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Concept
Voting behavior
Summary
Voting behavior refers to how people decide how to vote. This decision is shaped by a complex interplay between an individual voter's attitudes as well as social factors. Voter attitudes include characteristics such as ideological predisposition, party identity, degree of satisfaction with the existing government, public policy leanings, and feelings about a candidate's personality traits. Social factors include race, religion and degree of religiosity, social and economic class, educational level, regional characteristics, and gender. The degree to which a person identifies with a political party influences voting behavior, as does social identity. Voter decision-making is not a purely rational endeavor but rather is profoundly influenced by personal and social biases and deeply held beliefs as well as characteristics such as personality, memory, emotions, and other psychological factors. Voting advice applications and avoidance of wasted votes through strategic voting can impact voting behavior.
Voter behavior is often influenced by voter loyalty. There is a correlation between voter satisfaction with what a political party has achieved and dealt with a situation and voters' intention of voting for the same party again. Thus, if there is high voter satisfaction in how the political party performed, then the likelihood of a reoccurring vote in the next election is high. Additionally, the information supplied to the voter is significant in understanding voting behavior. The information provided to the voter, not only influences who to vote for, but if they are intending to at all.
Three cleavage-based voting factors, or individual differences impacting voting behavior, focused on in existing research are religion, class, and gender. In recent years, voting cleavage has shifted from concerns of Protestant vs Catholic religions to have a larger focus on religious vs non-religious leanings. Traditional conceptions of class voting dictate a working-class preference towards left-leaning parties and middle-class preference for right-leaning parties.
Official source
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