The relationship of attitude measurement with the political campaign process provides the problem area that this study considers. The purpose of this political communication study is to explore in detail and describe various "attitude" profiles of voters and resulting candidate "images" of the 1972 presidential election. These "attitudes" and "images" are determined through the use of three primary research instruments: the semantic differential scale, the Method of Ordered Alternatives, and the political philosophy continuum. In addition to these, a record of actual voting behavior serves as validating support of the measured attitudes. This study deals with "attitudes" toward and candidate "images" of George McGovern, R. Sargent Shriver, Richard M. Nixon, and Spiro T. Agnew, the Democratic and Republican candidates for President and Vice-President in 1972. This descriptive investigation unfolds into three major problem areas: 1. to report and describe "panoramic images" of Nixon,. McGovern, Agnew, and Shriver, as measured by the semantic differential scale. 2. to give an account of voter preferred positions A through I as measured by the Method of Ordered Alternatives in connection with "attitude" as measured by the evaluative factor of the semantic differential scale, and subsequently aligned with actual voting behavior. 3. to determine the relationship between voters' own political philosophies and their perceived political philosophies of the four candidates as measured by the political philosophy continuum. The remainder of this chapter overviews the historical mileau of the 1972 presidential campaign, explains the research design and procedures, and offers an organizational preview of the remaining five chapters.

There is contention surrounding two major questions in regard to voting behavior in American politics. First, are political advertisements efficacious? Second, do partisans interpret political information in a different way than those who do not identify with a political bias — that is, do partisans engage in partisan-motivated reasoning? As billions of dollars each American presidential election cycle are spent, and fierce competition pervades the elections, shedding light on these two questions is more essential than ever. This project focuses on coupling these questions together to investigate if individuals who identify with a political party reason in a partisan-motivated manner in response to political advertisements. Utilizing a novel survey instrument and originally designed political advertisements featuring the candidates of the 2020 Presidential election, I surveyed over 900 individuals to discern if partisan-motivated reasoning was operative. I found three key results. First, partisan-motivated reasoning was utilized by those who identified as Republican or Democratic, but not for those who did not identify as being a partisan of one of the major political parties. Second, Republicans and Democrats reason in distinct, separate manners. Republicans did not modify their responses after exposure to partisan-conforming political advertisements (Trump-source advertisements) but did modify their responses after receiving partisan-nonconforming political advertisements (Biden-source advertisements). Oppositely, Democrats did modify their responses after exposure to partisan-conforming political advertisements (Biden-source advertisements) but did not modify their responses after receiving partisan-nonconforming political advertisements (Trump-source advertisements). Third, and more broadly, political advertisements are indeed effective; over 85% of individuals changed their first responses after exposure to the political advertisements. Moreover, across treatments, more than 31% of individuals updated their first answers and submitted updated responses as the same statistic presented in the advertisement. In sum, this thesis helps to elucidate an understanding of how partisans understand political information, specifically in the format of a political advertisement.

Cette thèse porte sur l’évolution de la participation électorale des habitants des quartiers populaires depuis 1999. En France, après les émeutes de 2005, ces quartiers ont été marqués par une forte hausse de l’inscription et de la participation lors de l’élection présidentielle de 2007. Pourtant ils cumulent les caractéristiques susceptibles d’éloigner leurs habitants du vote. C’est ce paradoxe que la thèse cherche à expliquer. Pour y parvenir, elle croise plusieurs champs théoriques (sociologie urbaine, sociologie/géographie électorale, action publique) dans une perspective comparative, analysant ces évolutions électorales dans les périphéries marginalisées de Paris, Madrid et Birmingham. L’hypothèse centrale est celle d’une inclusion politique croissante des habitants des quartiers populaires français. La méthodologie est mixte, croisant analyse de données agrégées resituant le contexte, données de sondage, entretiens avec des habitants des quartiers marginalisés, observations de bureaux de vote en région parisienne et analyse des politiques d’incitation au vote. Les résultats montrent qu’il n’y a pas de fatalité à la non-participation des périphéries urbaines marginalisées. Enfin dans les trois pays les dispositifs d’incitation au vote influencent de façon très inégale l’évolution des comportements politiques. Les politiques publiques généralistes inspirées par la tradition républicaine se révèlent être plus mobilisatrices que les actions ciblées menées au Royaume Uni à destination de groupes sociaux ou de quartiers particuliers. / This research studies the evolution of voting turnout in in Paris, Madrid and Birmingham’s deprived neighborhoods since 1999. In France, after the 2005 riots, both registration and turnout increased sharply during the 2007 presidential election in those places. Yet their inhabitants face numerous social and physical barriers, reducing the likelihood that they would vote. We try to explain this paradox using combined theoretical frameworks from urban sociology, electoral sociology, electoral geography and public policies in a comparative research design. The core hypothesis is that those social groups are increasingly involved in politics and in voting. This study uses several methodological tools involving aggregate data analysis, survey data analysis, polling station observation and field interviews. The results show that public policies designed to influence turnout are sharply divided. Universalistic approaches appear more likely to get voters to participate.

