Changes in Public Opinion and Voting Behaviour and the Role of Collective Identities

The main factors influencing political attitudes, participation, and vote choice in advanced democracies have substantially changed over the past few decades. The effect of relatively stable, long term predictors of public opinion and voting behaviour (such as religious denominations and social class) seem to have been weakened, while alternative factors, (such as issues, the characteristics of party leaders and candidates, government performance, and campaigns) have a stronger effect on the voting decision process. The weakened role of group loyalties in political alignments have led to decreased partisan loyalties and increased importance of election campaigns. In addition, online social networks have rapidly changed the landscape and the dynamics of public opinion, enabling political parties and candidates to directly mobilize potential voters through decentralized platforms in an unregulated media environment. At the same time, various online platforms give voters the opportunity to become active participants and to engage with groups and networks with other like-minded citizens. In many cases, social media users may end up living in their own echo chambers, fostering a trend of polarization along group and partisan lines. Recent studies have shown that objective socio-structural groups as well as subjective group identifications are not only interrelated but they also affect electoral behaviour. There are also indications that political mobilization materialises on the basis of new collective identities. Societal conflicts around cultural issues can form group identities that are stronger and more exclusive than they used to be ten or fifteen years ago. In addition, the role of social, cultural, and political identities nowadays occupies a larger and more central position on issues related to political representation, participation, and trust. A direct consequence of this process is the rise of affective polarization and the direct decline of the opportunity for parties to collaborate and to compromise. These developments pose challenges to democratic politics as both right-wing and left-wing populist parties are challenging mainstream political parties. In this respect, it is important to further examine how long-term and short-term factors interact in producing electoral outcomes. Further work is needed to determine whether current developments in public opinion are indicative of a process of dealignment or of the process of realignment along new cleavages, such as the cleavage between the (new) left and the radical right which is based mostly on a socio-cultural and identity-based dimension that structures conflicts over immigration policies and European integration. To gain a deeper understanding of the changing political landscape of many advanced democracies, it is important to employ a comparative perspective that takes into consideration the contextual factors influencing party systems and the relationship between parties and voters. Scholars working in these areas of study may take advantage of data collected by the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, the Comparative Candidate Survey, the European Election Studies as well as many other social surveys such as the ISSP, that allow scholars to account for both individual-level characteristics and contextual features. Also, new, innovative tools and methodological advances are increasingly common, such as Voting Advice Applications, online text analyses, online searches, etc.