Bismillah Al-Rahman Al-Rahim

Voting behavior 5/19/2014 11:23:00 AM

Moodle:
Week 6: Voting Behaviour: Expressive or Strategic?
The lecture will introduce two competing motives behind voting in elections: expressive (voting
on the basis of party attachment, ideology and social cleavages) and strategic (voting to
produce an outcome which is as close as possible to ones preferences).
Regarding expressive voting, the lecture will explain the end of class voting,
dealignment and post-materialism theses, and also discuss the empirical evidence
on the social bases of party choice from several countries (such as the UK, USA,
Germany and Japan).
Regarding strategic voting, the lecture will look at policy concerns as well as
valence concerns (such as the leadership qualities of party leaders), and how
the complexity of the strategic context (such as the number of parties and
multidimensionality) affects voters choices.

Task: What social divisions or political issues influence which parties people vote for in your
adopted country? Do some people vote strategically in your adopted country, and, if so, why?
Class questions: Has class-based voting declined in the past few decades? Do people vote
sincerely or strategically?

Topics for today
Expressive and strategic (tactical, called this in the UK) voting
Social cleavages, leads to party identification
Party identification
Class voting
Dealignment, breaking of the links between political parties and social groups.
The spatial model of politics

Outline
1. Definitions
2. Political cleavages and dealignment
3. Evidence: social determinants of vote choice
4. Spatial politics and strategic voting
5. Some examples of strategic voting

Definitions
Expressive Voting: Voting on the basis of party attachment, political ideology, or
social group membership.

Strategic Voting: Voting to produce an election outcome which is as close as
possible to ones policy preferences, which may or may not mean voting for ones
most preferred party.

o Often these things are difficult to identify independent of each other.
o Researchers tend to investigate cases in which voters are torn between these
types of choices.

Political Cleavage: A division in society which produces an alignment between a
group of voters and a party (e.g. class, religion, language, urban-rural etc.)

Dealignment: The erosion of political cleavages, and their replacement with
individualistic voting.
o Empirically, we have gradually seen an erosion of the divisions of the 1950s
and 60s deep social divisions which led to a closer relationship of cleavages
to parties worldwide, voters thinking more strategically.
Voters are thinking more strategically when they go in the ballot
box.

The Cleavage Model of Electoral Politics (1920s-
1970s?)
Lipset and Rokkan

Developed in the 1960s by Seymour Lipset and Rokkan.
They were looking at the fact that the parties you observed in Europe in the 1960s
were broadly the same as the parties you observed in Europe in the 1920s, and thered
been dramatic changes in European society, wed had the second world war, wed
had the birth and the growth of the welfare state, a whole lot of changes. Yet, we had
the same sort of parties (socialist, conservatives, liberals) and we had the same sort of
social groups that we had in the 1920s, and they tried to then come up with an
explanation about why this was the case.
o They argued that you had universal suffrage in the 1920s that created a link
between voters and parties. Universal suffrage led to these mass political
parties setting up mass party organizations, the labor party socialist parties
across Europe closely aligned to the labor movement, with newspapers, party
members, etc.
You had this alignment then between these social groups and these
political parties, and wed normally talk about the fact that there were
deep divisions in society and these deep divisions were then reflected
in the class system.
Very stable relationships across time.


Which Cleavages?
Seymour M. Lipset (American) & Stein Rokkan (Norwegian) (1967)
IT IS IRONICALLY THE CHANGE IN CLEAVAGES THAT ALLOWS US TO
UNDERSTAND THE SUPPOSED DEALLIGNMENT


National Revolution (18-19
th
C) -> conflict between centre & periphery
=> national elites vs. local regional/sub-national elites
The formation of states in Europe in the 18
th
and 19
th
century.
Harmoginization of politics but not full.

