Lektion 12: Voting

Question 1

What does socio-structural voting model contain?

Answer 1

(samfundet skal være differentiet, der skal være en strukturel forskel, socioøkonomiske forskelle før denne model duer)

• Class, religion, values
• Affect political attitudes
• Selective exposure to information
• Long-standing ties between groups and parties (Denne model inddeler folket i grupper og derefter er der nogle der stemmer på specifikke partier)

Question 2

What does Class voting cotain?

Answer 2

• Occupational position determines vote
• Underlying economic conflict
• Strong organisational base
• Implies very stable voting behaviour
• Dominant view in 1950s and 1960s

Question 3

Forklaringer på at class voting ikke findes?

Answer 3

- Weaker class identity
     Individualism
     Changing class structure
     Convergence of living conditions
     Social mobility

• Weaker class-party links
  Broader party strategies

Question 4

How does religion effect voting behaviour?

Answer 4

(Religion vigtigt for voting fordi det skaber en homogen gruppe og identitet)

• Goes back to state-church cleavage
• Creates groups with strong identity
• Organisational reinforcement through churches
• Direct effect on political attitudes
• Persistent effect of church attendance

Question 5

How does values effect voting behaviour?

Answer 5

• Post-material values of increasing importance
• Problem: is it really case of social group voting?
• No fixed ties between group and one party
• Diffuse group
• No organisational core
• Does not provide stability of class or religions

Question 6

What does the funnel of causality show?

Answer 6

Hele ideen med party identification går tilbage til the funnel causality og michigan schools model

den viser processen til stemmeafgivelsen. Fra det basale til det konkrete (når man stemmer)

Question 7

Which dealignment trends are there?

Answer 7

Near-universal trend
Far-reaching consequences
- Issue voting
- Volatility
- Participation

Reasons:

• Social modernisation
• Citizens less reliant on party heuristics
• Growing availability of ‘neutral’ information (media)

Question 8

What is issue voting?

Answer 8

• Voting based on issue opinions
• Generally seen as increasing in importance
• Three types of issues
  
  1. Position issues (spatial model)
  2. Performance issues (valence model)
  3. Attributes (attribute voting)

Question 9

What is possition voting?

Answer 9

Første form af issue

• Require pro/con or more/less decision
• Voters compare with parties’ position
• Demanding decisions making
• Many voters able to form opinions on some issues
• Which issue is decisive?
• Salience necessary condition for impact of issue on voting

Question 10

What is performance voting?

Answer 10

(De finder en case og straffer regering. Hvis arbejdesløsheden er høj –> straffe regeringen.
Det er meget svært for regering at vinde valg hvis de har kriser
You can calcute the government by looking at the unemployment rate foreksempel)

1. How successful is government (expected to be)?
2. Valence model
3. Widespread form: economic voting
4. Economy strong predictor of incumbency vote
   Unemployment rate (macro)
   Economic perceptions (micro)
   Typically socio-tropic
5. Problem: endogenous to party identification?

Question 11

Why are attributes in voting behavouir important?

Answer 11

(Vi kigger meget mere på kandidaterne i politik det er ikke ligemeget hvordan de fremstår eller ser ud. De skal være præsentable og ligne nogle der kan håndtere sagerne. De må ikke være rodet)-

• Decision based on candidate images
• Growing importance in most elections
• Potentially superficial choice
• Some attributes convey information about expected performance

Question 12

Why is voting important for politica scientists?

Answer 12

Because voting is a political act that provide a window into the minds of citizens AND it reflects the changing patterns of citizen politics

Question 13

What role does social group play in voting?

Answer 13

Social groups represent the distinct social interests – such as between different class or groups, 
and elections are a way to resolve these different interests.

Question 14

In what ways can social characteristics such as class/religion influence a voter’s electoral choice?

Answer 14

1. first one’s social position - often indicates his values and political beliefs. (ALTSÅ: om man er høj eller lav klasse)
2. Second a person’s social characteristics reflect some of the political cues to which he or she is exposed. (ALTSÅ: ens karakteristika kan have en betydning for politisk ståsted)
3. Third, social groups can be important in orienting voters to political issues and providing information about politics. - GRUPPER: INFORMATIONSKILDE og fokus på politiske problemstillinger

Question 15

How does class groups vote in elections today?

Answer 15

• Theres a change shape in the labour force.
• Today the middle class is the biggest group of voters
  And typically located between left and right. They prefer parties that represent a new politics ideology such as Green or New Left parties.
• Class voting is only modestly related to vote choice.
• The greatest class polarization exists in Scandinavian countries.

Question 16

How is the situation with class differences today? And why?

Answer 16

Class difference have declined. Erosion (afslidning) of class voting.

Question 17

What are the explanations for the change in class-group voting?

Answer 17

1. The class of ”workers” have declined and is much smaller now. They still vote left, but are few, since the New middle class. - VOKSENDE MIDDELKLASSE
2. The changing relationship between class groups and the political parties. → the parties neglect the class element in their parties to gain the middle class voters. PARTIES NEGLECT CLASS ELEMENTS TO SEEK VOTES

Question 18

Whats the general conclusion of today’s social characteristics with voting behaviour?

Answer 18

The analyses lead to a general conclusion that sociological factors have a weak and declining influence on voting choice.

”almost all the countries we have studied show a decline .. in the ability of social cleavages to structure individual voting choice. ”

ALTSÅ: forklar skillelinjer minimalt vælgeradfærd

Question 19

Why, and what is partisan realignment?

Answer 19

They needed some new categorization of voters.
It is a significant shift in the group basis of party coalitions, usually resulting in the relative size of the parties’ vote share.

Question 20

Where is electoral politics moving?

Answer 20

It is moving from cleavages defined by identities with fixed social groups to issue/value cleavages defined by communities of like-minded people.

WE are witnessing a transformation from social group cleavages to issue group cleavages.

Question 21

What is partisan attitudes?

Answer 21

• partisan loyalties strongly influenced many of the specific political beliefs and behaviours of the citizenry.
• Partisan attachments are a sense of party identification (similar to identifications to a social class)

Question 22

What are the impact of partisanship?

Answer 22

• parties help to make politics user friendly

- provides an information shortcut → easier for people to decide their opinion based on their party’s opinion.

Question 23

How is partisan Dealignment expressed?

Answer 23

• erosion(forsvindelse) in partisan loyalties
• it means that a significant portion of the public isn’t developing party atachments and is often openly critical of political parties.

Question 24

What are the consequences of dealignment?

Answer 24

• people react to flow and events rather than support their party through elections,
• dealignment is paralleled by declining turnout in elections (ikke-aktive)

Question 25

What principles of issue voting are there?

Answer 25

- position issues (Spatial model) - performance issues (Valence model) - attributes of the parties of candidates - retrospective judgements (tilbageskuende) vs. Prospective (fremtidig) judgments - policy apprasial (vurdering) that asses a party’s past position on a policy controversy - performance evaluations are judgments about how a political actor has been doing his job.