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Voter behavior - part I
Sep. 16th, 2004 09:20 amHidden away in The Critics section of the August 30 New Yorker is an article on how people make decisions about voting. With my software engineering background, I'm wired to think that important decisions should be made in a logical, deliberate way, so this article was a shock to my system. Before I get deep into the substance of the article, here's something to think about:
In 2000, eighteen percent said they decided which Presidential candidate to vote for only in the last two weeks of the campaign; five percent, enough to swing most elections, decided the day they voted.
That would seem to suggest that polls don't begin to mean much until just before the election. So obsessing about the polls is a waste of worry that could be better invested elsewhere.
Now for the meat of the article. After mentioning some basic factors that influence votes, the article references political scientist Phillip Converse's 1964 article "On the Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics".
Any political scientists out this have comments on this? I'd be especially interested to know if these numbers have been re-checked recently.
Unfortunately, this article isn't to be found on the New Yorker's web site. If you'd like a copy of it, get in touch. I'll send you a copy (assuming the number of requests doesn't get out of hand, that this).
This post has become quite large; I'll save the rest for later.
In 2000, eighteen percent said they decided which Presidential candidate to vote for only in the last two weeks of the campaign; five percent, enough to swing most elections, decided the day they voted.
That would seem to suggest that polls don't begin to mean much until just before the election. So obsessing about the polls is a waste of worry that could be better invested elsewhere.
Now for the meat of the article. After mentioning some basic factors that influence votes, the article references political scientist Phillip Converse's 1964 article "On the Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics".
Converse claimed that only ten percent of the public has what can be called, even generously, a political belief system. He named these people "ideologues", by which he meant not that they are fanatics, but that they have a reasonable grasp of "what goes with what" - of how a set of opinions adds up to a coherent political philosophy. Non-ideologues may use terms like "liberal" and "conservative", but Converse thought they basically don't know what they're talking about, ... they can't see how one opinion (that taxes should be lower, for example) logically ought to rule out others (such as the belief that there should be more government programs). About 42 percent of voters, according to Converse's interpretation of the 1956 electorate, vote on the basis not of ideology but of perceived self- interest. The rest form political preferences from their sense of whether times are good or bad (about 25 percent) or from factors that have no discernible "issue content" whatever. Converse places 22 percent of the electorate in the last category. In other words, about twice as many people have no political views as have a coherent political belief system.
Any political scientists out this have comments on this? I'd be especially interested to know if these numbers have been re-checked recently.
Unfortunately, this article isn't to be found on the New Yorker's web site. If you'd like a copy of it, get in touch. I'll send you a copy (assuming the number of requests doesn't get out of hand, that this).
This post has become quite large; I'll save the rest for later.