Democratic Revolution (19
th
C) -> conflict between church & state
=> traditional elites vs. liberal professions
o Left and right come from French Rev (indiv rights vs state) in France
o Conservative vs liberals in UK

Same time; I ndustrial Revolution (19
th
C) -> conflict between social classes
=> working class vs. middle/upper class
Emergence of socialist parties.

1920s: introduction of universal suffrage
-> freezing of these social cleavages in the new party systems
Existing divisions in society suddenly emerge and you create mass parties to reflect
divisions
-> Created Party Identification class-based voting
o Ex working class, socialist democratic party in UK, elites conservative.

Social group Party the group identifies with
Working class Social Democrats
Middle/Upper class Conservatives (or Liberals)
Religious Conservatives (or Christian Democrats)
Atheists/Agnostics Liberals / Social Democrats
Centre Social Dems / Conservatives / Liberals
Periphery Regionalist / Linguistic minority parties


Causes of Dealignment
Irony: Book published in 1967, during massive social change in Europe, really capturing 1950s.

Economic growth + prosperity
o economic security no longer the primary goal of all voters
=> declining class conflict
POST-MATERIALISM.

Expansion of the public sector
o growth to 40-50% of GDP in the public sector, more employment thus
GDP per capita, etc.
Not classically liberal professors OR industrial workers.
=> new social groups, with new values & new interests

Expansion of higher education
o growing social mobility => changing aspirations
=> higher levels of cognitive skills in society
Breaks the historical class link within families, not passed on between
generations.
Growing education, higher cognitive endowment

Mass media, these days social media
o replacement of party-controlled media
=> personalisation of politics
Parties, unlike in the beginning of the 20
th
century, no longer control
info (pluralisation of media, conflicting views, etc.)

Decline in class-voting: Measuring Class Voting
The Alford Index (Alford 1962): Still used today across time and across country:

% of working class voters who vote for a left-wing party
minus
% of non-working class voters who vote for a left-wing party

Example: 2010 UK Elections
ABC1 (upper & middle class) DE (working class)
Labour 27 40
Liberal Democrat 26 17
Conservative 39 31

Alford Index = 40 27 = 13%

Declining Class Voting
(from Dalton 2002)
No recent data, according to Hix, doesnt matter any more.



Break in traditional class-based alignment. (European and American only, advanced
democracies).

Links to US as another Western example:

Andrew Gelman, Columbia (2008) Red States, Blue States, Rich States, Poor
States
o There seems to be a strange pattern of voting in the US:
o At the aggregate level (e.g. US states), richer states tend to vote Democrat,
while poorer states tend to vote Republican
o Whereas at the individual level, richer people tend to vote Republican, while
poorer people tend to vote Democrat
=> How can this be explained?

2004 and 2008 US Presidential Elections


o Poorer States Vote Republican !

o But, Richer People Vote Republican


Explaining the Pattern:
Class matters more in poor states

o Class Voting in the UK
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1992 1997 2001 2005 2010
%

S
u
p
p
o
r
t
Election
Upper Classes (A+B)
Con Lab LibDem
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
1992 1997 2001 2005 2010
%

S
u
p
p
o
r
t
Election
Working Classes (D+E)
Con Lab LibDem


How about Religion?

Does religious affiliation or church attendance correlate with party voting?
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
1992 1997 2001 2005 2010
%

S
u
p
p
o
r
t
Election
Middle Classes (C1)
Con Lab LibDem



The Spatial Model of Politics
Voters have preferences about a range of policies
These preferences are single-peaked => each voter has an
ideal point in a single- or multi-dimensional policy space
Expressive voting
=> a citizen votes for the party whose policy position is closest to her ideal policy
Strategic voting
=> a citizen votes to try to influence the outcome of an election,
so that the overall policy outcome (e.g. the person elected, or the government that is formed) is
closest to her ideal policy of all the likely outcomes
=> this might be the party closest to her ideal point, or it might not

Why Vote Strategically?
Two main reasons for voting strategically in an election:
1. Local: To influence the election outcome in a constituency
If the candidate a person most prefers has no chance of being elected,
then vote for the closest candidate from amongst the candidates who have a reasonable
chance of being elected
2. National: To influence government formation and policy outcomes
If the party a person most prefers has no chance of influencing government formation or might
form a coalition with a party which is further away from a persons preference,
then vote for a party which is further away, but which will lead to a policy outcome closer to a
persons ideal policy

Examples (Western, use Lebanon as another example):



Positions of the Parties also plays a role, and Electoral
systems design (ex. Expecting coalition, etc).


