Voting Behavior
"Vote: the instrument and symbol of a freeman's power to make a fool
of himself and a wreck of his country."(Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary)
“We would all like to vote for the best man but he is never a candidate.”
(Frank McKinney Hubbard)
Models of Voting Behavior
The Columbia School (1940s)
 social determinism (groups, context)
 voter brand loyalty
 selective perception / projection
 “minimal” campaign effects
 cross-pressures
 high interest + low partisanship rare
Models of Voting Behavior
The Michigan School (1950s)
 long-term and short-term forces
 party identification
 political socialization
 lack of ideology / issue voting
 funnel of causality
Elaborations/Qualifications/Dissents

voting as an “echo chamber” (the parties as tweedledumtweedledee, not a dime’s worth of difference between them)
“The voice of the people is but an echo. The output of an echo chamber
bears an inevitable and invariable relation to the input. As candidates and
parties clamor for attention and vie for popular support, the people’s verdict
can be no more than a selective reflection from among the alternatives and
outlooks presented to them. . . . If the people can choose only from among
rascals, they are certain to choose a rascal.”
“The perverse and unorthodox argument of this little book is that voters are
not fools. To be sure, many individual voters act in odd ways indeed; yet in
the large the electorate behaves about as rationally and responsibly [moved
by concern about central and relevant questions of public policy, of
governmental performance, and of executive personality] as we should
expect, given the clarity of the alternatives presented to it and the character
of the information available to it.”
V.O. Key, The Responsible Electorate (1966).

the “changing” American voter (late 1960s/1970s)
Although dated, this work in its time represented a serious challenge to the conventional wisdom about why people voted the way
they did. Most importantly, it . . .

noted an apparent decline of partisanship, and the reduced importance of
party id as a shaper of vote choice (the “unmoved mover”) even among the
remaining identifiers; and

