Um, I already know how a bill becomes a law. Why am I taking this exam again?


Unit 2: Political Beliefs and Behaviors



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Unit 2: Political Beliefs and Behaviors

To Do List


  • Drill 1

  • Drill 2

  • Drill 3

  • Read

DRILLS!


Drill 1Drill 2Drill 3

Have You Read This?If yes, click here.

True story: one of our Shmoop writers once taught at a small high school. When the high school's director was asked why there wasn't a student council, she responded like this: "I could not possibly allow 14-year-olds to make actual decisions affecting this school. Therefore, any student council would be a complete sham. And I will not have my students participating in a sham." Did we mention that she was Russian?

American democracy, however, is totally not a complete sham. As everyone from hologram Will.I.Am to animatronic George Washington will tell you, your vote matters. That's true whether you're casting a ballot for Congress, writing a hard-hitting letter to the editor, cutting a $5 million personal check to your favorite presidential candidate, or hiring several dozen lobbyists to systematically undermine federal food-safety regulations, freeing you to package and ship all of the delicious E. Coli you want. Democracy!

You've probably got some strong political views of your own. For instance, 87% of Shmoop readers moderately, strongly, or very strongly support sticking it to the Man. But have you ever considered where your extremely-well-thought-out political views come from? What concrete Man-sticking steps can you take to put your opinions into action? How does the Man even know about the existence of your pro-sticking views in the first place?

We're going to cover those topics in this unit. Here, we'll touch on ideology, the formation of our political beliefs, public opinion, and political participation. Did you know that you're sticking it to the Man simply by reading this unit?

Ideology


Have You Read This?If yes, click here.

"Ideology," like "Donald Trump," is a bit of a dirty word in American politics. "Ideology" conjures up images of bearded, latte-sipping, Marxist college professors plotting to seize the means of production for the proletariat, or something. That's why American politicians regularly say inane things like, "I don't believe in ideology, just common sense!"

To be fair, politicians often use "ideology" in the sense of "overly rigid, unthinking beliefs that never change in the face of new information." And we can probably agree that that's a bad thing. But the truth is that ideologies are like belly buttons: everyone has one, whether they want one or not, and if you don't, you're a misshapen freak.

An ideology is nothing more complicated than a set of beliefs—in this case, a set of beliefs about politics and the role of government. The emphasis is on set of beliefs—because, no matter how open-minded we are, few of us go through life spontaneously forming opinions on every issue under the sun. Much more often, our belief systems are complete packages that shape our response to new information; our views of human nature, our views of American history, and our views of politics are all linked. The more favorably you view labor unions, the more you're likely to have opposed the Iraq war; the more you're against abortion, the more likely you are to support lower taxes. How do all of those beliefs fit together, and where do they come from?


What We (Mostly) Have in Common


A kindergarten class doesn't work without a few basic ground rules: poop goes in the toilet (not on the floor); Play-Doh goes in the Play-Doh jar (not in your mouth); solve problems using your words (not your fists) (unless you really want to). Similarly, any democracy worth its salt needs ground rules of its own. Most citizens need to believe that the state has legitimacy, the right to govern in the first place. We tend to believe that this right comes from the consent of the governed, and that it is expressed in regular elections. We distinguish between the government and the people who happen to run it at any given moment (so that no American president could say, à la Louis XIV, that "I am the state"). And we usually agree that the people who should rightfully fill offices and set policies are the ones who won the most votes in the last election.

This seems like extremely simple stuff—but think of how hard it is for a country to convince an entire critical mass of people to agree on it. We see how difficult these beliefs are to inculcate whenever dictators postpone elections, stuff ballot boxes, or fill offices with well-connected cronies and family members. We see it whenever a losing faction refuses to accept the results of an election or resorts to violence in order to get its way. We see it whenever a long-ruling individual, family, or political party assumes that it should stay in power come hell or high water.

The fact that we agree on so many basic issues is even more impressive when you consider that these principles aren't written down or enforced anywhere. Instead, they are a political culture: a set of baseline agreements about politics that citizens come to share through informal means. Political culture is reinforced through events as grandiose as a presidential inauguration or as everyday as pledging allegiance to the flag at school.

Most of the parts of political culture we've just discussed are common to all democracies, but some are more or less distinctively American. For instance, American politicians across the ideological spectrum regularly invokeliberty as our central value. As the political scientist Clinton Rossiter wrote, "We have always been a nation obsessed with liberty."

