What Affects Voter Choice

1
What Affects Voter Choice?

• Demographics?
• Ideology?
• To some extent, but not as much anymore.
• 1) people are not very ideologically consistent
• 2) not a lot of true ideological variance in the
  American system.
• Partisanship?
• Yes, but increasingly a less powerful an affect
  w/ the rise of independents and direct techology
• Image of Candidate?
• Issues /Record ?

2
Ideology Defined

• Ideology is a value system or belief system
  accepted as fact or truth by some group. An
  ideology provides the believer with a picture of
  the world both as it is and as it should be, and
  in doing so, organizes the tremendous complexity
  of the world into something fairly simple and
  understandable

3
Political Ideology

• In its simplest formulation, an ideology that
  focuses on the political. It relates to the
  beliefs of a group or an individual.

4
Modern Political Ideologies

• Conservatives--are defined as individuals who
  emphasize the market place as a means of
  distributing economic benefits but look to
  government to uphold traditional social values.

5
Modern Political Ideologies

• liberals--favor activist government as an
  instrument to promote equality or widely
  distribute economic benefits, but reject the
  notion that government should favor a particular
  set of social values.

6
Modern Political Ideologies

• populists are defined as individuals who share
  with conservatives a concern for traditional
  social values but, like liberals, favor an active
  role for government in providing for economic
  security.

7
Modern Political Ideologies

• libertarians-- are opposed to government
  intervention in both the economic and social
  spheres.

8
Problem with Ideology is that it is often domain
specific

• Phillip Converse argued in an article entitled
  The Nature of Belief Systems that ideology is
  frequently inconsistent. For example, it is
  possible to be a liberal on issues of national
  defense while being a conservative on fiscal
  matters.

9
What affects Voter Choice?

• Issues vs. Image
• The Issues are those things that a candidate
  says to make people vote for them.
• The Image of a candidate is how they appear to
  the voters
• Now we realize it is all about Message
• The idea here is that the voting decision is a
  choice among alternatives available not the best
  choice for the job nor real differences in
  political ideology or programs.

10
Issue DrivenTwo Types of Voting...

• Prospective votingdescribes some voters who are
  highly informed on the issues and cast their
  ballots on this basis. These voters know the
  issue positions of candidates and choose the
  candidate whose proposals best match their
  positions.

11
Issue DrivenTwo Types of Voting...

• Retrospective votingwhen voters support the
  incumbent party or candidate irrespective of
  their ideology but because they are pleased with
  the performance of a candidate. Similarly it is
  retrospective voting when a voter reverses their
  position when they are displeased with a
  candidates performance.
• retrospective voting can be an effective form of
  popular control because it forces public
  officials to anticipate the voters likely
  response in the next election.

12
3 Sources of Power in Politics

• Framing the Debate--the power to influence how
  events and issues are interpreted
• Agenda Setting--the power to bring public
  attention to particular issues and problems
• Campaigns and Elections --the power to shape
  popular perceptions of politicians and political
  leaders AND WHAT ISSUES ARE IMPORTANT

13
Controlling the Agendain Politics

• In politics today there is a titanic struggle
  going on over what is known as agenda setting.
• On one side are POLITICIANS, who believe that
  THEY should decide what their campaigns will be
  based on, and if the voters dont like the issues
  theyve chosen to run on, they wont win.

14
Controlling the Agendain Politics

• On the other side is the media. A new and
  interesting school of journalism called civic
  journalism, asserts that too many difficult
  issues are ignored during campaigns.

15
Controlling the Agendain Politics

• Why is this important? Because the issues that
  dominate an election become the issues that
  office holders are obliged to deal with.
• How do you set the agenda?
• Message and focus!

16
Sample Campaign Radio Spot

• Im Dan Holliman, candidate for governor. If Im
  elected, I will do everything in my power to
  attack the number one issue facing our state
• too much sugar in our breakfast cereals. As a
  father, I have seen my own children so hopped up
  on Sugar Pops, they were bouncing off the walls.
  Then they get to school and theyre too wired to
  work. They wind up disrupting the class, making
  smart-aleck comments to the teacher and getting
  into fights during recess. Then, when the sugar
  rush wears off, theyre lazy and lethargic.
  Sugar-filled cereals are screwing up our test
  scores, contributing to the dropout rate and
  leading our children on a frenzied rush to a life
  of crime. Make me your governor and Capn Chrunch
  will go down with his ship.

17
Likely Opinion Page Response

• Without so much as a word about security,
  abortion, environment, taxes, crime or welfare,
  Mr. Holliman seeks our states highest office. A
  jeremiad against processed sugar is ludicrous.
  The food manufacturers and the FDA assure us the
  cereals are perfectly healthy. Mr. Holliman would
  do well to broaden his horizons, abandon his Don
  Quixote quest against Count Chocula and address
  the real issue facing this state

18
Staying on Message!!!

• You want to fight crime? Stop sending kids into
  the world wired on Cocoa Puffs. You want
  security. Keep the snipers away from the cold
  cereal. You want to reduce welfare dependency?
  Help low-income families afford brain food like
  wheat germ. Abortion? Thered be a lot fewer
  unwanted pregnancies if teenagers brains weren't
  scrambled by all that sugar. And the environment?
  The crap we pour into our unsuspecting kids
  cereal bowls each morning contains as many toxins
  as a Superfund site. The reasons the newspaper
  is attacking my candidacy is because its in the
  pocket of the grocery stores.

