Influences on Voting Behaviour

The electoral choices of voters are influenced by a range of factors, especially social-group identity, which helps to forge enduring partisan identification. In addition, voters are to a greater or lesser extent susceptible to the influence of more short-term and contingent factors such as campaign events, issues, and candidate appeals. In particular, the perceived governing competence of candidates and political parties often weighs heavily on voters’ choices.

Research suggests that, through partisan dealignment, the proportion of voters in Western democracies who retain their long-term partisan identities has been reduced. In conjunction with the declining impact of social-group influences, voter choice is now more heavily affected by short-term factors relevant to specific election campaigns. This shift from long-term predisposition to short-term evaluation has been facilitated in part by the phenomenon of “cognitive mobilization,” a supposed enhancement of the political independence and intelligence of voters who are both better educated and better informed than earlier generations. Nevertheless, many independents and nonvoters are poorly informed politically and relatively uninterested and uninvolved in politics. Whether cognitively mobilized or not, however, independent voters are often a decisive factor in elections. If elections are to be competitive, and if control of the government is to alternate between parties or coalitions of parties, then some voters must switch party support from election to election. New voters and independent voters, therefore, provide a vital source of change in democratic politics.