Determinants of Electoral Behaviour – UGC NET Geography – Notes

Voting Behaviour

• Voting is the primary form of political participation in liberal democratic societies and serves as a key mechanism through which citizens influence political outcomes.

• From a sociological perspective, the study of voting behaviour focuses mainly on explaining who votes and how they vote.

• Analysis of voting patterns places strong emphasis on identifying the determinants of voting behaviour, examining why people vote in particular ways and how they arrive at their electoral decisions.

• Early research on voting behaviour, pioneered by Paul F. Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in the mid-twentieth century, concluded that voting choices depend largely on socio-economic and social structural factors.

• According to this view, people’s voting behaviour is shaped by their location within social systems, including factors such as social class, occupation, gender, race, age, religion, ethnicity, and family background.

• Political socialization, especially family history of voting behaviour, plays an important role in shaping long-term political preferences and participation.

• Membership in voluntary associations—such as trade unions, recreational clubs, political parties, and civic organizations—was also found to significantly influence voting behaviour.

• In contrast, political scientists have tended to emphasise the role of political factors in shaping voting decisions.

• These include the influence of political issues, party programmes, electoral campaigns, and the broader political context.

• Particular importance is given to party loyalty, or voters’ psychological identification with specific political parties.

• Voters’ perceptions of and feelings toward individual candidates, including leadership qualities and personal appeal, are also considered key factors influencing voting behaviour.

• Together, sociological and political approaches highlight that voting behaviour is the result of a complex interaction between social characteristics and political influences.

Various Approaches

A number of different (not mutually exclusive) approaches (models) have been used to explain voting behavior. The major approaches may be distinguished as structural, ecological, social-psychological, rational-choice and radical.

1. Structural (or sociological) approaches concentrate on the relationship between individual and social structure, place the vote in a social context, and examine the effects of such variables as social class, language, nationalism, religion, and rural-urban contrasts on voting. This approach has placed much emphasis on the party identification and social class.
2. Ecological (or aggregate statistical) approaches relate voting patterns to the characteristic features of a geographical area (ward, constituency, state, etc.).
3. Social-psychological approaches relate voting decisions to the voter’s psychological predispositions or attitudes, for example, his or her party identification, attitudes to candidates, and the like.
4. Rational-choice approaches argue that voting is governed less by group loyalties and class position than by individual’s rational calculations of self-interest. These approaches attempt to explain voting behavior as the outcome of a series of instrumental cost-benefit calculations by the individual.
   This model of voting behavior sees the voter as thinking individual who is able to take a view on political issues and votes accordingly. It rejects the notion that voting behavior is largely determined by class affiliation or class socialization.
5. Radical approach regards class-based (structural) model as outdated and insufficient to explain contemporary developments and consider the rational-choice model as inadequate.