19
How not to win an election

• Im Dirk Dolittle. Im running for governor
  because I truly love this state. I was born here.
  My lovely wife, Louise, and I have raised three
  wonderful children here. If you love our state as
  much as we do, if you want us to have a future as
  bright as the best days of our proud past, Id
  appreciate your support.

20
Major Kinds of Campaign Strategies that
Candidates Use

• Positive
• War of Attrition-- Take what you can get
• Issue Dominated
• Winning your Base
• Coalition Politics
• Change the nature of the electorate
• Draw the Difference
• Diversion
• Hard Negative
• Attach yourself to larger Issues

21
Wedge Issues In American Politics

• Gay Rights
• Guns
• Abortion
• Development vs. Environment
• Labor vs.. Business
• Sex (harassment and education)
• Race
• Haves vs. Have nots
• Religion in Schools

22
Public Opinion

• Defined as...
• Those opinions held by private persons that
  governments find it prudent to heed.
• (V.O. Key)
• prudent because of their concern about their
  electoral fates
• need not be actively expressed--even if public
  opinion is latent, public officials may act or
  fail to act because they fear arousing it.

23
Sources ofPublic Opinion

• Socialization
• encompasses all the ways in which people learn
  beliefs and values in their families, schools,
  communities, churches, and workplaces.
• Interests
• Some of the opinions people hold are based on
  their personal interests or the interests of
  others like them

24
Sources of Public Opinion

• Education
• promotes tolerance to differing views
• The more highly educated are more tolerant
• the values emphasized in higher
  education--logical argument, open-mindedness,
  unemotional analysis--predispose the educated,
  liberal and conservatives alike to a somewhat
  greater acceptance of people and practices
  different form them and theirs

25
Sources of Public Opinion

• The Media
• Is opinion determined by the media? The answer is
  very unclear.
• Under some circumstances the media can move
  public opinion, while under other circumstances
  the media are ineffectual.

26
Critics of Public Opinion

• Because of their prominence, some critics charge
  that American government has degenerated into
  government by opinion poll
• But the real problem is that public opinion is
  not some well-defined, stable object that can be
  easily and accurately measured. It is often a
  moving target.

27
Problems of Public Opinion

• Mismeasurement
• Public Opinion Often is Uninformed
• Public Opinion is Often Unconnected
• Public Opinion is Often Inconsistent

28
Example of mismeasurement

• In 1993 one poll indicated that 22 percent of the
  American public believed it
• possible that Nazi extermination of the Jews
  never happened.
• Another 12 percent were unsure. In total ,
  one-third of all Americans apparently entertained
  doubts that the Nazis had murdered over 6 million
  Jews (and others) in World War II.

29
Clarity in Polling

• The Roper question was worded this way...
• Does it seem possible, or does it seem
  impossible to you that the Nazi extermination of
  the Jews never happened?

30
Clarity in Polling

• One of the first rules of survey research--the
  scientific design and administration of public
  opinion polls-- is to keep questions clear and
  simple.
• The Roper question fails that test because it
  contains a double negative--impossible...never
  happened--a grammatical construction long known
  to confuse people.

31
Clarity in Polling

• An Alternative Question (and results!)
• Does it seem possible to you that the Nazi
  extermination of the Jews never happened, or do
  you feel certain that it happened?
• With this question, less than 10 percent of the
  sample were Holocaust doubters.

32
Two Main Point to Remember

• I. Public Opinion is extremely important in a
  democracy. Why? Because people care deeply about
  what their fellow citizens believein large part
  because they believe that in the long run public
  opinion determines what government does.

33
Two Main Points To Remember

• II. Whatever its importance, it is often
  difficult to know what public opinion is.
• One has to carefully look at the question.
• Question wording can produce significant
  differences in measured opinion.

34
Another Example

• We are faced with many problem in this country,
  none of which can be solved easily or
  inexpensively. I am going to name some of these
  problems and for each one Id like you to tell me
  whether you think were spending too much money ,
  too little money, or about the right amount.

35
Another Example

• When the public was asked about welfare in the
  Spring of 1994 the responses were as followed
• Too little 13
• About right 25
• Too much 62

36
Another Example

• When the same people in the same poll were asked
  about assistance to the poor a large majority
  responded that too little was being spent
• too little 59
• About right 25
• Too much 16

37
Problems of Public Opinion

• Mismeasurement
• Public Opinion Often is Uninformed
• Public Opinion is Often Unconnected
• Public Opinion is Often Inconsistent