Voting Behaviour

Question 1

Give five examples of primacy factors

Answer 1

Ethnicity social class gender region age

Question 2

Does social class have much of an impact on voting behaviour (statistics)

Answer 2

In 1974 57% of the unskilled working source voted for labour and only 22% voted for the Conservative

In 1974 56% of the middle class voted for the Conservative’s while only 19% voted for labour

Question 3

Recency Factor

Answer 3

A short term factor that influences the way people vote

Question 4

Give five examples of recency factors

Answer 4

The media, opinion polls, the party leader , the policies of a party and salient issues

Question 5

How important are recency factors? (Statistics)

Answer 5

More important as partisan de-alignment has occurred .Southampton Itchen was a safe seat for Labourfrom 1992 until in 2015 when the conservatives won a majority which suggests that recency factors are becoming more important

In the 2015 general election 41% of people thought that the Conservative’s were the most capable at handling the most salient issue which was the economy proving that recency factors are becoming more important

Question 6

Name the voting theory models?

Answer 6

Social structure model Party identification model
rational choice model dominant ideology model
voting context model
spatial voting model
Valence model of Voting

Question 7

Describe the Social Structures model

Answer 7

It’s theorises that is the way people vote is dependent on their friends family and community that they are in

Question 8

Describes the party identification model

Answer 8

It’s theorises that the way people vote is due to a large amount of partisan alignment as people have a strong association and bias towards one party and do not take into account recency factors

Question 9

DeScribe the rational choice model

Answer 9

That People make a self interested conscious vote for a party and consider recency factors like issues and the leader of the party when voting (Sanders 1996)

Question 10

Describe the dominant ideology model?

Answer 10

The idea that voting behaviour is very much dominated by powerful groups of people like the media and business owners that these peoples political views influence others

Question 11

What is the proof for the dominant ideology model (statistics)

Answer 11

The sun and the times have a circulation of over 2 million per year they are run by Rupert Murdoch who supported the Conservative’s in the 2015 general election

in 2010 televised debates were introduced election campaign the first televised event was watched by over 9 million people

Over 97% of people have atelevision

And over 84% of people have the Internet

During the 1992 election Labour were the favouritesto win until the Sun released an article crutizing the leader of the Labour Party Neil Kinnock to the after it was declared that the Conservative party has won the election the following day the sun released an article headlined ‘it’s the sun wot won it’

Question 12

Describe the voting context model

Answer 12

To see arises that voting behaviour changes depending on the type of election and the circumstances that faces each voter

Question 13

What factors can affect the way people they according to the voting context model

Answer 13

Voting behaviour depends on the type of election ,the electorate type (PR or FPTP) ,media coverage of the election and the type of seat that their constituents are (swing or safe)

Question 14

What is the evidence for the voting context model?

Answer 14

In the 2010 general election the Conservatives gained 36.1% of the vote why are you kip gained 3.1% of the vote but in the 2014 EU election UK have gained 26.6% of the vote why the Conservatives gained 23.1% this may be due to the different electoral systems used in the elections

The general election first past the post is he is now in the EU election the closed party list is used which is much more proportional with the allocation of seats. This means people are more likely to back their preferred party as there is less of a chance of the vote being a wasted vote

Question 15

What is the spatial model of voting

Answer 15

This model is most likely relevant to positional voters as it theorises that people vote for the party with policies similar to theirs in the left to right wing spectrum

Question 16

What is evidence for the spatial model of voting

Answer 16

The policies of the Labour party and the Conservative party have become more similar as they are as they are both trying to converge around the middle voter to gain more votes which is why neither of the Conservative’s or Labour Party want to be seen as Left Wing or Right wing and only centre left or centre right.

This explains why doing for 2010 campaign right wing newspapers would portray Ed Miliband as extremely left wing and Nicknamed him ‘red Ed’

Question 17

What is the valance model of voting?

