01:790:302 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: The American Voter
17 Mar 2017
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Document Summary
Has become the model for voting behavior research globally. Replicated in the early 2000"s (the american voter revisited) Findings were largely the same, even 50 years later. Who do people vote for (and why?) Focus on individual partisanship, less on group behavior. Other major model: rational choice / political economy. Reason these models have not caught on as well: voting in inherently irrational behavior. Party id is a psychological attachment formed by your upbringing. Major theoretical device is the: funnel of causality. Meant to represent an over-time process, throughout the campaign cycle. Personal attributes of the candidates (likeability factor) Important because it recognizes multiple causes and multiple effects. But it boils down to party id to the perceptual screen, the lens through which everything is filtered. In other words, the funnel of causality means party. Replicated the original study, using the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Poll responders perceived little difference between parties on matters of foreign policy.
