Family Background Influence on Romanian's Youth Voting Behaviour

The present paper, “Family BackgroundInfluence on Komanian’s Youth Voting Behaviour”, falls into this tradition of analysing and explaining the voting behaviour. The author aims to find out whether and to what extent the parents’ voting choices are reproduced by their children. Also, the research aims are to identify how family background influences the voting behaviour of Romanian youth, and what are the family characteristics that allow us to predict youth voting behaviour. The family background concept is operationalized on three dimensions and for each dimension several sub-dimensions were considered: socio-economic (parents’ occupational status, parents’ education, and the financial situation of the family), political (parents’ partisanship, turnout and voting intentions) and informational (frequency of discussions on political issues, the frequency of accessing information on political issues through media channels, all at family level). Referring to youth voting behaviour, the measurements used focused on statements regarding turnout and the voting choice for the June 1st, 2008 local elections.