found evidence of heightened issue voting (said to be a function of greater
issue salience among citizens, and of the greater clarity of choice being
offered by candidates and parties – more like the 1930s than the 1950s on
both points).
NVP also described what they believed to be a polarization at both the elite
and mass levels (involving a single liberal-conservative dimension of
conflict), which suggested that a realignment might be imminent. But it
never happened . . . at least not in the manner the authors expected. Why
not?
Because, among other things, the public never became as ideologically
focused/driven (or as polarized in liberal-conservative terms) as did party
elites and activists during the 1960s and beyond.
But what about the cornerstone of the NVP argument, i.e., that
changes in the political environment (esp. the emergence of issues
such as civil rights and Vietnam, and behavior of candidates such as
Barry Goldwater and George McGovern) had caused a sharp rise in
issue voting, with party labels becoming less important as a voting
cue for many citizens?
Not everyone jumped on the revisionist bandwagon (then or now).
Although it is generally agreed today that The American Voter may
have overstated both the stability of party id and its role in shaping
voter behavior, there still is no consensus among scholars about
the relative impact of issues, candidates, party id, and other factors
on vote choice.
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retrospective voting
economic voting (sociotropic vs. pocketbook)
party id as a “running tally”
low-information rationality (short-cuts, cues, heuristics)
Voting Influences: Overview
Long-term forces:
Party ID
Ideology/Values (but only for some people)
Medium-term forces:
Party Images (stereotypes: performance, group affiliations)
Community/Group/Personal Context
Short-term forces:
Issues
Candidate Image (traits)
Retrospective Judgments (performance)
Macro and Personal Economic Conditions
Campaign Events/Strategy
Party and Ideology
Presidential Vote 2008
Party Identification
(N = 1594)
StDem WkDem DemLnr Indep RepLnr WkRep StRep
Obama
94%
84%
90%
51% 17%
12%
4%
McCain
5
14
9
41
78
88
96%
Other
1
3
1
8
5
1
*
Ideological ID
(N = 1288)
Obama
McCain
Other
(1)
Liberal
99%
1
*
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
93%
5
2
80%
19
*
59%
37
3
30%
68
2
11
89
1
Flanigan-Zingale, 12th ed., pp. 213-215 (data from 2008 ANES).
(7)
Consrv
10
86
4
Congressional Vote 2006/2010
Republican
Independent
Democrat
2006
% of Vote
Voters Rep
36% 91%
26
39
38
7
Vote
Dem
8%
57
93
Conservative
Moderate
Liberal
32% 78%
47
38
20
11
20%
60
87
2010
% of Vote
Voters Rep
35% 94%
29
56
35
7
42%
38
20
84%
42
8
Vote
Dem
5%
37
91
Rep
Gain
+3
+17
0
13%
55
90
+6
+4
- 3
Source: 2006/2010 exit polls; http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1789/2010-midterm-electionsexit-poll-analysis
http://people-press.org/2011/05/04/section-1-the-political-typology-2/
Issue Voting
On the one hand, it’s clear that there is a relationship – and often a
strong relationship – between people’s issue preferences (and priorities)
and their vote preferences. For example:
Source: 2010 exit poll; http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1789/2010-midterm-elections-exit-poll-analysis
Erikson and Tedin, American Public Opinion, 8th ed. (2011), p. 270.
Erikson and Tedin, American Public Opinion, 8th ed. (2011), p. 271.
On the other hand:
To repeat something from earlier: The authors of The American
Voter identified three minimal prerequisites for voters to be able to
exert meaningful influence over a given issue:
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they must be aware of the issue’s existence;
they must have a position on the issue; and
they must know the positions on the issue of the opposing
candidates in a given election.
How often are these conditions met? Here are some estimates for
presidential elections dating back to 1972. . . .
Erikson and Tedin, American Public Opinion, 8th ed. (2011), p. 268.
Abramson, Aldrich, and Rhode (2012), p. 158; data are from ANES 2008 with comparisons for 1972-2004.
Columns II, III, and IV compare Dem and Rep nominees (others excluded); respondents who could not place
themselves on a scale were not asked to place the candidates on that scale; numbers in parentheses indicate
the number of 7-point scales for each year.
Low-Information Rationality (Again)
Samuel L. Popkin, The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in
Presidential Campaigns, 2nd ed. (1994).
Many voters are said to exhibit low-information rationality (or gut
reasoning), i.e., they draw on various information shortcuts and rules of
thumb (heuristics) to assist them in making political choices. An example
is party ID, which Popkin describes as a default value, or a substitute for
more complete information that the voter might have (but really doesn’t
want to spend time and effort obtaining) about parties and candidates.
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However, according to Popkin,
party id is affected by voters’ beliefs and attitudes about government,
and about the issues of the day (cf. Fiorina’s “running tally”); and
issues and performance do matter to voters, even if ideology in the sense
Converse used the term usually does not.
For Popkin, the distinctions between issues, candidates, and party as
factors influencing vote choice are not always sharply drawn. For example:
He suggests that voters obtain (incl. during the campaign) information
about both candidates and their supporters, and use this information to
"extrapolate from personal characteristics to policy preferences, and from
campaign performance to governmental competence." [examples: Bush
and the supermarket checkout in ‘92; Ford and the tamale wrapper in ‘76]
Caution: Don’t assume that the use of short-cuts (heuristics) is exclusively
the turf of the poorly informed, although they may need them the most;
indeed, some studies have found just the opposite. Maybe the best way to
think about it is that sophisticated voters do not necessarily transcend the
use of shortcuts – they simply combine more decision criteria in a broader
and deeper net than do the less informed.
Issue Voting Depends on Both
