Analysis of Vote Choice Determinants in Great Britain
Volatile Voters and Vote Choice Determinants in Great Britain
Introduction
The study examines whether short-term factors increasingly determine vote choice due to rising electoral volatility in established democracies. It tests the hypothesis that volatile voters' choices are more strongly determined by short-term factors than stable voters. The research analyzes British election panels from 1992-1997, 1997-2001, and 2005-2010.
Key points:
Electoral volatility is rising in advanced democracies.
It's often assumed that short-term factors increasingly drive vote choice.
This study investigates the impact of both long-term and short-term factors on stable and volatile voters in Britain.
Theoretical Framework: Funnel of Causality
The "funnel of causality" explains how multiple factors affect voters' choices through a sequence of causal chains. Long-term factors include socio-demographics, value orientations, and partisanship. Short-term factors encompass issue attitudes, performance assessments, and candidate evaluations.
Long-Term vs. Short-Term Factors
Long-term factors: Stable, influence vote over extended periods (e.g., social class, party identification, ideology).
Short-term factors: Changeable, more immediate impact (e.g., candidate image, current issues).
Trends in Voting Behavior
Dealignment: Decreasing importance of long-term factors like party identification.
Volatility: Increasing instability in voting behavior.
Vote switchers increased from 18% in 1964 to 28% in 2010.
Previous Research and Hypotheses
Previous studies have not found strong evidence that dealignment leads to more weight for short-term factors. This study hypothesizes that the vote choices of volatile voters are more strongly determined by short-term factors than those of stable voters.
Data and Method
The study uses data from three British election panels (1992–1997, 1997–2001, and 2005–2010). Voters changing parties or switching to/from abstention are considered volatile. Multinomial logit models are used to explain vote choice (Labour, Conservative, Liberal Democrat, or other).
Analytical Strategy
Estimate multinomial logit models for vote choice.
Simulate how voters would have voted if particular sets of variables had zero effect.
Compare predictions of the full model with new predictions to assess the impact of each set of variables.
Variables
Socio-demographic: gender, age, education, religion, race, social class, public sector employment.
Partisanship: Party identification.
Short-term factors:
Issue distances.
Economic evaluations (sociotropic and egotropic, retrospective and prospective).
Leadership evaluations (summary score of leadership traits).
Main Results
About 37% of British voters switch parties between elections. The models explain stable voters' choices better than volatile voters' choices.
Short-term factors (issue distances, economic evaluations) have a more significant impact on volatile voters than on stable voters. Party identification strongly affects stable voters, but less so for volatile voters.
Specific Findings
Issue distances hardly affect stable voters but change the predicted vote of about one in five volatile voters.
Economic evaluations have a stronger impact on volatile voters' choices in 1997 and 2001.
Leadership evaluations vary strongly from election to election.
Partisanship has a strong impact on stable voters' choices.
Socio-demographic variables have more effect on volatile voters than stable voters.
Contribution to (In)stability of Vote Choice
Partisanship has a strong stabilizing impact on the vote. Socio-demographic factors also contribute to stability. Short-term factors have mixed effects; leadership evaluations stabilize voting behavior in some elections. The waning impact of long-term factors, especially partisanship, increases volatility.
Discussion
Short-term factors are relatively more important for volatile voters, but this is due to the weakening of long-term factors rather than the increasing importance of short-term factors in absolute terms. A lot of variation in vote choice models remains unexplained, especially for volatile voters. This could be due to factors not included in the analyses or random choice.
Implications for Democracy
The findings suggest that issues and economic evaluations have relatively more weight in the vote calculation of volatile voters. However, the results also show that this shift in relative importance is a consequence of weak long-term factors, not of short-term factors becoming more important. Short-term predictors are becoming more important, therefore, but this gain in strength is in relative rather than absolute terms. Overall, the study highlights the complex dynamics of voter behavior in an era of dealignment and increasing electoral volatility.