Voters and Voting

An Introduction

Jocelyn A J Evans

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780761949107, 9780761949091
• eBook ISBN: 9781446227800
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

?This clear and comprehensive textbook will be invaluable for undergraduate and graduate courses on elections and voting behaviour. Complex theoretical and statistical ideas are explained lucidly and effectively - no mean achievement?

- Representation

?Voters and Voting fills a yawning gap in the study of elections and voting

behaviour. No other book today matches the breadth and depth of coverage

provided by Jocelyn Evans. This book is destined to become a staple in

university courses on elections, parties and political methodology. It will

also be a well-thumbed addition to scholars? personal libraries? -

David M Farrell, The University of Manchester

This accessible textbook provides a comprehensive introduction and guide to theories of voting and electoral behaviour.

The text introduces the concept of voting and traces the historical origins and development of voting theories up to and including present-day techniques and models.

Approaches reviewed include the early social and psychological models, through the rational choice, spatial modelling and economic theories, to the more sophisticated contemporary models. By carefully presenting and explaining the major technical and methodological advances made in voting studies, the text serves to provide a complete review of the different approaches and techniques that have characterized this area of study from its origins to the present day.

The book includes separate chapters on abstention and electoral competition, and employs a range of empirical examples from a number of countries. It concludes by looking at how voting studies might evolve in the future.

Voters and Voting: An Introduction will be essential reading for all students of electoral and political behaviour across the social and political sciences.

1

Introduction

Looking at the vast literature dedicated to the analysis of voting behaviour and its context, it is sometimes difficult to work out exactly what kind of activity voting is. On the one hand books on democracy and democratic theory present voting as a unique activity which forms the bedrock of political equality and civic rights in our society. People have fought and died for the right to vote, and in some countries continue to do so. As the pinnacle of power in democratic societies, would-be prime ministers and presidents devote much of their lives in pursuit of office, spending time and money to win the support of the voting public. The apparently increasing failure of many individuals to participate in this selection of leaders and their parties leads to indignant and outraged accusations of apathy, and calls for measures to address the decline in interest in precisely the activity which allows all citizens access to the political process. From this perspective, voting is unique and of paramount importance.

Yet if we turn to much of the literature on how voters make up their minds whom to vote for, the impression we receive is far from the hallowed responsibility that the previous literature provides. Many of the theories present voting as an activity much like any other. In particular, the way individuals make up their minds how to vote is linked to how individuals make up their minds and take decisions in many other spheres. Which car should I buy? Which football team should I support? Which TV programmes should I watch? Which party should I vote for? Of course, the first literature is referring to the activity of voting itself, whereas the latter is referring to how people make their minds up when engaged in that activity. However, precisely the fact that analyses of vote decisions suggest that we use common processes to decide whom to vote for itself suggests that the activity is far from unique. Moreover, the fact that many people do not vote, and that many people express opinions which suggest they do not find voting important, or spend more time over other decisions, reinforces the view that, whilst voting may be an institution of inestimable importance, it is also one which is of little value for many.

In this book, we aim to set out the various explanations of why people vote the way they do, and in one chapter why they vote at all. Its principal intellectual motivation is precisely to present the various theories of voting in such a way as to explain how an activity which has such resonance as a part of democratic life is also based upon very mundane elements in voters’ personalities and contexts. The educational motivation of the book is to present such theories in an accessible way for students. The books and articles relating to voting research are immense in number and span over 60 years. As with any academic discipline, this literature can be overwhelming and confusing for the newcomer. Which books and articles to read? How do the different approaches to the subject relate to each other? What themes to be aware of? In this book, we present what we feel to be the main topics which a newcomer to the area should be aware of, and in a way that conveys the salient points in each.

Given the timespan of this research, the newcomer is also often lost as to the evolution of electoral analyses. Where did psephology – the study of voting – develop from, and what have been the main features of its development? From another point of view, it is often confusing for newcomers to find that, despite the widespread predictions and proofs of the decline of social indicators of voting preference, many contemporary models continue to use such theories, and with great success. What have been the main social changes which have apparently heralded the demise of such sociological theories, and why have these latter instead remained very useful perspectives in approaching voting behaviour? In the following chapter, we will look at the developments in voting analysis to provide initial answers to such questions, and then follow up on each approach in the relevant chapters.

The mode of analysis has also changed from qualitative analysis and basic descriptive statistics to sophisticated multivariate models requiring ever-increasing levels of computing power. Many if not most students who are looking at voting theories for the first time encounter this technical sophistication as a problem. Given that we are often interested in numerically-based questions (such as how many votes a party has won or will win, the likelihood of a voter choosing one party over another, or the relative strength of different indicators in predicting vote), such techniques are vital to rigorous analyses of voting, but they do provide a daunting barrier to readers not versed in their use. Consequently, another aim of this book is to provide readers with enough information for them to see what the statistical techniques are doing in such analyses.

