are several theories emphasizing different factors which may shape citizens' voting behavior. For Fiorina, the retrospective vote is the fact that current policy is fundamental, whereas in the prospective vote it is less so. The Lazarsfeld model would link membership and voting. Voters will vote for a party but that party is not necessarily the one with which they identify. By Web: Vote-By-Mail Web Request. 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. Radical approach regards class-based (structural) model as outdated and insufficient to explain . Video transcript. Numerous studies examine voting behavior based on the formal theoretical predictions of the spatial utility model. 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 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". 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. From that point on, there has been the development of a whole body of literature on political psychology. 0000007835 00000 n There is a particular requirement, which is that this way of explaining the voting behaviour of the electoral choice is very demanding in terms of the knowledge that voters may have about different positions, especially in a context where there are several parties and where the context of the political system and in particular the electoral system must be taken into account, because it may be easier for voters to know their positions when there are two parties, two candidates, than when there are, as in the Swiss context, many parties running. 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. The ideological space can be defined as a left-right ideological space but can also be defined more precisely in relation to certain issues. Some people talk about membership voting for the first two theories and cognitive voting for the economic model of voting. Voters vote for the candidate or party closest to their own position which is the proximity model. HUr0c:*+ $ifrh b98ih+I?v1q7q>. 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. A symbol is evaluated on the basis of two parameters, namely direction (1), a symbol gives a certain direction in the policy and in addition a certain intensity (2) which is to what extent is one favourable or unfavourable to a certain policy. This model leaves little room for the ideology which is the idea that by putting so much emphasis on the emotional voter and feelings, it leaves little room for the ideology that is central to explaining the economic model of the 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. 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. This is more related to the retrospective vote. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 59 0 obj <>stream There has been a lot of criticism that has allowed the idea of issue voting to develop in a rationalist context and models. 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 starting point is that there is a congruence of attitudes between party leaders and voters due to the possibility of exit for voters when the party no longer represents them (exit). 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. Of course, there have been attempts to assess the explanatory power of directional models, but according to these researchers, these spatial models were designed to be purely theoretical in order to highlight on a purely theoretical level what motivations voters may have for their electoral choice. For many, voting is a civic duty. Four landmark studies connected with the presidential elections of 1940, 1948, 1952, and 1956 mark the establishment of scholarly survey-based research on voting behavior (Rossi 1959). It can be defined as lasting feelings of attachment that individuals develop towards a certain party. Merrill, Samuel, and Bernard Grofman. Downs already put ideology at the centre of his explanation. Here, preferences are endogenous and they can change. 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. 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 heterogeneity of the electorate and voters must be taken into account. The system in the United States is bipartisan and the question asked was "Do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or otherwise? The concept of electoral choice does not belong to the sociological model but rather to rationalist theories. xref The initial research saw three major factors to voting behaviour: Personal identification with one of the political parties, concern with issues of national government policy and personal attraction to the presidential candidates. The term "group" can mean different things, which can be an ethnic group or a social class. The reference work is The Peoples Choice published in 1948 by Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet. 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. What we see here in relation to the sociological model and that these variables highlighted by the sociological model such as socialization, inking or social position play a role but only indirectly. There is a kind of heterogeneity of voters. 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. 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. The sociological model is somewhat the model that wants to emphasize this aspect. A lawmaker's (stochastic) voting behavior is characterized by the relationship between her position in this space and the bill's position [1 . On the other hand, in rationalist approaches, shortcuts are cognitive shortcuts. Voting behavior is a form of electoral behavior. On the other hand, the focus is on the political goals of the voters, whereas the psychological model puts a little more emphasis on the social use of the vote. Thus, voters find it easier to assess performance than declared plans during an election campaign. The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 261(1), 194194. . startxref Thus, the interpretation of differences in voting behaviour from one group to another is to be sought in the position of the group in society and in the way its relations with parties have developed. Ideology is a means of predicting and inferring political positions during an election campaign. 