Candidates and Voters
Candidates: Ambiguity (not taking a clear position) or uncertainty
(not talking about an issue at all) about where they stand may
prevent voters from casting a ballot based even on the most salient
of issues, e.g., Vietnam in 1968.
Voters: Issue voting appears to occur more often among those who
are well-informed about politics, and among those who believe
that a particular issue is very important (e.g., because it is thought
to be linked to the voter’s material self-interest, to be relevant to
key reference groups or reference individuals with whom the
person identifies, or to be connected to the person’s core social or
political values).
Issue Publics
J. A. Krosnick, "Government Policy and Citizen Passion: A Study of Issue Publics in
Contemporary America," Political Behavior (1990).
ANES 1968
Urban unrest
Vietnam
ANES 1980
Unemployment
Defense
Govt. Services
Russia
Abortion
Jobs
Minorities
ANES 1984
Govt. Services
Central America
Women
Jobs
Low
Importance
1
High
Importance
4
2
3
.06
.07*
.18*
.10*
.32*
.13*
.42*
.24*
.00
.14*
.01
.01
-.11
.09
.07
.17*
.17*
.21*
.08*
-.03
.08*
.22*
.28*
.29*
.35*
.17*
.01
.35*
.32*
.32*
.30*
.39*
.30*
.01
.36*
.46*
.30
.02
.18*
.14
.22*
.14*
.20*
.21*
.40*
.28*
.26*
.36*
.56*
.48*
.43*
.44*
* p < .05 (unstandardized regression coefficients estimating the association between policy attitudes and
candidate preference)
Easy vs. Hard Issues
Edward G. Carmines and James A. Stimson, "The Two Faces of Issue Voting,"
American Political Science Review (1980).
Easy Issues: (1) symbolic more than technical; (2) deal more with policy ends
than means; and (3) long on the political agenda.
Easy Issue (1972): racial desegregation – may have involved complex policy
conflicts, but was seen by many voters in “simple” terms; also, it’s an issue
on which the parties had staked out relatively clear positions by ‘72.
Hard issue (1972): Vietnam – easy for the hard-core antiwar voter (war vs.
peace) but (a) the choice in 1972 was between one candidate who favored
ending the war immediately and another who claimed to have already done
so (“peace is at hand”); and (b) much of the debate had to do with the speed
and conditions under which U.S. withdrawal should occur.
If Carmines-Stimson are correct, (a) easy issues should → voting more
strongly than hard issues; and (b) that impact should be greatest for less
informed citizens (allowing them to behave more like those who are well
informed). In 1972 . . .
Easy
Hard
Source: Carmines and Stimson, pp. 85, 83. (Is it really all that clear cut?)
Looking at Vietnam preferences a little differently:
Vietnam Preferences and Presidential Vote in 1972
Immediate
Withdrawal (1-3)
Complete Military
Victory (5-7)
Low Knowledge
60.8% McGovern
81.5% Nixon
Medium Knowledge
50.3% McGovern
95.7% Nixon
High Knowledge
67.9% McGovern
93.5% Nixon
Source: Anne M. Cizmar, “Reconsidering Whether Foreign Policy Issues Are ‘Hard’” (2010);
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/apworkshop/papers_fall10/APWPaper_11-19-10.pdf
More recently, the issue of whether to set a deadline for the withdrawal of
U.S. forces from Iraq . . . “hard” in the same sense as Vietnam ‘72? (data from
ANES)
Iraq Preferences and Presidential Vote in 2008
Low Knowledge
Medium Knowledge
High Knowledge
Favor Setting
Deadline (1-3)
Oppose Setting
Deadline (5-7)
77.4% Obama
74.4% Obama
73.9% Obama
36.9% McCain
75.4% McCain
82.7% McCain
Source: Anne M. Cizmar, “Reconsidering Whether Foreign Policy Issues Are ‘Hard’” (2010);
http://www.bsos.umd.edu/gvpt/apworkshop/papers_fall10/APWPaper_11-19-10.pdf
Easy Issue (2012): abortion? gay marriage? others?
Hard Issue (2012): health care? deficit reduction? others?
And easy issues should have a greater impact on vote choice overall, right?
Using data from a 2004 national internet survey:
D. Sunshine Hillygus and Todd G. Shields, “Moral Issues and Voter Decision
Making in the 2004 Presidential Election,” PS: Political Science & Politics
(2005).
David Moon, “What You Use Depends on What You Have:
Information Effects on the Determinants of Electoral Choice,” APQ
(1990); “What You Use Still Depends on What You Have: Information Effects in Presidential Elections, 1972-1988,” APQ (1992).
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
The hard vs. easy distinction aside . . .
Issues and ideological self-ID were fairly strong predictors of
presidential vote choice for high- and (to a lesser degree) mediuminformation voters – but not for those with low levels of political
information.
Low-information voters relied mainly on candidate evaluations, party
identification, and retrospective evaluations (LATER).
On the other hand, studies like this might reach different conclusions
if the people conducting them paid a little more attention to . . .
Measurement Error
Stephen Ansolabehere et al., “The Strength of Issues: Using
Multiple Measures to Gauge Preference Stability, Ideological
Constraint, and Issue Voting,” APSR (2008).
Stop measuring issue attitudes with just one survey question!!
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Scales constructed from a large number of questions:
were more highly correlated with each other than the individual
items);
were more stable over time, sometimes as much so as party id; and
had a substantial impact on voting (both economic and moral
issues) for high- and low-education respondents alike.
Directional vs. Proximity Voting
George Rabinowitz and Stuart Elaine Macdonald, “A Directional
Theory of Issue Voting,” APSR (1989).
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The spatial (proximity) model of voting assumes that
each voter can be represented by a point in some hypothetical
space such that the point reflects the person's ideal set of policies;
the policy position of each candidate can be represented by a point
in the same space; and
a voter chooses the candidate whose policy position is closest to
his or her own.
Alternatively . . .
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The directional model of voting maintains that
voters perceive political issues as two-sided, and prefer candidates
who take their side (direction) to candidates on the other side;
given a choice between candidates on their side, voters prefer the
