Voting behavior

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.

'I pay enough taxes already!' Applying economic voting models to environmental referendums

Philippe Thalmann, Nicholas Bornstein

Objectives. Models of economic voting have rarely been applied to referendum votes. We fill this gap by testing citizens’ voting behavior on environmental policy in relation to their perception of the business cycle. Thus, the study examines the personal, institutional and economic determinants of vote choice on 36 environmental bills from 1983 to 2004 in Switzerland. Methods. We apply a logistic hierarchical model, where individual characteristics on level-1 are nested within contextual determinants situated on level-2. Results. We conﬁrm the crucial importance of the individual-level variables education, political affinity, car ownership and urbanity. Classifying the electorate into ﬁve groups using open-ended survey questions about respondents’ reasons for approval or dismissal of the bills allows for finer hypotheses testing. We show that the individuals’ positive perception of their personal current economic conditions has a positive effect on the likelihood of supporting the proposals. In turn, we prove the negative, constraining effect of deteriorating macroeconomic conditions on approval rates. Conclusions. By applying economic voting models to referendum analyses we advance the understanding of citizens’ vote choice on environmental ballots. As environmental politics is cost-intensive and often entails redistributive measures, this result corroborates common sense beliefs that it is paramount designing cost-neutral bills.

2008

Three essays on the acceptability of environmental policy in Switzerland

Nicholas Bornstein

The present thesis studies the acceptability of environmental policy in Switzerland. The first part of the thesis concentrates on citizens' demand for environmental quality at ballots. The analysis is guided by the public choice framework, which is rooted in the assumptions of instrumental rationality and utility-maximization. However, it is advisable to account for socially constructed norms and preferences, and a logic of appropriateness, too when studying the demand for a public good such as the environment. This is why these elements were integrated into the analysis. Furthermore, in a rich decision-making framework which controlled for citizens' voting motivations and for contextual factors influencing the vote, it was shown that voters react sensitively to both their personal and the nation's perceived economic conditions. Thus, when they feel confident about the country's or their personal economic conditions, they are more likely to support environmental policy. The second part of the thesis is devoted to actors' policy preferences and their alliance formation behavior in the pre-parliamentary phase. Based on an in-depth analysis of actors' responses to four pre-legislative drafts, it was shown that the main conflict line in Swiss environmental policy runs along the market vs. state divide and that, thus, the possibility to engage in cross-cutting alliances remains limited. Despite hypotheses of scholars that this line of conflict may be shifting due to the emergence of post-material or left-libertarian issues on political agendas, we were not able to corroborate this claim for Switzerland.

EPFL2007

'I pay enough taxes already!' Applying economic voting models to environmental referendums

Three essays on the acceptability of environmental policy in Switzerland

The Determinants of Voting Choices on Environmental Issues: A Two-Level Analysis

'I pay enough taxes already!' Applying economic voting models to environmental referendums

Three essays on the acceptability of environmental policy in Switzerland

The Determinants of Voting Choices on Environmental Issues: A Two-Level Analysis