$2.75. It is because we are rational, and if we are rational, rationality means maximizing our usefulness on the basis of the closeness we can have with a party. The system in the United States is bipartisan and the question asked was "Do you consider yourself a Republican, Democrat or otherwise? Voting is an instrument that serves us to achieve an objective. Partisan attachment is at the centre of the graph influencing opinions on certain issues being discussed or the attitudes of certain candidates. changes in voting behaviour from one election to the next. This theory is not about the formation of political preferences, they start from the idea that there are voters with certain political preferences and then these voters will look at what the offer is and will choose according to that offer. This diagram shows the process of misalignment with changes in the generational structure and changes in the social structure that create political misalignment. The second criterion is subjectivity, which is that voters calculate the costs and benefits of voting subjectively, so they make an assessment of the costs and benefits. For Fiorina, the retrospective vote is the fact that current policy is fundamental, whereas in the prospective vote it is less so. Voting is an act of altruism. Economic theories of voting explain both voter turnout (1) and electoral choice (2). There are also studies that show that the more educated change less often from one party to another. Sociological Model (Columbia Model) Social-Psychological Model (Michigan Model) Economic / Rational Choice Model (Rochester Model) 5 Sociological Model. Fiorina proposed the question of how to evaluate the position of different parties and candidates: how can voters know what the position of different parties is during an election campaign? A third possible answer is that they will vote for the candidate whose political ideas are closest to their own. The problem of information is crucial in the spatial theories of voting and who would need an answer to fully understand these different theories. This approach emphasizes a central variable which is that of partisan identification, which is a particular political attitude towards a party. On the other hand, the political preferences are exogenous to the political process which is the fact that when the voter goes to vote which is the moment when he or she starts to think about this election, he or she already arrives with certain fixed or prefixed political preferences. It is a small bridge between different explanations. Lazarsfeld was the first to study voting behaviour empirically with survey data, based on individual data, thus differentiating himself from early studies at the aggregate level of electoral geography. In summary, it can be said that in the economic model of voting, the political preferences of voters on different issues, are clearly perceived by the voters themselves which is the idea that the voter must assess his own interest, he must clearly perceive what are the political preferences of voters. 5. What we are interested in is on the demand side, how can we explain voters' electoral choice. It is necessary to distinguish between two types of voters and to make a distinction between a literature that has become increasingly important in recent years on opinion formation in an election or voting context. This is a fairly reasonable development, as is the discounting model, whose proximity was something reasonable and which makes the model more consistent with reality. What are the criteria for determining the individual usefulness of voters? A unified theory of voting: directional and proximity spatial models. As this is the first model that wanted to study empirically and test hypotheses on the basis of survey data, it was necessary to develop conceptual tools, in particular the political predisposition index, which focuses on three types of social affiliations that are fundamental in this perspective to explain electoral choices, namely social status, religion and place of residence. There is a small degree of complexity because one can distinguish between attitudes towards the candidate or the party, attitudes towards the policies implemented by the different parties and attitudes about the benefits that one's own group may receive from voting for one party rather than another. (Second edition.) Theoretically, it is possible to have as many dimensions as there are issues being discussed in an election campaign. it takes a political position that evokes the idea of symbolic politics in a more salient way. It is in this sense that the party identification model provides an answer to this criticism that the sociological model does not highlight the mechanisms that make a certain social inking influence a certain electoral choice. It is a model that is very close to data and practice and lends itself very easily to empirical testing through measures of partisan identification and different measures of socio-demographic factors among others. This electoral volatility, especially in a period of political misalignment, is becoming more and more important and is increasingly overshadowed by this type of explanation. This economic theory of the vote, this rationalist theory, has a great advantage over the other models, which is that it does not only focus on voters, that is to say, it does not only focus on political demand, but it also looks at supply and especially at the interaction between supply and demand. So there is this empirical anomaly where there is a theory that presupposes and tries to explain the electoral choices but also the positions of the parties in a logic of proximity to the centre of