Democracy Under Pressure

1. Democracy Under Pressure Chapter 11 Voting Behavior and Elections

2. Voting Behavior and Elections • As the hoopla of the campaign subsides and the voters go to the polls, no one really knows the verdict of the voters on the campaign until the votes are counted. In democracies, the people vote to select those who will govern. • About half of the world's countries hold regular, free elections in which people choose among rival candidates.

3. Voting Behavior and Elections • In Chapter 1, the authors examined the reciprocal nature of power. • Government makes authoritative decisions about who gets what. • Government makes authoritative, binding decisions, yet derives its power from the consent of the people. • People influence government by taking part in politics. • They also wield influence by the opinions that they hold and voice, the organizations they join, and the direct action that they take.

4. Voting Behavior and Elections • The fundamental way that people influence government is through the ballot box. • In 1992, for example, voters removed one party from the White House and installed the other. • Voters in the federal system elect about 500,000 people to represent them, including a president, members of the House and Senate, and state and local officials. • American voters choose among candidates, parties, and sometimes, alternate policies.

5. Voting Behavior and Elections • There is often a gap between democracy in theory and democracy in practice. These distortions include: • At the presidential level, not all candidates are well-financed. • Television commercials try to create "images" rather than inform the electorate. • Voter often unenthusiastically select the "lesser of two evils," supporting independent and third parties at times.

6. Democracy Under Pressure Who Votes

7. The Voter • In each election since 1928, at least half of Americans of voting age have voted for president. • In non-presidential election years, less than half bother to vote for Congress. • In midterm Congressional elections since 1962, an average of only 38 percent voted for the House. • In nine presidential elections from 1960 to 1992, 55.1 percent of the voters cast ballots. • The turnout for president grew substantially in 1992 to more than 55 percent. Still, much larger percentages voted for president in the 1890s than today.

9. The Voter • Middle-aged people vote more than the young or very old. • In 200, over half between the ages of 18 and 24 did not register to vote. • Voter participation increases with age, peaks in the mid-forties and fifties, and declines after sixty. • In the decades after women's suffrage, men voted more than women. By 2000, the percent of women voting was 3 percent higher than men. This is because there are now more women than men.

12. The Voter • College graduates vote more than those with high school or grade school educations. • In 2000, 75 percent of college-educated Americans voted, as opposed to 52.5 percent of high-school graduates, and 39.3 percent of grade-school graduates. • Education caused the greatest variation in voter turnout of all the factors considered. • Income, education, social class, and occupation are closely related; the higher these are, the more likely it is that the person will vote.

13. The Voter • Jews vote more than Catholics, who turn out more often than Protestants. • Churchgoers vote more than nonchurchgoers. Many religious groups tend to get involved in politics. • African Americans are less likely to turn out than whites, due in part to legal games, intimidation, and violence that kept them out prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

15. The Voter • Voter attitudes. • The more partisan the person, the more likely he or she will vote. • The more interest the person shows in the campaign, the more likely he or she is to vote. • Concern over the impact of the election and one's sense of political effectiveness influences a person's likelihood of voting. • A sense of civic duty correlates with voter turnout.

16. The Nonvoter • Some 35 to 45 percent do not vote. The nonvoter is less educated, rural, nonwhite, very young or very old, and has less emotional investment in politics. • In 2000, only 51 percent, or 105.4 million, voted in the election. • Reasons people gave a New York Times/CBS News pollster for not voting: not registered, didn't like the candidates, too busy, chose not to vote, didn't care, sickness or sick child, felt their vote didn't matter.

17. The Nonvoter • Such low voter turnout doesn't speak well of the popular democracy model. • Some political scientists say the system was designed for rural America and doesn't fit today's hectic lifestyle. • One pattern that emerges from the data shows that those who are more advantaged in the social system are more likely to vote than the disadvantaged.

18. Democracy Under Pressure How the Voter Decides

19. How the Voter Decides • Why do people vote the way they do? • It is important to candidates to have an interest in this. • The kind of society we live in depends in part on whether voters are satisfied or dissatisfied with the adminstration. • It is extremely difficult to judge people's motives from their behavior. • Two basic methods can be used to study how voters decide: • The sociological method focuses on the personal background of the voter and how these factors relate to how he or she votes. • The psychological method attempts to determine what is in the mind of the voters: their perceptions of parties, candidates, and issues.

