Factors Predicting Voting Behavior - Research Proposal Example

Factors predicting Voting Behavior Introduction With some exceptions, all the countries on this planet follow is some form or there other, the democratic way of governing people. As it claims that, “it is the government of the people, by the people and for the people” (Broughton & Napel, pp. 75-82). Quite understandably, it allows and asks the people to cast their votes to select their representatives, which would then represent those people at some national platform like House of Commons or National assembly or Parliament. For the past decades, many political science experts and investigators have put in a lot of their energy to understand the psychology, attitudes, and behavior of their voters. More importantly, the factors that have the capability to affect their behavior have also been under a lot of debate and research. In fact, more than researchers the politicians have been trying to find the answers to these questions because they are one of the biggest stakeholders in this process. In short, this topic holds immense significance in all aspects of political studies. This paper also attempts to discuss the same but with a narrow scope. Since these voting behaviors change significantly with regions, countries, ethnicities and many other factors, this paper only focuses on the factors that can predict voting behavior in Western Europe. Without any doubts, this region of Europe has a rich political history and is somewhat different from the rest of the Europe based on their highly developed nature, high-income group status, and strong democratic political systems (Broughton & Napel, pp. 75-82). It is important here to note that Western Europe consist of many countries but this paper focuses only countries like France, Belgium, Germany, Austria, Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy, Luxembourg and Netherlands due to their strategic importance, activeness in political activity or political participation and other factors. However, United States has only nine countries in their list defined as Western European countries. Discussion Some recent studies in comparative politics have studied and revealed some impacts of globalization or international and regional political integration on the domestic electoral politics. In fact, Western Europe is a great example to understand this phenomenon. This is because of the presence of the European Union in Europe as a strong agency with the goal of brining all these European countries at one platform thus affecting the domestic elections. Research has studied this is in several dimensions and it has found out that “globalization reduces the voter turnout and interest in domestic elections” (Broughton & Napel, pp. 75-82). Now, it is important to understand the reasons for the same. The biggest motivation of people behind casting their votes remains their wish to implement their policies and thoughts by electing the representative who best matches your thoughts and expectations. In short, it is the desire and inspiration to control and influence the important decisions of the country, which forces the voters to come out of their homes to cast their votes in big numbers. However, the advent of European Union and common currency in form of Euro and its acceptance and implementation by countries gave a silent message to the voters about their decreased power to control their country’s economic decisions (Pállinger, pp. 163-168). This caused many economic voters to stay at home, because they assumed that they longer could influence their country’s economic decisions because that is some thing, which would be controlled by, supranational power like European Union from now onwards (Broughton & Napel, pp. 75-82). Moreover, they also understand that from now onwards most of the monetary, fiscal and other economic decisions of the governments would be driven by outside so it would be injustice to hold the government responsible for the same. Therefore, the result comes in the form that they restrain themselves from voting. However, there are exceptions to this case as well. The politicians who had based their campaign in the favor of European integration would have got some support from the voters in support of it or vice versa. For example, in the general of 2001 in United Kingdom, the conservative party ran a strong campaign on saving the pound however, the labor party and other liberal democrats showed a flexible opinion over the issue thus allowing the voters to choose their side (Pállinger, pp. 163-168). Another example is of the 2005 federal elections in Germany in which, the “Turkey’s bid for European Union’s membership” influenced the voter behavior with different parties having different opinions on this issue (Pállinger, pp. 163-168). Clearly, any country’s affiliation with supranational agencies like EU and others and the voters’ opinions about those polices helps a lot on predicting and understanding their behavior. Experts also believe that religion is losing its importance and significance as a major influencing factor in the past despite the fact that they agree that religion still is a very much considerable factor. They present Netherlands as the biggest example. History shows that since 1918, with the exception of German occupation, the Christian religious parties have been always dominating the lections and no government or coalition has formed without their agreement, presence, and support (Broughton & Napel, pp. 75-82). In fact, for more than five decades they continuously held more than half of the seats in the parliament. However, their elections of 1994 and 1998 were disastrous for them decreasing their share of votes to just 18.4 percent an asking them to play their role as opposition from now onwards (Oppenhuis, pp. 166-174). It is important here to note that the link between religion and a political party may be direct thus making it a religious political party. For this type, it is necessary that the party has its roots in religious principles, takes a clear stand in the light on the religion on issues, and targets the people belonging to that religion. However, there can be an indirect linkage as well where any political party may not label itself as religious but takes stands on religious issues, which appeal to the voters. In countries like Netherlands, these parties had a direct linkage with religions thus making technically religious political parties. A survey conducted in the year 2003 revealed that people of Europe no longer feel that their religion should govern issues related to their public life. Instead, they believe it is a personal a private matter. Moreover, the study also indicates that people who believe that “God is involved in every aspect of life are just 24 