Electoral research is a relatively new field in political science but, nonetheless, one of the most developed and sophisticated research bases in social science, with a history stretching over six decades (Thomassen, 1994: 241). This section gives a brief outline of the history of electoral research. It will highlight the influential studies that defined and in important ways continue to define and shape the scope and direction of research in this field. The purpose of this brief historical recount of electoral research is to try and put the present study into perspective and establish where it fits within the larger body of research in this field.
The origins of the studies on electoral behaviour can be traced down to Harold Gosnell’ study of voting behaviour in the 1924 and 1925 local elections in Chicago (Green et al, 2003:
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1085). The study sought to understand why voters often stay away from local elections than presidential elections. This was followed up by the landmark studies done in the late first half of the nineteenth century by Paul Lazarsfeld and associates at the University of Columbia in the United States. The studies later extended into the 1950s resulting in a number of books (Lazarsfeld, Berelson and Gaudet, 1948), (Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954) and (Lipset, Lazarsfeld, Barton and Linz, 1954) (Visser, 1996: 24). Their studies found that media content was of little significance in the people’s voting choice in the presidential elections.
Rather one’s social background as relating to their education, religion, race and occupation among other things were more reliable indicators of their voting choice (Bartels, 2008:4).
The aim of the studies was to investigate the voting behaviour of the Americans in the presidential elections. Specifically, to determine the factors that influenced their voting choice of the voters in the elections. Their model of voting behaviour has been has been hugely influential and has been the basis of many studies in the quest to understand voting behaviour (Brady et al, 1995; Habib and Naidu, 2006; Basat and Dahan, 2008; Fauvelle- Aymar, 2008; Gerber et al, 2008; Funk, 2005). These studies are credited for developing the Sociological approach to the study of electoral behaviour. The major thesis of the Sociological school was that voting behaviour was largely a function of one’s social situation or station vis-à-vis religion, age, education, class, place of residence and family among other factors.
There is an old adage in the American folklore to the effect that a person is only what he thinks he is, an adage which reflects the typically American notion of unlimited opportunity, the tendency towards self-betterment. Now we find that the reverse of the adage is true: a person thinks, politically, as he is, socially. Social characteristics determine political preference. (Lazarsfeld et al., 1968, p. 69)
As a result of these studies an Index of Political Predisposition (IPP) was developed in which religion, socio-economic status and area of residence were identified as the major determinants of electoral behaviour (Antunes, 2010: 147). The influence of the Sociological model, having waned in the 1950s, was rejuvenated in no small ways in the 1960s by Lipset and Rokkan’s Cleavage structures, Party systems and Voter alignments (1967). In their work, Lipset and Rokkan argued that religion, culture and class were important factors in understanding people’s political behaviour. In other ways this inquiry reinforced Lazarsfeld et al (1948)’s findings that one’s political choice, and by implication – political participation – was greatly influenced by their social background. Moreover, Brady et al (1996)’s resource model of political participation, by and large corroborated and in some ways improved the
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Sociological model as developed by Lazarsfeld and company. This model established that it is not simply one’s social background but the resources (time, money and civic skills) they have at their disposal that significantly influence political participation including voting (Brady et al, 1995: 274). The major finding of the resource model of political participation was that time, money and civic skills were three primary factors influencing one’s tendency to engage in political activities including the likelihood to vote or not to vote.
The second study of historical significance in electoral research was conducted at the University of Michigan in the United States began in 1948 and was later institutionalised and continues to the present (Visser, 1996: 24). It was largely a response to the weaknesses of the Sociological model which portrayed political behaviour as static and voters as passive actors rooted in their social surroundings. The study focused on the American presidential elections of 1952, 1956 and 1960 and culminated in a much acclaimed book The American Voter (Campbell et al 1960) (Bartels, 2008: 7). Also referred to as the party-identification or psychological model of voting behaviour, the Michigan study centred its analysis of electoral behaviour on political attitudes or people’s psychological predisposition to the political world. It gave primacy to personal attributes like political interest as the more immediate and perhaps most powerful determinants of one’s voting behaviour. Its main argument and major contribution was that people’s voting behaviour is determined and shaped, to an important extent, by party attachment or partisanship (Campbell et al, 1960: 121). People are likely to vote for a party they are attached or go to vote if they think the party they are attached to, has a chance of winning the elections.
