Electoral Behavior

STARTING WITH THE election of 1956, statistical data for each presidential election have been collected. Because of the importance of the presidential election, researchers have focused on those elections when researching voter behavior. Since the 1960s, several theories have been put forward on why people vote the way they do. Of particular concern is how informed the voters really are on issues, and how they use this information to choose a candidate. Alternatively, the choice may simply be a matter of voting along partisan lines.

Angus Campbell conducted one of the first studies on why people voted and how they picked a candidate. He concluded that while Americans might vote in an election, in general they are not very interested in politics. He concluded that the average American does not think much about politics or get involved often. Because voters are not overly involved, they tended to rely on the two parties to set out platforms that the candidates will follow. Voters tend to associate with one of the parties and stay with that association over a long period of time. Campbell believed voters pick the party they follow based one of several possible reasons. First, the party was the one their parents supported. This was especially true in households where the parents were committed to politics and exposed their children to politics. If the parents had no strong commitment to a given party, then organizations such as schools, work environment, or even the church would influence the party the person would choose. Overall, Campbell found that the average voter was unable to discuss the issues involved in the campaign, and instead relied on their party affiliation to determine the candidate they supported. Campbell also concluded that party preference was a social decision.

V.O. Keys disagreed with Campbell's conclusions, but not with the data. He claimed that while the data appeared to suggest that voters stuck with their party from election to election, this was because the number of people switching parties was about equal, thus giving the appearance of constancy. It was Key's conclusion that people tended to vote based on what politicians had done, not on what politicians said they were going to do. He called this retrospective voting. Later research would build on his conclusion, emphasizing that past performance is really all a voter has to work with to determine what candidate, or party, they support. The retrospective data are much easier for the voter to deal with and understand.

A second group of researchers, led by Norman Nie, also objected to Campbell's conclusions because Campbell only used data from the 1956 presidential election. Using data from the elections in 1964, 1968, and 1972, Nie saw a growth in Independent voters and an increase in dissatisfaction among voters with the two major parties. Finding that neither of the two major parties represented the voters' views, those voters had abandoned the major parties. They also found that more voters said they based their vote on the issues involved in the campaign. These researchers said that Campbell was not necessarily wrong, just that the political environment had changed and so had voters.

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