More than many other industrialized democracies, Americans tend to tolerate relatively high levels of income and wealth inequality—and this, in turn, comes from our political culture's emphasis on equality of opportunity, the idea that America ought to be free of barriers that prevent us from making the most of our individual talents. Of course, Americans disagree strongly on the extent to which equality of opportunity already exists, and the extent to which it remains an unrealized ideal. Last but not least, in comparison with other democracies, American political culture tends to be strongly individualistic, strongly nationalistic, oftenreligious, and often skeptical of government.

By now, you've probably realized a problem here: all of these terms in our political culture are really, really vague. Yep: think of the difficulties raised by the word "liberty." Liberty to do what—to own an M-16, to set up a giant cross on public property, to have a late-term abortion? Are we talking about freedom from oppressive government, or from powerful corporations, too? And what about "equal opportunity"? Does it mean equal opportunity if the government gets out of the way when I want to start a small business? Or does equal opportunity require the government to create equally-good schools, or to help me get a job if I'm a member of a disadvantaged group?

In other words, the shared terms of American political culture create just as many problems as they solve. As a result, American politics is much more about arguing over which side owns these big-ticket concepts ("I stand for liberty, not my opponent"), rather than arguing over which concepts ought to be on the list. Every politician, from Newt Gingrich to Barack Obama, is for freedom, equality, Mom, and apple pie; politics is basically a continual struggle to define those terms, and to claim them for one side or the other.

What We Don't Have in Common (or, Why the Other Side Is a Bunch of Godless, America-Hating Fascists [Who Also Dislike Puppies])


America is clearly about evenly divided between limp-wristed, Prius-driving sodomites who want to perform gender-reassignment surgery on your children and melt down your guns into an enormous, fire-breathing Obama idol, and slack-jawed rednecks who have more DUI convictions than teeth, consider the Home Shopping Network the height of Western civilization, and (in the words of Lewis Black) are convinced that The Flintstones is a documentary.

But because Shmoop imposes certain editorial standards that prevent us from tellin' it like it is, here is a slightly more neutral outline of America's ideological landscape.

Most politically-engaged Americas would describe themselves as either liberal or conservative—and while a huge range of interest groups, demographics, and beliefs fit under each of those broad headings, they do provide a useful shorthand for some of the major divisions in American politics.

Liberals generally believe that government ought to take an active role in promoting social justice and equal opportunity. They tend to be optimistic about human nature and the potential success of large-scale public enterprises. Those beliefs are behind widespread liberal support of universal health care; government spending on education, housing, infrastructure, and environmental protection; government support of unionization; and progressive taxation (where the wealthy pay higher tax rates) in the name of equality. Most liberals would agree with these words, from Democratic President Harry Truman: "We have rejected the discredited theory that the fortunes of the nation should be in the hands of the privileged few. Instead, we believe that our economic system should rest on a democratic foundation and that wealth should be created for the benefit of all."

Liberals celebrate the expansion of rights for underprivileged groups as a major theme in American history, and they have been at the forefront of the civil rights, feminist, and gay rights movements. Today, civil rights and feminist groups, along with unions and environmentalists, make up an important part of the liberal coalition. Not all liberals are dovish on foreign policy—in fact, both ideological coalitions have members who support and criticize an assertive American role in the world. But liberals make up a sizeable proportion of those who criticize American military interventions, such as the Iraq war, and who favor a foreign policy that emphasizes diplomacy and international institutions.



Conservatives generally favor a much more limited domestic role for government. While liberals often support expansive government programs, conservatives tend to point out the unintended ways in which such programs can fail. Conservatives want a government that gets out of the way of the private sphere, including businesses and the family, which they believe are collectively wiser than any central authority. Conservatives do not see the active promotion of equal opportunity as a legitimate function of government. Where liberals talk about "social justice," conservatives tend to talk about "individual responsibility."

Conservatives usually support lower taxes, privatization of government functions, curtailed federal programs, and less overall government spending (although government spending continued to increase under two of the most conservative recent presidents, Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush). Most conservatives would agree with President Reagan, a Republican, when he said: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem. From time to time, we have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule, that government by an elite group is superior to government for, by, and of the people. But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?"

