Elections advanced Flashcards
What is a psephologist?
A political scientist who focuses on elections and voting behaviour.
What is the difference between primacy and recency influences on voting behaviour?
Primacy factors are long term factors like age, ethnicity, gender etc. Recency factors are short-term influences like the actual election campaign, the manifestos, and party leaders.
What is the social structures model of voting behaviour?
The theory that our social groups, like age, ethnicity, gender, and region, have the biggest influence on voting behaviour.
What is socialisation?
The process through which we learn acceptable beliefs and behaviour from family and friends, which might lead us to learn to vote for the same party as our parents.
What are social classes?
Groups who share similar economic, social and cultural characteristics. Two of the most important factors determining your class are your occupation and income. Most simply, we can divide voters into upper, middle and working classes.
What is class alignment?
The term used when particular social classes predictably vote for a political party, for example, working class voters reliably voting for Labour, and middle class voters reliably voting for the Conservatives.
What is the partisan identification model?
A theory that argues that socialisation during childhood leads voters to develop a strong attachment to a particular party. Voters view their party as part of their identity, and loyally support them election after election.
What is partisan alignment?
The term used to describe the stable and consistent voting behaviour of voters who loyally support the same party from election to election, regardless of the changing short-term factors.
What is embourgeoisiement?
The term used to describe how the political views, and voting behaviour, of working class people can begin to change as they become more middle class as a result of changes in their employment and income.
How different is the voting behaviour of young and elderly voters?
Younger voters are more likely to support Labour and the Green Party, while older voters are more likely to vote Conservative and UKIP.
What is the North-South divide?
Labour has historically performed better in the north, which was home to important working class, unionised industries like mining and steel works, while the Conservatives had stronger support in many of the wealthier, rural constituencies in the South.
In elections, what is the difference between stability and volatility?
If an election is relatively stable, then most voters voted for the same party as at the last election, and few seats will change hands. An election is volatile if many voters change their minds and support a different party meaning the outcome is very different to the last election.
What is swing?
The movement of voters from one party to another party, calculated by averaging the % fall for one party, and the % rise of another party.
What is churn?
Where many voters vote for a different party, but this is masked by the fact that the overall results are still very similar, as parties gain and lose a similar number of voters.
What is the difference between a core and a swing/floating voter?
A core voter can be expected to loyally support the same party from election to election, where a floating voter is more open to influence from short-term factors.
