People Resist Admitting to Influence Opinion research has long shown that Americans resist admitting that their views or behavior are influenced by external sources, and particularly those that overtly seek such influence, such as advertising.
The same pattern is common when asking people to estimate the perceived impact of certain influences on their political choices. The other eight sources examined fall within the five to eight percent range. No other source tested is mentioned as having a lot of influence by even one out of ten evangelicals. Like evangelicals, non-evangelical born again Christians also place religious beliefs at the top of the list of major influences on their voting choices.
No other entity is listed by at least 10 percent of this group. Notional Christians — i. Statistically speaking there is no meaningful difference in the perceived influence of any of the ten sources evaluated. Adults who are not connected to Christianity have a different set of influences. Religious skeptics — those who are atheists, agnostics, or have no religious affiliations — are the least likely of any faith group to admit to being influenced by external sources.
However, each of those are named by just 5 percent. Other Distinctions A deeper dive into the data for all born again Christians — both evangelicals and the non-evangelical born again adults combined — reveals differences in influence according to age. Those sources are friends, campaign advertising, and all manner of political commentators in the media. The research also indicates that born again men and women have slightly different influence patterns.
Men were twice as likely to assert that they are influenced a lot by their pastor, by family members, and by the news media.
Born again women, on the other hand, are considerably more likely than men to admit to be greatly influenced by their religious beliefs and by campaign advertising.
While there are several minor differences between the influence patterns of Protestants and Catholics, one in particular stands out.
The New Deal realignment of the s reshaped the American political party system. Some of the current differences between the parties can be traced back to this realignment.
However, there have been important developments since the s that have altered the nature of the party system. The more recent developments have not been as sweeping in their scope nor as abrupt in their effect as what occurred in the s, but the cumulative impact of these developments has been substantial. A number of attitudinal and social factors are related to individual voting behavior.
Among attitudinal factors, assessments of the personal characteristics of the candidates, evaluations of government performance, orientations on specific policy issues, party identification, and ideology are the primary determinants of candidate choice.
For social factors, race, religion, region, and social class appear to be the characteristics that have most closely related to voting over the past several decades. Examining how these factors are related to the vote in particular elections not only allows us to explain the election outcome, but also can provide us with an understanding of electoral dynamics.
All of the ideas raised in this chapter can be examined with the data contained in this package. Please enable JavaScript in your browser. JavasScript is required to use the core functionality of this site including searching, downloading data, and depositing data. Voting Behavior The most interesting questions about an election are not concerned with who won but with such questions as why people voted the way that they did or what the implications of the results are. Sources of individual voting behavior On what basis do voters decide how they will cast their ballot?
A voter may choose a candidate on the basis of one or more of the following considerations: orientations on specific issues of public policy general evaluations of the government performance evaluations of the personal characteristics of the candidates When voters are asked what they like or dislike about a specific candidate--i.
These orientations and evaluations in turn are influenced by two more general attitudinal factors: party identification general ideological orientations Party identification and ideology are more general, long-run factors that influence the attitudes that are more immediate to the vote decision in a particular year.
Electoral dynamics Election results often change dramatically. Summary A number of attitudinal and social factors are related to individual voting behavior.
With the development of the Internet, the usage of social network sites has increased considerably. Social network sites have rapidly become one of the main media channels for all types of campaigns and have gradually become an alternative tool for marketing and service delivery Chadwick, ; Davis, ; Gulati, ; Tsai and Men, In the United States presidential election, Donald Trump widely used social network sites to create political issues during his election campaigns Enli, ; Ott, This situation is also noted in countries other than the United States.
The influence of social network sites on political involvement and attitude has received considerable attention from academic researchers and business managers over the past few years. People can fulfil their need to belong by using the features of social network sites; these include the ability to communicate, gather information, express opinions, obtain social approval, and influence others; by using these services.
