UNIVERSITY OF PETROLEUM & ENERGY STUDIES

College of legal studies

Semester: 1
Academic year- 2017-18
TOPIC: Election and voting behavior

Sap Id: 500060476

Roll No. 13
INTRODUCTION:
The history of the scientific take a look at of balloting behavior (or psychology)
goes returned nearly 100 years, but as an crucial and often colorful subfield of
political science, it most effective took off throughout the "behavioral revolution"
after the second global battle. These days, the sphere is well installed and is
considered a part of the "middle enterprise" of political technological know-how,
taking part in hyperlinks with other subfields as diverse as party structures, studies,
and political theory. moreover, the observe of balloting behavior is very a great
deal an interdisciplinary exercise: 3 of the maximum influential techniques to the
have a look at of voting behavior that inform the manner political scientists reflect
on consideration on voting behaviour up to the present date - Lazarsfeld, Berelson,
and Gaudet (1944), Campbell et al. (1960), and Downs (1957) - borrow their
fundamental principles from sociology, social psychology, and economics
respectively.

As a whole, the look at of electoral behavior is (with some extraordinary

exceptions) firmly grounded in methodological individualism, i.e. the idea that
individual human actions represent the primary unit of evaluation (Ester 1989).
Macro-phenomena like turnout rates or vote shares for a given set of parties are
obviously the outcome of thousands and thousands of man or woman choices,
which can be then aggregated according to the guidelines of the electoral device.
while different variables on the macro-stage (the price of unemployment, the
celebration system, media insurance of the incumbent authorities, inter alia) may
additionally have an effect on those individual acts, it's far next to not possible to
conceive of a causal link between two macro-stage variables - say, the proportion
of workers within the citizens and electoral assist for a socialist birthday
celebration - that absolutely bypasses what takes place at the extent of the character
(Coleman 1994). Even André Siegfried (1913) who on the very starting of electoral
geography famously diagnosed a connection between the form of soil the
electorate live on and the returns for conservative parties, stated that the causal
chain that links each variables is alternatively lengthy and includes - among
different things - the accumulation of capital and the exchange of ideas and
information.
Voting Behavior
Voting conduct is a type of political conduct. Understanding voters' conduct can
clarify how and why choices were settled on either by open chiefs, which has been
a focal worry for political scientists, [1] or by the electorate. To decipher voting
conduct both political science and brain science ability were vital and hence the
field of political brain research developed. Political brain science analysts think
about routes in which emotional impact may enable voters to settle on more
educated voting decisions, with some recommending that influence may clarify
how the electorate settles on educated political decisions regardless of low general
levels of political mindfulness and advancement.

To make surmising and forecasts about conduct concerning a voting choice, certain
elements; for example, sex, race, culture or religion must be considered. In
addition, key open impacts incorporate the part of feelings, political socialization,
resilience of assorted variety of political perspectives and the media. The impact of
these effects on voting conduct is best comprehended through hypotheses on the
arrangement of states of mind, convictions, pattern, learning structures and the act
of data preparing. For instance, overviews from various nations show that
individuals are for the most part more joyful in individualistic societies where they
have rights, for example, the privilege to vote.[2] Additionally, social impact and
associate impacts, as starting from family and companions, likewise assume an
imperative part in races and voting behavior.[3] A critical inquiry in this setting is
the means by which to unravel the social disease by peers from outer
influences.How much voting choice is influenced by inside procedures and outside
impacts adjusts the nature of settling on genuinely majority rule choices.

Voting behavior types[edit]

The existing literature does not provide an explicit classification of voting behavior
types. However, research following the Cypriot referendum of 2004, identified
four distinct voting behaviors depending on the election type. Citizens use different
decision criteria if they are called to exercise their right to vote in i) presidential, ii)
legislative, iii) local elections or in a iv) referendum.[6] In national elections it is
usually the norm that people vote based on their political beliefs. Local and
regional elections differ, as people tend to elect those who seem more capable to
contribute to their area. A referendum follows another logic as people are
specifically asked to vote for or against a clearly defined policy.

Interestingly, an older study in postwar Japan identified that urban citizens were
more likely to be supportive of socialist parties, while rural citizens were favorable
of conservative parties. Regardless of the political preference, this is an interesting
differentiation that can be attributed to affective influence.

