5 - Social dynamics in an election campaign

Summary

This chapter provides an empirical response to several questions regarding the dynamics of social influence in an election campaign: In particular, how does the structure of partisan preference change during the course of a campaign, both with respect to the voter's own social status and with respect to the social status of other citizens in the voter's surrounding environment? We are particularly concerned with individual and contextual effects on partisan identification and vote choice, and the interdependence between these two measurement levels is considered in order to assess differential individual sensitivity to the effects of the social context. A second series of analyses examines these relationships under variations in individual motivation and political attentiveness.

The social dynamic underlying electoral change can be observed either at the level of individuals or at the level of electorates. One alternative is to study the manner in which individual preferences change during the course of the campaign. And the other is to study the manner in which the pattern and distribution of aggregate preferences are altered. These are different issues that lead to different research strategies. The first requires that we observe individuals and their behavior through time, and that individual change be related to the social forces acting on individual preferences. The second requires that we inquire into the social boundaries that separate voters with different preferences and the extent to which these boundaries recede or emerge as a function of the campaign.