What Do We Choose: the Leaders, the Parties or the Ideologies? A Case Study for the 2016-2020 Local Elections in Romania, in Iași County
Keywords:
electoral system, local election, lider, political party, ideology, electoral behaviorAbstract
This article aims to make a theoretical incursion on electoral behavior highlighting/ stressing the key-factors which could influence voters’ electoral decision: the relations between political leaders and the parties they belong to, the left-right ideology of political parties/leaders.
Starting from the theoretical analyses carried out especially for the electoral rounds at national/central level, the article aims to outline the formula of determinism between local leaders appointed for Mayors in local elections in order to influence the results of electoral elections in relation to the vote obtained by parties for the nomination of elected representatives proposed for Local Councils/parties to which they belong, also appealing to the left-right ideological dimension, represented by the two parties that dominated political life after 1989 in Romania, PSD (Social-Democrat Party) and PNL (National Liberal Party), respectively.
The proposed analysis is a quantitative, an exploratory and a comparative one, starting from the results obtained in Iasi County in the local elections of 2016-2020 for the appointment of Mayors (political leader) and of Local Councils (party/ideology).
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