The initial formation of this model was very deterministic in wanting to focus on the role of social inclusion while neglecting other aspects, even though today there is increasingly a kind of ecumenical attempt to have an explanation that takes into account different aspects. By finding something else, he shaped a dominant theory explaining the vote. 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. This model emphasizes the role of integration into social groups. How does partisan identification develop? On that basis, voters calculate the utility income of the different parties and then they look at and evaluate the partisan differential. Voting is an instrument that serves us to achieve an objective. However, he conceives the origin and function of partisan identification in a different way from what we have seen before. It is interesting to know that Lazarsfeld, when he began his studies with survey data, especially in an electoral district in New York State, was looking for something other than the role of social factors. This model explains for Downs why we abstain. A third criticism of the simple proximity model is the idea of the median voter, which is the idea that all voters group around the centre, so parties, based on this observation, will maximize their electoral support at the centre, and therefore if they are rational, parties will tend to be located more at the centre. More specifically, the costs that the voter has to take into account according to the different parties and candidates must be evaluated, which is the partisan differential, i.e. Although the models rely on the same data they make radically different predictions about the political future. The strategies and shortcuts are mainly used by citizens who are interested in going to vote or in an election but who do not have a strong preference beforehand. Basically, Downs was wrong to talk about proximity logic and to explain some of the exceptions to the proximity model. The economic model has put the rational and free citizen back at the centre of attention and reflection, whereas if we push the sociological model a bit to the extreme, it puts in second place this freedom and this free will that voters can make since the psycho-sociological model tells us that voting is determined by social position, it is not really an electoral choice that we make in the end but it is simply the result of our social insertion or our attachment to a party. There are other variants or models that try to accommodate this complexity. The Logics of Electoral Politics. In Switzerland, the idea of an issue is particularly important because there is direct democracy, which is something that by definition is based on issues. There are several responses to criticisms of the proximity model. The answer to this second question will allow us to differentiate between proximity models and directional models because these two subsets of the spatial theories of voting give diametrically opposite answers to this question. Voters have knowledge of the ideological positions of parties or candidates on one or more ideological dimensions and they use this knowledge to assess the political positions of these parties or candidates on specific issues. We must also, and above all, look at the links between types of factors. 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. The term "group" can mean different things, which can be an ethnic group or a social class. There are a whole host of typologies in relation to issues, and we distinguish different types of issues such as position issues and issues that are more or less emotional. There is a whole branch of the electoral literature that emphasizes government action as an essential factor in explaining the vote, and there is a contrast between a prospective vote, which is voting according to what the parties say they will do during the election campaign, and a retrospective vote, which is voting in relation to what has been done, particularly by the government, which has attributed the successes or failures of a policy. Most voters have a sense of allegiance to a party that is inherited through the family. Iversena proposed a way of classifying the different explanatory theories of voting that allow to add a very important element that has been neglected until now. 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. 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 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. Discounting is saying that the voter does not fully believe what the parties say. Understanding voters' behavior can explain how and why decisions were made either by public decision-makers, which has been a central concern for political scientists, [1] or by the electorate. Another possible strategy is to rely on the judgment of others such as opinion leaders. 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 influence of friends refers to opinion leaders and circles of friends. 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 People's Choice (Lazarsfeld, Berelson, & Gaudet, 1944) Fiorina also talks about partisan identification, that is to say that there is a possible convergence between these different theories. By Phone: (386) 758-1026 ext. A corollary to this theory is that voters react more to the government than to the opposition because performance is evaluated and a certain state of the economy, for example, can be attributed to the performance of a government. In both The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) and Voting (Berelson et al., 1954), the authors With regard to the question of how partisan identification develops, the psycho-sociological model emphasizes the role of the family and thus of primary socialization, but several critics have shown that secondary socialization also plays a role. This refers to the Michigan model, the psycho-sociological model. Ideology is to be understood as a way of simplifying our world in relation to the problem of information. From the parties' perspective, this model makes different predictions than the simple proximity model, which made a prediction of convergence of a centripetal force with respect to party positioning. These two proximity models are opposed to two other models that are called directional models with Matthews' simple directional model but especially Rabinowitz's directional model with intensity. 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. It is possible to create a typology that distinguishes between four approaches crossing two important and crucial elements: "is voting spatial? 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. "The answer is "yes", as postulated by spatial theories, or "no", as stated by Przeworski and Sprague, for example. 