Week 10: Elections and Voting Behaviour Flashcards
Vote Turnout Over Time
Vote turnout started to decline in the 1980s
Lower at the province level, and far lower for municipal elections
Vote Turnout in a Comparative Context
Canada, compared to other democracies, has middling levels of voter turnout
Paradox of voting: is it rational to vote?
Helpful to explain voter turnout along the lines of costs and benefits
Any individual or contextual factor that has an influence on the benefits people receive from voter will affect their likelihood to vote
The same can be said for influences on relative costs
Individual level factors
Those that explain variations between individuals in their turnout
- Demographics
- Socio-economic status
- Efficacy
-Political interest
The dominant predictors of an individual’s propensity to
vote are their demographics and socioeconomic status
- Older voters= higher turnout
- Whites = higher turnout
- Wealthier citizens = higher turnout
- More educated = higher turnout
One big caveat. Young people are just as likely to engage in other forms of political participation like:
- Signing a petition
- Contacting a politician
- Attending a protest
They are also more likely to express themselves politically in online spaces
Efficacy:
Internal efficacy: belief that one has the capacity to meaningfully participate in the political system
External efficacy: belief that the political system is responsive to people like oneself
Political Interest
Interest causes more participation
Why? Social-psychological benefits (esteem, belonging), lower cognitive costs
Age gap is explained in large part by a lack of political interest among younger generations and their lower SES status
Context-level Factors
Context level factors explain why average turnout may vary across countries, provinces, or ridings
Examples:
Electoral systems
Polling station wait times/ distances
Voting restrictions
Voter registration
Time varying factors
Some factors may vary over time in ways that have led to declining turnout
Examples: generation change and norms
Declining efficacy and institutional trust
Declining social trust and volunteerism
Electoral competitiveness
HOW VOTERS DECIDE
Funnel of Causality
Demographics
Socioeconomic status
Partisan and ideology
Issue positions and economic evaluations
Leader evaluations
Vote choice
Social groups and vote choice:
Strong effects:
- Westerners more conservative, quebecois less so
- Younger voters less likely to support and vote for the conservatives, more supportive of Ndp
- Religious people more likely to support conservatives; non-religious the NDP
Weak effects:
- Income
- Education
- Small gender gap
- Visible minorities and immigrants historically have supported liberals over all others, but this has varied considerably
Ideology and values:
Ideology: an interrelated set of attitudes and policy beliefs about the proper goals of society and how they should be achieved
Typically characterized along a single dimension from left (liberal/progressive) to right (conservative)
Most canadians do not have coherent ideological beliefs and are broadly centrist in orientation
Notions of left right often broken down by levels of economic or social liberalism/ conservatism
Conservatives and liberals/ NDP increasingly divided on both dimensions
In quebec left right not always as relevant as federalist/ nationalist/ separatist divide
Partisan identification
Partisan identity or partisan identification: “ a person’s psychological attachment or lack thereof to a political party
Running tally theory
Party attachments are formed with a running tally where citizens form attachments to parties based on their leaders and policy positions
Party identification doesn’t cause public opinion or vote choice
Social identity theory
We become attached to parties because their supporters and officials are people like us
These attachments to parties take on a life of their own and actively bias our perceptions of the world around us
Economic voting
Some people also vote based on the economy
- This is typically done retrospectively: people judge past performance
- It is also done socio tropically: they judge based on national conditions rather than their own pocketbook
- Caveat: a lot of people evaluate the economy based on their partisanship
