This book attempts to redirect the field of voting behavior research by proposing a paradigm-shifting framework for studying voter decision making. An innovative experimental methodology is presented for getting 'inside the heads' of citizens as they confront the overwhelming rush of information from modern presidential election campaigns. Four broad theoretically-defined types of decision strategies that voters employ to help decide which candidate to support are described and operationally-defined. Individual and campaign-related factors that lead voters to adopt one or another of these strategies are examined. Most importantly, this research proposes a new normative focus for the scientific study of voting behavior: we should care about not just which candidate received the most votes, but also how many citizens voted correctly - that is, in accordance with their own fully-informed preferences.

Throughout the contest for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination, politicians and voters alike worried that the outcome might depend on the preferences of unelected superdelegates. This concern threw into relief the prevailing notion that—such unusually competitive cases notwithstanding—people, rather than parties, should and do control presidential nominations. But for the past several decades, The Party Decides shows, unelected insiders in both major parties have effectively selected candidates long before citizens reached the ballot box. Tracing the evolution of presidential nominations since the 1790s, this volume demonstrates how party insiders have sought since America’s founding to control nominations as a means of getting what they want from government. Contrary to the common view that the party reforms of the 1970s gave voters more power, the authors contend that the most consequential contests remain the candidates’ fights for prominent endorsements and the support of various interest groups and state party leaders. These invisible primaries produce frontrunners long before most voters start paying attention, profoundly influencing final election outcomes and investing parties with far more nominating power than is generally recognized.

Zeitungsausschnitte.

Based on a survey of the 1952 election conducted by the Survey Research Center at the University of Michagan. Cf. Preface.

Devoted to exploring elections as the central act in a democracy, Duty and Choice: The Evolution of the Study of Voting and Voters is animated by a set of three overarching questions: Why do some citizens vote while others do not? How do voters decide to cast their ballots for one candidate and not another? How does the context in which citizens live influence the choices they make? Organized into three sections focused on turnout, vote choice, and electoral systems, the volume seeks to provide novel insights into the most pressing questions for scholars of vote choice and voting behaviour. In addition to featuring several prominent Canadian scholars, the collection includes chapters by leading scholars from the United States and Europe.

Why do individuals make their vote decisions at the point in time at which they do, and what impact does the time-of-voting-decision (TOVD) have upon other important political variables? Through a series of integrated articles, this dissertation explores the causes, correlates and effects of TOVD in Canada. The first two articles explore the relationships between TOVD and political attitudes, employing TOVD as both an independent and dependent variable. The first examines the impact that consistency, intensity and direction of summary political attitudes have on TOVD, and introduces a new measure of attitudinal ambivalence. The second article employs cognitive dissonance theory to argue that TOVD can influence attitudes towards parties, after an election occurs. The third and fourth articles respectively consider the relationships between TOVD and vote sincerity, and an individual's ability to vote for the party that best reflects his or her own policy preferences. Insincere voters are found to have a relatively late TOVD, which the third article attributes to the fact that these individuals are able to use the campaign period to update their expectations about the competitive prospects of candidates and parties. The fourth and final article uses TOVD as a moderating variable to evaluate the impact of the campaign period on correct voting rates. It finds that late deciders, who are able to use the campaign period to collect information to inform their vote decisions, are actually less likely to vote correctly than are early deciders. The dissertation also includes a research note which outlines a new method of identifying invalid TOVD responses, and illustrates the importance of removing such cases. As a whole, this dissertation adds significantly to our knowledge of TOVD, a variable which, until now, has received relatively little scholarly attention.

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.