one who is most intense/extreme because they regard intense
candidates as more reliable and more committed to their cause;
some directional theories suggest, however, that candidates who
are too intense (falling beyond the “region of acceptability”) may
be penalized; and
campaign appeals are largely based on emotion (rather than on
careful position taking), as candidates seek to manipulate the level
of intensity in the electorate while persuading passionate voters of
their own commitment to the issue(s) that those voters are passionate about.
Academic research seems to favor the proximity model, though the
debate has yet to be fully resolved (as different scholars employ different
statistical techniques). One study that adds a new twist is . . .
Michael Tomz and Robert P. Van Houweling, “Candidate Positioning and
Voter Choice,” APSR (2008) – proximity voting much more common than
directional, though many voters appeared to follow a discounting model,
i.e., taking existing policy into account, and basing their choice on what
candidates are likely to be able to achieve if elected while discounting the
policies they espouse during the campaign.
While these two models yield very different predictions about voter
preference, they both suggest that voters look to the future and give
candidates’ issue stands greater weight than some studies indicate. More
common, however, is the argument that voters cast their ballots with an
eye to the past . . .
Retrospective Voting:
It’s (Usually) the Economy, Stupid
“Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose
Yours. And recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his.” (Ronald Reagan)
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According to V. O. Key, retrospective voters
are oriented toward policy outcomes rather than the means used
to achieve them;
consider the performance of the incumbent only, all but ignoring
the opposition; and
evaluate what has been done, paying little attention to what candidates promise to do in the future.
However, according to Anthony Downs:
In fact, because parties are basically consistent in their goals,
methods, and ideologies over time, voters look to the past to
predict what is likely to happen in the future – and they do so in a
comparative sense, taking into account both parties and not the
incumbent party alone.
According to Morris Fiorina:
Retrospective judgments, based on the monitoring of party promises and
performances over time, shape citizens’ vote decisions in part through
their impact on party id (“running tally” vs. “unmoved mover”).
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Economics and foreign affairs are especially likely to provide the basis for
retrospective voting because
the outcomes are clear, and most voters can judge whether they approve
of the results (high sophistication is not required); and
there is something close to consensus on the desired outcomes – who
opposes prosperity and peace?
The means to achieving those ends may be complex (elites, for example,
often disagree about them), and relevant information may be hard to
understand – but results/outcomes are more easily grasped than policy
alternatives by the average voter.
Two basic conditions must be met before performance evaluations can
affect voting choices:
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individuals must connect their concerns with the incumbent, and the
actions that he took in office, i.e., the incumbent (or his party) must be
blamed/credited with the current state of affairs; and
following Downs-Fiorina logic, they must compare their evaluations of the
incumbent’s (or his party’s) past performance with what they believe the
opposition party would do if elected – a comparison that presumably is
based on that party’s performance in the past when it was in office; and
vote accordingly.
While these conditions seem less demanding than the ones that are
prerequisites for issue-based voting, the first one might present a challenge
for some voters in a decentralized governmental system such as our own –
especially during periods of divided party control. Like now, for example.
A Caveat about Retrospective Voting:
Partisan Bias
“[V]oters’ evaluations will not translate into a vote for or against the
government unless citizens attribute responsibility for economic conditions to the incumbent government. . . . As it turns out, attribution is
tricky business, and citizens often make the wrong attribution. They
attribute problem-solving competency and responsibility for good
performance to the party they support and blame parties they do not like
for inferior economic performance.” Partisanship, then, “leads voters to
credit those institutional actors they already favor when times are good
and blame actors they already dislike when times are bad.”
Christopher J. Anderson, “The End of Economic Voting? Contingency Dilemmas and
the Limits of Democratic Accountability,” Annual Review of Political Science (2007).
BTW, partisan bias can also be seen with attributions of responsibility in
other areas of performance – not just the economy.
Two (seemingly) clear-cut examples of retrospective voting in off-year elections –
but we also shouldn’t forget that Republicans had rosier assessments of how
things were going in ‘06, while Democrats were more positive in ’10, i.e., partisans
often perceive the same reality in very different ways.
Source: 2006/2010 exit polls; http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1789/2010-midterm-elections-exit-poll-analysis
An Historical (and Aggregate-Level) Perspective:
Presidential Elections, 1948-2008
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/thomas-m-holbrook/unemployment-and-election_b_930540.html
http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/what-do-economic-models-really-tell-us-about-elections/;
the income variable is weighted to place more emphasis on the later years of a president’s term than the earlier
ones, and war casualties indicate the number of military fatalities resulting from U.S.-initiated foreign conflicts,
e.g., Vietnam and Iraq, but not the Gulf War or WWII (where the U.S. responded to attacks on other countries)
Further Observations

