Elections, Cleavages and Voting Behaviour: From Stability to Volatility

2017 ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Wouter van der Brug ◽  
Philip van Praag ◽  
Cees van der Eijk
Keyword(s):  
Voting Behaviour

Parties, Voters, and Multi-Level Elections

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sona N. Golder ◽  
Ignacio Lago ◽  
André Blais ◽  
Elisabeth Gidengil ◽  
Thomas Gschwend
Keyword(s):  
Political Parties ◽  
Driving Force ◽  
Party System ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Electoral Institutions ◽  
Multi Level ◽  
Different Levels

This chapter argues that individual voting behaviour and the strategies chosen by political parties across multiple electoral arenas should be considered jointly. Existing literature points to the importance of an election as a major driving force in voting behaviour, but it is argued that voters and parties may differ in their assessments of the importance of elections at different levels. The chapter discusses how the effect of the importance of an electoral arena, for both voter and party behaviour, will be conditioned by electoral institutions and characteristics of parties and the party system, in addition to individual voter characteristics contributing to it.

Rurality and Party System Fragmentation in the Nigerian Presidential Elections of the Fourth Republic

2020 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85
Author(s):  
Cletus Famous Nwankwo
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Party System ◽  
Party Systems ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Composite Measure ◽  
Singular Measures ◽  
Rural And Urban ◽  
Fourth Republic ◽  
Cast Doubt ◽  
Negative Effect

AbstractThis paper examines the effect of rurality on party system fragmentation in the Nigerian presidential elections of the fourth republic. The findings show that party system fragmentation (PSF) has been characteristically low in the Nigerian presidential elections and rurality does not significantly predict party system fragmentation. Rurality has a negative effect on PSF in all the elections studied except the 2003 election but only significant in the 2011 poll. Thus, the paper cast doubt on previous studies that indicate that striking rural-urban differences manifest in party system fragmentation in African elections and attribute it to previous studies’ measure of rurality. The paper argues that the use of a composite measure of rurality instead of singular measures of rurality might provide better analysis that helps us understand the effect of rurality on party systems. Also, it argues that in the study of the rural-urban difference in voting behaviour or political behaviours more broadly, data should be aggregated based on cities and non-city areas because cities have distinctive urban characters compared with non-city places. Analyses done on states or constituencies level may not reveal the rural-urban difference because states and constituencies usually have a mix of rural and urban population and other characteristics.

How Second-Order Is the Regional Level? An Analysis of Tweets in Simultaneous Campaigns

2017 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1021-1039
Author(s):  
Nicolas Bouteca ◽  
Evelien D’heer ◽  
Steven Lannoo
Keyword(s):  
Order Theory ◽  
Second Order ◽  
Regional Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
National Parliament ◽  
Political Experience ◽  
Regional Elections

This article puts the second-order theory for regional elections to the test. Not by analysing voting behaviour but with the use of campaign data. The assumption that regional campaigns are overshadowed by national issues was verified by analysing the campaign tweets of Flemish politicians who ran for the regional or national parliament in the simultaneous elections of 2014. No proof was found for a hierarchy of electoral levels but politicians clearly mix up both levels in their tweets when elections coincide. The extent to which candidates mix up governmental levels can be explained by the incumbency past of the candidates, their regionalist ideology, and the political experience of the candidates.

A Dividing Nation? An Initial Exploration of the Changing Electoral Geography of Great Britain, 1979–1987

1987 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 1001-1013 ◽  
Author(s):  
R J Johnston ◽  
C J Pattie
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Electoral Geography ◽  
Occupational Class ◽  
General Elections ◽  
Initial Exploration

Commentators have suggested an increased spatial polarisation in voting behaviour within Great Britain over recent decades. Analyses designed to evaluate this suggestion for the period 1979–87 are reported. Entropy-maximising procedures were used to produce estimates of voting by occupational class at the 1979, 1983, and 1987 general elections; they show very clear patterns of increased polarisation over the period.

V. The Liberal Revival in Northamptonshire, 1880–1895: A Case Study in Late Nineteenth Century Elections

1969 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-118 ◽  
Author(s):  
Janet Howarth
Keyword(s):  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Party Competition ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
English History ◽  
Quantitative Evidence ◽  
General Terms ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
Local Pressures

There can be few fields in modern English history in which the historian is so frustrated by lack of evidence as in the study of elections between the introduction of the secret ballot and the coming of the opinion polls. For threequarters of a century after the Ballot Act was passed there is no precise quantitative evidence relating to movements of opinion or the voting behaviour of different groups within the electorate. We cannot even hope for conclusive evidence of what, in general terms, the determinants of voting behaviour were in this period; how to balance the importance of the national party competition and of local pressures; of the ‘image’ and the leadership of the parties and their programmes; of class loyalties and religious loyalties; of electoral persuasion and the fluctuations of a still unmanaged economy. These questions are strictly unanswerable, for there are no pollbooks from which we can deduce the opinions of late nineteenth and early twentieth-century electors, and they are beyond the reach of questionnaires. The only statistics we possess are the bare figures for votes cast for each party in contested elections, and the number of registered electors in each constituency (from which we can calculate the percentage of voters who went to the poll).

Een verscheurende keuze : Analyse van het stemgedrag van de VU-leden bij de ledenbevraging over het voortbestaan van de partij

Res Publica ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 44 (1) ◽  
pp. 3-26
Author(s):  
Bram Wauters
Keyword(s):  
Mail Survey ◽  
Voting Behaviour ◽  
Party Member ◽  
New Parties ◽  
Party Leaders ◽  
Nationalist Party ◽  
The Future

The Flemish-nationalist party Volksunie ceased to exist in 2001. Due to deep divisions within the party, it was decided to organise a referendum in which each party-member could vote for a project, outlining the future of the party. Since none of the three projects managed to obtain a 50 %-majority, a requisite to preserve the party name, the name Volksunie disappeared and the party was split up in two new parties.  In this article we tried to answer the question which members voted for which project. A mail survey was held among a sample of Volksunie-members. Explanations for voting behaviour were found in characteristics of voters, their viewpoints on issues and their appreciation of notable party leaders. Finally, we analysed the second preference-party of the Volksunie-members in order to estimate with which existing parties the two new parties could possibly form future alliances.

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