Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Shaun Ratcliff
Key terms/names
agenda setting, cues, ecological fallacy, framing, heuristics, non-response bias,
normative, random sampling, rational choice, response rates, sample size, social
desirability bias, survey research
Representation is the basis of modern democratic theory. In most mature electoral
democracies, it is achieved through regular elections, which provide voters with
the opportunity to select representatives whose policy goals align with their own.
This chapter explores how citizens vote and some of the key influences on their
behaviour.
Research into voter behaviour has been greatly influenced by a shift from
normative assumptions about how citizens should behave in democratic society
to studying how they act. This highlights a troubling and persistent problem for
democratic governance: if citizens in representative democracies are largely not
interested in politics and are under informed about basic matters of state, how can
they provide any control over public policy through elections or referendums?
Borrowing from social psychology, political science provides an answer to
this. While most voters are far from perfectly equipped to analyse political issues,
most use limited information to make reasonably sophisticated judgements about
political leaders, candidates, parties and salient matters, particularly those relevant
to their lived experiences. When voters pool their individual opinions at elections,
Ratcliff, Shaun (2019). Voter behaviour. In Peter J. Chen, Nicholas Barry, John R. Butcher, David
Clune, Ian Cook, Adele Garnier, Yvonne Haigh, Sara C. Motta and Marija Taflaga, eds. Australian
politics and policy: senior edition. Sydney: Sydney University Press. DOI: 10.30722/sup.9781743326671
470