Political preferences – party evaluations – political knowledge. The prediction of voting behaviours in the 2015 Polish parliamentary elections

Abstract

_{According to the popular perception of electoral behaviours, individuals vote for parties whose program and actions are close to their views. However, studies on voting indicate that ideological proximity is of little importance both for electoral decisions and for the evaluation of political parties, especially for people with little political knowledge. In the paper, I focus on two key determinants of electoral behaviour: attitudes towards key political issues and party evaluations, analysing the diversity of their impact due to the political knowledge of the individuals. Based on the data of the Polish General Election Study 2015, I show that: 1) the ideological space of political competition in Poland is limited, primarily in the area of economic issues; attitudes towards political issues are of limited importance both for voting decisions and for party evaluations; 2) despite limited ideological differences, political divisions on the emotional level are strong and are good predictors of electoral behaviours; 3) political knowledge is a factor that strongly affects party evaluations; people with greater political knowledge base their party evaluation on issue proximity to a greater extent.}