20. The Sociological Factors • A classic 1940 study of 600 Erie County, Ohio, residents found that wealthier people tended to vote for the GOP while the poorer people voted for Democrats.

21. The Sociological Factors • People can be members of many groups simultaneously and sometimes those groups conflict in voting behavior. This causes them to be "cross-pressured." • Catholics vote for Democrats, but what about wealthy Catholics? • Cross-pressured voters are more likely to decide late and change their minds on how they will vote. • Table 11.3 gives voter preferences by groups in presidential elections.

22. The Sociological Factors • Social class, income, and occupation. • Upper and middle classes go for the GOP; lower classes go for Democrats. • Unions vote Democrat, while professionals and business people support the Republicans. • In 1996, Bob Dole had big lead over Bill Clinton in households with an income of $75,000 or more.

25. The Sociological Factors • Education. • Clinton got 47 percent of the college-educated vote in 1996, while Dole got 45 percent. This is an exception, since college graduates typically vote GOP. • In 1996 Clinton got 49.2 percent of the "grade school only" vote.

26. The Sociological Factors • Religion and ethnic background. • In 1992, 59.5 percent of Jews, 41.8 percent of Catholics, and 36 percent of Protestants called themselves Democrats. • In 1960 the Michigan Survey Research Center study concluded that JFK won a "bonus" from Catholics of 4.3 percent and lost 6.5 percent of the Protestant democrats. He lost a net 2.2 percent of the popular vote because he was Catholic, but a heavy Catholic vote helped him win the electors from the northern industrial states. • Black Americans voted about 94 percent Democrat in the 1964 election. In 2000, Gore got 87 percent of their vote.

27. The Sociological Factors • Primary groups. • These groups tend to have the same socioeconomic characteristics as the voter. • Primary groups typically reinforce the voters' views.

28. The Sociological Factors • Geography. • Democrats are strongest in the big cities of the North and East, while rural areas of the North are more likely to support the GOP. • Until the 1960s, Democrats took the South. This is no longer the case. • In 1972 Nixon polled 71 percent of popular vote in the South for the first such GOP win since Reconstruction. • Carter won the South in 1976. Reagan got 51 percent of the popular vote in the South in 1980 and won every southern state in 1984, as did Bush in 1988.

29. The Sociological Factors • In the three-way 1992 race, 41.5 percent of the South went with Clinton and Gore (two southerners), 42.7 percent with Bush, and 15.8 percent with Perot. • In 1994 the GOP made big gains in the South, getting more votes than the Democrats in House races. • In 2000, both major parties nominated a candidate from a southern state to head their presidential ticket. Republican George W. Bush carried all 11 southern states in 2000. • Suburbia tends to go with the GOP, but Democratic votes have grown as lower- and middle-class whites and many blacks have left the cities.

30. The Sociological Factors • Sex. • Until 1980, a person's sex did not seem to have much influence on how they voted in presidential elections. • After 1980, a decided difference began to appear: • Men voted for Reagan over Carter by a margin of 15 percentage points or more, while women were more evenly split on the candidates. • By 1984, GOP strategists feared a gender gap would hamper Reagan's reelection, but that year both sexes voted heavily for Reagan (although there was a 9 percent gap between the sexes).

31. The Sociological Factors • In 1996 another gender gap was evident, with Clinton having a narrow lead among men but sizable lead with women. See Table 11.3. • In 2000, both candidates made it a point to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show, to appeal to women voters.

32. The Sociological Factors • Age. • 1. In most elections since 1960, younger voters were more likely to vote Democratic, while older voters went for the GOP. • 2. The pattern changed in 1984. Reagan was popular with younger voters, running as strongly with the young as with the old. • a. In 1992 Clinton led Bush 47 percent to 31 percent in capturing the vote of those under age 25. • 3. In 1996, the Dole campaign was concerned about his age, as the oldest major-party candidate at the age of 73. He only received 34 percent of the vote from those under the age of 30.

33. The Psychological Factors • University of Michigan scholars examined how individuals perceive and evaluate politics. • They theorized that social characteristics of society change gradually, while voter shifts can be more sudden. They concluded that other factors must be involved. • They identified three powerful factors: party identification, candidates, and issues.

34. The Psychological Factors • Party identification. • From the late 1930s to 1984, Democratic identifiers outnumbered Republicans by 2 to 1. • By 1988, Democratic identifiers outnumbered GOP identifiers-43 percent to 29 percent. • By 1999, 34 percent considered themselves to be Democrats, 28 percent said they were Republicans, and 38 percent called themselves independent.