In the face of marginalized groups' demands for equal rights, conservatives have generally stood for tradition and a slower pace of societal change. They often idealize the Founding Fathers and favor a strong role for traditional religion in public life. Modern conservatives often describe their movement as comprised of three major parts: economic conservatives (who emphasize lower taxes and less intervention in the private sector), social conservatives (who emphasize promotion of traditional "family values"), and foreign policy conservatives (who emphasize an aggressive foreign policy and higher military spending). These groups aren't mutually exclusive: social conservatives, for instance, are usually also economic and foreign policy conservatives. But sometimes one group or another is more dominant in the conservative movement, which is especially important when the groups priorities conflict (e.g., What if we need higher taxes to pay for a bigger military?).

Socialism and libertarianism, while far less prevalent than the ideologies we've just covered, also contribute to the American political debate (as you've no doubt noticed in every online message board and YouTube comments section ever). Socialists favor much more progressive taxation, more government programs to advance economic equality, national ownership of some industries, and a much more dovish foreign policy. Libertarians want government to be dramatically smaller in both the economic sphere (lower taxes, far fewer government programs and regulations, more decisions left up to the private sector) and the social sphere (often including decriminalization of drugs and prostitution).

One more note before we end this section: the intersection of ideologies and political parties is one of the more important themes in American politics, and we'll discuss parties at greater length in a later unit. But for now, it's important to remember that ideologies and parties are not the same.

Parties want to win elections, and to do so, they'll often take actions that anger more ideological true believers. Some union members criticized President Obama for not taking stronger action on legislation that would make it easier for unions to organize workers; some members of the conservative movement criticized President Bush for expanding the federal government and increasing the national debt. Further, both major parties contain a mix of ideologies: a generation ago, it totally made sense to talk about a "liberal Republican" or a "conservative Democrat."

However, one important trend in recent years has been political polarization: the parties are becoming more ideologically pure and moving further apart from one another. In other words, there is less overlap between the parties than there was a generation ago. Today, voting records show that the most conservative Democrat in the House of Representatives is still more liberal than the most liberal Republican.


Study break


Sure, it's from 2004, but this Bush vs. Kerry musical number is still a classic.

Political Socialization and Demographics

Have You Read This?If yes, click here.

We've covered political culture and the various ideologies that make up the political landscape. So where do your particular beliefs come from? Obviously, you, Shmoop reader, are a uniquely insightful political animal who systematically deduced every one of your well-considered opinions from your wide reading in philosophy, history, and social science. Duh.

But what about the rest of us, poor, benighted fools that we are? Frankly, most of us here at Shmoop still struggle with concepts like "don't pick the coffee cup up by the lid" and "walk/chew gum at the same time," let alone concepts like "progressive taxation." Without personally asking you, how can we possibly know who to vote for, or even what to think?

Political scientists generally point to two factors as the most important in shaping our political beliefs: political socialization and demographics.



Political Socialization

Political socialization is a fancy term for the social processes that shape our attitudes about politics from an early age. None of us comes to politics as a blank slate. We're all, to some extent, the product of our upbringings and environments, and the ways in which we learn about politics shape our opinions and beliefs down the road. For instance, if your parents were union members, you may be more likely to vote Democrat. If you were dropped on your head as a child, you may be more likely to vote for Ron Paul. (Sorry, Ron, that was a cheap shot.)

Political socialization shapes our adoption of the shared aspects of American political culture, as well as our more specific ideological leanings. Some of the most important socializing forces include the following:



  • The family: Your earliest political education usually comes from watching your family's political behaviors (or lack of them). While some of us rebel against mommy and daddy, you're actually more likely to inherit your parents' partisan leanings.
     

  • Schools: We pick up some of the most basic aspects of political culture, from voting in student council elections to the ideals of democracy, in school—sometimes in history classes, and sometimes in specialized classes on civics. Few primary schools, or even universities, would claim that they explicitly point students in the direction of one ideology or another, but the arguments over politics in the classroom continue to be fierce. Should elementary school teachers read children books with a positive take on gay marriage? Should biology classes "teach the controversy" of evolution versus "intelligent design"? Should college professors ever advocate for their political views in class?
     

  • Civil society: "Civil society" refers to voluntary organizations in the private sphere, like churches, clubs, social organizations, and advocacy groups. Civil society groups often share and spread political beliefs: regular churchgoers, for instance, are more likely to vote Republican.
     

  • The media: From Rush Limbaugh to The Daily Show to Facebook, media is often a prime source of our political information and beliefs.

Demographics

Yes, we are all precious, individual snowflakes. Somewhere in America, there is no doubt an African-American lesbian who donates 10% of the profits from her organic muffin bakery to the Republican Party, just as there is probably a tobacco-chewin' Texas prison warden who wrote in Ralph Nader in the last election. Realistically, though, we can make pretty good generalizations about your political attitudes based on the groups with which you identify, your demographic information.



