Voting and Public Opinion

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What is the mind of the public? How do opinions, attitudes and beliefs of citizens affect the policy making of political elites? What motivates citizens to vote or not to vote and why do they vote the way they do? Are voters oriented more towards issues or towards the personality of particular candidates or is their vote an expression of long standing loyalty to a particular party or leader, regardless of its candidates or position on the major issues of the day?

If voters perceive a discrepancy or inconsistency between these various categories eg between party loyalty and the party's candidates, how are they likely to behave? And how do various orientations of voters relate to their level of formal education; the extent of their political knowledge; their age, sex, race, religion, profession, income and place of residence and the opinions of their close friends and relatives?

What explains a voter's shift in political allegiance between elections or his willingness to vote for candidates of different parties in the same election? And what accounts for changes or shift of public opinion on salient issues over the time - for example, on the rights of black citizens or minority ethnics in a white-dominated society on the proper role of government in the economy, or on the appropriate foreign policy for combating guerrilla insurgency abroad?

To what extent are changes in public opinion on major issues reflected in the decisions of political elites? Or is it the other way round. Do changes in decisions of political elites precede changes in public opinion and how does this relationship vary from one issue to another?

It is obvious that the recent development of this particular sub-discipline of political science has depended heavily on the sophistication of the science and art of survey research - the inference from a small sample of respondents of opinions and characteristics representative of the entire population.

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