According to previous studies, the perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, and need to belong are strongly correlated with the usage of social network sites Adams et al. Research on involvement with political processes has long been conducted Muehling et al. On the basis of previous results, this study further argues that when users seek belongingness and social acceptance on social network sites or when they feel using a social network site would be effortless and would improve their performance, their involvement with political issues strengthens.
Moreover, we further developed five hypotheses:. We used a survey questionnaire to collect data for testing the validity of the research model and hypotheses.
The measurement items in the final questionnaire are summarised in Supplementary Appendix A. All the variables were measured on the Likert five-point scale ranging from strongly disagree 1 to strongly agree 5 , except for background information. For the survey, we selected Facebook users of voting age in Taiwan as the survey population. Facebook was used by nearly all social network site users across Taiwan, establishing it as the most popular social network site in Taiwan Statista, We collected data through an online survey platform.
The links to the online questionnaires were distributed using Facebook to recruit respondents. All respondents were voluntarily participating in the research and informed about the use of data for academic research.
The process yielded responses. After eliminating the responses of respondents that failed to meet voting age 20 years old or answer key questions and after sending follow-up emails to respondents who had provided their contact information but had not finished the questionnaire, we eventually obtained valid questionnaires for the analysis.
Next, the possibility of non-response bias was assessed using an extrapolation method comparing late and early respondents Armstrong and Overton, The results of the t-statistics indicated no differences across either substantive or demographic variables, suggesting the absence of nonresponse bias.
The demographic characteristics of the sampled population are presented in Supplementary Appendix B. The aforementioned questionnaire was developed by reviewing literature to identify previously validated measurements, some of which were revised to adapt to the context of politics.
Based on the suggestion of Hair et al. Based on a study by Pinkleton et al. The mean, standard deviation, and correlations of all measured variables are listed in Table 1. VIFs indicate whether predictors are correlated to each other, which can affect p values in the model and reduce its reliability. According to Hair et al. VIFs presented in Table 1 exhibit a range of 1. Models 1a, 2a and 3a in Table 2 are the basis models including the five control variables.
The model demonstrated significant results, explaining Both models provided significant results. Figure 2 presents the results for structural model. First, Models 2b and 3b were run to test the effects of the independent variables on the dependent variables.
Finally, to examine mediating effects further, the Sobel test—a specialised t test that can be used to determine the reduction in the independent variable in the model after including the mediator, was performed. Based on the results of regression analysis Table 2 , the findings of Model 1b indicated that voters highly involve with politics when they use social network sites.
The positive and significant coefficients from Model 2c and 3c indicated that voters exhibit considerably positive attitude towards voting and high degrees of confidence on decisions when they achieve a high level of involvement with politics. These results confirm the first precondition of H4 and H5, which includes mediating effects.
These results meet the second precondition of H4 and H5. This study next discusses several theoretical and practical issues for both scholars and practitioners and presented many opportunities for further explorations.
Many election campaigns use social network sites as a channel of communication strategies. However, such strategies may not influence voters if social network site usage determinants are not considered. Despite its contributions, this study has some limitations. First, the relationship between social media and voters was investigated by considering only the Facebook users of voting age in Taiwan.
Although Facebook exhibits the highest penetration among Taiwan social media users, the results may not be considered representative of the entire country because only one network site was used. For future research, respondents from different social network sites or different countries can be recruited to enrich the sample.
Second, although the demographic distribution of sampled population in this research is similar to the overall demographic characteristics of Facebook users in Taiwan, potential bias may exist because our respondents were voluntarily participating in the research. For future research, randomly choose the respondents to participate in the survey would decrease the bias. Social network sites have become one of the important channels for election campaigns.
The influence of social network sites on political participation has received considerable attention from academic researchers and business managers. These findings contribute to the research on social media and political participation and open many avenues for further explorations. Furthermore, these findings give marketing managers, political workers, and candidates a better understanding of the influence of social network sites on the elections. MIS Quart —
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