percent compared to the previous figure of 47 percent. In addition, people thinking that natural disasters are a will of God have declined from 40 percent to 11 percent” (Oppenhuis, pp. 166-174). Therefore, now people do not engage in purely religious voting to that much extent since there are other important issues as well to drive their voting decisions. Moreover, the example of France is also there where the old myth of the presence of presence of religious vote has been somewhat hampered by the recent trends (Tillman, pp. 45-58). Therefore, despite the fact that the importance of religions is decreasing but religious issues still hold a significant place in predicting the voter’s behavior. Furthermore, a recent survey also revealed that despite the Western Europe’s commitment to democracy many people in Europe are alienated from this system. Switzerland, the only country in Europe, which gives direct-democratic participation to its citizens, ranks first on list of the countries in Europe where politics comes under discussion more often than a month (Tillman, pp. 45-58). Germany had the second rank followed by Norway and Austria. Moreover, countries like Belgium, Spain, Italy, and Greece rank the last in the rankings (Tillman, pp. 45-58).These differences as mentioned earlier exist due to the political systems of these countries. Therefore, political system also plays an important part in exploring voting behavior. It is also important to note that age also has an imperative impact in predicting the voting behavior. Recent studies show that it voting activeness has a curvilinear relationship with age. In other words, it means that the oldest age group people are the least likely to participate in voting process. However, there are some contradicting results from countries like Germany, Netherlands, and France (Oppenhuis, pp. 166-174). These countries always show a great turnout level for the older age group people as well. Experts have explained this inconsistency of this theory as its inability to remain useful in relatively very high-income group countries. In developing countries and those with comparatively low-income, the older people would face the problem of transportation, security, mobilization, and more importantly, health care facilities (Richardson, pp. 205-217). In addition, in countries where some one lives his or her whole life without much progress that develops a pessimistic attitude about the system and the politicians. These people would never make an effort to cast their vote since they just do not trust the system and the people running it (Oppenhuis, pp. 166-174). However, in developed countries where the older generation have witnessed development and growth in their times, they tend to understand the importance of their votes. Therefore, in the Western Europe, we can say that the more developed and civilized the country the more is the probability that the older generation would outclass the number of votes put in by the youth. Youth would not take much interest as compared to the older generation because of their immaturity and inexperience about the political system and its importance (Richardson, pp. 205-217). However, in less developed countries only the youth remains more optimistic. Other factors also contribute and predict the voter’s behavior like the phenomenon of compulsory and Sunday voting also makes a huge amount of difference (Bader, pp. 12-18). In addition, education levels, income group, and gender seem to have important relations with voting behaviors. Research for Western Europe indicates that the higher the level of education the higher the probability that he or she would come out to vote. Moreover, level of education has relations with votes to secular or religious parties. Despite the fact that there needs to a lot more research on this since the evidence is not comparatively strong but experts say that higher education levels would lead to votes to more secular parties (Richardson, pp. 205-217). Furthermore, income group also has links with voting behavior. Rich and wealthy people are the most likely to cast their votes and the poorer are the least likely to make an effort for the same. In addition, other factors like season and weather, time of the day or week can also have impact on the voting behavior (Bader, pp. 12-18). In addition, the voter’s perception of the political parties may also influence his or her voting behavior. If the voter thinks that there is little or no difference between the agenda and ideology of the political parties then it is highly unlikely that he or she would make an effort to vote (Tillman, pp. 45-58). Another factor bought into debate by Mark N. Franklin is of salience (Pállinger, pp. 163-168). He gives the example of Switzerland and country with a direct democratic system but with low turnout ratios. Switzerland allows its citizens to have more powers than the government, referendums are common for all important issues, and people can always challenge the decisions of the government with some specific number of people. Since the government is weak and federal legislature does not have a significant impact on the country, so that decreases the voter’s turnout and interest to quite a lot of extent (Pállinger, pp. 163-168). However, in other countries of western Europe where the turnout ratios are high because of the higher perceived importance of the federal legislature in the political system and lives of the people of that country (Tillman, pp. 45-58). Lastly, the researcher has scrutinized various imperative aspects of factors that play their role in encouraging or discouraging voting behavior in the Western Europe. Additionally, the paper documented and inspected different explorations related to the topic but it is prospect that studies in the future on the same topic will allow to acquire an extensive and critical understanding of the topic. Conclusively, it is anticipation of the researcher that the above discussions will be very fruitful for students, teachers, and professionals in better understanding of the topic. Works Cited Bader, Max. Fluid party politics and the challenge for democracy assistance in Georgia. Caucasian review of international affairs. Vol. 2 (2), Spring 2008. Broughton, David, & Napel, H.-M. T. D. Ten. Religion and mass electoral behaviour in Europe. Routledge, 2000. Oppenhuis, Erik. Voting behavior in Europe: a comparative analysis of electoral participation and party choice. Het Spinhuis, 1995 Pállinger, Zóltan Tibor. Direct democracy in Europe: developments and prospects. VS Verlag, 2007. Richardson, J. J. European Union: Power and Policy-making. Routledge, 2002. Tillman, Erik R. European Integration, Economics, and Voting Behavior in the 2001 British General Election. University of Nebraska, 2008 Read More