...long-term factors in shaping voting behaviour. Many factors are said to impact the way in which people vote, some factors been long term whilst some are seen to be short term, however it is evident they all cross over to determine the way in which people vote. However, Peter Pulser once said that ‘ class is the basis of all party politics all else is embellishment and detail’ however this long-term factor has an impact along side other factors that shape voting behaviour these are Ethnicity, the Media, Age and recent events. Firstly, class is an important determinant of voting behaviour and this is a long-term factor. In the 1950s/60s, due to strong class alignment particular groups identified strongly with a class. This meant that people were more likely to turnout and vote for a particular party because of their allegiances. A/B/C1 were linked to the Conservatives because of their strong stance on tax and law and order, whilst C2/D/E were Labour since they were likely to be unionised and or accessing the Welfare State. However, since the introduction of Thatcher’s ‘right to buy’ people began to feel more middle class; also referred to as embourgeoisement. However, since Thatcher C2 voters were labelled as ‘the working class Tories’ with Thatcher receiving more votes from the C2 voters, however in the 2010 general election the conservatives gained votes from all ‘classes’. The idea that class is a key determiner in the way shaping voting behaviour is supported by Peter Pulser...
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...Stability rather than volatility, now characterises voting behaviour at UK general elections. Discuss There are many reasons why people choose to vote. Whether they have a strong view that agrees with the party they are voting for, or they are tactically voting so a certain party that they really don’t like doesn't get into parliament. Most of the time voting is devided into short term and long term decisions, which means that a certain member of the family will vote differently than usual because of a certain law that a party wants to pass. Recently, and leading up to the 2015 General election, there have been declining levels of class alignment. This means that a member of the public that usually votes conservative, might decide to vote labour, or vice versa. This shows the volatile side of voting as these statistics change depending on what the parties promise, however, it is becoming more common for people to vote the opposite to what they usually vote for because of party policies. This makes it very hard for people to predict the way other people are going to vote. Another point of volatile short term voting, is the declining levels of party id. This means there has been an increase in floating voters. The 2010 general election resulted in a coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and the Conservatives. In some respects, this was a surprising coalition and many of the parties laws they promised to change, never happened. Again this has had a knock on effect for the...
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...Evaluate the view that voting behaviour in the USA is determined more by the socio-economic characteristics of the voters than by issues, candidates and events. (30 marks) It is commonly argued that voting behaviour in the USA is determined more by the socio-economic characteristics (religion, race, gender and age) of the voters than by issues, candidates and events. Arguments that support the question include race being an influence, religion being an influence and gender being an influence in all of the recent elections. However, there is evidence to suggest that issues and candidates are the deciding factors in an election. Firstly, many argue that in the U.S. race has large influence in voting behaviour. For example, in 2012, 93% of African Americans voted for Obama as did 71% of Hispanics. This suggests that racial minorities are more likely to favour Democrats, because of their liberal attitude on issues that are more likely to affect ethnic minorities, as seen with Obama’s promised immigration reform in 2012. This is also seen in the UK, where the Labour party have typically performed better amongst racial minorities. However, some would argue that this is not always the case. The African-American vote for Democrats has been stable (80%+) for over 30 years, but the Hispanic vote has not. Hispanics are typically swing voters. For example, on social issues such as abortion/same-sex marriage, some Hispanics tend to take a more social-conservative stance which attracted...
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...‘The election campaign is more important than long-term factors in shaping voting behaviour.’ Discuss. There are many different factors which effect voting behaviour, both long and short term, and in this essay I will be discussing whether I believe the more short-term election campaign, or long term factors have more influence on the way people vote. The region in which you live has a huge impact as to the way you are predicted to vote. In the north, especially in industrial areas, you would be much more likely to vote labour. This is because in these industrial areas there are incredibly high numbers of working class people who work in factories and mines for example and labour has many more policies put in place to help people who are of a lower class. An example of these policies is lower taxes which means working class people will have more money than they would otherwise have should the Tories be in power. In post war 2/3 of the working class population in Britain voted labour, and 4/5 of middle class voting Torie. ‘Class is the basis of British politics, all else is embellishment.’ -Pelzer (1967). This would suggest that 50 years ago many people believed that partisan alignment was purely based on class. This would suggest that purely based on partisan alignment, long term factors are more important in shaping voting behaviour. Ethnicity is also a factor in shaping voting behaviour. 80% of people from black and Asian origins living in the UK have voted labour since...
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...politics and at a local and national level. Another reason why turnout may be low that of disengagement of younger voters and ethnic minorities, the decline of voter participation is highest for young voters also ethnic minorities may feel as if they are not being identified with from the leading UK political parties. The election campaign is a way of determining voting behaviour yes. With the election campaign it is easy to calculate statistics to find out voting behaviour, although you cannot determine why every person is or is not voting it gives us the closest figures we can get for voting behaviour i.e. seeing what figures are from which constituency’s, in the extract we see that in Liverpool Riverside there was a voter turnout of 41.4% and in West Tyrone there was a turnout of 80.2% proving to us that there is different voting behaviour in different regions of the country. This cannot show the feelings of why people may or may not vote though, some people may feel apathy, hapathy or just be completely unaware of politics all together, the election campaign however does show us the basic ideas of voting...
