Almost 100 years ago political scientists began to study in a scientific manner the political behavior of American voters. The initial work was done without the use of computers. It has since evolved into what is today a significant branch of study of political science, political behavior on a world-wide scale as well as within the United States. Unlike pollsters and students of public opinion, scholarly survey research was and continues to be conducted mainly by university-based scholars.
From the earliest work done studying voters in Erie County, Ohio, in 1940 and Elmira, New York, in 1948, social scientists have sought to determine how and why people vote. As computers developed and scientifically based political science research evolved, the University of Michigan moved into the forefront of and the repository of voting data on this subject. It included work that they themselves authored and/or and collected. The data on national voting behavior has naturally progressed and intensified since Michigan began collecting national data in the 1952 election.
In the course of this work, the Survey Research Center championed a critical thesis that voters were motivated to select a given candidate based on either party, candidate, or issues. At its inception, the SRC found that party was clearly the motivating factor which was confirmed by the fact that voters who were sampled clearly identified first and foremost with a party. Already during the Kennedy years and certainly by the time Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, it became readily apparent that voters’ identification with party was declining as their orientation with a candidate was increasing. By the end of the 20th Century, this shift became even more apparent as the public became demonstratively less identified with one of the two major parties, with many regularly opting to declare themselves “independents”. Voters became more and more moved by individual candidates than by parties. Issues never became the important factor that political scientists might had hoped them to have become. Today, issues like abortion might be important to many voters, but such a salient issue is unable to become the driving force that many politicians assumed it would and should have become. Yesterday’s election returns positively, among many other things, have confirmed this fact.
Vice-President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party lost yesterday so badly at least in part because they misjudged the American electorate on numerous issues. They assumed that sex, race, color, and national origin was no longer a major issue for Americans following two terms of President Barack Obama and the candidacy of Secretary Hillary Clinton. In addition, they assumed that Black males--as well as White lower middle-class people in general--would not push back against a Black woman running for President. Furthermore, Harris assumed that she would clearly obtain solid support from all women—as well as from most educated men--for her strong pro-choice record and party’s platform. This strategy clearly failed, because while Americans have strong opinions on the issue of reproductive rights, their voting choice of candidates is based on image, personality, and perceived strength (however that is defined).
The evidence of this theory is already clear although there remains much more data still to be evaluated. Almost all referenda and ballot initiatives in support of extended periods to permit a woman to make a decision on abortion and to obtain medical attention succeeded throughout the country. At the same time and frequently in the same state, voters for Donald Trump or for a Senate or House candidate supported a candidate who did not support a more liberal approach to women’s reproductive rights. In Montana, for example the voters elected Trump and the Republican Tim Sheehy to the Senate, at the same time that Montanans voted in support of a state-wide initiative enshrining abortion access in the Montana State Constitution.
Similarly, in Missouri voters enshrined in the state constitution a woman’s right to an abortion while electing Trump and re-electing Republican Senator Josh Hawley. Missouri was a state that, in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in the Dobbs case, which had overturned Roe vs. Wade, had enacted one of the most restrictive bans on abortion in the country. (The Missourians also voted to raise the State’s minimum wage to $15/hour and to require paid sick leave, both of which are not Republican priorities.)
These actions by American voters clearly confirm the suggestion that voters remain concerned about issues. Yesterday’s election also confirmed that voters are not voting for candidates based on their positions on issues. An early reading of some of the results from November 5th’s elections suggest that voters—inconsistently--continue to select candidates based on likeability, personality, potential leadership ability, and image and not based on positions on issues.
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