Answer 17

It theorises that valence voters (voters that do not have a clear position on the issues and instead have ideas on issues that have a broad range of agreement such increasing economic growth) vote for the party that seem the most capable and able are doing well in valence issues

Question 18

What factors influence valance voters

Answer 18

The media

Party reputation

Question 19

How does the media influence valence voters

Answer 19

In opinion polls during the 2015 election campaign it was seen that Ed the band was seen as the weaker candidates when compared to David Cameron by the time of the election his approval rate was at -18% while David Cameron’s was at 0%

After looking at televised debates Gordon Brown had the lowest approval rate of 35% which is now are then David Cameron is 45% and Nick Clegg is 68% in 2010 which could explain why the Labour party lost the election

Question 20

Primacy factor

Answer 20

A long term sociological factor that influences the way people vote they tend to not change much over time and are stable.

Question 21

What is psephology?

Answer 21

The study of elections and voting behaviour. Both recency and primacy factors are looked at to determine voter behaviour.

Question 22

What is social class?

Answer 22

A social group whose members share similar interests :
Economic
Social and
Cultural circumstances

Question 23

What is class alignment?

Answer 23

When there is a clear link between someone’s social class and who they vote for

Question 24

Give an example that proves class alignment

Answer 24

In 1974 56% of the Middle class voted for the conservatives

Question 25

What is partisan alignment

Answer 25

When a person has a strong association with a party and continuously votes for them while not taking other parties and recency factors.

Question 26

Give evidence for partisan alignment

Answer 26

Conservatives have won in Kensington since when it became a constituency in 1974

Question 27

What factor may have caused partisan dealignment

Answer 27

The deindustrialisation of the UK lead to more people having white collared jobs and hence forth less people voting for labour

Improve in access to good education ( grammar schools) has lead to more working class people getting jobs that require good qualifications, embourgeisoment is when the working class become more middle class and so do their votes

Question 28

What factor may affect partisan alignment

Answer 28

The deindustrialisation of the UK lead to more people having white collared jobs and hence forth less people voting for labour

Improve in access to good education ( grammar schools) has lead to more working class people getting jobs that require good qualifications, embourgeisoment is when the working class become more middle class and so do their votes

Question 29

What evidence is there of class dealignment since 1974?

Answer 29

In 1974 49% of the skilled working class voted for labour by 2010 only 29% voted for Labour

In 1974 56% of the Middle class voted for Cobservatives however by 2010 only 39% did

Question 30

What is economic voting?

Answer 30

A type of issue voting where voters reward governments by re-electing them if the economy is going well when they’re in government, but punish them (by not voting for them again) if the economy is going badly

Question 31

What is issue voting?

Answer 31

When someone votes for a party that has policies that represent the voters beliefs

Question 32

What is an election campaign ? (5 marks)

Answer 32

The lead up to the election where parties try to reach out to potential voters and try to persuade them to vote for this party.

In the UK this generally lasts for one month. 1/5 of people don’t know how they will vote until the last week.

MP’s try especially to campaign in swing seats as they don’t have many core voters due to partisan dealignment

Question 33

What is swing?

Answer 33

When people change which party they vote for, it is shown as a percentage EG
In 1997 general election Labour had an increase of votes by 8.8%

In 2015 they only had an increase of 1.5%

Question 34

What is churn?

Answer 34

That swing doesn’t show the complete movement of voters between elections. If from 2005 to 2010 1000 voters move from cons to labour while 1000 move from labour to con, swing will still be 0%.

Question 35

What are salient issues (5 marks)

Most salient issue? How does this relate to votes?

Answer 35

• Issues that are viewed by the electorate as the most important
• In 2010 the most salient issue was the economy and in 2015 it was the economy followed by the NHS
• In 2001 Labour were seen as the most capable party at handling 4/5 o’clock the most salient issues and in 2005 they were preferred for 3/5 and they won in both years
• In 2010 the conservatives were seen as the most capable at handling 4/5 of the most salient issues and they gained the most seats
• In 2015 UKIP were seen as equally capable as labour at handling the 3rd most salient issue, immigration and ended up with a swing of +9.5% as they had 3.1% of the vote share in 2010, but 12.6 in 2015

-In 2010 when IPSOS MORI conducted an opinion poll to find out who the general public thought was the most capable at handling the economy (the most salient issue) 30% of people were unsure which may have caused these people to not vote as they thought the policies were too similar which caused them to become more apathetic and a hung parliament was formed

Question 36

How important is age group in voting behaviour?

