Rational Voter Model

THE RATIONAL VOTER model is one of the major alternative explanations of voting behavior to arise in the wake of the now-classic American Voter study by Angus Campbell, Phillip Converse, Warren Miller, and Donald Stokes, released in 1960. While it was not the first in-depth examination of voter behavior, it is certainly the most influential and controversial. It is not an overstatement to say that this study has dominated work on, as well as our collective understanding of, electoral behavior in the United States for the last half-century.

One proponent of this model was the legendary political scientist VO. Key. Published posthumously in 1966, with the assistance of Milton Cummings, “The Responsible Electorate” was not only Key's response to the American Voter study, but his defense of the American electorate. Key's primary argument can be summarized by a statement early in the text in which he claims, “Voters are not fools.” While largely criticized and discredited in the American Voter Study, Key finds that the electorate is, for the most part, responsible, reasonable, and rational.

It is always dangerous to attempt to summarize a study as involved as Key's, but in order to understand his conclusion it is important to look at how he approached his work. Key categorized voters as either “standpatters” (if they voted for candidates from the same party in two consecutive elections), “switchers” (if they voted for candidates from different parties in two consecutive elections), or “new voters” (if they voted in one election, but not the previous one). He then examined the behavior of voters within each of these three categories to determine if they had acted rationally. Key found that the switchers [Page 695]were not only the smallest of the three groups, but also the most rational. Unlike the other two, the switchers based their vote on how they were treated between elections. Moreover, they behaved this way regardless of how they voted in the past. Key also determined that standpatters, the largest group, were rational. He was less upbeat when it came to new voters.

Consequently, while the influential American Voter model suggested that voters were not well informed or concerned and thus often cast their votes irrationally, Key claimed this was not necessarily the case. Key's study presented a picture of the American voter as careful to consider what happened since the last election and to cast their vote retrospectively, on the basis of a reasonable assessment of past performance; to this extent Key argued they were responsible and behaving rationally. Key's defense of the American voter not only served as an important counterpoint to the American Voter model, it has influenced subsequent work in this area as well.

Out of Key's notion of a more reasonable, rational electorate has grown an entire body of literature on electoral behavior from scholars such as Morris Fiorina, Charles Franklin, John Jackson, and many others. Like Key, for example, Fiorina argued that voters behave rationally. Fiorna's work has been influenced not only by Key, but other scholars such as rational choice theorists like Anthony Downs.

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