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...so easy to access all parts of the media through our phone. Therefore when a major newspaper is bias towards one they get more media coverage and the therefore it sways people’s opinions as all the positives about that political party are shown. Firstly, the influence of the media. The media nowadays comes in all different forms for example; newspapers, magazines, television and radio. The media is where people can form their opinions on the ability of political leaders and whether the government is doing a good job or not. The media determines what people see and what people hear, if they want to cover something up then they have the ability to do so as they decide what goes in to the public eye. In the dominant ideology model of voting behaviour its argued that the mass media has traditionally been supportive of the conservative party opinion and due to this it has persuaded a large number of the working class voters to vote in favour of the Conservative party. In the run up to the 2010 UK General Election, the Sun newspaper that usually supported the Labour Party ran a headline saying ‘Labours Lost It’. This lets the Sun’s readers know that they feel it would be a bad decision to let Labour run the party and its support...
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...As well as social class, age is a long term factor which can influence voting behaviour. Analysis of data from 1945-1970, suggested that older voters were more likely to vote Conservatives than those younger and less likely than younger voters to vote Labour. This could be explained through the notion that as an individual gets older they become more concerned about their financial and personal security and believe Conservative governments are more likely to protect their interests than one of Labour. However, psephologists like Butler and Stokes explained that the relationship between age and voting is linked to the different processes of political socialisation and the notion of political generations. (Butler and Stokes, 1969) If an individual forms an allegiance with a particular party as an adult and continues to vote for that party throughout their life then they may be politically influenced by the prevailing climate...
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...vote by party identification. It has fallen from 45% in 1964 to 10% in 2010, it is apparent that voting may be becoming an issue of deliberated choice, a rational exercise rather than something decided by your upbringing or you socio-economic group. To name one reason, it is clear that voting is a rational exercise when we take into account party leadership, and how that has affected past general elections. Past general elections have shown us that the image of the party leader is in-fact of most importance, with elections having significant swings based on the image of the party leader. An example of such an occasion was the 1979 general election. Labour leader Michael Foot was a kind-hearted man, an ex-pilot and had credible policies, yet he cared not for his appearance and was often quite scruffy and poorly dressed. Mrs Thatcher on the other hand was well-spoken, well-dressed and an looked the part of a prime-minister - and it was her that won the election. It is also often the case that opinion polls also show this is the case, and that an appealing party leader will often result in a win at the general election. This fact that a party’s leader’s appearance affects the outcome of a general election is significant evidence in favour of the view that voting now is a rational exercise. Yet further evidence that voting is now an essentially rational exercise is voting behaviour regarding the economy, especially in times of economic crisis. Sanders’ theory is that the economy...
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...Assess the main factors which determine how voters discriminate between political parties at general elections There are many factors that may affect voting behaviour; of which age, occupation, financial stability, gender, party records and place of residence are all important. However, the first, and possibly most important, is the party policies shown on the manifesto. Voters may often choose to vote instrumentally, to find the policies that suit them and their needs best. For example, an expansionary fiscal policy will often particularly appeal to those who are poorer, as they are more likely to want the Government to help create jobs and improve services so that they can gain a better grounding. Those unemployed would also find the appeal in these policies. (This would most likely be a Labour policy) Policies often come down to opinion and this is often implemented by a type of upbringing or personal experience. Class used to be a factor in this, but after class dealignment happened in the late 1960s, embourgeoisement started to happen with the working class and there was partisan dealignment. This meant that political parties had to work harder to keep voters, so their policies had to be more widely aimed. Instead of just aiming to appeal to a poor working class or a rich upper class, these were just less obvious sets of people. The working class grew in affluence and they allied themselves less with Labour. New Labour responded to this by moving further right on the...
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...Political advertising – a brief survey The empirical political advertising literature is limited. Most authors refer to Rothschild’s seminal (1978) article, which is both a review and a report on his tests of an involvement model. The level of involvement of voters in a particular election could depend on a wide range of factors, but Rothschild offers three general ones: 1. the level of the election (national/local etc.); 2. the closeness of the race; and 3. the volatility of the issues or candidates. There is some more recent work examining voter recall of political messages. Faber and Storey (1984), note voter responses to different messages and presentations (see, for example, Thorson et al., 1991), in particular negative ones (Faber et al., 1993; Garramone, 1984; Tinkham and Weaver-Lariscy, 1994). These studies used subjects in experimental groups rather than actual electoral or opinion poll data. More recently Ansolabehere and Iyengar (1995) have substantially added to the literature on negative advertising through the use of a very rounded and full quantitative and qualitative study which shows that a highly focused negative campaign can increase the turnout of those potential supporters predisposed to abstain by something in the order of approximately 29 per cent, thus maximising your supporters’ vote. Weaver-Lariscy and Tinkham (1987) investigated how Congressional election candidates evaluated different media and proposed six levels of response to political...
