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Issue voting is when voters cast their vote based on issues in elections rather than on other factors. In the context of an election, issues include "any questions of public policy which have been or are a matter of controversy and are sources of disagreement between parties.” According to the theory of issue voting, voters compare their and the candidates' respective principles in order to decide who to vote for.

Causes
A voter does not need to have an in-depth understanding of every issue and knowledge of how a candidate stands on every issue, but rather a sense of which candidate they agree with the most. Voters use many different tactics to rationalize their view on a particular issue. Some people look at what has happened in the past and predict how they think a particular issue will affect the future. Issue voting is often contrasted with party voting.

A 2010 University of California Davis study found that voters switch between issue voting and party voting depending on how much information is available to them about a given candidate. Low information elections, such as those for congressional candidates, would thus be determined by party voting, whereas presidential elections, which tend to given voters much more information about each candidate, have the potential to be issue-driven.

Voters typically choose a political party to affiliate with in one of two ways. The voter will create an opinion of an issue without consulting what a political party thinks about it and choose the political party that best fits the opinion they already have, or the voter will study the opinions of the different parties and decide which party he or she agrees with the most.

A voter’s understanding of parties’ principles is strengthened and developed over time as a person gains experience with more political events. In order for an issue to create the foundation for party choice, a voter must first be concerned about a particular issue and have some knowledge about that issue.

A person must have formed some type of solid opinion about the issue. Also, the voter must be able to recognize that there is more than one opinion about the issue and be able to relate that to a specific political party. According to Campbell, only 40 to 60 percent of the informed population even perceives party differences, and can thus partake in party voting. This would suggest that it is quite common for individuals to develop opinions of issues without the aid of a political party.

History of Issue Voting
Prior to The People’s Choice study in 1944, it was assumed by political scientists that voting was based solely on issues. However, this study found little evidence of issue voting in the United States presidential election of 1940. Rather, the researchers found that issues reinforced political party loyalties. Research stemming from the study concluded that voters’ motivations could be broken down into three categories: party identification, candidate orientation, and issue orientation. The American Voter in 1960 determined that party identification was the primary force, which in turn strongly influenced the other two categories. These three factors make up the Michigan School’s approach to modeling voting behavior.

Some of the earliest research on issue voting done in 1960 found that voters often did not have enough information to link specific issues to individual candidates. Converse, in 1964, also concluded that voters did not have a sophisticated enough understanding of issues to be able to link them to candidates. In 1966, Key was one of the first people to conclude that voters are able to connect certain issues to certain candidates and cast their vote based on that information. (Key) Despite the growing knowledge of the field, real evidence didn’t begin to appear until the 1970s. The American Political Science Review published a symposium that hypothesized that there was a rise in issue voting in the 1960s. An analysis of correlations with issue orientations was published by Nie and Anderson in 1974 that attempted to revise the Michigan school’s theory of the public’s political belief systems’ inherent limitations. In 1979, Nie et all in The Changing American Voter attempted to explain the rise in issue voting through the fall in party voting. This decline of party voting, they claimed, came about because the proportion of the electorate with no party affiliation had fallen, and because the proportion of voters who cast votes for candidates from other parties had risen.

Rise in Issue Voting
In recent years, America has seen a rise in issue voting. This can be attributed to the increased polarization in the last century between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party. The two parties becoming more extreme in their issue viewpoints has alienated moderates from their parties. Since moderates consist of most of the American Voters, an increase has been seen in the number of affiliations as an Independent Identifying as an independent allows voters to deal with the constraints of a polarized political party by hand picking the candidates based upon their stance on issues, rather than feeling obligated to vote along party lines that may conflict harshly with other stances.

Catholics face this dilemma. Most Catholics support the pro-life stance which is historically supported by Republicans, but strongly oppose the death penalty which is strongly supported by Republicans and condemned by Democrats.(abortion citation) Since both parties have polarized their stances and have gravitated to propose extreme ways of manifesting their opinions in litigation in Congress Catholic voters might feel uncomfortable about how a certain presidential candidate views one issue.

Members of Labor Unions also identify strongly with the Democratic Party and its efforts in advocating for workers rights, but Labor Unions also tend to not support Gay rights, a stance which aligns more closely with Republican views.

Issue voting by registering as an independent allows voters to have more freedom in the candidates they chose, and the increase in issue voting has been apparent in the increase of independents in America. Identifying as an independent allows voters to deal with the constraints of an extreme political party by hand picking candidates based upon their stance on issues, rather than feeling obligated to vote along party lines that may conflict harshly with other stances.

Complications Regarding Issue Voting
Many complications can arise when voters decide to employ issue voting. One is that issues sometimes do not provide clear dichotomous positions on the issue. There are no two answers, and a voter must choose a candidate that is closest to their opinion. This can prove difficult when the two candidates are similar in their opinions. An example of this is how much money from the GNP should be spent on education.

A second complexity is that sometimes problems do not line up on a linear bases, where a person can objectively choose what is closer to their opinion like the education spending example. In the 1980 US Presidential Election the growing threat of Communism in the eastern hemisphere was a salient issue for voters. There were many proposed solutions to this problem, Ronald Reagan endorsed military intimidation through increased spending and innovation known as the Reagan doctrine, Jimmy Carter sided with diplomatic efforts to keep peace, and the independent John Anderson advocated a return to the Containment strategy. None of these answers are mutually exclusive or can be linearly plotted. The voter would just instead have to chose the candidate with the closest opinion of the mix of the possible solutions.

A third problem is if there are multiple issues that are equally salient to the voter. If candidates differ in opinions on the multiply issues, how does the voter choose the candidate? In the 2008 US Presidential Election two issues dominating attention were the economy and the Afghanistan War and Iraq War. Many people viewed these issues equally salient, and had a hard time picking one issue to vote on. These three complexities in issue voting have provided problems in using this tactic in choosing candidates.

Models of Issue Voting
While scholars employ many models to study issue voting, there are the three primary models used in statistical studies of issue voting. These models are not in tension with one another, and are used to answer different questions that are deemed important in the field of issue voting.

The Linear Position Model operates on the basis that the greater the voters consistency with the the position of the party on the issue, the greater the chance of the voter voting for the party. A graph is used where the Y-axis is the proportion voting for the party and the X-axis is the consistency of the issue position. A simple equation is used where there are variables that represent the minimal amount of people voting for the party and another that ensures there is a positive gradient for the slope of the equation. The variables “a” represents the minimal amount of people voting for the party, while “b” ensures that there is a positive gradient. This model aids to predict how strongly issue voting will affect a voter in an election. The spatial model is used to determine the perceptions and decisions of voters when using issue voting strategies in elections. The spatial model consists of three premises. The first is that a person can be represented in relation to other voters by placing them on a hypothetical spatial field that represents that voters absolute set of policies. The second idea is that a candidate’s policy position can be placed on the same spatial field. The final is that a voter votes for the candidate whose political stances are closest to their own. This model looks to predict how voters that employ issue voting methods while vote based on their opinions on multiple issues. Other models that follow the idea of “closeness” are called proximity models.

The salience model is important to issue voting because it utilizes data on the election agenda to total election outcome. The theory is that the two parties in the United States are associated with certain goals or views on an issue, and the voter’s decision in selecting a candidate depends on the actual salience of the issue. A simple view of this model can be summarized in the equation:

Vote=a(Saliency of the party's issues)+b(Saliency of the party's issues)

where "a"=Party 1, and "b"=Party 2

The more important the issue becomes, the more the voter would favor a particular candidate or party on the issue.