Voters and Voter Behavior

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Voters and Voter Behavior

• How American democracy works depends largely on
  who participates and how.

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Ideology - A coherent set of beliefs that
structure ones thinking about political issues.

• What are you ? ? ? ?
• http//court.it-services.northwestern.edu/idealog/

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How We Form Political Opinions
Political Opinions
Personal Beliefs
Political Knowledge
Cues From Leaders
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POLITICAL SOCIALIZATION

• The process in which individuals acquire the
  information, beliefs, attitudes and values that
  help them comprehend the workings of a political
  system and orient themselves within it.

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Political Socialization and Other Factors That
Influence Opinion Formation

• Political attitudes are grounded in values. We
  learn our values by a process known as political
  socialization.
• Many factors influence opinion formation.
• The Family
• The Mass Media
• School and Peers
• The Impact of Events

• Social/economic groups
• Religion, Race,
• Education, Income,
• Gender, Region

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Presidential Election 2000

• Al Gore (D)
• 50,996,116 votes
• 48
• 21 States Won
• 266 Electoral Votes

• George Bush (R)
• 50,456,169 votes
• 48
• 30 States Won
• 271 Electoral Votes

Does your vote matter?
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Who Votes? (social and demographic
factors)

• Income people with higher incomes have a higher
  tendency to vote.
• Age older people tend to vote more often than
  younger people (less than half of eligible 18-24
  year olds are registered to vote).
• Gender Since 1980, women have a higher tendency
  to vote for Democrats than Republicans.
• Race in general, whites tend to vote more
  regularly than African-Americans (this may be due
  to income and education not race).

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Who votes cont.

• Education (high)
• Parental participation
• Occupation (high status)
• Religion
• Exposure to media
• Geographic region
• Age

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Voting Behavior

• Voter Participation
• About 40 of the eligible adult population votes
  regularly.
• About 25 are occasional voters.
• About 35 rarely or never vote.

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Voter Turnout

• Australia 96
• South Africa 86
• Denmark 83
• Germany 78
• Britain 78
• Israel 77

• Canada 69
• Japan 67
• Russia 54
• Mexico 52
• India 50
• U.S. 48

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Why Dont People Vote?
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Does Low Voter Turnout Matter?

• Is low voter turnout a problem in a democracy?
• Do we want the uninformed or poor and uneducated
  voting? Mightn't they make bad decisions?

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Potential Solutions
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Alternative Voting Systems

• Plurality
• Simple Majority
• Run Off
• Approval Voting

• Cumulative Voting
• Transferable Vote
• Proportional Representation

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Plurality - The candidate who receives the most
votes wins.

• Simple Majority - A candidate must receive 50
  percent of the total votes cast plus 1 more.

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The Run-Off System - If no candidate wins a
simple majority in the first primary election,
the top two finishers compete in a second
primary, a run-off primary, which again is
decided by a simple-majority vote.
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The Approval Voting System - Voters may decide to
cast no votes or to cast one vote for every
candidate on the ballot that they find
acceptable. Winning could be a plurality or a
simple majority.

• A Democrat, liberal, pro-choice
• B Democrat, moderate, pro-choice
• C Republican, moderate, pro-choice
• D Republican, moderate, pro-life
• E Republican, conservative, pro-life

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Cumulative voting - citizens can cast as many
votes as there are candidates in the race.

• A Democrat, left-wing liberal, white, female
• B Democrat, liberal, white, female
• C Democrat, moderate, black, female
• D Republican, moderate, white, male
• E Republican, conservative, black, male
• F Republican, right-wing conservative, white,
  male

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Transferable-Vote System

• Takes into account voters preferences. Voters
  rank each candidate.

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Proportional Representation

• Each party fields a slate (list) of candidates,
  and voters cast their ballots for the party they
  prefer. Seats are awarded to each party according
  to the percentage of votes the party captures in
  the election.

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TheAmerican Voter