CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2009
| Author | Weith, Paul Thomas |
|---|---|
| Title | Should the Political Knowledge of Voters be a Matter of Concern? |
| Summary | In multi-party systems there is virtually no published evidence of any influence of political sophistication on vote choice. The aim of this study is to find whether the political information prevents one to some extent from voting for extreme-right parties. By testing this theory using two mixed-effects models on a sample of 5542 respondents nested in 8 multi-party European countries, I have found no significant evidence of such a linear relationship. Very low levels of political information foster the vote for the extreme right, whereas political information in general has the opposite effect: the increase of political knowledge contributes to the increase of the citizen's willingness to vote for the extreme right. Furthermore, it appears that education also plays a role in the vote for extreme right-wing parties, and its influence on vote choice is mediated by the national average of formal education. Thus, as the national average increases, the influence of the individual education on one's propensity to vote for extremist parties decreases and becomes negative after passing a certain threshold. This paper calls for further research on the issue of education and the vote for extremist parties. |
| Supervisor | Littvay, Levente |
| Department | Political Science MA |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2009/weith_paul.pdf |
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