Via Alas, A Blog, the current New Yorker has an article on how most Americans decide who to vote for: THE UNPOLITICAL ANIMAL: How political science understands voters by LOUIS MENAND.
It begins by explaining:
To voters who identify strongly with a political party, the undecided voter is almost an alien life form. For them, a vote for Bush is a vote for a whole philosophy of governance and a vote for Kerry is a vote for a distinctly different philosophy. The difference is obvious to them, and they don’t understand how others can’t see it, or can decide whom to vote for on the basis of a candidate’s personal traits or whether his or her position on a particular issue “make sense.” To an undecided voter, on the other hand, the person who always votes for the Democrat or the Republican, no matter what must seem like a dangerous fanatic. Which voter is behaving more rationally an responsibly?"That pretty much sums up the wonder we all have at the people who are still undecided at this point... and then it goes on to draw from the work of political scientist Philip Converse, who published an article on “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in 1964.
Converse concluded that “very substantial portions of the public” hold opinions that are essentially meaningless—off-the-top-of-the-head responses to questions they have never thought about, derived from no underlying set of principles. These people might as well base their political choices on the weather. And, in fact, many of them do.The social aspect of it is really interesting though:
Man may not be a political animal, but he is certainly a social animal. Voters do respond to the cues of commentators and campaigners, but only when they can match those cues up with the buzz of their own social group. Individual voters are not rational calculators of self-interest (nobody truly is), and may not be very consistent users of heuristic shortcuts, either. But they are not just random particles bouncing off the walls of the voting booth. Voters go into the booth carrying the imprint of the hopes and fears, the prejudices and assumptions of their family, their friends, and their neighbors. For most people, voting may be more meaningful and more understandable as a social act than as a political act.Posted by Emily at August 27, 2004 09:17 PM