The study of voting has been dominated by several major research traditions—social class and social structure, party identification, and rational choice—each of which has been subject to major criticism. In this article, we develop an alternative approach to the study of electoral behavior. We view vote choice as a decisional process, and the assumptions of our model are in line with available knowledge of simple human decision making and with related theoretical approaches to the subject. In addition to accounting for vote choices in Britain in 1970 and 1974, our argument rests on relatively few and simple assumptions and provides hypotheses that account for stability and change in the votes cast by individuals and by the electorate taken as an aggregate. It also provides a proper theoretical and empirical understanding of the concept of party identification. The result is an alternative to more widely used explanations of electoral behavior.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BLOOM, H. , and H. D. PRICE (1975) “Voter response to short-run economic conditions: the asymmetric effect of prosperity and recession.”Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev.69: 1240-1254.
2.
BRODY, R. A. (1977) “Stability and change in party identification: presidential to off-years.” Presented at the 1977 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washington, D.C.
3.
BRODY, R. A. and B. I. PAGE (1973) “Indifference, alienation, and rational decisions.”Public Choice15: 1-17.
4.
BUDGE, I. , I. CREWE, and D. FAIRLIE (1976) Party Identification and Beyond: Representations of Voting and Party Competition. New York: John Wiley.
5.
CAIN, B. E. (1978) “Dynamic and static components of political support in Britain.”Amer. J. of Pol. Sci.22: 849-866.
6.
CAMPBELL, A. , G. GURIN, and W. E. MILLER (1954) The Voter Decides. Evanston, IL: Row, Peterson.
7.
CREWE, I. (1980) “Negative partisanship: some preliminary ideas using British data.” (mimeo)
8.
CREWE, I. (1976) “Party identification theory and political change in Britain,” pp. 33-62 in I. Budge, I. Crewe, and D. Fairlie (eds.) Party Identification and Beyond. New York: John Wiley.
9.
CREWE, I.B. SARLVICK , and J. ALT (1977) “Partisan realignments in Britain 1964-1974.”British J. of Pol. Sci.7: 129-190.
10.
FISHBEIN, M. (1963) “An investigation of the relationship between beliefs about an object and the attitude toward that object.”Human Relations, 16: 233-238.
11.
FIORINA, M. P. (1977) “An outline for a model of party choice.”Amer. J. of Pol. Sci.21: 601-625.
12.
FROHLICH, N. J. and J. A. OPPENHEIMER (1978) Modern Political Economy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
13.
HARROP, M. (1977) “Beliefs, feelings and votes: the British case.”British J. of Pol. Sci.7: 311-320.
14.
KATZ, R. S. (1979) “The dimensionality of party identification: cross-national Perspectives.”Comparative Politics, 11: 147-164.
15.
KATZ, R. S.R. G. NIEMI , and D. NEWMAN (1980) “Reconstructing past partisanship in Britain.”British J. of Pol. Sci.10: 505-515.
16.
KERNELL, S. (1977) “Presidential popularity and negative voting: an alternative explanation of the midterm congressional decline of the president's party.”Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev.71: 44-66.
17.
KELLEY, S. and T. W. MIRER (1974) “The simple act of voting.”Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev.68: 572-591.
18.
MAGGIOTTO, M. and J. E. PIERESON (1977) “Partisan identification and electoral choice: the hostility hypothesis.”Amer. J. of Pol. Sci.21: 745-767.
19.
MARKUS, G. B. and P. E. CONVERSE (1979) “A dynamic simultaneous equation model of electoral choice.”Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev.73: 1055-1070.
20.
MEULLER, J. (1973) Wars, Presidents and Public Opinion. New York: John Wiley.
21.
MILLER, W. E. (1977) “The cross-national use of party identification as a stimulus to political inquiry,” pp. 21-32 in I. Budge, I. Crewe, and D. Fairlie (eds.) Party Identification and Beyond. New York: John Wiley.
22.
NIEMI, R. G. , R. S. KATZ, and D. NEWMAN (1980) “Reconstructing past partisanship: the failure of the party identification recall questions.”Amer. J. of Pol. Sci.24: 633-651.
23.
PAGE, B. I. (1978) Choices and Echoes in Presidential Elections. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
24.
PAGE, B. I. and C. JONES (1979) “Reciprocal effects of policy preferences, party loyalties and the vote.”Amer. Pol. Sci. Rev.73: 1071-1089.
25.
REYNOLDS, H. T. (1974) Politics and the Common Man. Homewood, IL: Dorsey.
26.
ROGOWSKI, R. (1981) “Social class and partisanship in European electorates: a reassessment.”World Politics33: 639-649.
27.
ROHTER, I. S. (1974) “A social-learning approach to political socialization,” pp. 129-162 in D. C. Schwartz and S. K. Schwartz (eds.) New Directions in Political Socialization. New York: Macmillan.
28.
ROSENBERG, M. J. (1960) “An analysis of affective cognitive consistency,” pp. 15-64 in C. I. Hovland (ed.) Attitude, Organization and Change. New Haven, CT: Yale Univ. Press.
29.
cation.”Pol. Behavior2: 33-60.
30.
ZUCKERMAN, A. S. and M. I. LICHBACH (1977) “Stability and change in European electorates.”World Politics29: 523-551.
