 | This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page . (Learn how and when to remove these messages)
|
| Part of the Politics series |
| Voting |
|---|
 |
 Politicsportal |
Class voting is the relationship between social class and voting behavior. The concept is central in political sociology, as political parties are seen by a large segment of scholars as representing social classes. [1]
The is a lack of clear consensus among scholars investigating class voting, with no agreed-upon definition or standardized measurement for class. In academia class is characterized as a contested concept due to this lack of scholarly agreement on its definition. [2] The English sociologist Robert Alford took a binary approach to class, delineating two categories: the non-working class and the working class. [3] Alford's influential work, "Party and Society: The Anglo-American Democracies," introduced the Alford Index for measuring class voting, currently the most widely utilized and critiqued index in the field. Additionally, Alford identified two voting categories: left-wing and right-wing votes. [3]
Class voting as understood in a modern context started in the backdrop of the French Revolution and amidst escalating class tensions during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, social class emerged as a significant societal division that profoundly impacted electoral dynamics. This period witnessed a distinct pattern where laborers predominantly aligned with left-wing political parties, while the privileged middle class tended to support right-wing parties. [5]
One of the most important works to scientifically research the question was the seminal work "The People’s Choice" (1944) by Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet-Erskine. Now the is widely acknowledged as the foundational exploration of electoral sociology in the United States. [3] In their investigation into the impact of social class on voting behavior during the 1940 presidential election, the researchers curated a representative panel and conducted seven rounds of comprehensive questioning. Their findings revealed a significant alignment between individuals' social and professional backgrounds and their voting preferences. Moreover, a noteworthy discovery was the limited deviation from initial choices among the majority of participants, suggesting minimal influence from electoral campaigns on vote selection. [6]
The researchers identified three pivotal variables—economic and social status, religion, and place of residence—that played a crucial role in shaping political preferences. This led Lazarsfeld and his team to draw the conclusion that individuals tend to think politically in accordance with their social identity, asserting that social characteristics ultimately determine political traits. [6]
One of the early theorists of class voting was Robert Alford, an English sociologist born in 1963, conceptualized class as a binary division, delineating two primary categories: the non-working class and the working class. Alford introduced a pivotal tool for quantifying class-based voting behavior, now widely recognized as the Alford Index which has drawn as drawn both acclaim and critique within scholarly discourse. [7]
Alford also identified two distinct voting tendencies: a left-wing vote and a right-wing vote. The Alford Index operationalizes class voting by computing the disparity between the percentages of workers and non-workers casting ballots for left-wing candidates. In instances where all workers align with left-wing politics and none of the non-workers do so, the Alford Index achieves its maximum value of 100%, indicating a perfect class vote. Conversely, if the proportion of left-leaning voters among workers and non-workers is equal, the index yields a value of 0%, signifying the absence of a discernible class vote. [7] The Alford Index, a significant measure in its time, has exerted a notable influence on subsequent approaches. Contemporary scholars often reference a classification system that was inspired by the Alford Index, which was developed by John Goldthorpe and Robert Erikson in 1992. [8]
The sociological model of class voting is defined as emphasizing bottom-up analysis the top-down approach, which looks to parties as the primary mechanism of class voting. In model has its origin in the book The People’s Choice (1944), by Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet-Erskine, the pivotal in the study of electoral sociology in the United States. Investigating the 1940 presidential election, the researchers found a significant link between individuals' social backgrounds and their voting preferences. They identified key factors—economic status, religion, and place of residence—that shape political views. Lazarsfeld and his team concluded that social characteristics drive political traits. This model remains influential to this day. [9]
Dealignment in terms of class voting is understood as the reduction of the importance of class voting in favour of new cleavages, which have been called "post-materialist". [10] In a period that class-based thinking in much of academia seemed prevalent, one of the first to discuss the idea of social class dealignment was Robert Nisbet, who in 1959 considered that because of current social developments during the period that he was writing, social class had become largely obsolete as a useful concept in social science, as status and values became more individualized. [11] The concept is contested in academia, but at least starting at least from the 1980’s some researchers increasingly were noticing a decline of class voting based on the traditional definitions in western countries, in contrast with the early post-WW2 period, leading to questions about "class voting dying out". [12]
According to researcher Geoffrey Evans, summarizing much of the scholarly results, the decline could be explained by five explanations:
A different strand of scholars, starting at least from the 1990's started arguing that rather than class voting losing importance, it is rather changing, thus "realignment", particularly in the West and the USA. [13] Realignment researchers argued that even though classes were assumed to be less distinctive in their material conditions and value preference, yet that the distinctions have been transformed rather than removed, considering globalization as one of the main drivers of this realignment. [14]
One 2021 research paper argues that class realignment consists of two main components. The first component is the changing behaviour of the working class. While the working class continues to form a substantial portion of the social-democratic vote, there has been a noticeable shift away from the left. This shift is characterized by a general decline in voter turnout among the working class in Western Europe and a significant educational voting gap. Many working-class voters have shifted their support to other mainstream parties, including those on the right, either directly or indirectly. The second component of class realignment focuses on the middle class. Within this group, there has been a notable shift among the highly educated middle class from the mainstream right to the left. In contrast, the managerial middle class continues to support mainstream right-wing parties. As the middle class has expanded, their voting behaviour has become increasingly fractured. [15]
Another 2020 paper sees realignment in a western context driven by several factors: The increase in higher education, leading to graduates forming a new social class.Mass migration and the resulting reaction from socially conservative white voters. The growing proportion of older voters due to increased life expectancy. The development of cosmopolitan cities contrasted with conservative hinterlands. [16]
In 2018 the concept of a "tripolar political space," was proposed suggesting that class voting has evolved into competition among three new political poles: the left, the center-right, and the radical right. Despite changes in class structures, voting behavior and competition remain influenced by class dynamics within these three political poles. [17]
The research also raises concerns about Western-centric and Eurocentric perspectives, as most studies focus on Western countries, calling into question the generalizability of these theories beyond the Western context. However, there have been efforts to understand the political dynamics of classes in post-Communist Eastern European countries. At east least some research has concluded that "divisions have emerged to some degree in each state according to its specific social composition, historical inheritance, and post-communist economic and political performance", indicating that class voting is also evident in post-communist nations. [18]
The Civic Platform is a centre-right liberal conservative political party in Poland. Since 2021, it has been led by Donald Tusk, who previously led it from 2003 to 2014 and was President of the European Council from 2014 to 2019.
Paul Felix Lazarsfeld was an Austrian-American sociologist and mathematician. The founder of Columbia University's Bureau of Applied Social Research, he exerted influence over the techniques and the organization of social research. "It is not so much that he was an American sociologist," one colleague said of him after his death, "as it was that he determined what American sociology would be." Lazarsfeld said that his goal was "to produce Paul Lazarsfelds". He was a founding figure in 20th-century empirical sociology.
A party system is a concept in comparative political science concerning the system of government by political parties in a democratic country. The idea is that political parties have basic similarities: they control the government, have a stable base of mass popular support, and create internal mechanisms for controlling funding, information and nominations.
Direct election is a system of choosing political officeholders in which the voters directly cast ballots for the persons or political party that they wanted to see elected. The method by which the winner or winners of a direct election are chosen depends upon the electoral system used. The most commonly used systems are the plurality system and the two-round system for single-winner elections, such as a presidential election, and proportional representation for the election of a legislature or executive.
Elections in Cameroon occur in a system of electoral autocracy, as the ruling party manipulates elections and represses political opposition.
Dealignment, in political science, is a trend or process whereby a large portion of the electorate abandons its previous partisan affiliation, without developing a new one to replace it. It is contrasted with political realignment.
An independent voter, often also called an unaffiliated voter or non-affiliated voter in the United States, is a voter who does not align themselves with a political party. An independent is variously defined as a voter who votes for candidates on issues rather than on the basis of a political ideology or partisanship; a voter who does not have long-standing loyalty to, or identification with, a political party; a voter who does not usually vote for the same political party from election to election; or a voter who self-describes as an independent.
Seymour Martin Lipset was an American sociologist and political scientist. His major work was in the fields of political sociology, trade union organization, social stratification, public opinion, and the sociology of intellectual life. He also wrote extensively about the conditions for democracy in comparative perspective. He was president of both the American Political Science Association (1979–1980) and the American Sociological Association (1992–1993). A socialist in his early life, Lipset later moved to the right, and was considered to be one of the first neoconservatives.
Party identification refers to the political party with which an individual is affiliated with. Party identification is typically determined by the political party that an individual most commonly supports.