Of course, Americans frequently identify with many different groups at the same time—as members of an ethnicity, a religious group, a social class, etc. The fact that our social identities often pull us in different directions, rather than establishing clear dividing lines, is one reason why America has been able to maintain a degree of unity in spite of its massive diversity. But, while there are always exceptions to demographic rules of thumb, politicians and political scientists care about group identity because it shapes the political landscape on a large scale. Here are some of the most important demographic factors that shape political attitudes:

Race and ethnicity: African-Americans' struggle for freedom from slavery and then for full civil rights has been a central theme in American politics; as we saw in the last unit, slavery and the politics of race were shaped American history as far back as the Constitutional Convention. For the first century after the Civil War, those African-Americans who could vote generally supported Republicans, the party of emancipation. But the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts under President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Democrat, dramatically changed the equation: long before the election of the first black president in 2008, blacks favored democratic presidential candidates by a margin of 90% or more; at the same time, the Southern white vote has grown steadily more Republican. Today, Latinos, as America's fastest-growing ethnic group, are an increasingly large factor in national politics. While Latinos' political loyalties remain fluid, they have also tended to vote for Democrats in recent years. Immigration politics may be an important factor: while President George W. Bush attracted Latino support on the basis of his support for comprehensive immigration reform, conservatives in his own party prevented him from following through on reform legislation, and the most recent Republican presidential primary has been characterized by strong anti-immigrant rhetoric from most of the contenders.

Gender: Women have been a factor in national elections since the 19th Amendment gave them the vote in 1920. Since then, women have voted for both political parties in roughly equal numbers. While leaders of the feminist movement have generally identified as liberal, recent years have seen an increasing number of female Republican politicians, like Sarah Palin and Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who participate fully in public life but reject the "feminist" label. Most recently, an electoral "gender gap" has opened between the parties: in 2008, 56% of women voted for Barack Obama, while 43% voted for John McCain.

Religion: As we saw above, increased religious participation tends to correlate with conservatism. At the same time, there are political differences among religious denominations, as well. Evangelical Protestants, for instance, tend to vote Republican, while Catholics and Jews have historically been Democrats.

Social class: Of course, both parties claim to be fighting the good fight for Average Joe: Democrats, by supporting government programs to promote equal opportunity; Republicans, by getting government out of the way of wealth-creating entrepreneurs. Since President Roosevelt's New Deal of the 1930s, the less well-off have tended to vote Democrat (though with lower turnout numbers than better-off Americans). But the picture is complicated by the fact that wealthier Americans tend to be more socially liberal, while poorer Americans tend to be more socially conservative. Yet, while social class remains an important factor in American politics, an overwhelming number of Americans identify themselves as "middle class." In recent years, both parties have decried the decline of the American middle class; fingers have been pointed at everything from the Bush tax cuts, to shrinking unions, to excessive government regulation, to free trade and unfair competition from countries like China.

Age: Guess which group votes the most? Nope, not you—you youngins are too busy infoblogging your YouPads on the FaceTube, or whatnot. When it comes to political participation, your granny blows everyone else away. And the government pays attention—what granny wants, granny gets. A huge part of the federal budget goes to programs for the elderly, like Medicare and Social Security—which is why the federal government has been described (by economist Paul Krugman) as "an insurance company with an army." And it's because of the influence of the elderly in politics that both parties have defended the programs that make them happy. For instance, in 2011 House Republicans proposed a budget that made significant cuts to Medicare—but the cuts would not kick in for years, so that current seniors would be exempt. And in 2010, Democrats lost the elderly vote in large part because of claims that their health care reform bill could cut Medicare. Issues affecting younger voters, such as student loans, have gotten comparatively less attention.

Study break

Okay, to make up for the Ron Paul jab, here's a trailer for his favorite movie.



Public Opinion and Political Participation

Have You Read This?If yes, click here.

"Abortions for all!"



Booooo!

"Very well. Abortions for none!"



Booooo!

"Very well. Abortions for some, miniature American flags for others!"



Yaaaaaay!

As any Simpsons viewer can tell you, public opinion is a messy, fickle thing. We want low taxes, but we also want lots of government-funded goodies. We want illegal immigrants to cut our lawns and make our hamburgers, but we're also against illegal immigration. We want a metric ton of cheap plastic stuff from China every day, but we're also mad at China for stealing all of our jobs in the cheap-plastic-stuff industry. We'd probably support a universal pony program, and then complain that the government is allocating too much money for pony acquisition.

