Ranking the Cultural Attributes Influencing Voting Behaviors in Elections based on Gabriel Almond’s Structural Functional Approach

Academic interests in election behavior emerged at the same time with the advent of behavioral political science. As the most extensive and most measureable form of political behavior, election became the focal point of the novel sample study and statistical analysis techniques in such a way that psephology or the scientific study of the election behavior is still given an important stance in political analysis because polling is one of the richest sources providing information on the interactions between the individuals, society and politics. The objective of the present study is finding an answer to the question as to what are the most important cultural (attitudinal) factors and barriers of exhibiting a voting behavior based on individual and social rationality in elections. Almond’s structural functionalism has been employed to introduce and analyze the approaches and perspectives. The present study is an applied research in terms of its objectives and it has been carried out based on a descriptive-analytical method. The data has been collected based on a survey method. The study population included 805263 qualified individuals all above 18 years of age. To determine the study sample volume, Cochran formula was utilized and a sample volume comprised of 500 individuals was selected based on a simple randomized method. The information gathering instrument is a researcher-constructed 26-item questionnaire containing open and closed questions that have been scored based on Likert’s scale. The study data were classified in Excel and SPSS was the software of choice for descriptive analysis; Cronbach’s alpha test, Kolmogorov-Smirnov normality test and LISREL was utilized to verify the validity of the proposed model and subject it to confirmatory factor analysis. The obtained results are indicative of the idea that, amongst the cultural factors, language and dialect (with an impact coefficient of 0.97 and a significance value equal to 17.26) have the highest positive effect hence taking the first rank.

political participation, political culture, voting behavior, ethnic culture, political structures