American Voter, the

First published in 1960 by Angus Campbell, Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and Donald Stokes of the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan, The American Voter (AV) is considered an icon in the study of voting behavior theories and forms the foundation of the National Election Studies. The work is primarily concerned with the fundamental processes of political decision making by individual voters in the election of the American president, specifically as found during the 1956 EisenhowerStevenson presidential vote.

The work defines a political system as a collection of processes for the making of decisions. As such, the authors seek to comprehend the electoral process itself, as office holders in a democratic government are guided in many of their actions by what the work terms a calculus of electoral effect. Overall, the stated aim of American Voter is to understand the voting decisions of the national electorate in a manner that transcends some of the specific elements of historical circumstance.

Data for this endeavor, which has become controversial over time, was collected through interviews with randomly selected individuals in an effort to represent the national electorate on three presidential elections (1948–1956). Though most of the data represents individual recollections of behavior from the two Eisenhower-Stevenson elections, the authors attest that their data have the capacity to extend historical intervals, as they believe people are able to recall accurately past political actions. This methodology was chosen due to the authors'view that voters have a picture of the world of politics in their head, and that this picture is a key to understanding what voters do at the polls.

Of the book's major findings, AV depicts an individual's political decision process, in terms of partisan choice and turnout, as highly influenced by psychological factors as broken down into six dimensions. These dimensions include perceptions of a candidate's personal attributes, the comparative record of the two parties in managing the affairs of government, and informal political discussion between individuals or between individuals and the mass communications media. Thus, overall the model of voting behavior posited by AV described voting decisions as being determined by long-term forces (party identification and group affiliations) and short-term forces (candidate images and issues). Partisan identification is represented by the model as the dominant factor in determining voting outcomes for presidential elections.

Other forces are found to play a role in the political decision process including sustained party identification between elections. AV concludes that the orientation to party identification begins long before [Page 36]an individual reaches voting age and is found to be a strong reflection of one's social surroundings, especially family. The authors attest that stability in party identification is so strong that cumulative intense and widespread experiences (such as found during a great national crisis) are required to produce profound political consequences. Finally, external factors such as membership in social groupings, social class, and economic antecedents are further determinants of a citizen's voting behavior.

As a seminal work in political behavior studies, AV has posited both revolutionary and controversial findings. Debate has centered upon the true level of voterationality possessed by individuals, and on the notion that participation in political processes is often determined by partisan intensity. Finally, some have criticized that certain findings have not been sustainable over time, especially in the face of modern dealignment and a decline in partisan identification by voters.

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