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Previous studies of the first direct elections to the Hong Kong Legislative Council (LegCo) in 1991 were largely focused on the effect of the Tiananmen Incident on voters' choice, neglecting the domestic dimension of social conflict evolving within Hong Kong from the 1970s. Adopting the social cleavage approach, the present thesis argues that two electoral cleavages, centre-periphery and collective consumption, were important by 1991. It, therefore, explores the international, social and political contexts within which the 1991 LegCo direct elections took place in order to explain the political alignments and electoral cleavages during the period 1982-1991. First, the study examines the Sino-British attitudes towards political reforms in Hong Kong and the development of the centre-periphery cleavage in the 1980s as the two countries negotiated the transfer of sovereignty. Second, the expansion of the Hong Kong Government's activities and its privatisation programmes are analyzed in order to describe the increasingly intimate relations between government and society and to show that, as a result, conflicts evolved over issues of collective consumption. Third, the emerging competition at the time of the 1991 elections is discussed with reference to political mobilisation and alignments during the previous decade. Fourth, the electoral market of 1991 is examined to explain voters' choice. Finally, the election results are analyzed to demonstrate that two electoral cleavages, centre-periphery and collective consumption, played a significant role. The data used in this study were collected from: official documents, such as the Hong Kong Government Gazette, the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the Basic Law, the Hong Kong Census and By-census reports, the annual reports of various government departments; opinion polls and one exit poll of the 1991 LegCo direct elections; personal interviews with leading political leaders; campaign materials and election debates on television; and newspaper cuttings.

The Reasoned Action model was applied in Portugal to study the factors which determine vote choice among Portuguese voters. Covering three elections (the 1980 Presidential election, the 1982 Local elections and the 1983 General election) the study was started six years after the Revolution of 25 April 1974 which restored Democracy after 48 years of the Salazar-Caetano Dictatorship. The Reasoned Action model, successfully tested in one American Presidential election and in one British General election, assumes that voting intentions are directly related to a) attitudes towards voting for each candidate or party based on knowledge voters possess about important issues and about the candidates or parties stands on them, and b) social influence factors based on voters' beliefs on the opinions of trusted referents as to whom they should be voting for. The results obtained in the three Portuguese electoral studies give strong support to the thesis that in spite of their undemocratic background Portuguese voters like their American and British counterparts make reasoned choices based on their knowledge of important issues and of the differences between the candidates' or parties' stands on such issues. As in the American and British studies the weight of the attitudinal component of the Reasoned Action model was found to be a much more significant determinant of voting intentions than its social influence component.

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The purpose of this study was to assess whether advertising influences South Africans’ voting behaviour. The research compared two advertising appeals, fear and rational, to assess which is most preferred by voters. A secondary purpose was also to review whether having knowledge of voters’ influencers and using that knowledge, coupled with an advertising appeal, would influence voters’ behaviour. The study also briefly reviewed whether demographics such as race, gender and education level could have an impact on voting behaviour. The study also reviewed the relationship between the influencers and voting behaviour. The research was done using an online and hard-copy questionnaire. Sampling was both random and by referral. Three hundred and nineteen valid questionnaires were returned. Various frequency analyses were conducted to establish the varying relationships amongst the variables. The main findings of the study were the following: firstly, race is a very significant issue influencing South African voting behaviour. The second finding is that trust in the leader of the political party and that political party’s previous government performance are significant issues that voters consider when engaging in voting. The third finding from the study was that the advertising appeal most preferred by voters between rational and fear is rational appeal. The final finding is that voters can be influenced by advertising to change their voting behaviour, however the change is not brought by advertising in isolation other factors need to be considered.

This thesis aims to examine both the extent to which political opinion polling can contribute to democratic processes in different countries, and the degree to which polling is tied to the developing processes of restructuring and transition which contemporary advanced societies are tending to undergo. Specifically, the examination will focus on political opinion polling in both 'late-capitalist' and 'post-communist' societies. In doing so, it will consider two key related issues: firstly, how shifting political contexts impact upon the ability of polls to carry out their perceived tasks of measuring public opinion and contributing to political democratisation; and secondly, whether polls extend or inhibit democratic processes. The principal concept around which this analysis is organised is that of 'Complex Politics'. This has as its core an analytical framework which focuses upon those aspects of political systems similar to both late-capitalist and post-communist societies, which impinge directly upon political opinion polling. These are Political Culture, Party Systems, Mechanisms for Political Participation, and the Policy Process. It is argued that, despite the obvious differences in context and recent history, the complexity of contemporary political envirorunents in which polls operate in both types of political system are such as to display broadly similar problems for pollsters. In order to project the course of development of polling, the likely issues that pollsters will need to address in the future, and the shape and nature of the links between polling and the processes of democratisation in late-capitalist societies, it is instructive to refer to the current experiences of pollsters and polling in the transitional states of Central and Eastern Europe. As the processes of political pluralisation and restructuring take place in these former communist societies, this will help to identify the major problems which pollsters are likely to face in countries such as Britain and elsewhere in continental Europe when attempting to gauge political opinions, beliefs, orientations and behaviour as their own societies become more variable and complex.

In November 2007 the right of centre Saskatchewan Party defeated Saskatchewan’s social democratic party, which had been in government for seventeen years. Unlike previous defeats, the New Democratic Party’s (NDP) loss in 2007 clearly showed that a new intra-urban political polarization in Saskatoon and Regina had emerged with the outer suburbs abandoning the NDP and the core areas maintaining previous levels of support. This study employs correlation analysis and logistic and linear regression analysis, using survey data from the 2003 and 2007 general election campaigns from Saskatchewan. Urban zones are constructed based on the morphological (urban form) hypothesis in order to create categories for spatial analysis. The different types of urban places are analyzed incorporating survey and Statscan data. Statistically significant differences between the urban zones are discussed in light of possible mechanisms found in the literature in order to explain recent political turns in Saskatchewan.