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...a rational exercise?” (25 marks) Over recent years the way people have voted has changed drastically, as the electorate are no longer voting simply for the party in which they have been brought up to support or the party with which they identify themselves with. E.g. People in the North East identifying with the Labour party. This could be caused by class dealignment. This is likely to be the case as evidence shows that there is a great decrease in the percentage of people who vote by party identification. Which has fallen from 45% in 1964 to 10% in 2010, it becoming apparent that voting may be becoming an issue of rational exercise instead of something decided by your upbringing or you socio-economic group. Past general elections have shown evidence that the party leader and the image they portray to the public is of the most importance, with elections having significant swings based on the image of the party leader. It is often the case that opinion polls also show this and that having a party leader who appeals to the electorate rather than policies will often result in a win in the general election. The fact that a party’s leader’s appearance can affect the outcome of a general election is significant in showing that voting is becoming a rational exercise. It can also be argued that voting is a rational exercise due to voting behaviour patterns during times of economic crisis, the government in power can often lose support due to the blame of these problems. It also allows...
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...Organizational Behavior Assignment Group Behavior A1: The Punctuated Equilibrium Model Of Group Development The behaviours of the jury in the Movie supports the theory of punctuated equilibrium. The jury's deliberation which found the boy guilty eleven votes to one set the tone for the first half of the movie. During this time, the majority were still quite fixed in their guilty verdict and not very open or willing to consider other points of view. A significant transition took place when the old man supported the architect's (jury 8) questioning of the validity of the testimony. At this point the discussion the man from the slum, also changed his vote. This was right at the midpoint of the movie and soon after this the tone of the conversation of the group began to change. Following the midpoint transition, the second phase was marked by more skilful dialogue and genuine curiosity. The group moved towards a firmer conviction that the boy was not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. Ultimately, even the most stubborn of the jurors changed their views. A2: The Group Think Phenomenon Group-think, which is agreeing to avoid conflict this theory exists most often when people are in a group, because some people have the tendency to agree with the majority instead of stating their own opinions. The members of the jury all vote guilty right off the bat except Juror No 8. The other jurors never had much reason to vote guilty in the first place. They simply heard other angry...
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...Democracy Mukulika Banerjee A s India is hailed as the next superpower, do its political credentials stand up to scrutiny? Is its record on governance and development up to the challenge of its newfound reputation? India has been a democracy for over six decades. In this time it has achieved some remarkable successes but also failed in significant ways. While economic growth has been rapid over recent decades, this has not translated into greater welfare for the majority of the Indian population. Despite being severely critical of its politicians, the electorate however remains enthusiastic in its political participation, especially at elections. In 1947, when India gained her independence from colonial rule, the choice of parliamentary democracy and a universal franchise for such a poor, vast and largely illiterate nation was considered foolhardy by many observers, at home and abroad. Nevertheless the first general election was held with great rigour, enthusiasm and success in 1952. In the meantime, a Constitution reflecting the political and ideological goals of the new nation had been adopted. It was authored by the Constituent Assembly made up of 299 members who represented the enormous class, religious and linguistic diversity of India’s population and who after much debate and deliberation set out the framework for India’s future as a republic and parliamentary democracy. Enshrined within it were the principles of the separation of powers, a universal...
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...1 Participation and Voting Behaviour Total for this topic: 40 marks (01) Explain the term turnout used in the extract. (5 marks) It is likely that the majority of candidates will define turnout as a measure of the number or proportion of people who vote at an election. Higher-level responses are likely to provide a more authoritative definition: ie the proportion of registered voters who cast a ballot at a given election, expressed as a percentage. Candidates may pick up on the reference in the extract (ie by identifying electoral turnout as one measure of political participation). At the higher levels of response, it is likely that candidates will look to develop their answers by introducing material from their own knowledge. Some may refer to varying levels of turnout witnessed at different types of elections or introduce the notion of differential turnout in a single electoral cycle, with top-level responses supporting such points with statistical evidence. It is likely that many candidates will also make reference to the relatively low levels of electoral turnout witnessed at some recent general elections (most famously in 2001) and such knowledge is obviously creditable here. (02) Using your own knowledge as well as the extract, consider why some commentators have spoken of a ‘participation crisis’ in recent years. (10 marks) The focus here is the issue of why commentators have spoken of a participation crisis, as opposed to the question of...
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...institutionalized principle because it applies social order and cooperation in the management of the human behaviour. Institutions managed through democratic style are chosen depending on the permanence and social order. The style transcends the individual human lives and intentions through enactment of rules that capitalize on the cooperative human behaviour. The democratic leader shares problem-solving and decision-making responsibilities with the employees. However, he or she retains the final decision. Democratic leadership incorporates various styles. Democratic leadership incorporates different styles such as anticipatory democracy that is related to the future expectations and bioregional democracy that links geopolitical regions to ecological regions. Additionally, democratic style also includes cellular democracy that is related to the multilevel bottom-up structure of communities; defensive democracy whereby the democratic principles within the society limits some rights to protect some institutions of democracy; and liberty democracy that protects the individual rights (Billsberry, 2009). The prominent goal of democratic leadership is fostering employee investment in an organization through enhancing their commitment to individual roles within the organization. Some examples of democratic leadership situations include requesting idea input from all members, voting on the most effective way of the input and...
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