4. Ideology and Issues

This chapter looks at the changing nature of ideology in Europe. It also delves into the issue of voter preference and considers how that has changed over time. It is all too often assumed that voters, as well as parties, exist along a single ideological left-to-right continuum. However, the truth is that there more deviations from this continuum than we might have in the past assumed. With the emergence of new salient issues, such as immigration, the environment and European integration, the old assumptions no longer hold true. The chapter also looks at populism, which it defines as a thin-central ideology. The final questions of this chapter are: how has populism challenged our current model of democracy? What does the future hold in this regard?

Aligning Political Options and Aggregated Personal Opinions on the Issues

Much work has been done in studying how to aggregate voter opinions to decide a fair election. These models presuppose that each voter has a solid understanding of their choices and can express that opinion in the election process. We discuss why this is not always the case. Further, we explore some of the issues that arise when considering the multidimensional nature of both voter preference, with respect to the slate of issues in an election, and the platforms of the various candidates, with respect to the same slate of issues. In light of the complications we encounter and with full apologies to Jonathan Swift, a modest proposal is made for conducting future elections in a way that offers all of the voters a true chance to find a voice.

What is the College-Educated Voter? A framework for analysis and discussion of 2020 voter data.

The 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections brought unprecedented attention to political polling and especially to analysis of voter preferences by education level. In addition to affecting collection of voter data, how a survey defines and categorizes college attendance and completion and whether participants are presented with levels to define their educational attainment or whether they self-identify, can also affect analysis of voter data collected in surveys of voter preference. This paper examines the current polls leading up to the 2020 election and the impact that defining education may be having on predicting outcomes.

DECLINING LEGISLATIVE DISSENT IN CHINA: EVIDENCE FROM NATIONAL AND PROVINCIAL PARTY CONGRESS ELECTIONS

Using a novel statistical method, we estimate the vote counts of the secret elections held by the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party from 1945 to 2017. We also construct a metric for voter preference diversity based on a standard index of legislative party fractionalization. We find that both the number of dissenting votes and the voter preference diversity index plummeted to the bottom in 2017, which is an unprecedented phenomenon in the party's history. Applying the same method to provincial party congress elections from 2006–2017, we find that provincial dissenting votes also declined around the same time, though the magnitude is relatively smaller and there is a wide range of provincial variations. We suggest that President Xi's suppression of formal party institutions is complete at the national level but not yet at the provincial level.

On the Ground

Based on a personal journey through states in south, west, and north India, starting from Bengaluru and ending with Banaras, this chapter examines popular and elite conceptions of electoral politics during the 2014 Indian general election campaign. It argues that the National Democratic Alliance’s success was not monocausal, but arose from effective targeting of ‘winnable’ seats, high turnout by new voters, the professionalism of the BJP’s national campaign, and limits in the success of appeals to caste identity in favour of voter preference based on economic self-interest and aspiration. Using interviews with individuals, ‘On The Ground’ looks at the ways local, regional, or state factors can affect voting decisions.

Biases of Online Political Polls: Who Participates?

With a large portion of the population online and the high cost of phone-based surveys, querying people about their voter preference online can offer an affordable and timely alternative. However, given that there are biases in who adopts various sites and services that are often used as sampling frames (e.g., various social media), online political polls may not represent the views of the overall population. How are such polls biased? Who is most likely to participate in them? Drawing on a national survey of voter-eligible American adults administered in summer 2016, this paper shows that background characteristics (i.e., age, gender, race, education, and employment status) as well as Internet experiences and skills relate to who casts votes in online political polls.