Assess the Extent to Which Short Term Factors Are Now More Important Than Long Term Factors in Shaping Voting Behaviour

Today for most Australian’s the potential of what a vote can represent is lost in political apathy and some could argue that this directly relates to how the leaders of the two main political parties continually compete for the populist vote. This environment is dominated by the media portrayal of our political parties and as a result of this, policies for the long term interests of the country have become secondary to short term wins (Marsh, 2010).

This evidence shows the newer generation of Liberals were more influenced by poverty reports and more accepting that they needed to change things. New Liberalism was useful in influencing the Liberal government to pass more social reform as one of the main new liberals, Lloyd George, chancellor of exchequer, had experienced poverty when he was young and he realised that it wasn’t the person’s fault that they were in poverty. However New Liberalism was not as an important factor as the surveys of Booth and Rowntree as the number of new liberals were quite low, were as the poverty reports proved to the whole government that poverty was a huge

Linkage institutions can be defined as institutions that connect citizens with the government. Examples of linkage institutions include elections, political parties, interest groups, and the media. Elections specifically are supposed to encourage public participation in the selection of governmental officials. Unfortunately, low voter turnout has proved that elections are an imperfect linkage institution. Elections depend on voters to be successful, and some factors that relate to the likelihood of voting include age, education, and race. Although some people underestimate the power of the vote, voter turnout is

The Funnel of Causality model describes voting behaviour in terms of socio-demographics, party identification, issues, and candidates. In this essay I will focus on issues because they can be compared between countries. An issue is essentially a problem that is perceived to be important, and there is an actor with “ownership” of the issue, meaning that there is someone who is thought to be “the best man for the job” so to speak. The economy isn’t an issue because you can’t have “ownership” over the economy. Issues are important because they explain a lot about voting behaviour.

In 2003 the Democrats still figured out how to hold a 17-15 point of interest inside the state's U.S. House delegation, a bonus to the new electoral map was intended to undo. The Republicans' manage to hang on to the administration and the Democrats' determination to recapture lost ground uncover however far the state has come since the times of the democratic form of government. In 2004, both parties admonished the committee to get out the vote through time-regarded grassroots organizing on the local and precinct levels, while at the same time using new innovations and methods to expand partisan mobilization. As a quick come about, in numerous parts of the state, turnout sailed above historic averages.

‘Voting behaviour at UK elections is determined more by issues of personality and image than on the basis of policies or performance in office’. Discuss.

Industrial Countries all over the world have seen a steady decline in voter participation; Great Britain is a great example of this. The country has witness turnout in elections falling slowly as time pass. However, the election of 2001 dropped the country from their average of 76% voter turnout to just a 59.4% turnout. Comparatively, Australia, a former colony of Britain, has enjoyed high and steady voter participation since 1924 because of the implementation of compulsory voting. This system has proven to be not only effective in bring voters to the polls, but also effective in improving Australia’s democracy. By evaluating these two countries with similar political structure; one can see the difference in compulsory voting turnouts

Throughout the article Page is supported only by different studies in which show the nature of voters, however Page relies greatly on these studies, so much that her own ideas get lost. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of the studies were not lost. Page did an incredible job of connecting the studies to her claim which improved her argument. But page still could consider either removing studies or elaborating more on them. Since some of these studies could use a bit more discussion to help the audience better understand the study and

The first determinant of variation in voter turnout is election differences between states; specifically, voting accessibility, early voting, how competitive the race is, and gerrymandering of districts in the state. Voting accessibility

Every person may not have the same level of these components, but it is present. Everyone will not know everything about the candidate they plan to vote for, they only know the high points of their campaign. According to the LA TIMES “It's a rare voter who carefully reads a candidate's position papers on every conceivable topic. Instead, we typically vote based on a candidate's stance on a subset of topics, assuming there will be a certain consistency on other topics…Another conscious component of political decision-making is voting for experience or competence, rather than a platform. This is so common that one study found that candidates judged to look more competent had won elections 68% of the time.” (Sapolsky) Especially, with how the media reports news about a particular candidate, they only report the parts of the campaign that the public would consider controversial. This bias also depends on the news station you are choosing to watch because the news reported is often swayed to reflect the views of a certain political party. For example, FOX NEWS is known for having republican views, MSNBC is known for having liberal views, and CNN is known for having democratic views. The question now becomes what is the threshold of irrationality, bias, ignorance or immoral belief that deems someone as a bad

Between the years of 1945-1970 social class dominantly shaped the voting behaviour of individuals. Whilst there has been a decline in prominence of class voting: Labour remains the most popular working class party and Conservatives perform best among middle-class voters. Social classes are defined by economic and social

British society is split into hierarchical categories with “higher” “middle” and “lower working” class. The British class structure is shaped like a pyramid cut into three

Many political science researchers study the forces that drive the vote. One of the earliest, and most well known, books about election studies is The American Voter. Written in 1960, the book tries to explain a model that describes what drives Americans to vote the way they do. The model suggests that social factors determine ones party identification, which determines one's issue positions and evaluation of candidate's characteristics. These forces all work together to determine how one will vote. This model may or may not still hold true today, as political researchers are not in agreement as to what exactly drives the vote. One thing that does remain true, however, is that factors such as social groups, party identification, issues,

Some voters cast their ballots based on the emotions such as trust rather than on the candidate's experience or policy. These voters lean toward those candidates who appear to share the voter's concerns on the political issues at the time. They vote for a candidate that appears to be honest and have integrity (Schmidt, Shelley, Bardes, 2011, p.196)

How much does your vote really count? As a voter, does your choice really matter? How much influence does the media have on your vote? How many choices does the media actually make when it comes to our nation's leadership? These are questions pondered by both political scientists and the average American citizen each year as the second Tuesday in November approaches. Though we know that the framers founded this nation on the principles of representing it's citizens, and on the ideals of a nation for the people and by the people; it is obvious that the people feel that their vote doesn't always count. In this paper I plan to expand on these questions and the justifications behind asking them, and I plan to follow up with a specific