El voto oculto en España

¿Ocultan los individuos su intención de voto? Y si es así, ¿por qué lo hacen? En el presentetrabajo el autor responde a ambas cuestiones tomando como estudio de caso la intenciónde voto a las dos principales fuerzas políticas españolas en los años ochenta. Su análisismuestra que la ocultación del voto no ha permanecido constante a lo largo del tiempo.Mientras que a principios de los años ochenta votar a la fuerza política conservadoraestaba «mal visto», algunas decisiones del gobierno socialista llevaron a los electores deeste partido a no declarar sus preferencias partidistas. Finalmente, la amenaza terroristaen el País Vasco ha conllevado la ocultación de la intención de voto por parte de numerososvotantes

¿Por qué importan las campañas electorales?

Ferran Martínez i Coma. Madrid: Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 200

El futuro de la socialdemocracia tras la gran recesión

El Dr. Ignacio Urquizu Sancho de la Universidad Complutense de Madrid parla sobre el futur de la socialdemocràcia centrant la seva presentació en l'esquerra del segle XX, l'opinió pública sobre les idees progressistes i els reptes de la socialdemocràcia en els àmbits de la política, l'economia i la societat, en el marc del Seminari Permanent 2012: Crisi i globalització

The role of the political context in voting indecision

A substantive portion of the electorate declares in pre-electoral surveys that they are undecided. However, little has been done in trying to understand who these voters are and how they finally decide their vote. In this article, we try to advance the literature by disentangling the circumstances under which voters are more likely to be undecided. While the traditional approach to the study of electoral indecision has been to characterize which individual traits make voters more likely to be undecided, this article provides consistent evidence showing that key elements of the political context may also affect electoral indecision. Using long-term harmonized data from Spanish pre-electoral surveys over 30 years, we find that voting indecision is influenced by two different types of contextual factors. First, there are some political contexts that reduce voters' cognitive costs when deciding their vote, i.e. the level of electoral competitiveness and the number of parties competing in the elections. Second, there are other political contexts that increase voters' social or expressive costs, i.e. the level of government popularity, since costs of expressing preference for the party in government increases when its public image is undermined

Asymmetric federalism and economic voting

Although federal arrangements adopt a multiplicity of forms across and within federations, this article suggests that some models of power division are better than others at enhancing clarity of responsibility and electoral accountability. This conclusion is the result of exploring responsibility attribution and economic voting in a state where decentralisation arrangements vary across regions: the Spanish State of Autonomies. Using electoral surveys and aggregated economic data for the 1982–2012 period, the empirical analysis shows that regional economic voting is most pronounced in regions where decentralisation design concentrated authority and resources at one level of government, whereas it is inexistent in regions where devolution followed a more intertwined model of power distribution. The implication of the empirical findings is that the specific design of intergovernmental arrangements is crucial to make electoral accountability work in federations