User:John R Hermann/sandbox

Future Topics:

4 Theories of Voting Behavior and three schools

Voter Turnout

Determinants of the votes in congressional election.

Voting Behavior in Presidential Elections

There are four theories created to explain voting behavior in presidential elections: Columbia University's Consumer Preference and Sociological Modification, University of Michigan's psycho-sociological party identification, and the University of Rochester's Rational Choice theories. These four theories are not always mutually exclusive. The entry defines the four theories and discusses their strengths and weaknesses. Columbia University's Consumer Preference and Sociological Modification

Theory 1: Consumer preference, the first one, argues that a voter will choose a presidential candidate like he or she would pick a product at the supermarket. There can be logical or illogical reasons behind the decision. A logical reason might be that Mitt Romney favors a trimmer, leaner federal government, which is the same value that you share. In contrast, an illogical decision would be that President Barack Obama is more handsome than Mitt Romney.

Flaw: While this theory was appealing at first, it was plagued with one major flaw – a majority of voters had their decision made prior to the beginning of the presidential campaign. Thus, voters knew how they were going to vote –= irrespective of the logical or illogical reasons based on consumer preference.

Theory 2: Instead of attempting to remedy the flaw of the Consumer Preference theory, scholars at Columbia University devised a second theory called Sociological Modification. This theory contends that three factors accurately predict one’s vote: Religious affiliation, socioeconomic status, and whether someone lives in a city or rural area (the suburbs were just being developed when this theory emerged). Apparently, your religion, educational/ income level, and geographic location (urban/suburban/rural) predispose you to vote for one candidate over the other. For example, based on the findings of the Sociological Modification theory, scholars find that a Jewish second grade teacher from New York City would vote for President Barack Obama, while a Baptist oil tycoon from a small town in West Texas would vote for Mitt Romney.

Flaws: While this theory is largely static, it offers a significant improvement in how one votes in relation to the Consumer Preference Theory. It also does not consider the personality of the candidates and makes the voter into a robot.

Theory 3: University of Michigan scholars conceived the third theory, which is frequently named the Party Identification theory. This theory makes two basic

assumptions. First, a voter is socialized at a young age through several experiences to have certain political beliefs. Chief among these influences/experiences, however, are your parents’ views and their political party. Second, these views predict which party you will vote for in a presidential election, including how active you are in politics. The more active your parents are in politics, the more active the child will be. I am a good example of this theory. My parents were both hippies, extremely liberal, and belong to the Democratic Party. In fact, I was arrested when I was two years old with my parents at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in 1968. I am also named after two Kennedys, John and Robert. And, it is little coincidence that I tend to vote Democratic in presidential elections.

Flaws: While this is among the most popular theories with political scientists, it is not without problems. The most prominent issue is that elections are candidate centered today with a potentially dwindling influence of political parties. This theory, moreover, does not consider a divided government (president is one party and Congress is the other).

Theory 4: Rational Choice, the final theory, was created at the University of Rochester, and it is borrowed from the field of economics. This theory muses that you, the voter, seek to optimize your expected utility. Put simply, you will conduct a cost benefit analysis to determine which candidate will benefit you the most. If you are pro-life, for heterosexual marriages only, and for a flat tax, you will vote for Mitt Romney for president. This theory also assigns weights (in terms of relative importance) to your views on certain issues to accurately predict your vote. This is the most sophisticated view of voting behavior. It also examines voters’ views on issues through a lens of retroactive and prospective voting.

Flaws: While usually the most appealing theory to my students, University of Rochester does neglect to consider that candidates frequently obscure their views on issues, voters are not that intelligent, and the theory is circular (I vote rationally because I am rational).

Columbia University School of Voting Behavior:

Consumer Preference:

“The 1940 Columbia study was based on a Consumer Preference Model, in which each party was seen as presenting a product to the public, the campaign was seen as an advertising campaign during which the compelling products were weighed by the public, and the voters were seen as recording their final choices when they stepped into the booth on election day.

Problem:

“The problem with this model was that most people knew how they would vote even before the national convention were held, particularly since President Franklin D. Roosevelt was running for a third term in office in 1940” (p. 8).

Sociological Modification:

“In the end, the Columbia researchers explained the 1940 election with a sociological models, relating voters’ socioeconomic status (education, income, class), religion, and place of residence (urban or rural) to their vote” (p. 8).

University of Michigan School of Voting Behavior

“The Michigan researchers analyzed the 1952 election using a social-psychological model. The major emphasis was on three attitudes: The person’s attachment to party, the person’s orientation toward issues, and the person’s orientation toward candidates. The emphasis on parties, candidates, and issues explicitly incorporated political variables into the voting model. … A person’s identification with a party became the core of the model” (p. 8).

The authors describe this in terms of “funnel of causality.” The phenomenon to be explained – voting – is at the tip of the funnel, by it is preceded by, and dependent, on a variety of factors. The funnel’s axis is time. …. (p. 8).

Thus, a multitude of causes manifests narrows into the voting act. Most prominent is your parents party identification [p. 8], which is related to race, socioeconomic status, religion, and on and on.

University of Michigan Model does a good job of explaining long-term and short-term factors.

University of Rochester School of Voting Behavior

“One other model of voting became popular during the 1970s: the rational voter model” (p. 9)

“According to this model, voters decide whether or not to vote and which candidate to vote for based on rational basis, usually on the basis of which action gives them greater expected benefits. … They vote only if they perceive greater gain from voting than the cost (mainly in time) of voting” (p. 9)

“One of the major contributions of the rational voter approach has been to emphasize the role of issues, which were submerged in the early finding of the Michigan findings” (p. 9).

Be sure to mention the retrospective and prospective voting.