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. In this approach, these voters keep their partisan identification and again in the medium or long term, they will go back on the electoral choice that is identified with the partisan identification, also called the homing tendency, which is a tendency to go back on the party with which one identifies. There are other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. Voters are more interested in political results than in political programmes, and the choice is also made from this perspective. 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. 0000001213 00000 n In directional models with intensity, there are models that try to show how the salience of different issues changes from one group to another, from one social group to another, or from one candidate and one party to another. 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. We can talk about two major theories or two major models or even three models. Symbols evoke emotions. Ideology can also be in relation to another dimension, for example between egalitarian and libertarian ideology. Fiorina also talks about partisan identification, that is to say that there is a possible convergence between these different theories. Fiorina proposed an alternative way to explain why voters vote for one party rather than another, or a different answer to how the position of different candidate parties can be assessed. So all these elements help to explain the vote and must be taken into account in order to explain the vote. 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. party loyalties are freed from their social base and thus these party identifications are formed and crystallized. 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. (1949). This identification with a party is inherited from the family emphasizing the role of primary socialization, it is reinforced over time including a reinforcement that is given by the very fact of voting for that party. It is a small bridge between different explanations. Voting requires voters to know the candidates' positions on issues, but when there are several candidates or several parties, it is not very easy for some voters in particular. The idea is to see what are all the factors that explain the electoral choice. At the aggregate level, the distribution of partisan identification in the electorate makes it possible to calculate the normal vote. Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. If we look at it a little more broadly, partisan identification can be seen as a kind of shortcut. The law of curvilinear disparity takes up this distinction. Today, this may be less true, but until a certain point, there were relatively few empirical analyses based on the economic model of the vote. Hirschman wanted to explain what happens in organizations when they enter a situation of crisis or decline. 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. Pages pour les contributeurs dconnects en savoir plus. The sociological model at the theoretical level emphasizes something important that rationalist and economic theories have largely overlooked, namely, the importance of the role of social context, i.e., voters are all in social contexts and therefore not only family context but also a whole host of other social contexts. Most voters have a sense of allegiance to a party that is inherited through the family. Prospective voting says that voters will listen to what candidates and parties have to say. For example, a strongly conservative voter who votes Democratic may vote Republican because he or she feels more in tune with the party. Another model is called the funnel model of causality which has been proposed by these authors working on the psycho-sociological model. Information is central to spatial theories, whereas in the psycho-sociological model, information is much less important. On the basis of this, we can know. Four questions around partisan identification. This is called the proximity model. 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. offers a behavior analysis of voting behavior. These authors have tried to say that the different explanatory theories of the vote can be more or less explanatory in the sense of having more or less importance of explanatory power depending on the phases in which one is in a process of alignment and misalignment. 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. models of voting behavior -the columbia school (1940s) -the Michigan school (1950s) the columbia school -1940s -social determinism -voter brand loyalty (party id) -selective perception/projection -minimal campaign effect -cross-pressures -high interest+low partisanship are rare minimal campaign effect . The Michigan model was based on the idea of socialization and partisan identification as a long-term attachment to a party that is the result of primary socialization in particular, and therefore as insertion into a given social context. Another strategy is the so-called "shortcut" that voters take within the rationalist framework of voting, since they are confronted with the problem of information and have to choose on the basis of this information. 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 Peoples Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) and Numerous studies have found that voting behavior and political acts can be "contagious . The advantage of the intensity directional model is that it goes in a more intense direction, i.e. 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. The influence of friends refers to opinion leaders and circles of friends. Among these bridges, one of the first bridges between the psycho-sociological voting theory and the rationalist theories was made by Fiorina because he considers partisan identification to be an important element in explaining electoral choice. The psycho-sociological model says that it is because this inking allows identification with a party which in turn influences political attitudes and therefore predispositions with regard to a given object, with regard to the candidate or the party, and this is what ultimately influences the vote. There are different strategies that are studied in the literature. Hinich and Munger take up the Downs idea but turn it around a bit. This is linked to a decrease in class voting and a loss of traditional cleavages. We are looking at the interaction. 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. To summarize these approaches, there are four possible answers to the question of how voters decide to vote. Moreover, retrospective voting can also be seen as a shortcut. 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