In the last few decades there has been an expansion of institutions of direct democracy in most developed countries. The Czech Republic has been no exception and over the past 25 years, there has been a rise of direct democracy in the Czech Republic. The aim of the dissertation is an analysis of the use of direct democracy in the Czech Republic. Although the analyses are based mainly on data from the Czech Republic, the aim is also to contribute to scholarly debates in the field of direct democracy research. I focus on the following questions: Who supports the use of direct democracy and who participates in it in the Czech Republic? How do voters form opinions and what are the characteristics of direct democracy campaigns? What is the effect of direct democracy on other forms of political participation? I view direct democracy as an institutional innovation and evaluate it based on three criterions: inclusiveness, competence and efficiency. First, I focus on who supports the expansion of direct democracy. I also study the patterns of turnout of various social groups in direct democracy (inclusiveness). Second, I analyse the processes of opinion formation in direct democracy campaigns to find out, whether it can be regarded as competent or not. Last, I analyse whether direct democracy leads to increased or...

This thesis aimed to investigate and describe the influence that certain socioeconomical, demographical, and geographical variables had on the election results for the three parliamentary party groups in the 2018 Swedish parliamentary election on the municipal level. The study also aimed to compare the difference in effect of the variables between two different geographical study areas: Norrland and the Greater Stockholm area. The study has been conducted via a regression analysis.  The results indicated that income, education, population density and average age all have a noticeable influence on the election results for the different party blocks. Income was the factor with the overall largest influence on the election result. There was a difference in influence from different variables between the three different party blocks. The study also found that there was a difference in effect between Norrland and Greater Stockholm. Certain variables had more of an effect in Norrland, and vice-versa. Most notably, income and average age had the opposite effect in Norrland compared to Greater Stockholm. The reason for this is not clear, but differences in culture between the study areas may provide an explanation.

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This thesis deals with the success of the two newly formed parties ANO 2011 and Úsvit přímé demokracie Tomia Okamury in the elections to the House of Commons in the Czech Republic in 2013. These two parties gained a substantial percentage of votes and became part of the government despite the fact, that they were established shortly before the elections. In the theoretical part of this thesis, the formation and success of new parties abroad and in the Czech Republic is analysed. The main focus are the voters voting these parties, so there is an extended part dealing with voting behavior in the Czech Republic. Secondary analysis is the research method used in this thesis; its advantages are discussed in the methodological part. Secondary analysis of multiple high quality data sets is used to compare the voters of the new parties and the voters of other established parties. It turns out there are significant differences between these two groups in the areas of sociodemography, political views and experiences and even outlooks on life. The trend of new parties, which started already in the 2010 elections, is obviously continuing and it seems that it is even broadening.

One fundamental condition for a democracy to work is the possibility for voters to hold their legislators to account. Because voter turnout in European Parliament (EP) elections is so low, however, the task of holding MEPs accountable is passed on to the national parties. These become ‘transmission belts’ between voters and legislators: they instruct the MEPs how to vote and present them threats and rewards to ensure they vote as promised. To study how well this works, this thesis aims at exploring what influences how an MEP votes in situations where the national party and the European Party Group (EPG) hold conflicting policy positions. A new analytical framework is built to generate and preliminarily test hypotheses concerning what influences how an MEP votes. The analytical framework is largely inspired by Strøm (1990), who assumes that legislators are driven by their wishes of getting policy through, reaching high office and being re-elected. Normally, these goals can be reached with the help of the legislator’s party, which is why legislators have an incentive to keep their party happy and vote according to its policy position. In the EP, however, things are complicated by the fact that certain goals can only be reached with the help of legislators’ EPGs. Hypotheses concerning what may drive MEPs to vote either with her national party or with her EPG are tested in the thesis with the help of unique interview data, collected from five Swedish MEPs from parties in government. The thesis’ results show that policy-related incentives are most important to MEPs, and that these incentives are mainly controlled by EPGs. Office- and re-election-related incentives are only ascribed limited importance. There are contextual factors that affect these results: if an issue is perceived as important to Sweden or to the national party or if it receives high media attention, MEPs ascribe less importance to EPG-controlled incentives, although this does not mean that national party-controlled incentives increase in importance. In conclusion, MEPs do not seem to feel pressured by their national parties when deciding how to vote. This leads me to the conclusion that the role of national parties as ‘transmission belts’ between voters and MEPs is defective

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Time spent in the military has the ability to guide service members with political characteristics that influence voting behavior and political involvement throughout life. The objective of this thesis is investigating the relationship between military service and their personal political ideology. This thesis will address political socialization as an agent, while truly understanding the difficulty in what time spent in the service has. The research questions addressed are: How much does military service contribute to an individual’s political ideology? and, Does military service alter an individual’s political belief from a neutral or liberal perspective to a more conservative view? The variables of political socialization are as vast as our imagination, and is a constant changing process. The course from which we form our political views is indicative of the social constructs from which we are subjected to. The ebbs and flows of life experiences is for the most part planned. To what extent our life experiences shape our views could never be calculated. There are, however, variables that can be applied to almost all human life such as our peers, family, institutions, education, strife, success, struggle, and perseverance. Most can understand that family and school are important early in life. Later as adults; peers, literature, education, and socioeconomic status is more impressionable. This research aims to discover military service as an agent with the ability to frame forming opinions. Military service is not a rare human experience of itself, but is rare in its ability to hold all of the above variables in a complete surrounding environment. Military service has the unique ability to sever ties from outside influence, inhabit complete social submersion, force uniformity in thought, regularity in action, all during the time an individual is most impressionable towards political ideas. This is interesting as it tests a full immersion political socialization environment to what we label ourselves in the grand scheme of political constructs over a life time.

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