Voting behavior in New Zealand

Résumé du document

In the 2008 general election in New Zealand, voters decided not to renew their confidence in Helen Clark's Labour-led government, and to give his chance to National's John Key as Prime Minister of the country. How can we explain this alternation? What could have helped Labor policy done to win a fourth consecutive term in office? Has it not addressed the issues that voters deemed important the way they expected or hoped? Much literature has been produced in order to explain why voters vote the way they do. Important issues are at stake in this debate, for its outcome might be the questioning of the voters' autonomy of choice, which is a pillar of democracy. If wining an election is about rightly ticking the boxes of voters' expectations, why do the various political parties not have very similar manifestos and strategies? The fact is that explaining the voters' choice is no easy matter, and many different thesis have been put forward that are often contradictory— or complementary ?

In this paper, I shall examine the various theories that try to explain why citizens vote the way they do: I shall analyze the rational/socio-economic thesis (1), investigate the issue of values (2), and explore other factors— personal voting, attachment to a party, and Maori / Pakeha cleavage— that have also been submitted as part of the explanation (3). At the end of this essay, I shall verify what empirical evidence establishes in explaining voting behavior in New Zealand (4).

Extraits

[...] The image of a rational voter. One of the main theories that explain voting behaviour is the rational one, which assumes that voters are focused on their personal interest and vote for the party that best defends them. An electoral campaign is therefore a “market place” where citizens “shop around for the best party” (Karp, in Miller, 2010). Therefore, wealthy citizens should favour platforms that pledge to lower taxes, whereas poor ones should support parties that advocate higher benefits (Allen and Ng, 2000). [...]

[...] Empirical evidence shows that all these theories explain in part why people vote the way they do in New Zealand : as Karp (in Miller, 2010) puts it, these various thesis not so much opposing [ ] as they are complementary”. They give clues on how citizens make their choice and therefore have an influence on the final results of elections. The switch to MMP and the subsequent birth of new political parties has transformed voters' behaviour regarding these main theories. Some new political parties overtly focus on peculiar social groups : the Māori Party and Mana Party on Māori and often poor voters, ACT on wealthy citizens. [...]

[...] Their policies, which reflect the dominant views among Māoris, are characterised by a distributive stance on economic issues and a conservative stand on societal questions. It can nevertheless be asked if these viewpoints are of their own making, or if they follow from their generally lower socio-economic condition How do New Zealanders vote ? The results from empirical analysis Method and sources. After having analysed a number of different thesis that explain how voters make their choice, let us now see how New Zealanders vote. [...]

[...] BEAN Clive, “Class and Party in the Anglo-American Democracies : The Case of New Zealand in Perspective”, British Journal of Political Science, Cambridge University Press, Vol No pp. 303-321. HOLLAND Martin, Electoral Behaviour in New Zealand, Oxford University Press, Auckland HUBER John and STANIG Piero, do the Poor Support Right-wing Parties ? A CrossNational Analysis”, paper published for the RSF Inequality Conference, UCLA, January 2007. INGLEHART Ronald and WELZEL Christian, Modernization, Cultural Change, and Democracy. [...]

[...] By doing so, they were maintaining a “class cleavage”, a concept noticeably introduced by the marxist approach : the society is divided in two antagonist blocs the bourgeois and the proletarian social classes that have contradictory economic interests and therefore vote differently. The renewal of the class. Yet with the decline of manual working, the rise of the middle class and the increased liberalisation / individualisation of the economy and society, class voting has since then decreased, at least in its most narrow meaning based on occupation (Bean 1988). [...]