Journal of Electoral Studies

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Home Issues Backissues Volume 31, No.1 The Determinants of Voting Choice: Structural, Psychological, and Rational Factors

The Determinants of Voting Choice: Structural, Psychological, and Rational Factors

Hung-der Fu
1996 / 11
Volume 3, No.2

pp.157-185
Paper

Abstract

There are three major schools in the study of voting behavior, namely, sociological, sociopsychological and rational. Sociological school presents evidence that structural factors have high correlation coefficients between socioeconomic factors and voting choice. Sociopsychological school indicates that sociological factors are long term indirect determinants while party identification, candidate evalution, and issues are direct determinants. Rational approach suggests that the choices of vote is based on cost and benefit consideration. In this study, using post election survey data from the 1996 presidential election, three major approaches are tested thoroughly. In order to demonstrate that the integrated theory is better than those separated theories, seven possible combinations have been tested. The results show that psychological model is the best single model, ration and structural followed respectively. The best joint model is the combination of structural and psychological, followed by psychological and rational, and structural and rational. The intergrated model has slightly increased the explanatory power in terms of variance explained. Although the increase is not dramatic, the model maintains. This results suggest that the three approaches have overlapping explanation power, and no single model can claim to be the dominate model. Since the combined model can increase explanation power, thus, he integrated model should be emphasized in near future.

Keywords

Structural factor

Psychological factor

Rational factor

Voting decision

Presidential election