In our poll-driven age, political attitude surveys have become
something of an academic industry. Researchers have proposed
numerous models to explain the relationship between a particular
issue and voter behavior, but there is no consensus on which
approaches work best. Issue Voting offers a welcome overview of the
various models in use today, their strengths and their
shortcomings. In the early days of democracy, issues played a
leading role in shaping American and Western European party
systems. Liberal parties were formed explicitly to combat
privilege, conservative parties to defend the military or the
monarchy, socialist parties to champion unions, agrarian parties to
campaign for the redistribution of land. By the time the first
election studies came out in the 1940s, however, issue voting was
of minor importance. Instead, the vote of the ordinary citizen
reflected group norms - class, ethnic, religious and geographical
norms - and the main factor in voting behavior was party
identification, followed by candidate identification. In the early
1970s, evidence emerged of a surge in issue voting, and since then,
political writers have proposed many models to describe its
mechanisms. Yet their suggestions tend to be found in either
professional articles that focus on some isolated aspect of issue
voting, or single-election studies, a chapter of which sets forth
some ad hoc model for the occasion. This volume provides a sorely
needed overview of the approaches available. Ole Borre shows how
the different models highlight consistency, position and issue
distance, salience, valence issues and performance. He keeps the
statistics simple, illustrating the various approaches with recent
British and Danish election data and favoring linear regression
whenever possible. Issue Voting will be invaluable to political
scientists and modern historians trying to make sense of this
quintessential democratic phenomenon.
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