We should emphasise immediately that this book does not provide sufficient instruction in statistical techniques for readers to carry out analyses themselves, or to know exactly how these techniques work. This is the subject of other books. But it is not necessary here. With just a few simple pointers as to what the empirical analyses employing the statistics are doing, and the benefit of the explanations of findings by the authors themselves in their analyses, even someone with no training in statistics can still appreciate another researcher’s findings. For those with the time and inclination, however, there is absolutely no substitute for learning the statistical techniques involved, particularly if they want to carry out analyses themselves.

This chapter, then, has two distinct purposes. Firstly, we will look at the nature of voting as a decision-making procedure and why it is out of the ordinary, together with a brief consideration of the influences on this decision which will be developed in subsequent chapters. Secondly, we will look at the main methodological elements and statistical techniques which will be encountered in the literature.

What is voting?

Voting is clearly a choice, but is it a choice like any other? Certainly in terms of the motivations which drive individuals, electoral choice is very similar to other choices we make in our daily lives. As all the subsequent chapters will show, voters choose parties and the candidates on the basis of the benefits they think or are told they will derive. The nature of such benefits vary according to the theories in question – it may simply be an affirmation of identity, or conversely a concrete calculation of material benefit – but just as in any choice that an individual makes, voters have a set of criteria which they wish their choice to satisfy. What these criteria are may vary according to the voter.

However, in looking at voting choice, the different theories either try to find criteria which best characterise as broad a number of voters as possible, or they try to find characteristics of voters which indicate that they are likely to share similar desires and consequently similar voting choices. We will look at some of the broader categories of motivation in the following section. For the moment, however, what differentiates this choice from other choices we make? A common analogy which is drawn with voting is that of the market. A number of candidates and parties present their products (political programmes for government) and voters pick from amongst these, ‘paying’ their vote to the party offering the product which best satisfies their criteria. Whilst some theories have developed this analogy as their theoretical basis (Chapter 4), we need to be careful to acknowledge the differences which obtain between the political market and the economic market.

The first thing to notice about voting is that it contributes to a collective outcome, rather than affecting us purely as individuals. Many of the market choices we make in life are designed to have a tangible effect only on ourselves – which food to eat, which film to see at the cinema, and so on. Of course, such choices will also have an effect on others. For instance, choosing to go to see a film will contribute to the financial well-being of the cinema and the film-makers (and the opposite effect for those connected with a film we opt not to see). However, this is not usually the primary motivation, if at all, of going to see a film. In a vote of any kind, however, we precisely make a decision conscious that, if we get what we want, this will be imposed upon others too.

Who those ‘others’ are depends on the nature of the vote. In this book, we concentrate almost entirely on national elections. In this case, ‘the others’ would be the population of a country electing a president or the constituents in one parliamentary constituency electing their representative. But it is instructive to remember that voting occurs in more than just general elections. Committees which run all manner of organisations vote on a range of proposals. Even in the most anodyne of situations, voting matters – for example, the members of a tennis club deciding whether to build a new club-house or not.

Indeed, the large number of contexts in which voting occurs is reflective of the broad nature of politics itself – individuals’ decisions having an effect on others. When we look at other decisions which individuals take in everyday life and which, having repercussions beyond the individuals themselves, do affect others, we often refer to them as being ‘political’. Consumer goods boycotted because of their manufacturers’ employment practices; employees appointed because of a managerial agenda; university places rejected because of the institution’s selection procedures – all can be and are termed political even though none is directly related to politics in its narrow sense, in other words the job of running government.

Consequently, when people make their voting choices, the decision is made on the basis of what is the best choice for them. But this will include a statement of values which implies what is ‘best’ or ‘right’ for others. The nature of what is best for others will vary widely, from a highly interventionist state managing the lives of all its citizens, to a society left largely to determine its own course without state intervention. At the limit, it may be support for a regionalist party which proclaims no interest in many of the ‘others’, and a separation of one territory from the rest. Even in the case of a voter motivated by nothing more than self-interest, the practical outcome – if her vote is influential – is an effect on other individuals.

As well as providing collective outcomes, voting is also a collective activity, unlike many of the other choices we make in our lives. When we make an individual choice among alternatives, the results are often clear. For instance, when we pick a brand of biscuits to buy, we are sure to get those biscuits.¹ In voting, however, we are far from certain about getting what we want. We may vote for a candidate, but if a majority of other voters choose a different candidate, then my attempt to buy my candidate’s ‘product’ fails. Voting is not the only example where individuals group together to engage in activity, market-oriented or otherwise: the professors using a common room in a university department may take it in turns to buy biscuits for tea break; lottery syndicates in offices and social groups pool funds to buy tickets; and groups of parents share the school run to drop off and pick up their children. In such cases, individuals derive benefits from engaging in the activity with others – fewer trips to the supermarket; a wider range of potentially winning numbers; or fewer return trips to school every week. However, in all these cases, individuals are able to withdraw their participation if they are not happy with the outcome – the tasteless brand of biscuits colleagues buy; the unlucky lottery numbers which the syndicate keeps choosing; or some of the other parents’ bad driving.

