Candidates' Perception of Voter Competence
Author | : Chong Lim Kim |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 46 |
Release | : 1972 |
Genre | : Cognitive dissonance |
ISBN | : |
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Author | : Chong Lim Kim |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 46 |
Release | : 1972 |
Genre | : Cognitive dissonance |
ISBN | : |
Author | : Paul Goren |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press, USA |
Total Pages | : 288 |
Release | : 2013 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 0195396146 |
Argues with the standard interpretation of the American voter as incompetent in matters of policy.
Author | : Paul Goren |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press |
Total Pages | : |
Release | : 2012-08-24 |
Genre | : Psychology |
ISBN | : 0199908699 |
A half century of research shows that most citizens are shockingly uninformed about public affairs, liberal-conservative ideologies, and the issues of the day. This has led most scholars to condemn typical American voters as politically brainless and to conclude that policy voting lies beyond their reach. On Voter Competence breaks sharply from this view. According to Paul Goren, people vote based on abstract policy principles, a practice that has escaped scholars because they have searched for evidence of policy voting in the wrong places. Once we turn away from liberal-conservative predispositions and issue preferences, we find that nearly everyone holds genuine policy principles and uses these to guide their votes on election day. Three key principles divide the Democratic and Republican parties: limited government, traditional morality, and military strength. Deftly integrating research in social and political history, social and political psychology, and electoral behavior, Goren argues that nearly all citizens keep these principles in mind. The principles function as central heuristics in their belief systems, are rooted deeply in basic human values, and guide presidential choice to a similar degree for voters across the sophistication spectrum. Goren's comprehensive analysis of opinion data from the past six presidential elections and several new national surveys yields unequivocal support for these claims. Contrary to the indictment leveled by most of the scholarly community and political pundits more generally, ordinary citizens who are neither deeply knowledgeable nor engaged with the world of public affairs prove as adept as their more sophisticated counterparts in grounding presidential votes in abstract views about public policy. Insofar as citizen competence can be equated with the development and use of bedrock principles, the American voter performs far better than has been recognized in the past.
Author | : David B. Holian |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 238 |
Release | : 2014-10-03 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 1317668383 |
Voter perceptions of the personal traits of presidential candidates are widely regarded to be important influences on the vote. Media pundits frequently explain the outcome of presidential elections in terms of the personal appeal of the candidates. Despite the emphasis on presidential character traits in the media, the scholarly investigation in this area is limited. In this book, David Holian and Charles Prysby set out to examine the effect that trait perceptions have on the vote, how these perceptions are shaped by other attitudes and evaluations, and what types of voters are most likely to cast a ballot on the basis of the character traits of the presidential candidates. Using the American National Election Studies (ANES) surveys, the authors find that traits do have a very substantial effect on the vote, that different candidates have advantages on different traits, and that the opinions expressed by media pundits about how the candidates are viewed by the voters are often simplistic, and sometimes quite mistaken. Character traits are important to voters, but we need a better and more complete understanding of how and why these factors influence voters. An essential read which provides a clear and original argument to all those interested in furthering their understanding of the importance of candidate character traits for the quality of American elections and democracy.
Author | : J. Cryer |
Publisher | : |
Total Pages | : 0 |
Release | : 2019 |
Genre | : |
ISBN | : |
While voters may form negative impressions of candidates that do not immediately fit traditional expectations, equal electoral success rates demonstrate that voters are not biased against women and racial minority candidates. I argue that candidates address voter perceptions through their campaign strategy and messages. Thus, a key dimension of campaign strategy is the extent to which perceptions of candidate gender and racial identity may encourage, or even necessitate, the use of differing campaign message strategies. This paper seeks to determine whether candidate profile characteristics might account for the seeming discrepancy between voter bias and electoral outcomes. I use large-scale observational and experimental messages to show how candidate identity, communication--particularly image-managing messages that express individualistic work-ethic and perseverance--and signals of competency affect voter perceptions. In a preliminary forced-choice paired-conjoint and a menu-based choice experiment (n=500), I find that constituents make judgments regarding vote choice, candidate issue competencies, and character using identity. Nevertheless, respondents positively respond to other dimensions of candidate profiles, specifically messages of work-ethic and previous political experience. In particular, Image-Management is consistently shown to be associated with a significant positive increase in these evaluations. In the menu-based survey experiment, I find that when respondents craft the candidates they would consider ideal and worthy of their vote, women and racial minorities are often recommended to pursue messages of Image-Management and higher educational attainment. Taken together, these findings suggest that candidate messaging may provide an account for why women and racial minority candidates are able to obtain electoral success despite evidence of voter biases. This work provides cutting-edge analysis of strategic campaign messaging and puts to the test its effectiveness in attenuating voter biases.
Author | : Gabriel S. Lenz |
Publisher | : University of Chicago Press |
Total Pages | : 341 |
Release | : 2013-01-29 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 0226472159 |
In a democracy, we generally assume that voters know the policies they prefer and elect like-minded officials who are responsible for carrying them out. We also assume that voters consider candidates' competence, honesty, and other performance-related traits. But does this actually happen? Do voters consider candidates’ policy positions when deciding for whom to vote? And how do politicians’ performances in office factor into the voting decision? In Follow the Leader?, Gabriel S. Lenz sheds light on these central questions of democratic thought. Lenz looks at citizens’ views of candidates both before and after periods of political upheaval, including campaigns, wars, natural disasters, and episodes of economic boom and bust. Noting important shifts in voters’ knowledge and preferences as a result of these events, he finds that, while citizens do assess politicians based on their performance, their policy positions actually matter much less. Even when a policy issue becomes highly prominent, voters rarely shift their votes to the politician whose position best agrees with their own. In fact, Lenz shows, the reverse often takes place: citizens first pick a politician and then adopt that politician’s policy views. In other words, they follow the leader. Based on data drawn from multiple countries, Follow the Leader? is the most definitive treatment to date of when and why policy and performance matter at the voting booth, and it will break new ground in the debates about democracy.
