Voting behavior

About: Voting behavior is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 6312 publications have been published within this topic receiving 214475 citations.

Political Knowledge, Political Engagement, and Civic Education

Abstract: After decades of neglect, civic education is back on the agenda of political science in the United States. Despite huge increases in the formal educational attainment of the US population during the past 50 years, levels of political knowledge have barely budged. Today's college graduates know no more about politics than did high school graduates in 1950. Recent research indicates that levels of political knowledge affect the acceptance of democratic principles, attitudes toward specific issues, and political participation. There is evidence that political participation is in part a positional good and is shaped by relative as well as absolute levels of educational attainment. Contrary to findings from 30 years ago, recent research suggests that traditional classroom-based civic education can significantly raise political knowledge. Service learning—a combination of community-based civic experience and systematic classroom reflection on that experience—is a promising innovation, but program evaluations ha...

Economics and Elections: The Major Western Democracies

Abstract: Does a government's fate at the ballot box hinge on the state of the economy? Is it inflation, unemployment, or income that makes the difference? What triggers economic voting for or against the incumbent - do voters look at their pocketbooks, or at the national accounts? Do economic voters "punish" rulers for bad times, but fail to "reward" them for the good times? Are voter's judgments based on past economic performance or future policy promises? These are some of the questions considered by Michael Lewis-Beck in this major cross-national study of the effect of economic conditions on voting behavior in the Western European democracies and the United States.

The Political Relevance of Political Trust

Abstract: Scholars have debated the importance of declining political trust to the American political system. By primarily treating trust as a dependent variable, however, scholars have systematically underestimated its relevance. This study establishes the importance of trust by demonstrating that it is simultaneously related to measures of both specific and diffuse support. In fact, trust's effect on feelings about the incumbent president, a measure of specific support, is even stronger than the reverse. This provides a fundamentally different understanding of the importance of declining political trust in recent years. Rather than simply a reflection of dissatisfaction with political leaders, declining trust is a powerful cause of this dissatisfaction. Low trust helps create a political environment in which it is more difficult for leaders to succeed.

Citizens, Politics and Social Communication: Information and Influence in an Election Campaign

Abstract: Acknowledgments Part I. Democratic Politics and Social Communication: 1. The multiple levels of democratic politics 2. A research strategy for studying electoral politics Part II. Electoral Dynamics and Social Communication: 3. The social dynamics of political preference 4. Durability, volatility and social influence 5. Social dynamics in an election campaign Part III. Networks, Political Discussants, and Social Communication: 6. Political discussion in an election campaign 7. Networks in context: The social flow of political information 8. Choice, social structure, and the informational coercion of minorities 9. Discussant effects on vote choice: Intimacy, structure, and interdependence 10. Gender effects on political discussion: The political networks of men and women Part IV. The Organizational Locus of Social Communication: 11. One-party politics and the voter revisited: strategic and behavioral bases of partisanship 12. Political parties and electoral mobilization: political structure, social structure, and the party canvass 13. Alternative contexts of political preference 14. Political consequences of interdependent citizens Bibliography Index.

Corruption, Political Allegiances, and Attitudes Toward Government in Contemporary Democracies

Abstract: Using surveys conducted in sixteen mature and newly established democracies around the globe, this study examines the effect of corruption on people's attitudes toward government. The analysis demonstrates that citizens in countries with higher levels of corruption express more negative evaluations of the performance of the political system and exhibit lower levels of trust in civil servants. However, the results also show that the negative effect of corruption on evaluations of the political system is significantly attenuated among supporters of the incumbent political authorities. These findings provide strong and systematic evidence that informal political practices, especially those that compromise important democratic principles, should be considered important indicators of political system performance. Moreover, they imply that, while corruption is a powerful determinant of political support across widely varying political, cultural, and economic contexts, it does not uniformly diminish support for political institutions across all segments of the electorate.