Voter Characteristics and Leader Effects in a Post-Communist Context: The Case of the 2012 Legislative Elections in Romania

In the contemporary political environment, the added value brought by leaders to the electoral performance of the parties appears to be significant and growing. However, the impact of leader evaluations on the vote choice is likely to vary from one voter to another. This article explores the influen...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Romanian journal of political science 2015-06, Vol.15 (1), p.52-80
Main Author: Gheorghita, Andrei
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Case studies
Leadership
Political aspects
Politics / Political Sciences
Social aspects
Voting
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Summary:In the contemporary political environment, the added value brought by leaders to the electoral performance of the parties appears to be significant and growing. However, the impact of leader evaluations on the vote choice is likely to vary from one voter to another. This article explores the influence of voter characteristics on the magnitude of leader effects in the context of the 2012 legislative elections in Romania. Five such characteristics are considered: objective political knowledge, subjective political information, party identification, political engagement, and time of voting decision. For this purpose, the paper employs data from the 2012 Romanian Election Studies (RES) three-wave panel survey. The analyses prove a significant influence of political knowledge and party identification and negligible effects of the other three voter characteristics considered. Thus, political knowledge appears to stimulate the manifestation of leader effects. Similarly, voters holding partisan ties appear to experience higher levels of personalization. The implications of these findings are discussed extensively.
ISSN:1582-456X
2068-7613