Studies show that economic conditions also influence the outcome of
congressional (above) and other races, e.g., the state’s economy and gubernatorial elections.

These results refer to the macroeconomy and to voters in the aggregate;
that is, they show how the electorate as a whole (not individual voters)
responds to economic conditions and trends. In fact . . .

Individual-level studies (using survey data) have sometimes been unable
to confirm that economic voting is as widespread as the aggregate models
would seem to indicate.

To the extent that economic voting does occur, it may reflect people’s
reactions either to economic conditions generally or to their own personal
financial circumstances. While the former is usually thought to be more
important, personal finances are hardly irrelevant . . .
Sociotropic vs. Pocketbook Voting
Thomas Holbrook, “Forecasting Presidential Elections” (2010), p. 357; the figure shows incumbent party
share of the two-party vote in presidential elections from 1952-2004 – solid line for races where an incumbent
seeks re-election, dashed line for open-seat races ; what the data seem to show is that the electorate assigns
less credit/blame for personal economic circumstances when an incumbent is not on the ballot (a pattern that
is driven mainly by the elections of 1960 and 2000, cst. 1952, 1968, and 1988).
Candidate Image/Traits
Numerous studies have shown that candidate image → vote choice. This
is probably less true, on average, in lower-profile elections where voters
often don’t know much about the candidates – leaving party ID to exert
even greater influence than is usually the case (at least when party labels
are on the ballot). Still, image doesn’t only matter at the top of the ticket.
For example:

Jeffery J. Mondak, "Competence, Integrity, and the Electoral Success of
Congressional Incumbents," JOP (1995) – House members who scored
higher on competence and integrity (measured qualitatively based on
descriptions in the Almanac of American Politics) had higher re-election
rates, larger general-election vote margins, and were less likely to face
primary opposition than those who scored lower. [note: this is indirect
evidence, but . . .]

