Transcript Voting Behaviour Models - Lurgan College Politics / FrontPage

Voting Behaviour Models
Voting Depends Specifically on Red Pants
•Voting Context
(Nature of election, electoral system can affect voting, voters may choose to protest, abstain or vote tactically)
•Dominant Ideology
(Conspiracy theory, voters choice is manipulated by those in power using media)
•Social Structures
(Mainly class, but also age, gender. Race, religion etc.)
•Rational Choice
(voters weigh up parties’ manifestos, track-record and recent events)
•Party ID
(voters aligned to a certain party)
•William Millar’s “General Model”
(attempts to combine the above factors)
Examples
• Pre 1970’s era of alignment – class & party (SS, PID)
• Post 1970’s era of dealignment (volatility) – Rational
choice e.g. Fall in Tory vote after Black Wed
• Northern Ireland – Religion (SS) Women’s Coalition
(Gender)
• America – Race, Black’s vote Democrat (SS)
• 2003 Election – Lab voters going to Lib Dem in protest
over Iraq (VC)
• 1997 Election – Sun backs Labour (DI)
• Spain 2004 – Election happened immediately after train
bombings and the govt were removed because of the
way they handled the affair (VC/RC)
Don’t Forget to Mention:
• Shock Events (VC / RC)
• Media (DI)
• Charisma of leaders (RC)
Voting Systems
Don’t Forget to mention:
Evaluate using:
• Turnout
• Wasted Votes
• Simplicity
• Likelihood of coalition govt
• Spoiled votes
• Voter Input
• Tactical voting
• Proportionality / Fairness
• Stability
• Constituency Representation
Examples
• UK, USA – use FPTP & Stable, successful. But is this down
top the electoral system? The dubious 200 election of George Bush
almost undermined the whole US political system!
• NI – FPTP ultimately unstable as nationalists protested against the
“unfairness” – NICRM, Bloody Sunday 1972, IRA formed 1968.
• NI – STV (GFA) unstable? Was the electoral system the reason
the GFA failed? May have been part of it as the threahold for MLAs
was so low they could get elected entirely from own community, so
there was no need to try and appeal to the “other side” – resulting in
many hardliners being elected (DUP & SF now largest parties in
assembly).
• France – 2nd Ballot – Few people turned-out for the first ballot in
last presidential election and the national-front candidate Le Penn
made it through!
Examples
• ITALY – used a proportional system after WW2 which created
weak coalition governments. Italian politics became very corrupt as
parties did deals with each other to get into government, and few
parties remained in power long enough to fully implement their
policies. Italy stabilised when it switched to a hybrid system.
• Weimar Germany – Used a proportional system
resulting in weak coalition governments who were unable to deal
with crises such as the Wall Street crash and ultimately lost the
support of the people allowing the Nazis to rise.
• Israel – Uses the Party List system which allows small
fundamentalist Jewish Parties into coalitions governments which
have prevented agreement in the middle-east.
• Ireland (STV) Netherlands (List) Sweden (List)
All stable successful democracies using proportional systems and
often have coalition governments.
Don’t Forget to Mention:
• No perfect electoral system – depends on
time, history, size, development etc.
• Elections can be improved/modified
without changing the system (electronic
voting, compulsory voting etc.)
• Elections must be free, fair, secret ballot,
universal suffrage etc.
• Some groups may boycott elections e.g.
Sunni Muslims in Iraq.
Referendums
Advantages
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Allows direct participation (direct
democracy) there was 80% turnout for the
GFA vote.
Enables govt to deal with a tricky issue
Provides a clear answer
Act as check on the power of govt
Campaigns inform the public
Technology now allows referendums to be
carried out more often
Disadvantages
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What’s popular isn’t always right!
May result in tyranny of the majority over
minorities
Can be used by politicians to avoid tricky
issues
Wording of question can be used to
manipulate result – only certain options may
be made available.
Can over simply complicated issues
Governments will rarely agree to a
referendum unless they can be fairly sure
they will win – why have we not had a
referendum on the euro yet?
Referendums can be very open to influence
from the media.
A large portion of society might be
disgruntled if they lose by a small majority.
For example in the Welsh Assembly vote
49.7% people voted no.
Examples
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In 2005 European Nations began to hold referendums on the European
constitution which was agreed between the leaders. The results have so
far indicated that the leaders had become out of touch with their people and
the NO votes in France and the Netherlands provided a wake-up call to
governments across Europe.
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GFA, the referendum reduced this complicated issue to a simple yes or no.
In reality most people supported some areas of the agreement but were
opposed to others.
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Switzerland/Some US States – The people can initiate their own
referendums on any issue through an initiative (petition) this gives them a
great degree of direct democracy.
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1973 Border Poll, was boycotted by nationalists.
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UK devolution referendums set-up the assemblies in Scot, Wales, London
but no NE England where it was rejected!
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In Ireland issues such as divorce and abortion have been settled in
referendums
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Australia has held a referendum on becoming a republic
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Denmark rejected the Euro in a referendum