In Sum
Until the late 1960s, most citizens in Western democracies had strong
attachments to a particular political party because of their class/income,
religious view, or regional location
In the past 30+ years, these attachments have broken for many voters
As a result, electoral politics in most Western democracies is now more like
shopping than class warfare !
i.e. people vote for the party they most prefer, or vote for another party if their most
preferred party doesnt have a chance
But, because citizens who are located on the Left (Right) vote for a party on the
Left (Right), class alignments (e.g. income) can still be a strong predictor of how
people vote
=> Clearly, where parties are located is a key factor in explaining which parties
people choose (which we will look at next week)

References
Alford, Robert (1962) A Suggested Index of the Association of Social Class and
Voting, Public Opinion Quarterly 26: 417-412.
Dalton, Russell J. (2002) Political Cleavages, Issues, and Electoral Change, in
Lawrence LeDuc, Richard G. Niemi and Pippa Norris (eds.) Comparing Democracies
2: New Challenges in the Study of Elections and Voting, London: Sage.
Gelman, Andrew (2008) Red States, Blue States, Rich States, Poor States: Why
Americans Vote the Way They Do, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Lipset, Seymour M. and Stein Rokkan (1967) Cleavage Structures, Party Systems
and Voter Alignments. Introduction, in Seymour M. Lipset and Stein Rokkan (eds)
Party Systems and Voter Alignments: Cross-National Perspectives, New York: Free
Press.




Bismillah Week 6 Voting Behavior 5/19/2014 11:23:00 AM
Week 6: Voting Behaviour: Expressive or Strategic? 8 items

Week 6: Voting Behaviour: Expressive or Strategic? 8 items

Essential Reading 2 items
The Science of Politics: An Introduction - Josep Colomer 2011
Book Essential PLEASE READ CHAPTER 10 "ELECTORAL COMPETITION".
Online Resource Read status Add note

Comparing democracies 2: new challenges in the study of elections
and voting - LeDuc, Lawrence, Niemi, Richard G., Norris, Pippa 2002
Book Essential PLEASE READ CHAPTER 9 "POLITICAL CLEAVAGES,
ISSUES, AND ELECTORAL CHANGE" BY RUSSELL J. DALTON. Online
Resource Read status Add note

Further Reading 6 items

The West European Party System - Peter Mair 1990
Book Background PLEASE READ CHAPTER "CLEAVAGE STRUCTURES,
PARTY SYSTEMS, AND VOTER ALIGNMENTS" BY SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET
AND STEIN ROKKAN. Preview Read status Add
note

Comparing Strategic Voting Under FPTP and PR - Paul R. Abramson,
John H. Aldrich, Andre Blais, Matthew Diamond 2010 Article Background
Online Resource Read status Add note

Red state, blue state, rich state, poor state: why Americans vote the
way they do - Gelman, Andrew 2010 Book Background PLEASE READ
CHAPTER 2 "RICH STATE, POOR STATE". Online Resource Read
status Add note

The Continued Significance of Class Voting - Geoffrey Evans 2000
Article Background Online Resource Read status Add
note

Minor Parties and Strategic Voting in Recent U.S. Presidential
Elections - Barry C. Burden 2005 Article Background Online
Resource Read status Add note

New Labour, New Tactical Voting? The Causes and Consequences of
Tactical Voting in the 1997 General Election - Geoffrey Evans, John
Curtice, Pippa Norris 1998 Article Background