Tribe voters

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Tribe voters are voters who consistently vote for the same political party over many years ; tradition and habit often play a greater role in voting than the actual or current performance of the party.

causes

The close ties between voters and a political party are explained by the following factors:

  • a relatively uniform social milieu ( family , workplace , private environment with norms that all members of the respective milieu consider binding);
  • the historical experiences of members of a particular social class ;
  • loyalty to party-affiliated organizations, for example to certain clubs / associations to which eligible voters belong.

Results of election research

For election forecasts, the close ties between the regular voters and one party play an important role, as does the fact that such close ties are becoming increasingly rare in Western democracies.

Germany

Both a uniform social milieu and shared historical experiences in Germany since the 19th century can be demonstrated, for example, in the ties between industrial workers and the SPD . The clear effect of organizational backgrounds can be seen in the example of the electoral orientation of unionized workers: In Germany they voted for the SPD much more often than unorganized workers.

In addition to belonging to a professional milieu, religious affiliation has also proven to be formative. Also as early as the 19th century , there was evidence of an orientation towards the center , especially for rural Catholic areas . This was reinforced by the common historical experience of the Kulturkampf against the Catholic Church . Even today, both Catholic and Protestant Christians who go to church frequently ( frequency of church attendance ) are much more likely to vote for parties that use their party names to identify Christian attitudes as their core brand (such as the CDU and CSU ).

Up until 2009, a close connection between the social and cultural character of the voters and their specific voting decision could be demonstrated in federal elections: Workers were more likely to vote for the SPD and other left-wing parties, whereas the CDU and CSU tied the majority of the devout Catholic or Protestant electorate per se.

The erosion of the regular voter potential from around the beginning of the 1990s onwards has made it increasingly difficult for electoral research to make correct and exact forecasts (see also variable voters and non-voters ).

Greece

The Pasok in Greece is an extreme example of the almost complete loss of former regular voters . For a long time, the socialist party Pasok was the dominant political force in Greece. As recently as 2009, it received 43.9 percent of the vote in the parliamentary elections. But in 2015 the share of the vote shrank to 4.7 percent.

Earlier high votes for the Pasok are mainly attributed to the fact that many voters viewed it as a leading force in the resistance against the Greek military dictatorship . Today, the Greeks see the Pasok as the main force responsible for the mismanagement from Greece's entry into the euro zone to the Greek sovereign debt crisis .

European Union

The Pasok is considered to be "patient zero" in a process that affects many social democratic parties in Europe. In the Netherlands , France , the Czech Republic and Italy , the center-left parties are also fighting for survival. In connection with the German SPD, too, there are voices that speak of a “ pasokization ” of the party. Uwe Jun explains the decline of European social democracy with the fact that social democrats, because of their government activities, often appeared to many voters as “too compromise-oriented”, so that these voters tended to take left-wing populist positions.

In a survey in 2019, the Bertelsmann Foundation found that in the twelve largest countries in the European Union (except among supporters of right-wing populist parties) there is only less than ten percent of those eligible to vote with a "positive party identity" in the sense of that they vote in every election of their preferred party. People “without a positive party identity” include not only swing voters, but also people who are not sure whether they will participate in a certain election (for many who have always voted the same party so far, deliberately not voting in a certain election is one Behavior option). The aversion to one or more parties is more pronounced than before, which the Bertelsmann Foundation calls “negative party identities”. The main motivation of many eligible voters is to prevent the electoral victory of parties that reject them. On average, 48.3 percent of the eligible voters in the twelve countries said they had at least one “negative party identity”.

United States

An erosion of the core electorate was already noticed in 2004 in the USA . Workers, Latinos and colored people are not automatically on the side of the Democrats . Conversely, "the economy is by no means an absolutely safe bank for the Republicans ."

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl-Rudolf Korte: Social structure and milieus: core voters . Federal Agency for Civic Education. June 2, 2017, accessed April 30, 2019
  2. ^ Judith Görs: Social Democracy Medical Record - Why Europe's comrades are on IV drip . n-tv.de . December 29, 2018, accessed May 7, 2019
  3. Olga Drossou / Ralf Fücks ; Greece and the EU: A relationship drama in four acts . Heinrich Böll Foundation . July 20, 2015, accessed May 8, 2015
  4. ^ Judith Görs: Social Democracy Medical Record - Why Europe's comrades are on IV drip . n-tv.de . December 29, 2018, accessed May 7, 2019
  5. Sabine Kinkartz: European elections: More than ten percent right-wing regular voters . dw.com . April 26, 2019. Retrieved April 29, 2019
  6. ^ Gerd Schneider / Christiane Toyka-Seid: Stammwähler / in . The young politics lexicon. Federal Agency for Civic Education. 2019, accessed April 30, 2019
  7. Michael Backfisch: Analysis: Flutterhaft Stammwählers . handelsblatt.com . October 19, 2004, accessed April 30, 2019