EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Like their predecessors of the 1950s, American voters of today generally cast their ballots based on which political party they most identify with rather than on specific issues, according to a new book co-authored by a Michigan State University political scientist.
In "The American Voter Revisited," William Jacoby and three fellow researchers contend that voting behavior in the United States has changed very little in the past half century and should remain consistent in the upcoming election.
Essentially, they argue that voters continue to remain removed from the political world and instead rely on party identification to determine their vote. That echoes the main findings from "The American Voter," the 1960 classic by a group of University of Michigan researchers.
"Politics is still a very distant phenomenon for most people," said Jacoby, MSU professor of political science. "The political world is not something that hits on them in direct ways, every day, so it's not worth their while to take the time and become informed about the issues – particularly when they have this nice easy criterion like party identification that gives them the same results with far less effort."
"We're not saying that voters don't know what they're doing or that voters are fools," he added. "They're far from that. They are very efficient in the ways they reach their decisions."
The "American Voter Revisited" is based on analysis of the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections, both won by Republican George W. Bush. It follows the same format, theory and mode of analysis as "The American Voter," which analyzed the 1952 and 1956 elections won by Republican Dwight Eisenhower.
Party identification is developed early in life and is influenced most by a voter's parents, Jacoby said, adding that income, racial, ethnic and geographic influences also play a role. "Once the sense of party attachment develops it doesn't change much over their lives," he said. "Each voter enters the election campaign with this preconceived bias and it pushes them pretty consistently in one direction or another."
Jacoby's co-authors are Michael Lewis-Beck, professor of political science at the University of Iowa; Helmut Norpoth, professor of political science at Stony Brook University; and Herbert Weisberg, professor of political science at Ohio State University.