Voting

(and related issues)

Lecture 4, SAMPOL 107
05 February 2025
Yvette Peters
What we do today
1. Who do citizens vote for?
• Social basis
• Partisanship
• Issue voting
2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
6-ish theories to explain why people vote (or not)
3. Contacting
4. Representation
• Representatives: styles
• Representing citizen opinions: aggregation
• Representing opinions…equally?
→The role of participation in unequal representation
→Compulsory voting?
5. Democracy
 1. Who do citizens vote for?
• Social basis → e.g., class, religion, age, gender…
o Social position affects preferences
o Social position affects communication/information received
o Social groups provide orientation information and shortcuts
• Partisanship → long-term affective, psychological identification with
one’s preferred political party
o Gives cues to evaluate
• Issue voting
o Issues position
o Performance evaluation
o Traits of candidates and parties
Explanations are not deterministic
nor mutually exclusive! Source: TravelMarx
1. Who do citizens vote for?
Issue voting

Criteria:
▪ People should be interested in the issue
▪ They should have an opinion
▪ They should know the position of the party/candidate

→ Quite demanding as a basis of voting; requires lots of skills

→ Issue voting has gone up over time
→ Issue publics (groups of people interested in a specific issue)
1. Who do citizens vote for?
The nature of issue voting
oPosition (policy goals) →Retrospective voting
oPerformance (evaluation) →Prospective voting
oAttribute (of party or candidate)

Position Performance Attribute

Retrospective Policy appraisal Performance
evaluation Attribute
Prospective Policy mandate Anticipatory voting
judgement
1. Who do citizens vote for?
Issue voting
→Position: correlation between issue position and vote choice
→Economy, immigration, environment, moral issues
→And.. People seems to know what parties stand for generally
→Performance: How effective will the party/candidate be?
→Valence issues: where people agree on the general outcome, e.g., the economy
→More based on macro economy than pocketbook (Importance of the reporting
of the news!)
→Images: superficial or informative?
→May indicate competence; displays traits that are good to have as a leader
→Personalization of politics
1. Who do citizens vote for?
Voting
1. Who do citizens vote for?
Voting
2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
6 theories to explain why people vote (or not)
# The Resource model
➢Those with more resources have larger network, have higher stakes, and are more
motivated
➢Education, age, income, class, marital status, home ownership
# The Mobilization model
➢People are mobilized by organized interests; they are asked to participate and offer
information
➢Organizational membership, partisan/non-partisan mobilization, media exposure
# The Socialization model
➢Years between childhood and adulthood are formative; relations affect behaviour
➢Parental influence, political discussion (+/-)
2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
6 theories to explain why people vote (or not)
# The Rational Choice model
➢Some cost-benefit calculation; lower costs and higher gains affects voting
➢Voting experience, propensity to vote, caring about outcome, civic duty
# The Psychological model
➢Cognitive characteristics → related to resources and RC
➢Party ID, political interest, political knowledge, internal and external efficacy
# The Political-Institutional model
➢The context of elections affect voting considerations
➢Compulsory voting, facilitate voting, electoral system (…)
➢Discuss effects of institutions more later in the course
2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
Remember the Civic Voluntarism model from last week? People participate
because they can, they want to, and they are asked to
- Resources
- Motivation
- Being asked

→ The list of theories gives more specific content to the civic voluntarism
model
 2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
Voting in Norway
over time
 2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
Voting in Norway by gender

Kilde: SSB
 2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
Voting in Norway by age groups

Kilde: SSB
 Direct contacting MODE
❑ Low pressure/High information
3. Contacting ❑ Conflict varies
❑ High effort required
❑ Little cooperation with others
People contact officials, may be increasing required

May be more important than sometimes thought: it communicates

information and preferences.
→ sometimes by people with specific links or influence (e.g., the very rich in the US)

→ Do officials respond? Yes! Quite a bit (Giger et al. )

• Intrinsic motivation AND
• Extrinsic motivation
→ means that officials value contacts
3. Contacting
Aars & Strømsnes article
(Link to the ‘crisis of democracy’ debate; discusses unidimensional and
multidimensional concept of participation; complexity of participation)

→ Focus: participation is undertaken by regular citizens (excluding

officials)
▪ Who: somewhat more men, higher income + education, being
married and in work
▪ Context: those living in smaller places are more active
▪ Attitudes: Those with more efficacy and more political interest
3. Contacting
4. Representation
Representatives: styles Models of representation
oTrustees oGyroscopic representation
oDelegates oAnticipatory representation
oParty delegates (Responsible oPromissory representation
party model)

Implications:
Who is represented
Accuracy
Source: UiB
4. Representation
4. Representation
4. Representation
Representing citizen opinions: aggregation
How does that actually work? Do those who are elected do a good job?
→Political scientists have tried to measure this; not easy!
→Different ways to look at this

Policy
Public opinion Representatives’ opinion
Party platform

o Response over time? Or ‘level’?

o Specific issues? Or a ‘superissue’?
o One-direction, or thermostatic?
4. Representation
Representing citizen opinions: aggregation
Many studies, using different approaches

❑ Collective correspondence (citizen-representative opinions; many-to-many)

❑ Dyadic representation (many-to-few)
❑ Did not work well in Europe
→Responsible party model; representation works differently, through parties

OVERALL → Representation seems to work!

We see that elite opinion/policies/parties follow public opinion
And opinion adjusts after policies change → thermostatic model of representation
4. Representation
Representing citizen opinions: aggregation
Example: US
Stimson et al. 1995
4. Representation
Representing opinions…equally?
Unfortunately, representation does not work as ideal entirely
Studies have found that policies respond better to some than others
• The rich
• Men
• Older
• Higher educated

→ Discussion of democracy: political equality? Citizens’ capability? The

capability of the elite?
4. Representation
Representing opinions…equally?
Example: Norway
Mathisen 2023
 4. Representation
Representing opinions…equally?
→The role of participation in unequal representation
Mathisen/Peters 2023
4. Representation
3. Representation
4. Representation
Representing opinions…equally?

Should voting become compulsory?

(Do countries with compulsory voting have less inequality in

representation? Research!)
4. Democracy
Citizen participation and democracy really intertwined! Citizens are the heart
of democracy. Questions we have dealt with:
→Are they competent (enough)?
→Are they involved (enough)?
→Are they heard (enough)?
→Are they considered as equal (enough)?

Looked at institutionalized forms of participation explicitly connected to the

state:
Discussions about democracy and citizens may look different when we
look at other forms of activity
What we did today
1. Who do citizens vote for?
• Social basis
• Partisanship
• Issue voting
2. Why do citizens turn out to vote—or not?
6-ish theories to explain why people vote (or not)
3. Contacting
4. Representation
• Representatives: styles
• Representing citizen opinions: aggregation
• Representing opinions…equally?
→The role of participation in unequal representation
→Compulsory voting?
5. Democracy
Questions? Comments?