It's every politician's job to sort through this mess, figure out what the public is saying, give the people what they want, and then apologize for giving the people what they want—and rinse and repeat.

(But don't blame Shmoop—we voted for Kodos.)



Public Opinion: It's Complicated

Public opinion is the sum total of our individual preferences on any given issue at any given moment. While ideologies combine a host of beliefs on a range of issues, we usually use "public opinion" to refer to viewpoints on a particular issue or decision (like a war or a presidential election). And while ideologies are more stable over time, public opinion often fluctuates with events.

Of course, any democratic government has to account for public opinion if it wants to stay legitimate—a government that systematically ignores public opinion is pretty much the definition of a dictatorship. But listening to public opinion isn't as simple as tracking down Mr. Public Opinion and asking him a few questions. Public opinion is a lot vaguer than that; basically, think of it as The Force from Star Wars.

A central part of democratic politics revolves around debating what public opinion is saying, what it means, how to accurately measure and interpret it, and how much politicians have to listen to it. Three issues make public opinion especially messy.

First, there's the question of how much politicians ought to respect public opinion in the first place. As we just said, the amount can't be 0%—but it's rarely 100%, either. If public opinion had absolute power, then democracies would settle everything with referendum votes (in which the people vote on an issue directly). While some states, like California, set some policies through referenda, the vast majority of state and federal policies are set by representative bodies—which allow representatives some scope to use their own judgment, bargain, and convince one another.

As the 18th-century British politician Edmund Burke said to his constituents, "Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion." Representatives often take different views, or prioritize different issues, than the majority of voters—but how much independence is too much? Politicians often characterize themselves as listening to "the will of the people," and blame the other side for ignoring it. But the line between leading public opinion and ignoring it is a fine one.

Second, elections may settle who gets to hold which office, but they don't settle what public opinion says. No sooner is an election over than both sides start to debate what it meant. Winners usually claim a mandate, a public endorsement of their platform. Losers often argue that the result does not reflect public agreement with their opponents' policies, but some other factor; maybe the other side had a more personally appealing candidate, or maybe voters were influenced by the state of the economy.

Third, public opinion itself is never cut-and-dried—it is often contradictory and subject to interpretation. Take the issue of health care reform. In 2008, Barack Obama made health care reform a central part of his platform and was elected president. By 2009, as Democrats struggled to pass legislation, slightly more of the public disapproved of "health care reform" than approved of it. But when voters were asked about the specific policies that made up "health care reform," they approved of all of them, except for the individual mandate to buy health insurance.

So what did public opinion say about health care reform? One side could argue that President Obama won a mandate to pass it, that the public approved of the substance of reform, and that disapproval of health care reform as a whole was mostly a reflection of public frustration with the long-drawn-out process of passing the bill. The other side could argue that Obama was elected on the basis of likeability, not policy, and that public opinion turned against health care reform the more public learned about it.

In other words, making sense of public opinion is as much an art as a science.

Measuring Public Opinion

Of course, that doesn't stop politicians and pollsters from huge amounts of time and money to obtain a grasp of public opinion. How do we have any idea what the public is thinking? Let's say you're a redhead-hating senator trying to gauge support for your new bill, the Redhead Internment Act of 2012. You probably want to ask five questions about public opinion:



  • Distribution: What percentage of people support and oppose your position. (Do a majority of Americans want to put redheads in internment camps?)
     

  • Intensity: How strong are the public's feelings on the issue? Would they be willing to mobilize on its behalf? Will it determine whom they vote for? (Can I win an election by appealing to single-issue anti-redhead voters?)
     

  • Stability: To what extent are views on an issue changing? (Are more Americans favorably disposed to redheads since Ron Weasley was portrayed as a redhead in the Harry Potter movies?)
     

  • Latency: What issues or concerns are lurking beneath the surface? What attitudes, worries, and perceptions may influence voters' future response to issues and candidates? (How many voters can be convinced that redheads pose a threat to the American way of life?)
     

  • Salience: How relevant is a particular issue to people? (Do redheads make Americans' lives miserable all of the time, or just some of the time?)

