voting Flashcards
how have cleavages been solidified over time?
- 18th-19th century revolutions created national v reigonal elites
- 19th centruy democratic revolutions traditonale leives v democratic liberals
- indurstial revolutions 19th century wokring v upper classes
- 1920 s universal sufferage solidified calss cleavages
economic explaination for political preferences
- marx argues that indivdual political preferences are determined by relatioship to economy production
- weber argues it is determined by your relationship to economic consumption: there is a possibility for soial mobility therfore you rpreferences will change as you make more or less money
modern argument explanation of economics setting political preference
dahrendrof argues that growing economic fragmentation and more complex economic interests creates a middle class
- people vote based on their middle class interests
kitschell: preferences determined by type of jobs people do; those in people processing jobs have liberal values comapred to more conservatie alues of those who process data
what index is used to measure class voting?
afford index: finds the share of votes for major class based parteis and then how many people of what class voted for them:
% of working class voting of rleft win (-) number of middle classes voting for left wing party
examle of afrod index in 2010 elections
labour got 40% De vote and 27% pper class vote leaving theri afford index at 13%
example of declining class voting in the UK
in 1964 4/10 voters were either strong tory ot abour comared to 1/10 in 2005
causes of class dealigment:
- econmic growth and properity: anyone can make money now so peolpe vote based on thier moeny not class
2) exapnsion of hgigher education: social mobility and diferent intersts as well as developing a cognative society who vote based on logical decisosn rather than class identity
3) mass media
- replacement of party controlled newspapeers
- politicans using media to gain populatiyu like boris johnson on have i got news for you
4) expansion of the social sector
increased GDP by 4050% new social groups and new values and interests
what is valence voting?
voting by juding what the governemnt or partie spervios performance has looked like and what they have achived
people also look at the salient issues they have focused on and if these align with their views
who coined valence voting?
clarke
simplist defintion of valence voting
citizens vote for the governemnt if the economy is doing alright otherwise they vote against it
simplist defintion of valence voting
citizens vote for the governemnt if the economy is doing alright otherwise they vote against it
what are the different ways people judge governemnts on (miller and wattenburg)
1) temporal: retrospetive v prospective
how have they performed in the past v what have they promised to do in future
2) personal: egocentric or socio-tropic:
voting based on the personal beenfit v voting for the betterment of scoiety
3) performance v position
how has the gov perfromed on an issue that is importnat to an indivdual v perfomance on a whole
additional factors of cross country varitian in economic or perfomance voting
- clarity og repsonsbility of political system
- econmic openness and depednencae on other countreis eocnomies or export
has there been dealignment or realignment?
there has been class dealignment but some realigment:
voters no longer vote based on socio economic cleavages but increasingly on social and cultural issuesp
parties have then realigned themsleves dependig on what the majoirty of their voters want
ingelhart on post materialism
argues we are in a post material socety: people no longer vot for economic gain but for self expression of cultrual views so vote based on gender equality, civil liberties
this shift is a generational one
two dimentions of politics
due to the shift to post materialism politics now in most countreis has two dimentions:
1) party competition based on socio-economic polices making people rich
2) socio-cultrual dimention creating policies on immigration and inclusivity to win the younger gernations vote
what is issue voting on a macro level?
- increased importance of media for parties to set their agendas
- parties becoming more independent from thier old mass organisations
- party leaderhsip becoming more top down due to less memberhsip
- new issues that arent related to class sucha s the envrioment and immigration
what is issue voting on a micro level
- voters make decisons based on single issues (healthcare adn education) which may change election to election
- parteis judges on thier performance or position (clarke)
- has lead t increased crossing of cleavage lines
what are the consequences of valence voting
increased importance of issue voting a decreasd impotance of cleavage based voting. parteis still have to appela to their key voter based but also fit to issue oting to get as many votes as possible
what is the simplest model of issue voting
- voters have policity postitions they vote based on
- voters are aware of the parties position on these due to manifestos
- they then cmpare these parteis and choose the most applicable one
however issues arent usually this simple and a re mostly multidimentional and so this mdoel doesnt really capture all decision making processes
what is issue ownership?
petrotik:
- parties have a reputation about what polciies they are best at (tories economy and labour social welfare)
- voters choose who to vote for based on wat is needed in scoiety and which party owns thse issues
- issue ownership can shift and parteis cna claim new issues suchas. camerons vote blue go green campaign
what is the strategic inscentive
parties try to get their issues on te agenda to try an avoid issues other than ones own
what is the spatial model of politics when voting and issues
- voters have ‘single-peaked’ preferences on a range of policies.
- each voter has an ideal point of view on each issue. but it is unikely a party will have the same peak so they choose the closest party
- this is called expressive voting
what is tactical voting
when voting trying to influence the outcome of the election so the overall policy outcome is closest to their ideal policy
why do people vote tactically?
1) if people want o affect the outcome of local represenative
if the candiate yu want to win has no chance of winning you vote for the peron who is closest in ideas to that candiate and has a chance of winning so that some of your views are presented
2) if you want to affect the governemtn formation and national policy
- voting for a party who has a chance of being in the governemnt or coalition that will have poicies close to your peak but have more of a chance at gettin in than the party that best represents you
factors for not voting:
- social factors suchas age, education and occupation
- efficancy: perception that your vote doesnt matter and wont change anything
- lack of political knolwedge
- lack of ebelif that voting is a civic duty
- if both parties have similar policies then why vote if they dont represent you?
who coined issue ownership?
petrocik
