Voter Expectations

THE PHRASE VOTER expectations has several usages in studies of campaigns and elections. In dtudies from an economic perspective, the term refers to rational calculations of anticipated or future costs and benefits associated with the various candidates. In studies from a sociological perspective, the term refers to voter preferences for candidate characteristics (such as charisma, leadership, and integrity), policies (for example, supporting more or less of a government service or program), or election outcomes (for example, the chances that a certain candidate will win). In both cases, the idea is that expectations of a future outcome affect voter decisions and behavior in the short term. Expectations about the outcome of an election may affect whether or not an individual will vote. If a voter expects one candidate to win an election in a landslide, then there may be less reason to spend time and energy becoming informed about candidates or even voting on Election Day.

In terms of candidate characteristics or behavior, expectations refer to a voter's ideal, which the voter expect candidates to live up to or meet. Candidates' characteristics include personal characteristics (a candidate's appearance, style, charisma, competence, empathy, integrity, and leadership, and political role characteristics, their record as a public leader, policy positions, tendencies toward liberalism or conservatism, and position in the context of their political party). Candidates who do not meet expectations have less appeal to voters than those who meet expectations for candidate character. Voters, however, often have inconsistent or contradictory expectations. For example, voters may expect candidates to be firm in their policy positions, but also to be willing to compromise to get things done. The existence of multiple, potentially conflicting, expectations make it difficult for politicians to satisfy these expectations, and may contribute to cynicism and mistrust among voters.

Expectations are formed through an interactive process between an individual's beliefs and the information provided by candidates, the media, political parties, and advocacy groups. People have limited cognitive capacity and sensory perception and do not pay attention to the full range of information available in the environment. An individual's interpretation of political information is influenced by their unique set of beliefs, values, and attitudes formed through their socialization and other life experiences.

Expectations are formed, reinforced, or modified as people encounter new bits of information that interact with their existing information base stored in long-term memory. Voters tend to interpret fragments of information obtained through episodic attention to politics in ways that are consistent with their existing beliefs. In particular, most voters' images of candidates are affected by their party loyalties, ideological orientations, and deep-seated political attitudes relevant to the processing of information about candidates. People tend to see or invent what is favorable and they tend to distort or deny much of what is unfavorable with [Page 833]respect to these prior beliefs. For example, Republican and Democratic voters tend to pay attention to and incorporate information favorable to their party's candidate, while ignoring or distorting information that is unfavorable to their party's candidate. Thus, partisan voters tend to inflate expectations for their own political party's candidate, anticipating that their preferred candidate will do better in an event such as a debate or in an election than may be the case from the perspective of a neutral observer.

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