Voting Decisions Flashcards
What are the predictors of vote choice? What is the strongest predictor and why?
- Social Groups
- Incumbent Performance
- Policy Issues
- Candidate traits
- Party Identification
Where does partisanship emerge from?
Learned early in life through socialization processes
* Family
* Friends
* Schools
* Churches
* Clubs
* Political context during formative years also matters
What is the “Michigan model” of partisan identity?
It’s a social identity
* Group membership
* “Michigan Model”
* “I am a Democrat” or “I am a Republican”
* People root for their group like they would a sports team
How do social groups impact vote choices and why? What groups tend to support which party?
Democratic voters tend to be
* Racial minorities
* Non-religious people
* Women
* Lower-income
* Well educated
* Republican voters tend to be
* White
* Religious
* Men
* Wealthy
* Less educated
* 2024 showed this is rapidly changing, though
What trends do we see in the relationship between certain social groups and vote choice?
Beyond partisanship, other group identities and memberships
* Different races, religions, sexual and gender identities tend to vote for
different parties
* Social groups help inform voters who don’t always pay attention to
politics on how to vote
How does incumbent performance matter? What about policy issues?
- If voters feel as though the incumbent has done a poor job on key issues,
they probably won’t vote for them - Of course, partisanship influences how we see incumbents’ performance
Policy Issues - In a fully rational world, people would just vote for whoever was
closest to them policy wise - Proximity voting
- People don’t actually do this
- Lack enough knowledge about politics and lack coherent ideologies
What is the “personal vote”?
The idea that a voter personally knows their representative and wants
to vote for them because of that