the political spectrum, but on the other hand there is the empirical observation that is the opposite and that sees parties and voters located elsewhere. p. 31). If we do not accept the idea that actors will vote according to their assessment of certain issues, to be more precise, according to their assessment of the position that the various parties have on certain issues, if we do not understand that, we cannot understand the spatial theories of voting either. Lazarsfeld's book created this research paradigm. In this perspective, voting is essentially a question of attachment, identity and loyalty to a party, whereas in the rationalist approach it is mainly a question of interest, cognition and rational reading of one's own needs and the adequacy of different political offers to one's needs. Others have criticized this analogy between the economic market and the political market as being a bit simplistic, saying that, basically, the consequences of buying a consumer product have a certain number of consequences, but they are much more limited compared to what buying a vote can have in terms of choosing a party. It has often been emphasized that this model and approach raises more questions than answers. To summarize these approaches, there are four possible answers to the question of how voters decide to vote. Cambridge New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. We have to be careful, because when we talk about political psychology, we include that, but we also include the role of cognitions and rationality. It is by this configuration that May tries to explain this anomaly which is due to the fact that there is a group of voters who become activists within the party and who succeed in shifting the party's positioning towards the extremes. Psychological Models of American Voting Behavior* DAVID KNOKE, Indiana University ABSTRACT A path model of the presidential vote involving social variables, party identification, issue orientations, . Prospective voting is based on election promises and retrospective voting is based on past performance. Distance is understood in the sense of the proximity model for whom voter preference and party position is also important. If we look at it a little more broadly, partisan identification can be seen as a kind of shortcut. It is a rather descriptive model, at least in its early stages. These criticisms and limitations are related to the original model. If we take into account Przeworski and Sprague's idea that there can be a mobilization of the electorate in a logic of endogenous preference and non-maximization of the utility of voters. Four landmark studies connected with the presidential elections of 1940, 1948, 1952, and 1956 mark the establishment of scholarly survey-based research on voting behavior (Rossi 1959). The explanatory factors and aspects highlighted by these different models are always taken into account. Inking and the role of socialization cause individuals to form a certain partisan identification that produces certain types of political attitudes. There are other theories that highlight the impact of economic conditions and how voters compare different election results in their electoral choices, which refers to economic voting in the strict sense of the term. According to Downs, based on the prospective assessment that voters make of the position that voters have and their position on various issues, voters arrive at and operate this shortcut by situating and bringing parties back to an ideological dimension that may be a left-right dimension but may also be another one. The strategic choices made by parties can also be explained by this model since, since this model postulates an interdependence between supply and demand, we address the demand but we can also address the supply. For example, a strongly conservative voter who votes Democratic may vote Republican because he or she feels more in tune with the party. The same can be said of the directional model with intensity. Distance must be taken into account and the idea of mobilizing the electorate must be taken into account. In short, it is an explanatory model that emphasizes the role of political attitudes. the translation of personal preference into a voluntary action designed to influence public policy The theoretical criticism consists in saying that in this psychosocial approach or in this vision that the psychosocial model has of the role of political issues, the evaluation of these issues is determined by political attitudes and partisan identification. Does partisan identification work outside the United States? This model relies heavily on the ability of voters to assess and calculate their own interests and all the costs associated with the action of going to the polls. While Downs said that there are parties that take positions on issues, the voter has difficulty with this inferring a position on a left-right axis. Symbols evoke emotions. This model leaves little room for the ideology which is the idea that by putting so much emphasis on the emotional voter and feelings, it leaves little room for the ideology that is central to explaining the economic model of the vote. There is in fact the idea that the choices and preferences of voters in the centre will cause the parties, since they are aiming in this model, to try to maximize their electoral support. The fit of a measurement model that differentiates between the various degrees of suicidal severity was verified. We are looking at the interaction. The Lazarsfeld model would link membership and voting. The advantage of the intensity directional model is that it goes in a more intense direction, i.e. We can talk about two major theories