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. The concept and measurement of partisan identification as conceived by these researchers as applying to the bipartite system and therefore needs to be adapted to fit the multiparty and European system. These theories are called spatial theories of the vote because they are projected. This study presents an automated and accurate . A set of theories has given some answers. So, voters evaluate the positions of the parties and from these positions, this party is a left-wing party and this party is a right-wing party. The basic assumptions of the economic model of the vote are threefold: selfishness, which is the fact that voters act according to their individual interests and not according to their sense of belonging to a group or their attachment to a party. There are certain types of factors that influence other types of factors and that in turn influence other types of factors and that ultimately help explain the idea of the causal funnel of electoral choice. Distance is understood in the sense of the proximity model for whom voter preference and party position is also important. 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. One of the answers within spatial theories is based on this criticism that voters are not these cognitively strong beings as the original Downs theory presupposes. For the sociological model we have talked about the index of political predisposition with the variables of socioeconomic, religious and spatial status. The heterogeneity of the electorate and voters must be taken into account. These are models that should make us attentive to the different motivations that voters may or may not have to make in making an electoral choice. Basic Idea What you are vote choice ; Key foundational studies ; Lazarsfeld, Berelson, Gaudet (1944) The Peoples Choice Berelson, Lazarsfeld, McPhee (1954) Voting This identification is seen as contributing to an individual's self-image. Nevertheless, both models may be more or less correct. 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. What is interesting is that they try to relate this to personality traits such as being open, conscientious, extroverted, pleasant and neurotic. On the other hand, to explain the electoral choice, we must take into account factors that are very far from the vote theoretically, but we must also take into account the fact that there are factors that are no longer close to the electoral choice during a vote or an election. 0000003292 00000 n A lawmaker's (stochastic) voting behavior is characterized by the relationship between her position in this space and the bill's position [1 . [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. For Iversen, distance is also important. Finally, there is an instrumental approach to information and voting. 0000000016 00000 n Reinforcement over time since adult voters increasingly rely on this partisan identification to vote and to face the problems of information, namely partisan identification seen as a way of solving a problem that all voters have, which is how to form an idea and deal with the abundance and complexity of the information that comes to us from, for example, the media, political campaigns or others in relation to the political offer. Since the economic crisis, there has been an increasing focus on the economic crisis and economic conditions and how that can explain electoral volatility and electoral change. Today, there is an attempt to combine the different explanations trying to take into account, both sociological determinants but also the emotional and affective component as well as the component related to choice and calculation. Prospective voting is based on election promises and retrospective voting is based on past performance. It is also often referred to as a point of indifference because there are places where the voter cannot decide. Misalignment creates greater electoral volatility that creates a change in the party system that can have a feedback on the process of alignment, misalignment or realignment. It is easier to look at what someone has done than to evaluate the promises they made. Others have criticized this analogy between the economic market and the political market as being a bit simplistic, saying that, basically, the consequences of buying a consumer product have a certain number of consequences, but they are much more limited compared to what buying a vote can have in terms of choosing a party. This jargon comes from this type of explanation. On this basis, four types of voters can be identified in a simplified manner: It is possible to start from the assumption that the characteristics of these different voters are very different. Bakker, B. N., Hopmann, D. N., & Persson, M. (2014). The goal of this study was to evaluate the psychometric properties of the measurement of suicide severity based on the Columbia suicide severity rating scale. For Fiorina the voter does not do that, he will rather look at what has happened, he will also look at the state of affairs in a country, hence the importance of the economic vote in the narrower sense of the word. This is the basic motivation for the development of these directional models. Distance must be taken into account and the idea of mobilizing the electorate must be taken into account. Lazarsfeld was interested in this and simply, empirically, he found that these other factors had less explanatory weight than the factors related to political predisposition and therefore to this social inking. Simply, the voter is going to evaluate his own interest, his utility income from the different parties and will vote for the party that is closest to his interests. Prospective voting says that voters will listen to what candidates and parties have to say. The function of partisan identification is to allow the voter to face political information and to know which party to vote for. In other words, there is the idea of utility maximization which is a key concept in rational choice theory, so the voter wants to maximize his utility and his utility is calculated according to the ratio between the cost and the benefit that can be obtained from the action, in this case going to vote (1) and going to vote for that party rather than this one (2). 102 Lake City, FL 32055 OR 17579 SW State Road 47 Fort White, FL 32038. What are the criteria for determining the individual usefulness of voters? They are both proximity choices and directional choices with intensity, since there are voters who may choose intensity and others who may choose direction. In the study of electoral behaviour, there is a simple distinction between what is called prospective voting and retrospective voting. Than to evaluate the partisan differential to the Michigan model, the psycho-sociological model finding else! 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