Author | : Marina Costa Lobo |
Publisher | : Oxford University Press, USA |
Total Pages | : 273 |
Release | : 2015 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 0199660123 |
Personality Politics? assesses the role that voters' perceptions and evaluations of leaders play in democratic elections. The book presents evidence from an array of countries with diverse historical and institutional contexts, and employs innovative methodologies to determine the importance of leaders in democracies worldwide. Addressing such questions as 'Where do leaders effects come from?', 'In which institutional contexts are leader effects more important?' and, 'To which kinds of voters are leaders a more prominent factor for voting behaviour?', the authors seek to determine whether the roles leaders play enhances or damages the electoral process, and what impact this has on the quality of democracy in electoral democracies today.
Author | : David P. Redlawsk |
Publisher | : Routledge |
Total Pages | : 201 |
Release | : 2020-04-06 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 1317272870 |
In the run-up to a contentious 2020 presidential election, the much-maligned American voter may indeed be wondering, “How did we get here?” A Citizen’s Guide to the Political Psychology of Voting offers a way of thinking about how voters make decisions that provides both hope and concern. In many ways, voters may be able to effectively process vast amounts of information in order to decide which candidates to vote for in concert with their ideas, values, and priorities. But human limitations in information processing must give us pause. While we all might think we want to be rational information processors, political psychologists recognize that most of the time we do not have the time or the motivation to do so. The question is, can voters do a “good enough” job even if they fail to account for everything during the campaign? Evidence suggests that they can, but it isn’t easy. Here, Redlawsk and Habegger portray a wide variety of voter styles and approaches—from the most motivated and engaged to the farthest removed and disenchanted—in vignettes that connect the long tradition of voter survey research to real life voting challenges. They explore how voters search for political information and make use of it in evaluating candidates and their positions. Ultimately, they find that American voters are reasonably competent in making well-enough informed vote choices efficiently and responsibly. For citizen voters as well as students and scholars, these results should encourage regular turnout for elections now and in the future.
Author | : Amanda Bittner |
Publisher | : OUP Oxford |
Total Pages | : 224 |
Release | : 2011-05-12 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 0191618950 |
Campaign organizers and the media appear to agree that voters' perceptions of party leaders have an important impact in elections: considerable effort is made to ensure that leaders look good, speak well, and that they are up in the polls. In contrast, the academic literature is much more divided. Some suggest that leaders play an important role in the vote calculus, while others argue that in comparison to other factors, perceptions of leaders have only a minimal impact. This study incorporates data from thirty-five election studies across seven countries with varying institutional environments, and takes both a broad and in-depth look at the role of leaders. A few noteworthy conclusions emerge. First, voters evaluate leaders' traits in terms of two main dimensions, character and competence. Second, voters perceive leaders within the framework of a partisan stereotype in which the party label of the leader imbues meaning; more specifically, leaders of Conservative parties are seen to be more competent while Left leaders are seen to have more character. Third, and most importantly, leaders matter: they affect voters' decisions and have a discernible effect on the distribution of votes in an election. Fourth, there are consistent differences in the perception of party leaders according to voters' level of political sophistication. While all voters evaluate party leaders and consider leaders in their vote calculus, the more sophisticated do so the most. This book argues that personality plays an important role in elections, and that in a healthy democracy, so it should. Comparative Politics is a series for students, teachers, and researchers of political science that deals with contemporary government and politics. Global in scope, books in the series are characterised by a stress on comparative analysis and strong methodological rigour. The series is published in association with the European Consortium for Political Research. For more information visit: www.essex.ac.uk/ecpr The Comparative Politics Series is edited by Professor David M. Farrell, School of Politics and International Relations, University College Dublin, Kenneth Carty, Professor of Political Science, University of British Columbia, and Professor Dirk Berg-Schlosser, Institute of Political Science, Philipps University, Marburg.
Author | : Christopher H. Achen |
Publisher | : Princeton University Press |
Total Pages | : 423 |
Release | : 2017-08-29 |
Genre | : Political Science |
ISBN | : 1400888743 |
Why our belief in government by the people is unrealistic—and what we can do about it Democracy for Realists assails the romantic folk-theory at the heart of contemporary thinking about democratic politics and government, and offers a provocative alternative view grounded in the actual human nature of democratic citizens. Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels deploy a wealth of social-scientific evidence, including ingenious original analyses of topics ranging from abortion politics and budget deficits to the Great Depression and shark attacks, to show that the familiar ideal of thoughtful citizens steering the ship of state from the voting booth is fundamentally misguided. They demonstrate that voters—even those who are well informed and politically engaged—mostly choose parties and candidates on the basis of social identities and partisan loyalties, not political issues. They also show that voters adjust their policy views and even their perceptions of basic matters of fact to match those loyalties. When parties are roughly evenly matched, elections often turn on irrelevant or misleading considerations such as economic spurts or downturns beyond the incumbents' control; the outcomes are essentially random. Thus, voters do not control the course of public policy, even indirectly. Achen and Bartels argue that democratic theory needs to be founded on identity groups and political parties, not on the preferences of individual voters. Now with new analysis of the 2016 elections, Democracy for Realists provides a powerful challenge to conventional thinking, pointing the way toward a fundamentally different understanding of the realities and potential of democratic government.