or two major models or even three models. However, we see that this is not always true and that there are parties that propose more extreme policies that receive considerable electoral support. In other words, they propose something quite ecumenical that combines directional and proximity models. <]>> From the point of view of parties and candidates, the economic model and in particular the model that was proposed by Downs in 1957 and which predicts a convergence of a party position towards the centre. We are not ignoring the psychological model, which focuses on the identification people have with parties without looking at the parties. Some have criticized this model saying that it puts forward the one-dimensional image of the human being and politics, that is, that it is purely rational, hypercognitive in a way without taking into account sociological but also psychological elements. One must take into account the heterogeneity of the electorate and how different voters may have different motivations for choosing which party or candidate to vote for. There is a particular requirement, which is that this way of explaining the voting behaviour of the electoral choice is very demanding in terms of the knowledge that voters may have about different positions, especially in a context where there are several parties and where the context of the political system and in particular the electoral system must be taken into account, because it may be easier for voters to know their positions when there are two parties, two candidates, than when there are, as in the Swiss context, many parties running. The theory of the economic model of the vote is also a model that allows predictions to be made about party behaviour. Some have another way of talking about convergences and showing how the theories explaining the vote can be reconciled with the process of political misalignment. In this representation, there are factors related to the cleavages, but also other factors that relate to the economic, political or social structure of a country being factors that are far removed from the electoral choice but that still exert an important effect in an indirect way the effect they have on other variables afterwards. Suicide is a global public health problem. The idea is that a party is ready to lose an election in order to give itself the means to win it later by giving itself time to form an electorate. The external factors would be the factors that, in the basic theory of the psycho-sociological approach, it would seem that this is what can do but if we have a certain partisan attachment to vote for another party because we are influenced by one or other of these factors but, basically, we keep our partisan attachment and the next time when these factors change, we return to the normal vote corresponding to the partisan attachment. The basic idea is the representation of a point that is an ideal point for each voter in a hypothetical space. . The initial research saw three major factors to voting behaviour: Personal identification with one of the political parties, concern with issues of national government policy and personal attraction to the presidential candidates. They may rely less on their partisan loyalties, so their vote may be explained less by their social base and more by their choice among an offer that is the economic model. In other words, when we are interested in trying to explain the vote, we must already know what type of voter we are talking about. Cross-pressure theory entered political science via the analysis of voting behavior at Columbia University (Lazarsfeld et al. By finding something else, he shaped a dominant theory explaining the vote. The theory of partisan competition was completely eliminated by the other types of explanations. There are several reasons that the authors of these directional models cite to explain this choice of direction with intensity rather than a choice of proximity as proposed by Downs. Today, in the literature, we talk about the economic vote in a narrower and slightly different sense, namely that the electoral choice is strongly determined by the economic situation and by the policies that the government puts in place in particular to deal with situations of economic difficulty. What is interesting is that they try to relate this to personality traits such as being open, conscientious, extroverted, pleasant and neurotic. This is the idea that gave rise to the development of directional models, which is that, according to Downs and those who have followed him, because there is transparency of information, voters can very well see what the political platforms of the parties or candidates are. In other words, the voters' political preferences on different issues, in other words, in this type of theorizing, they know very well what they want, and what is more, these positions are very fixed and present when the voter is going to have to vote. On the other hand, in rationalist approaches, shortcuts are cognitive shortcuts. Of course, there have been attempts to assess the explanatory power of directional models, but according to these researchers, these spatial models were designed to be purely theoretical in order to highlight on a purely theoretical level what motivations voters may have for their electoral choice. Parties do not try to maximize the vote, but create images of society, forge identities, mobilize commitments for the future. [14] They try to answer the question of how partisan identification is developing and how partisan identification has weakened because they look at the stability over time of partisan identification. 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