Understanding and Modelling Voting Choice Behavior with Empirical Data

There is a tremendous amount of literature in Political Science dealing with the subject of voting behavior, however, the studies are mainly descriptive in nature rather than modelling. On the other hand, political marketing literature is in its infancy providing limited insights in understanding the phenomenon of voting behavior. Theories of party support are investigated either within the sociological framework or individual rationality framework. Sociological framework includes variables such as social class, ethnicity, gender, race and party identification. On the other hand, individual rationality framework encompasses utility maximization, spatial and valence models of political choice together with the party and leader image variables. In this research, we try to develop an integrative model of voter behavior explaining causal relationships between various determinants in the literature. For this purpose, data is collected during 2011 general elections in Turkey with an innovative scaling and sampling methodology. The relationships in the model are tested with Structural Equation Modelling analysis. The results show that sociological and individual frameworks can be modelled in a single framework within levels of causality. Individual characteristics such as demographics, religiosity, modernity and involvement affect future economic evaluations of parties and individual’s fit characteristics with the party identities and ideologies. These fit and evaluation variables later affect party and leader image variables which in turn affect loyalty, confidence, promoting and donating behaviors of voters in addition to the voting choice. The model is tested with the voters of major parties in Turkey and also within separate analysis of voter types and voting types. This research contributes to the voting behavior literature by demonstrating the operationalization of constructs in a reflective manner instead of using formative measures and also by explaining the causal mechanisms of social, psychological and rational frameworks of voting behavior in a single model