ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a unique opportunity to evaluate the importance of leaders across a wider range of social and political contexts. It explores the determinants of the vote in two different rounds of analysis. The chapter examines the impact on voting choice of the conventional set of explanatory factors: long-term socio-demographic, attitudinal orientations (ideological orientation and party identification) and short-term campaign-specific factors (attitudes towards the leading candidates and assessments of the government's performance in managing the economy). After completing the evaluation of the relative impact of conventional determinants of the vote, the chapter undertakes a second round of multivariate analysis in which the two sets of variables that are signature contributions to this research by the Comparative National Elections Project (CNEP) are added to the equations. Political elites, the basic nature of political parties and their electoral-mobilization strategies play extremely important roles in determining the relative importance of various factors as determinants of the vote.
