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.

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.

Political observers routinely lament that American democracy is broken, and many of them blame electoral malfunction. But is the system really broken? Panagopoulos and Weinschenk make the case that citizens are empowered to fix what’s wrong with electoral politics and renew democracy in America, all within the institutional setup and framework of the existing system. Put simply, much of what is broken can be fixed if people stop throwing up their arms and start rolling up their sleeves to do the hard work of building our democracy. This book provides an overview of the basic features that characterize contemporary elections in the United States and includes discussions about voter participation and decision-making patterns, money in elections, and the role of parties and the media in presidential, congressional and state and local races. It also outlines some of the most important trends and challenges in the current system. As a call to action, each chapter features potential solutions to the challenges that exist in U.S. elections.

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.

Interest in voting systems and voting system reform is growing in the United States. Voting systems—the procedures by which we cast votes and elect our public officials—are a crucial part of the democratic election process. The decision to use one kind of voting system rather than another has far-reaching political consequences. Among other things, voting systems help to determine which officials are elected to run our governments, the variety of parties that voters have to choose from at the polls, whether political minorities can win any representation, and whether the majority will rule. Amy gives readers all the information and analytical tools needed to make intelligent choices among voting systems. He provides a set of political criteria that can be used to judge voting systems and gives detailed descriptions of all the common voting systems used in the United States and other Western democracies, including winner-take-all systems as well as proportional representation systems. He also provides an analysis of the various political advantages and disadvantages associated with each type of system. This is an important guide for citizens, government officials, political activists, students, and anyone who wants to learn more about voting systems and their political implications.

Argues with the standard interpretation of the American voter as incompetent in matters of policy.

"A unique insight into the minds of voters around the world"--