Answer 36

People are more likely to vote conservatives as they become older, while younger voters are more likely to vote for labour in the 2015 general election:

• Only 27% of 18-24 year olds voted for Conservatives
• 43% of 18-24 year olds voted for Labour
• In the 65+ age category 47% voted Conservative while 23% voted labour.

Question 37

How important is region in voting behaviour?

Answer 37

Labour and Conservatives both have a sizeable amount of safe seats due to partisan alignment. In these seats there are many core voters that have continuous support for the party.

The north-south divide plays an important role in voting in the 1997 general election
64% of people in the North East voted Labour
while 41.9% in the South East voted Conservatives.
In 2010:
In the North East region 46.9% voted for Labour
In the South east 50.8% voted Conservatives

Question 38

What is socialisation?

Answer 38

When peoples political beliefs are shaped off their families, friends or work colleagues beliefs.(Could be linked to class alignment and other primacy factors

Question 39

What proof is there of socialisation

Answer 39

People voting based on primacy factors is socialisation.

65% of non-white people voted for Labour in 2015.

Question 40

What is embourgeoisement?

Answer 40

\When the working class become more middle class and so do their votes. THis is due to improvements to education in the sense that grammar schools are supposed to give children an education that is comparable to one received at a private school for free.

Question 41

What is a protest vote?

Answer 41

Where voters avoid voting for their preferred party in order to send a message that they are not happy with their performance.

Question 42

Protest vote example

Answer 42

In 2015 the Liberal democrats went from having 57 seats in 2010 to having 8 seats in 2015. This is most likely due to LD’s breaking their promise of eliminating tuiton fees to increasing tuition fees when in a coalition government with the conservatives.

Question 43

What is tactical voting?

Answer 43

Where voters avoid voting for their preferred party as they are aware that they have little chance of winnig in their constituency , so to avoid their vote from counting as a wasted vote they vote for another party that they like that has a better chance of winning, in order to prevent their least favourite party from winning

Question 44

Give some examples of how tactical voting has been encouraged.

Answer 44

In the 1997 election a tactical voting campaign called ‘Get Rid of them’ (GROT) advised people to vote for the Liberal democrats or the labour party to avoid the Conservatives winning.

There are tactical voting websites such as tacticalvoter.net and tacticalvoting.com that give people advice on how to vote tactically

Question 45

What concerns are there over the ownership of UK newspapers?

Answer 45

Newspapers are not legally obliged to be impartial and can make it clear which party they support.

Newspapers are run by wealthy billionaires who’s concerns are mainly in agreement with centre-right wing parties who’s policies involve lower taxes for the wealthy and reduced public spending.

This will be reflected in news articles meaning they will try to influence their readers to vote for the party they think should govern the country.

The Sun and the Times are both run by Rupert Murdoch and these papers supported the Conservatives in the 2015 election. Since the circulation is 2 million a year means they potentially can influence a large amount of people

Question 46

Name the 4 different theories relating to the Dominant ideology model

Answer 46

Direct effect theory of media influence
Agenda setting theory of media influence
Framing theory of media influence
Reinforcement theory of media influence

Question 47

What is the direct effect theory of media influence?

Answer 47

The idea that the media can directly influence our opinions on different political ideas and henceforth the way we vote.

Question 48

What is the agenda setting theory of media influence?

Answer 48

The idea that the media influence what people think about as they decide what gets broadcasted and what doesn’t. From the 2005 to 2010 election the Sun declared that they supported the Conservatives and they ended up having a swing of 13.5% but it was reported that 12.5% of this swing happened before the Sun reported their alliance.

Question 49

What is the framing theory of media influence?

Answer 49

The idea that the media can subtly influence our views by sharing stories from the perspective of whose side they’re on. In 2013 the Daily Mail ran a story on Ed Milibands father called ‘The Man who Hated Britain’.

Question 50

What is the reinforcement theory of media influence?

Answer 50

Theorises that people choose to follow media that confirms the views they already hold. Generally people that vote for certain parties read a newspaper that endorses this party.

Question 51

What is socialisation?

Answer 51

When the people acquire their political beliefs from their family,friends, work colleagues or community

Question 52

Going into the 2015 general election what percentage of seats were deemed by the electoral reform society as ‘safe’

Answer 52

56% (this has gone down from 59% in 2010)