However even though attachment is a key factor, an individual’s psychological make-up would influence them to behave in ways not entirely consistent or even outright opposite to their party attachment. Thomassen (1994: 239) points out that the model was so influential so much so that, “a whole generation of European scholars made the pilgrimage to Mecca to study political behaviour at the University of Michigan’s Survey Research Centre”. The study came up with the explanatory model known as the ‘funnel of causality’. It demonstrated that seeking to understand people’s political behaviour or their propensity to behave in a certain way by simply referring to their social background was merely scratching the surface of a more complex process. The explanatory framework of the Michigan approach distinguishes between distal factors (sociological) and proximal (personal) factors in explaining a person’s voting behaviour. By focusing on the psychological aspect, the model is able, unlike the Sociological model, to explain why sometimes people vote for a party they are not attached to
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or abstain from voting altogether. This model showed that people’s political behaviour is a function of a more complex interaction of psychological and social processes cannot simply be reduced to their social situation (Bartel, 2008: 8). In other words, people are not just passive actors but actively decide whether to participate in politics or not and their political attitudes are not static. But constantly change in response to the political environment like the issues at stake and the candidates competing for office.
The other major work in electoral research was the rational choice theory of voter turnout, which was developed by Anthony Downs in his work Economic Theory of Democracy (1957) improved later on by Riker and Ordeshook (1968) and Edlin et al (2005) among others. The rational choice theory’s analysis of political behaviour is based on an analogy of the behaviour of a consumer in the market. It is derived, by and large, from the principle of utility maximization16 and stipulates that voters, like consumers, seek to maximise the utility of their vote (Bartels 2008: 19).
Our model could be described as a study of political rationality from an economic point of view. By comparing the picture of rational behaviour which emerges from this study with what is known about actual political behaviour, the reader should be able to draw some interesting conclusions about the operation of democratic politics (Downs, 1957:14).
The model rests on the assumption that voters are rational individuals whose likelihood to participate in the elections will be determined by the decisiveness of their vote and the choices at their disposal in the election (Antunes. 2010: 162). Downs (1957: 295) argues that the rational choice thesis is premised largely on the concept of rationality. Parties and voters alike seek to realise some profit or benefit from their actions and will therefore act in an instrumental manner. As a result rational choice theorists suggest that in order to boost turnout it is important that policymakers create an environment which reduces as much as possible the cost incurred by voters in the voting process. At the same time increase the possible benefits of voting.
However the theory came under heavy criticism for failing to explain why the majority of citizens still turnout to vote even though there little chance of their vote influencing the outcome (Blais 2000; Green and Shapiro, 1994). This was known as the paradox of voting
16 Utility maximisation is an economic concept that suggests that when making a decision to purchase something, a consumer attempts to get the greatest value possible from expenditure of least amount of money. His or her objective is to maximise total value derived from available money (See http://www.businessdictionary.com).
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(Feddersen, 2004). Nevertheless this theory has been very influential in the field of electoral research and has been adopted and expanded by several scholars to improve its explanatory power. For example in an attempt to solve the paradox of voting Riker and Ordeshook (1968:28) add citizen duty as a motivational factor for the voter. Fiorin (1981) contends that voters are indeed rational as they adopt retrospective voting strategy as they vote. Other scholars (Feddersen and Sandroni, 2002; Edlin et al, 2005; Coate and Conlin, 2004) used group-based models approach to voter turnout in which they sought to substitute social interests for selfish interests as the main reason for an voter turning out to vote.
There were some other equally important developments in the literature on voter turnout. One such was Jackman (1987)’s fairly influential institutionalist model of electoral turnout. The main argument of the model is voting is an act governed by institutional rules, laws and procedures and as such, the type of institutions in place is an important determinant of voter turnout rates. Jackman (1987) and Powell (1986) conducted cross-national studies on voter turnout and found that institutional differences like the electoral systems, registration process, voting age, the party system among others significantly affected the variations in turnout rates.
Jackman (1987: 412) points out the classic examples of the United States and Switzerland whose turnout rates are severely depressed by the institutional settings particularly the registration process, outweighing the favourable political attitudes of their populations. The study’s findings were later replicated by many other studies like (Blais and Dobryznska, 1998; Norris, 2003; Endersby and Krieckhaus, 2008) who found institutional factors to significantly affect turnout rates. The institutionalist model lays emphasis on factors like the electoral system, party system, legal rules for registration, the level of the election and various other institutional variables that may affect the overall turnout. The preceding discussion has highlighted the major developments in electoral research which continue to influence literature in the field. The vast majority of the previous literature falls squarely into one or the other of these models with other studies using an overlapping approach combining one or two of these models.