Policymakers makers often measure public opinion through polling. Politicians and political observers have always used straw polls, unscientific samplings of public opinion. But in the 1930s, scientific polling was introduced by Elmo Roper and George Gallup. Scientific polls measure the opinions of people within a designated universe—that is, a particular group of people. In a national presidential poll, the universe consists of the nation's voters. But if a policymaker or candidate wishes to gauge the views of a smaller demographic, such as women voters under 40, the universe polled is much smaller. Scientific polls are not perfect. Most contain a margin of error of plus or minus 3%. But generally, they have proven highly reliable in assessing public opinion.

Here are some of the different kinds of polls:



  • Random or probability sample polls. Many polls are based on the random sampling of persons within the selected universe. But to be truly random, care must be taken that every person within the universe has an equal probability of being surveyed. If pollsters measuring national opinion limit their calls to people in cities, or west of the Rockies, or even those just listed in phone books, the results will be compromised. ("Good evening, ma'am. May I take a moment of your time to ask you about your opinions on redheads?")
     


  • Quota sample polls. Another polling technique involves constructing a demographic model (maybe you're interested in the opinions of African-Americans, women, or blue-collar workers), and then surveying a sample of representatives from that model. (I wonder how much school nurses over the age of 40 hate redheads?)
     


  • Tracking polls. This type of poll is repeated periodically to track changes in opinion. ("Good news, senator. Tracking polls show that anti-redhead sentiment is on the rise since the debut of your documentary, The Red Menace.")
     

  • Exit polls. These are taken as voters leave the polling place. But exit polls must measure an accurate sample of voters in order to accurately predict election results—for example, exit polls shouldn't oversample voters who are more likely to talk to pollsters, or those who are more likely to vote at a certain time of day (e.g., voters without jobs might be more likely to vote in the afternoon). ("Was your vote for the senator strongly, moderately, or not at all affected by his stance on redheads?")

But not all polls are created equal. For example, you should be skeptical of polls with loaded questions (in which questions are designed by parties or interest groups to obtain a particular response) and opt-in polls (because the sample of respondents is neither random nor representative of the broader population).

Political Participation

Okay, so you've got your set of well-considered political opinions, and you've settled on the middle-aged white dude you'd like to represent you in Washington for the next two to six years. Now what? Well, you could click "Like" on a bunch of Facebook videos and buy a bumper sticker or a witty t-shirt to show off your extraordinarily enlightened views. Or you could, you know…vote?

Doing so would make you a proud member of an elite group—the slightly more than half of all eligible Americans who show up at the polls every four years. Congrats!

National voter turnout is roughly correlated with a technical term referred to by political scientists as "sexiness." How else to explain why voter turnout hit a high of 63% in 1960, with a sexy Kennedy on the ballot, and rebounded to a 40-year high of 57% with a sexy Obama on the ballot? In between, voter turnout reached its low point, 49%, in 1996—when American voters were evidently repulsed by a gross, septuagenarian Bob Dole. In fact, since its 1960 high, the trend for turnout has been largely downward. And even fewer Americans show up at midterm elections for Congress: in 2010, for instance, only 38% of eligible voters cast ballots.

The more privileged you are, the more likely you are to vote. The higher levels of education you've completed, the more likely you are to vote. Rich people are more likely to vote than the poor, whites are more likely than blacks and Latinos, and the old more likely than the young.

What actually influences your choice at the polls? Political scientists point to three broad groups of factors.Partisan identification plays a strong role, especially because the party with which you identify tends to stay stable over time ("I've voted straight-ticket Democrat since 1932, and I'm not about to change now, dagnabit"). Party-line voting is especially important for low-information voters, those who don't pay much attention to the issues or political news; for those voters, looking at a candidate's party is a helpful shorthand for his or her beliefs.

Candidate appeal also matters ("Al Gore reminds me of the annoying know-it-all from junior year biology class"). A candidate's personal popularity is sometimes enough to override higher partisan identification with the other side.

Last, issues matter as well, though the majority of voters are not well-informed enough to have a detailed picture of what each candidate stands for. Most often, a range of issues sways voters in each election, though some single-issue voters are so passionate about one topic in particular that it alone can sway their vote (e.g., someone who always votes for the anti-abortion candidate). Issue voting can be either prospective(voting based on a candidate's promises) or retrospective (voting to punish or reward a candidate for past action). Voting for Mitt Romney because he promises tax cuts would be prospective issue voting; voting to recall Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker because he passed legislation to weaken unions would be retrospective issue voting.

Of course, voting isn't the only form of political participation. Political participation also includes writing letters to a newspaper or politician's office, joining or donating to advocacy groups, following politics through social networking, or turning out for protests.

Study break

Think a redhead genocide couldn't actually happen? It totally could, guys!




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