Affective influence
A growing literature on the significance of affect in politics finds that affective
states play a role in public voting behavior that can be both beneficial and biasing.
Affect here refers to the experience of emotion or feeling, which is often described
in contrast to cognition. This work largely follows from findings in psychology
regarding the ways in which affective states are involved in human judgment and
decision-making.

Research in political science has traditionally ignored non-rational considerations

in its theories of mass political behavior, but the incorporation of social psychology
has become increasingly common. In exploring the benefits of affect on voting,
researchers have argued that affective states such as anxiety and enthusiasm
encourage the evaluation of new political information and thus benefit political
behavior by leading to more considered choices.[9] Others, however, have
discovered ways in which affect such as emotion and mood can significantly bias
the voting choices of the electorate. For example, evidence has shown that a
variety of events that are irrelevant to the evaluation of candidates but can stir
emotions, such as the outcome of football matches[10] and weather,[11] can
significantly affect voting decisions.
Several variables have been proposed that may moderate the relationship between
emotion and voting. Researchers have shown that one such variable may be
political sophistication, with higher sophistication voters more likely to experience
emotions in response to political stimuli and thus more prone to emotional biases
in voting choice. Affective intensity has also been shown to moderate the
relationship between affect and voting, with one study finding a doubling of
estimated effect for higher-intensity affective shocks.

Mechanisms of affective influence on voting

The differential effect of several specific emotions has been studied on voting
behavior:

Surprise – Recent research suggests that the emotion of surprise may magnify
the effect of emotions on voting. In assessing the effect of home-team sports
victories on voting, Healy et al. showed that surprising victories provided close to
twice the benefit to the incumbent party compared to victories overall.

Anger – Affective theory would predict that anger increases the use of
generalized knowledge and reliance upon stereotypes and other heuristics. An
experiment on students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst showed that
people who had been primed with an anger condition relied less upon issue-
concordance when choosing between candidates than those who had been primed
with fear.[13] In a separate laboratory study, subjects primed with the anger
emotion were significantly less likely to seek information about a candidate and
spent less time reviewing a candidate's policy positions on the web.[14]

Anxiety – Affective intelligence theory identifies anxiety as an emotion that

increases political attentiveness while decreasing reliance on party identification
when deciding between candidates, thus improving decision-making capabilities.
Voters who report anxiety regarding an election are more likely to vote for
candidates whose policies they prefer, and party members who report feeling
anxious regarding a candidate are twice as likely to defect and vote for the
opposition candidate.[9] Others have denied that anxiety’s indirect influence on
voting behavior has been proven to the exclusion of alternative explanations, such
as the possibility that less preferred candidates produce feelings of anxiety, as
opposed to the reverse.[15]

Fear – Studies in psychology has shown that people experiencing fear rely on
more detailed processing when making choices.[16] One study found that subjects
primed with fear spent more time seeking information on the web before a
hypothetical voting exercise than those primed with anger.[13]

Pride - Results from the American National Elections Survey found that pride,
along with hope and fear, explained a significant amount of the variance in
peoples' 2008 voting choices. The size of the effect of expressions of pride on
voting for McCain was roughly one third of the size of the effect of party
identification, typically the strongest predictor.[17] Appeals to pride were also
found to be effective in motivating voter turnout among high-propensity voters,
though the effect was not as strong as appeals to shame.[18]

Effects of voting on emotion

The act of voting itself can produce emotional responses that may bias the choices
voters make and potentially affect subsequent emotional states.

A recent study on voters in Israel found that voters' cortisol levels, the so-called
"stress hormone," were significantly higher immediately before entering a polling
place than personal baseline levels measured on a similar, non-election day.[19]
This may be significant for voting choices since cortisol is known to affect
memory consolidation, memory retrieval, and reward- and risk-seeking behavior.
Acute stress may disrupt decision making and affect cognition.

Additionally, research done on voters in Ann Arbor and Durham after the US 2008
elections showed partial evidence that voting for the losing candidate may lead to
increased cortisol levels relative to levels among voters who chose the winning
candidate.