35. The Psychological Factors • Though party identification has been an important factor, there are signs it is becoming less important. • In Election 1972 the University of Michigan survey found that issues were at least as important as party identification. • Ticket splitting has become more common, especially since the Second World War.

37. The Psychological Factors • The candidates. • Although people identify with a party, they don't always vote for it. • Short-term factors such as changes in candidates and/or issues can lead to short-term switches in a given election. • Eisenhower, a military hero, led short-term switches to the GOP.

38. The Psychological Factors • The impression a given candidate makes on the voters can have an impact on their preferences. • Nixon's "Tricky Dick" image did not help him at all. • Ford was seen as well-meaning but dull, while Carter was seen as being decent but ineffective. • George Bush, in 1988, had a rich Ivy League image that made him appear ill at ease among the common folk. His son, George W. Bush was seen as more at ease with rank and file voters but was ridiculed for his tangled syntax and mispronounced words.

39. The Psychological Factors • The issues. • To be motivated by an issue, a voter must know it exists and have an opinion on it. • A voter must have feelings on the issue and see one candidate as espousing his or her views. • The issue must be salient to the voter and break through the voter's consciousness.

40. The Psychological Factors • When one group of voters is directly affected by an issue-such as black voters perceiving Barry Goldwater as an opponent of civil rights-they can turn out for the other candidate. • Issues such as the Vietnam War, race, and controversial social issues can be paramount in some elections. • In 1992, 61 percent of those polled who said that the "economy/jobs" was important voted for Clinton. For those who said "Medicare/social security" was important, 67 percent voted for Clinton.

41. Retrospective Voting • The relative importance of candidates, issues, and party identification appears to vary from election year to election year. • Morris Fiorina studied retrospective voting, in which voters tend to make up their minds by looking back at what has happened under current leaders. • They know what life has been like under current leaders. • They need not know the policies in detail to feel their impact. • If jobs have been lost, or food, water, or air has been polluted, something is wrong.

42. Rational Choice • Some political scientists emphasize the concept of rational choice, in which individuals engage in political behavior to serve their own best interests. • Morris Fiorina argues that " . . . that behavior is purposive. Rather individuals have goals they try to achieve . . ."

43. Democracy Under Pressure Voting Patterns

44. Voting Patterns • Individual voters cast ballots in what amounts to a group decision. • Sometimes the meaning of the election is clear and at other times it is not. A trained eye can see trends and interrelationships.

45. Control • For the national parties, the prize is control of the presidency. • Political results are geographically dramatic: • Both FDR (1936) and Ronald Reagan (1984) had electors virtually covering the map. • GOP strength can be seen covering the Midwest and the Plains states.

46. Control • Though Clinton won in 1996, Dole carried the center of the country from Texas to the Canadian border, the Southeast and the Rocky Mountain section of the West. • In 2000, there was a strong sectional pattern in the vote. Democrats carried most of the Northeast and the West Coast. Republicans carried the Southern and Mid-western states.

47. Coalitions • Electoral victories are formed by alliances of segments of the electorate and of interest groups, and unorganized masses of voters. • The FDR coalition included the South, the urban North, minority groups, and labor unions. • Nixon's coalition in 1968 included parts of the South, the Midwest, the West, whites, Protestants, white-collar workers, and business people. • Trend analysis in American politics means looking at the makeup of both the winning and losing coalitions.

48. Congress • Patterns of voting for president and Congress are often linked. • From 1932 to 1992, GOP presidents were elected to seven terms. At the same time, Republicans held Congress for a total of four years. • In 1992 Ross Perot got 19 million votes. In the same election, the two major parties won all but one seat in both houses of Congress.

49. Congress • The 1994 election year was a dramatic one, with the GOP gaining seats in all major regions of the nation and making big gains in the South, Midwest, and the West. For the first time since Reconstruction, there were more Southern Republicans elected to the House of Representatives than Democrats. • Between 1996-2004, Republicans won more Southern seats that Democrats in congressional election years.

50. Coattails • In a presidential election year, the vote for president may affect the vote for Congress, and even state and local races. • Some members of Congress can withstand the tides of presidential voting, while at times a president can carry into office a majority of his party in the House. • The fortunes of presidential and senatorial candidates are also linked. Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush were elected along with a Congress controlled by the opposition party.