Voting behavior

[1] Voter attitudes include characteristics such as ideological predisposition, party identity, degree of satisfaction with the existing government, public policy leanings, and feelings about a candidate's personality traits.

[12] In recent years, voting cleavage has shifted from concerns of Protestant vs Catholic religions to have a larger focus on religious vs non-religious leanings.

[12] Research shows that citizens vote for the candidate that they believe is most compatible with their moral convictions and religious values.

The influences of class voting is reliant on political environment and location, many nations observe the opposite preferences.

[12] Research following the Cypriot Referendum of 2004 identified four distinct voting behaviors depending on the election type.

[15] Citizens use different decision criteria if they are called to exercise their right to vote in presidential, legislative, local elections or in a referendum.

[21] This research is based on the United States and has not been confirmed to accurately predict voting patterns in other democracies.

Gender often interacts with factors such as region, race, occupational differences, age, ethnicity, educational level, and other characteristics to produce a distinct multiplicative effect on voting behavior.

[26] Frequently utilized explanations for gender gaps in voting are socioeconomic factors, situational constraints for women, and differences in political priorities.

[26] Studies indicate that the way these factors interact with voting behavior depends on location, cultural norms, literacy level,[35] lived experience, and other facets of identity including race, ethnicity, and age.

[1] These influences include, but are not limited to, issue and public policy beliefs, perceptions of government performance, and personal evaluation of candidate characteristics.

[36] Oftentimes, voters will hold viewpoints that are too unstable to serve as a benchmark for comparing the candidates, while others won't detect any significant distinctions between them on the subject.

In the United States, ideology affects how voters cast their ballots in presidential elections based on their beliefs on certain policy concerns.

Another method of influence is party identification, which working with ideology may also shape the ways in which voters perceive policy.

[40] Research that affirms the existence of this gap emphasizes that younger women in particular are more likely to support progressive left-leaning candidates than men.

[46] Voters frequently weigh candidates’ personal qualities such as experience, integrity, morals, compassion, competence, and leadership potential.

[47][37] These established opinions of candidates' traits are developed in addition to how they view them in terms of political and policy issues, and these judgments have a significant impact on voting decisions.

[47] The candidates' perceived competence, concern, sincerity, dependability, and leadership ability have been found to be one crucial feature of their personal character.

[50] This unrepresentative balance is still reflected today with the vast majority of the highest political offices occupied by men.

[49]There is an overall bias that suggests that voters are using the candidates gender to make assumptions about political factors that are relatively closer to their own.

[56] A study based in Germany found that women with access to educational resources and who possess and live in societies that promote egalitarian values and practices are more likely to engage in politics than those who lack access to education and who live in societies with more essentialist norms and practices, in which gender roles are more prevalent and women are viewed as essentially "feminine" and fundamentally different from men.

Cooperative Congressional Election Study, a large survey that matches respondents to their voter file records, has found that low income Black women have a significantly higher predicted voting rate compared to Black men, White men, or White women in the same income category.

[60] Some have theorized that this increased voter participation occurs because voting and other civic engagement are ways of coping with the stress of persistent racial discrimination.

2016 Election in Japan; A 1960 study of postwar Japan found that citizens living in urban areas were more likely to be supportive of socialist or progressive parties, while citizens living in rural areas were favorable of conservative parties. [ 16 ]
In 2016 , a higher percentage of White women in the United States voted more for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton [ 25 ]
Afghan women voting in the 2004 Presidential Election ; under Taliban rule, women are not allowed to travel more than 72 kilometers without a male chaperone which creates a voting obstacle. [ 30 ]
Former U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron at the London Summit on Family Planning ; the U.K Conservative Party under David Cameron between 1997 and 2010, had more success winning votes from younger women as they addressed issues like government funded family planning. [ 39 ]
Women members of the U.S. Congressional Black Caucus 2019; Black women in the United States are much more likely than White women and than Black men to vote for Democratic candidates [ 58 ] [ 59 ]