Danny Hayes, “Trait Voting in U. S. Senate Elections,” APR (2010) –
the comparative assessment of competing candidates on leadership, morality, compassion, and empathy (really cares about people
like me) → vote in 2006 Senate races even with party ID, ideology,
views on Iraq, and other variables taken into account; leadership
carried the most weight (most often to the benefit of incumbents),
followed by empathy.
Does physical appearance (John or Jane is “just another pretty
face”) matter as much to voters as some people seem to believe?
Does it matter as much as the top of the ticket (JFK in 1960) as it
does at the bottom (where “looks” may be all that some voters
know about the candidates)? If the latter, does this contract what I
said earlier about the greater importance of party id in low-visibility
races?
Shawn W. Rosenberg et al., “The Image and the Vote: The Effect of
Candidate Presentation on Voter Preference,” AJPS (1986).
Result: The physical appearance of candidates had a strong and consistent
impact on vote choice (by causing people to make inferences about their personal
qualities and suitability for office).
Alexander Todorov et al., “Inferences of Competence from Faces
Predict Election Outcomes,” Science (June 10, 2005).
Result: The candidate perceived as more competent, based solely on
the photo, won 71.6% of the Senate races and 66.8% of the House races.
G. S. Lenz and C. Lawson, “Looking the Part: Television Leads Less In-formed
Citizens to Vote Based on Candidates’ Appearance,” AJPS (2011).
Large-N (over 36,000) internet survey in 2006; the main independent/
predictor variable was “appearance advantage,” based on Todorov’s
competence rankings for 29 Senate and 35 gubernatorial pairings in ’06 and
coded (identically for all respondents in a given state) as the pro-portion
who rated the Democratic candidate as more competent than the
Republican.
Result: Appearance advantage was significantly related to vote intention
(pre-election poll), especially in Senate elections – and more strongly for
some people than for others; specifically, appealing-looking candidates
(judged to be more competent than their opponent) benefitted primarily
among low-knowledge individuals who watch a lot of TV.
On the other hand (shifting our attention to presidential elections) . . .
Danny Hayes, “Has Television Personalized Voting Behavior?”
Political Behavior (2009).
Campaign Events/Strategy
Functions of Campaigns

persuading voters, especially independents and others who initially are
undecided or have weak preferences, to support a candidate;
http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/undecided-voter/1418227/
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activating latent predispositions, mainly partisanship; that is, providing
cues that lead Republicans and Democrats to make a choice in line with
their underlying loyalties;
educating voters by providing information about (a) economic and other
conditions for which elected officials can be held accountable (punished or
rewarded); and (b) whether candidates’ issue stands are consistent with
their own views and self-interests; and
mobilizing potential voters who, absent the stimulus (general or targeted)
provided by the campaign, might be inclined to stay home on election day.
Early research (beginning with the Columbia studies) stressed the importance of brand loyalties/party id and provided the foundation for what
came to be known as the “minimal effects” model of political campaigns.
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Recent work, however, has indicated that various aspects of campaigns
can make a difference after all – not always a big difference, but a difference nonetheless (potentially decisive in a close race). Some examples:
money (diminishing returns)
campaign appearances
debates (effects mostly short-term)
campaign ads (more later on this)
events and candidate gaffes
grassroots contacts (phone, in person)
hiring professional consultants
anything else???
More on this LATER in the course.
Contextual Effects on Voting
(and Turnout)
Family (parents, spouse, others)
Friends and co-workers
Neighborhood
Community as a whole (“breakage effect” in Elmira)
Church (clergy, fellow congregants)
Media (but selective perception, partisan bias)
Effects are more often to reinforce one’s existing preferences than
to change them, though that is not true in all instances.
Last But Not Least . . .
There are several aspects of voting and elections that we are not
covering in class, but for which there is a considerable literature if
you care to check it out. Among these are the following:
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role of emotions in voting
congressional, gubernatorial, and local elections
incumbency advantages/disadvantages
frequency/causes of split-ticket voting
voting in primaries (directional? proximity?)
impact of divisive primaries
did anyone really vote for/against Paul Ryan or Joe Biden?