MINI REVIEW article
Front. Polit. Sci.
Sec. Political Participation
This article is part of the Research TopicCognitive Biases and Populist Success: Political Identification in Right-wing and Left-wing PopulismView all articles
Understanding Voter Heterogeneity: An Integrated Psychological Framework
Provisionally accepted
Lavinia De Santis1*
Mara Morini2- 1Department of Political and Social Science, Universita degli Studi di Bologna, Bologna, Italy
- 2Department of Political Science, Universita degli Studi di Genova, Genoa, Italy
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This paper builds on a comprehensive review of the main studies examining differences between right-and left-wing voters. Specifically, it identifies six key dimensions underlying these differences (personality; cognition; motivation; emotionality; social attitudes and group perception; time perspective) and advances the need to apply a mixed-method approach to assess them. By integrating existing insights with a multidimensional approach, the study seeks to provide a more systematic understanding of the psychological and ideological traits that distinguish voters across the political spectrum.
Keywords: electoral differences, Psychological attitudes, in-group, out-group, Authoritarianism, time perspective
Received: 19 Sep 2025; Accepted: 17 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 De Santis and Morini. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Lavinia De Santis, lavinia.desantis@phd.unipi.it
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