The Sixth Party System is the era in United States politics following the Fifth Party System. As with any periodization, opinions differ on when the Sixth Party System may have begun, with suggested dates ranging from the late 1960s to the Republican Revolution of 1994. Nonetheless, there is agreement among scholars that the Sixth Party System features strong division between the Democratic and Republican parties, which are rooted in socioeconomic, class, cultural, religious, educational and racial issues, and debates over the proper role of government.
Ethnic hatred, inter-ethnic hatred, racial hatred, or ethnic tension refers to notions and acts of prejudice and hostility towards an ethnic group to varying degrees.
In political science and sociology, a cleavage is a historically determined social or cultural line which divides citizens within a society into groups with differing political interests, resulting in political conflict among these groups. Social or cultural cleavages thus become political cleavages once they get politicized as such. Cleavage theory accordingly argues that political cleavages predominantly determine a country's party system as well as the individual voting behavior of citizens, dividing them into voting blocs. These blocs are distinguished by similar socio-economic characteristics, who vote and view the world in a similar way. It is distinct from other common political theories on voting behavior in the sense that it focuses on aggregate and structural patterns instead of individual voting behaviors.
Bernard Reuben Berelson (1912–1979) was an American behavioral scientist, known for his work on communication and mass media.
Voting behavior refers to how people decide how to vote. This decision is shaped by a complex interplay between an individual voter's attitudes as well as social factors. Voter attitudes include characteristics such as ideological predisposition, party identity, degree of satisfaction with the existing government, public policy leanings, and feelings about a candidate's personality traits. Social factors include race, religion and degree of religiosity, social and economic class, educational level, regional characteristics, and gender. The degree to which a person identifies with a political party influences voting behavior, as does social identity. Voter decision-making is not a purely rational endeavor but rather is profoundly influenced by personal and social biases and deeply held beliefs as well as characteristics such as personality, memory, emotions, and other psychological factors. Voting advice applications and avoidance of wasted votes through strategic voting can impact voting behavior.
Centrism is the range of political ideologies that exist between left-wing politics and right-wing politics on the left–right political spectrum. It is associated with moderate politics, including people who strongly support moderate policies and people who are not strongly aligned with left-wing or right-wing policies. Centrism is commonly associated with liberalism, radical centrism, and agrarianism. Those who identify as centrist support gradual political change, often through a welfare state with moderate redistributive policies. Though its placement is widely accepted in political science, radical groups that oppose centrist ideologies may sometimes describe them as leftist or rightist.
Kai Arzheimer is a German professor of Political Science at the University of Mainz. Previously, he was a Lecturer in German and West European Politics at the Department of Government of the University of Essex. In 2017-2018, he held the Hannah Arendt Visiting Chair in German and European Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.
Nan Dirk de Graaf is a Dutch sociologist working in Nuffield College, University of Oxford. He is known for his work on social stratification, religion, political sociology, the impact of social mobility on a variety of social issues, pro-social behaviour, as well as his books.
The open–closed political spectrum, an alternative to the standard left–right political spectrum, is used to describe a cleavage observed in political systems in Europe and North America in the 21st century. Under this view, parties and voters are understood on a single-axis political spectrum from open to closed. Groups, leaders and citizens on either end of this spectrum draw from both traditionally left- and right-wing ideas and values. For example, closed parties usually hold conventionally right-wing views on social issues but may support the left-wing policies of market intervention and redistribution of wealth. Open groups, leaders and citizens can hold left-wing or progressivist opinions on many issues but be staunchly in favour of the traditionally more right-wing policies of free trade. Depending on context, open–closed can be a replacement to the left–right political spectrum or a second axis on a political compass.
Computational politics is the intersection between computer science and political science. The area involves the usage of computational methods, such as analysis tools and prediction methods, to present the solutions to political sciences questions. Researchers in this area use large sets of data to study user behavior. Common examples of such works are building a classifier to predict users' political bias in social media or finding political bias in the news. This discipline is closely related with digital sociology. However, the main focus of computational politics is on political related problems and analysis.
Political cognition refers to the study of how individuals come to understand the political world, and how this understanding leads to political behavior. Some of the processes studied under the umbrella of political cognition include attention, interpretation, judgment, and memory. Most of the advancements in the area have been made by scholars in the fields of social psychology, political science, and communication studies.
