POL 1001 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Peer Group, Anthony Downs, Voting Behavior
Document Summary
December 2, 2015: the context of voing. The not-so-special interest: subgroups with higher levels of civic paricipaion are more likely to achieve representaion. *language / educaion issues: the decision to vote. Voing behavior and opinion aitudes are predominantly determined by party id (psychological atachment). The funnel of causality: a chain of prior events causes an individual choice later. Despite the increase in independent for pid, parisan voing is dominant. Parisan voing has increased strongly at the presidenial and congressional levels. Prospecive voing: voters base their choices on the anicipated consequences of the choices (idealized). Low levels of poliical knowledge do not afect turnout. The cost of geing informed: in a world of uncertainty, it takes ime and efort to acquire informaion about candidates (public policy issues, too). Fore some it is more expensive than others. It is raional to only acquire enough informaion necessary to make the right vote choice.
