Why voters vote like they do

by David Grand
September 13, 2006

In the "The New Yorker" issue of 2004-08-30 an article appeared, titled "How political science understands voters." While it's too long to quote in its entirety, I culled out a few passages I found enlightening, as well as confirming my beliefs: that one's party affiliation is, in the main, as hereditary as the religion they're born into; that people who strongly identify with a political party view undecided voters as almost an alien form of life; and that those who always vote for Democrats or Republicans in the general election, no matter what, as being fanatics.

Renown political scientist Philip Converse, whose conclusions in a 1964 article, "The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics" are still the bones at which the science of voting behavior picks, claimed that around 10 percent of the public has what can be called a political belief system, who he named "ideologues;" that about forty-two percent vote not on the basis of ideology but of perceived self-interest; and that the rest form political preferences either from their sense of whether times are good or bad or from factors that have no discernible "issue content" whatever, and who might as well base their political choices on the weather.

And, in fact, many have. Two Princeton political scientists estimated that 2.4 million people voted against Al Gore in 2000 because their states were too dry or too wet that year, and that these voters cost him seven states.

But Gore isn't the only one who suffered from such illogical, far-out thinking:

• George H. W. Bush's image was tarnished, when in the 1992 campaign he showed astonishment at the existence of scanners at a supermarket's checkout counters, which psychologists called a "fast means" of assessing the likely effects of his economic policies.
• Gerald Ford visiting a Mexican-American community in Texas made the mistake of trying to eat a tamale with the corn husk still on it, which led most Mexican-Americans to conclude that a man who did not know how to eat a tamale was not a person predisposed to put their needs high on his list. And when asked after losing to Carter, what the lesson of his defeat was, answered "always shuck your tamales."
• Even voters who supported Michael Dukakis in 1988 agreed that he looked ridiculous wearing a weird helmet when riding in a tank; and that when combined with the adverse effects of the infamous Willie Horton ad, his 17-percent lead in the early polls evaporated overnight.

As the author of the article summed it up: "the outcome of elections (as far as 'the will of the people" is concerned) are essentially arbitrary; that even when voters believe that they're analyzing candidates on the basis of their positions on issues, they're usually operating behind a veil of political ignorance; and that the fraction that responds to substantive political arguments is hugely outweighed by the fraction that responds to slogans, misinformation, personal associations and "gotchas," adding that "it's not that people know nothing, but it's just that politics isn't what they know."