Political campaigns
The use of emotional appeals in political campaigns to increase support for a
candidate or decrease support for a challenger is a widely recognized practice and a
common element of any campaign strategy.[23] Campaigns often seek to instill
positive emotions such as enthusiasm and hopefulness about their candidate among
party bases to improve turnout and political activism while seeking to raise fear
and anxiety about the challenger. Enthusiasm tends to reinforce preferences,
whereas fear and anxiety tends to interrupt behavioral patterns and leads
individuals to look for new sources of information.[9]

Political surveys
Research findings illustrate that it is possible to influence a persons' attitudes
toward a political candidate using carefully crafted survey questions, which in turn
may influence his or her voting behavior.[24] A laboratory study in the UK
focused on participants' attitude toward former Prime Minister Tony Blair during
the 2001 pre-election period via a telephone survey. After gauging participants'
interest in politics, the survey asked the participants to list either i) two positive
characteristics of the Prime Minister, ii) five positive characteristics of the Prime
Minister, iii) two negative characteristics of the Prime Minister, or iv) five negative
characteristics of the Prime Minister. Participants were then asked to rate their
attitude toward Blair on a scale from 1 to 7 where higher values reflected higher
favorability.
Listing five positive or negative characteristics for the Prime Minister was
challenging; especially for those with little or no interest in politics. The ones
asked to list five positive characteristics were primed negatively towards the
politicians because it was too hard to name five good traits. On the contrary,
following the same logic, those who were to list five negative, came to like the
politician better than before. This conclusion was reflected in the final survey stage
when participants evaluated their attitude toward the Prime Minister.[26]

Military Voting Behavior

Recent research into whether military personnel vote or behave politically than the
general population has challenged some long-held conventional wisdom. The
political behavior of officers has been extensively studied by Holsti,[27] Van Riper
& Unwalla, and Feaver & Kohn[29][30] In the United States, particularly since the
end of the Vietnam War, officers are strongly conservative in nature and tend to
identify with the Republican Party in the United States.

Enlisted personnel political behavior has only been studied more recently, notably
by Dempsey,[31] and In body.[32][33][34] Enlisted personnel, often thought to
behave and vote as did officers, do not. They more nearly represent the general
population. In general, the usual demographic predictors of voting and other
political behavior apply to military personnel.

Early Voting
Early voting lets in residents to forged ballots in character at a polling vicinity
prior to an election. In states that permit no-excuse early balloting, a voter now
ought not to provide an excuse for being unable to vote on Election Day. States
that do not permit no-excuse early voting can also nevertheless permit some
residents to vote early, supplied they prove that they've legitimate reasons for
doing so. This practice is known as in-individual absentee voting. Early voting has
additionally essentially changed campaigns in other ways. Campaigns now run
voter mobilization efforts during the whole early voting duration. This gives them
a hazard to invite more citizens to guide their candidate, and those contacts were
properly-mounted to increase turnout.

Presidential campaigns and the foremost parties have more than sufficient sources
to behavior prolonged mobilization efforts and the run marketing at some stage in
the early voting period. where I worry about a poor effect of early voting is for
country and local elections, which do not have the same assets. but, in states that
put up election effects by using voting method, more early voters cast a vote in
down poll races than Election Day electorate. this can be due to the truth that early
citizens comply with politics more carefully than folks who wait till the closing
minute to vote.

Indian electoral system

The President of India is elected for a 5-yr term via an electoral university of India
including contributors of federal legislature and country legislatures (i.e. all the
elected member of parliament and all elected individuals of all legislative
assemblies of the country).