However, in voting, withdrawal is rarely if ever an option. I can withdraw from the common room biscuit pool and buy my own, but I cannot ask my favoured but losing candidate to set up his own personal government for me. Moreover, if I refuse to take part in the election and do not vote, I am still unable to withdraw from the system, having the victorious party/parties foisted upon me in the government. The reason for this is clear: government and the state form the institutions which regulate the public sphere and aspects of the private sphere in which individuals live. Thus, the decision-making procedure to which citizens are allowed to contribute implies an acceptance of the rules of the game which determine the state’s right to manage society and how the managers are chosen. Given that the managers (governments) and potential managers (parties and coalitions) are drawn from within this society, the majority decision can be seen as the largest aggregation of similar views as to what form this management should take. Those who desire alternative forms are free to do so, but in the short term agree to accept the majority decision with the proviso that at subsequent elections their favoured candidate or party may win, but also that via various institutional routes they may still influence the government. Thus, individuals agree to abide by the rules of the game, even where their favoured outcome is not reached, because the game continues.

In short, the following quote from The American Voter, a book we will subsequently refer to a number of times, sums up our book’s overall take on voting:

In the contemporary world the activity of voting is rivaled only by the market as a means of reaching collective decisions from individual choices. (Campbell et al., 1960: 3)

What then are the motivations which drive individuals’ vote?

What influences vote?

Amongst the desires which may motivate vote are:

• group benefit (e.g. a class-related party working in this class’ best interests)
• material gain (e.g. lowering of taxes)
• managerial competence (e.g. the successful running of public services)
• focus on relevant issues (e.g. environmental policy to reduce pollution)
• another party’s defeat (e.g. voting for a Conservative party to keep out a Socialist party which the voter despises).

It would be very easy to extend this list to thousands of different motivations, some of them very particular and not widespread at all. Consequently, the characteristics of voters which indicate the likelihood of sharing similar desires also become useful. Such characteristics include:

• age
• gender
• social class/occupation
• religious group
• ideological group.

It is clear that the first four of these all come under the heading of social characteristics, and one of the most influential schools of thought on how people vote has been the sociological approach, which we will consider in Chapter 3. What is an ideological group, however? Unlike the social categories, ideological groupings cannot necessarily be identified by overt characteristics such as age or occupation. Instead, these describe individuals according to their different views on political issues such as the ones listed earlier. Researchers have tried to find patterns which apply to these issues so that one can group voters from different parties into different ideological categories – for instance, Left-wing and Right-wing voters or libertarians and authoritarians. We will look in more detail at what these mean in later chapters. However, the point again is that individual voters are not unique in their preferences and motivations. Indeed, to look at electoral behaviour scientifically, we have to be able to discern common elements in voter choice, otherwise we can never hope to explain people’s motivations. As with all social scientific analysis, we are trying to identify a ‘parsimonious’ number of indicators which explain people’s behaviour.² From our theoretical perspective we posit the motivations which determine vote choice, and in order to test these hypotheses to find out which are accurate and which are the stronger/weaker explanations, we need to construct causal models using empirical data.³

Methodological and empirical perspectives

Probably the main obstacle to students coming to theories of voting for the first time is the methodological complexity which the more recent literature employs. As the subsequent chapters will show, the basic theoretical elements are not complex at all. Indeed, many of their arguments are ones which have passed into everyday usage – class voting, the role of issues, governments losing votes when unemployment rises, to name but a few.⁴ However, because researchers wish to test these as completely as possible, and look at the relative strength of different theories in accounting for vote, they employ statistical models. In focusing on the methods behind such models, what are the key elements we should be aware of in their construction and application to data?

Dependent and independent variables

In testing hypotheses as to the relationship between voting and individual’s social and attitudinal profiles, economic and political context, we are implicitly placing these different elements in a causal relationship. In other words, we are searching for an effect and a number of causes, which can also be referred to as the dependent and the independent variables. For some reason, people often confuse dependent and independent variables. To remember it:...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of tables and figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Chapter 2 The historical development of voting studies
• Chapter 3 Social structural theories of voting
• Chapter 4 Rational choice theories of voting
• Chapter 5 Issues and space: proximity and directional theories of voting
• Chapter 6 Voting and the economy
• Chapter 7 Non-voting and abstention
• Chapter 8 Thinking about voting change
• Chapter 9 Conclusion
• References
• Index