Voters and election

Preconditions for democratic elections

Free and fair, universal adult suffrage, secret ballot, impartial administration of voting and vote counting, free and

equal access to the polls

System factors explaining voter turnout

• Perceived importance of the election

• Electoral system leads to lower voter turnout ('my vote doesn't make a difference')

• Frequency of elections (election fatigue)

• Compulsory voting

Cosmetic democracy

People are voting, but there are underlying problems that you don't see

- people feel like they don't have power, and therefore tend to choose extreme parties to make up for this

Individual factors explaining voter turnout

• SES

• Socio-demographic

• Party identification

• Values and culture (habit—parents)

• Protest voting

Plurality majority

Goal is to identify clear winner based on majority

Simple Plurality ('First past the post')

• Country divide into small constituencies, one candidate per constituency is elected based on highest % of votes

• advantages: clear lines of political responsibility, simple, clear winner—> stable gov.

• disadvantages: larger parties overrepresented, votes for losing candidates are wasted

Block Voting

A system in which a voter can select as many candidates as there are open seats

second ballot

• In each constituency one candidate is elected, but there is a second round if majority (>50%) isn’t established the first round

• Advantages: simplicity, clear winner—> stability

• Disadvantages: unfair to smaller, third parties, voter fatigue from second ballot

if no candidate achieves a majority of votes cast, a second ballot is held some days later

candidates who scored poorly on the first ballot are often eliminated

Alternative Vote

Voters mark in order of preference, where the bottom candidate is eliminated if no candidate wins outright.

proportional representation

- Larger constituencies—in each one, multiple candidates are elected (multi-member districts)

- Each party receives # of seats as it won in votes — perfect proportionality

- Electoral threshold to counter fragmentation/small parties = minimum % of the poll required to be elected

(Belgium is 5%)

An electoral system used throughout most of Europe that awards legislative seats to political parties in proportion to the number of votes won in an election.

list PR system

• Parties rank candidates in order of preference, and are elected in proportion to this

• Voters vote for party list

• Advantages: fair to all parties, better representation of traditionally disadvantaged groups in politics

(women)

• Disadvantages: requires multi-member districts, possible fragmentation, no clear winner, party leaders

given lots of power

Single Transferrable Vote

Voters rank their candidates. Once a candidate passed a threshold, his EXTRA votes, in order of preference, get transferred to other voters. It stops once enough have passed the threshold.

Mixed Member Proportional

Two votes, one for a candidate from a district, one for a party. You get half of your total seats by plurality of the first vote and the other half from party lists. Your percentage of total seats is equal to your percentage of the second vote.

Ex: If 10 candidates from a party win their district, they get 10 seats. If that party also wins 28% of the second vote they will get 18 seats from that vote. That way, they have 28 total seats.

Electoral voting system is related to

• Party system

- Plurality/majority = two-party system

- PR = multi-party systems

Composition of Government

- plurality/majority = one-party government

- PR = coalition government

Duverger's law:

non-proportional elections favor two parties while proportional elections favor multi-party systems

economic voting

reward parties if economy is doing well

the idea that voters assess politicians' performance based on the economy. One of the most consistent findings in political science is that incumbent politicians and parties win when the economy is growing.

Class voting and Religion, gender, race voting

based on socio-economic differences

New party voting

psychological attachment to political parties (partisan re-alignment) but growing partisan de-alignment, increased volatility (fluctuating voting patterns), class de-alignment [post-materialist values]

Rational choice model

benefiting self interests (but fails to explain why people vote at all)