Voting without ideology. Evidence from Spain (1979-2008)

Although non-ideological voters make up a considerable share of the electorate, the literature has systematically overlooked their voting behaviour. Using Spanish electoral data from the 1979-2008 electoral period, we seek to identify the alternative cues ?in the absence of ideology? these voters ma...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Revista española de investigaciones sociológicas 2010-01 (129), p.107-129
Main Authors: DE LA CALLE, Luis, MARTINEZ, Alvaro, ORRIOLS, Lluis
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Decision Making
Elections
Political behaviour
Political Ideologies
Political sociology
Sociology
Sociología
Spain
Voting Behavior
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Although non-ideological voters make up a considerable share of the electorate, the literature has systematically overlooked their voting behaviour. Using Spanish electoral data from the 1979-2008 electoral period, we seek to identify the alternative cues ?in the absence of ideology? these voters may use when casting their ballot. We do not find that evaluations of the incumbent?s performance have a greater influence on non-ideological voters, as the retrospective voting literature suggests. Nor do we find that other shortcuts such as candidate evaluations or party identification are used more by this group when they vote. Instead, our results indicate that non-ideological voters have exchanged the traditional ideological shortcut for simple proincumbent voting as a decision rule.
ISSN:0210-5233
1988-5903
DOI:10.5477/cis/reis.129.107