The residence of the human beings (Lok Sabha) represents residents of India (as
envisaged by using the charter of India, presently the contributors of Lok Sabha are
545, out of which 543 are elected for 5-12 months term and members represent the
Anglo-Indian community). The 543 individuals are elected beneath the plurality
('first beyond the post') electoral system.[8] The Council of States (Rajya Sabha)
has 250 individuals, 238 individuals elected for a six-yr time period, with one-third
retiring every years. The participants are circuitously elected, this being
accomplished by the votes of legislators within the kingdom and union (federal)
territories. The elected participants are selected beneath the machine of
proportional illustration by means of the single transferable vote. The twelve
nominated individuals are normally an eclectic mix of eminent artists (which
includes actors), scientists, jurists, sportspersons, businessmen and newshounds
and common humans.[3]
Lok Sabha consists of representatives of the human beings chosen by using direct
election on the idea of the grownup suffrage. The maximum power of the house
envisaged by the charter is 552, that is made up with the aid of election of as much
as 530 participants to symbolize the States, up to 20 individuals to represent the
Union Territories and now not greater than two members of the Anglo-Indian
network to be nominated by way of the President, if, in his/ her opinion, that
community isn't always safely represented in the decrease residence i.e. Lok
Sabha. In 1952, on Lok Sabha elections there have been 1874 candidates, which
rose to 13952 applicants in 1996. But, in Lok Sabha elections in 2009, most
effective 8070 applicants contested.[9] historical percentage of seats and votes of
foremost political parties are ranked by means of the wide variety of seats won.

Indian political parties[edit]

Indian national Congress dominated the Indian political scene beneath the
leadership of Jawaharlal Nehru from the independence in 1947 until his loss of life
in 1964. The party continued its dominance below the management of k Kamaraj
and Lal Bahadur Shastri. The Congress birthday celebration turned into cut up into
two within the 1970s and Indira Gandhi led Congress (I) to election victory.
however the triumphing run was broken for the primary time in 1977, with the
defeat of the birthday celebration led by way of Indira Gandhi, with the aid of an
not going coalition of all the major different parties, which protested in opposition
to the imposition of a debatable emergency from 1975–1977. but, Indira Gandhi
regained electricity soon after and her son rajiv Gandhi led the birthday celebration
after her assassination. A coalition led by means of vp Singh swept to power in
1989 in the wake of principal allegations of corruption against then prime Minister,
Rajiv Gandhi. but the coalition lost steam in 1990 necessitating new elections with
the congress party once more emerging positive underneath the leadership of P V
Narasimha Rao.

In 1996, the election consequences caused a coalition machine in which no

unmarried party executed a majority in the Parliament to shape a government, but
as an alternative has to depend on a method of coalition building with different
events to form a block and claim a majority to be invited to shape the authorities.
This has been a outcome of strong local parties which ride at the returned of nearby
aspirations. There were more than one governments inside a span of few years led
by way of Atal Bihari Vajpayee, I okay Gujral and H D Deve Gowda.

In 1999, national Democratic Alliance led by the Bharatiya Janata birthday party
came to strength and have become the primary coalition authorities to complete the
whole time period. For the following decade, congress led coalition United
innovative Alliance fashioned the authorities beneath Manmohan Singh. in the
recent elections held in 2014, the countrywide Democratic Alliance led by the
Bharatiya Janata party came to strength with Bharatiya Janata party achieving a
simple majority on its own by using securing 282 seats. Narendra Modi, the BJP's
high Ministerial candidate, is now serving his first term because the high Minister
of India.

Absentee balloting
An absentee ballot is a vote forged by way of someone who's unable or unwilling
to attend the reputable polling station or to which the voter is typically allocated.
sevearl methods had been devised to facilitate this. increasing the convenience of
get entry to absentee ballots is seen by many as one manner to improve voter
turnout, though some countries require that a legitimate purpose, which include
illness or travel, receive before a voter can take part in an absentee ballot
.presently, India does now not have an absentee poll system for all residents except
in few exceptions. phase 19 of The illustration of the people Act (RPA)-1950[38]
permits someone to register to vote if she or he is above 18 years of age and is an
'regular resident' of the residing constituency i.e. dwelling on the cutting-edge deal
with for six months or longer. phase 20 of the above Act disqualifies a non-resident
Indian (NRI) from getting his/her name registered within the electoral rolls.
therefore, it additionally prevents a NRI from casting his/her vote in elections to
the Parliament and to the nation Legislatures. In August 2010, representation of the
human beings (change) invoice-2010 which lets in voting rights to NRI's became
handed in each Lok Sabha with next gazette notifications on 24 November 2010.
[39] With this NRI's will now be capable of vote in Indian elections but must be
bodily present at the time of balloting. numerous civic society enterprises have
advised the government to amend the RPA act to permit NRI's and people at the
circulate to forged their vote via absentee ballot device. Humans for Lok Sabha
has been actively pushing mixture of net and postal ballot as a viable method for
NRI voting.