How do voters decide? 327actual turnout (votes as a percentage of the total adult population) has been closer to
50 percent.^51 As the figure shows, turnout is significantly higher in presidential
elections than in midterms—although in 2018 turnout was higher than in previous
midterms. Turnout is much lower in primaries and caucuses: in the 2016 presidential
primaries, some states reported unusually high turnout exceeding 30 percent. Because
caucuses can take several hours, turnout is generally only a few percentage points.
In the main, turnout is higher for whites than for nonwhites (African Americans
have been an exception in recent elections), for older Americans than for younger
Americans, and for college graduates than for people with a high school education or
less. Men and women, however, say they vote at roughly the same rate. Many factors
explain variation in turnout.
Turnout is affected by structural factors, such as state laws that prohibit convicted
felons from voting, laws that require citizens to be registered to vote a set number
of days before an election, variation in early voting and voting by mail laws, laws
requiring a photo ID to vote, and laws that make it easier or harder to obtain an
absentee ballot.
However, turnout is far below 100 percent, even in areas of the country where all
of these factors are set to make it easy for people to vote. Analysis shows that turnout
is much higher among people who consider going to the polls as an obligation of
citizenship, feel guilty when they do not vote, and think that the elections matter.
Turnout is much lower among those who are angry with the government, think that
government actions do not affect them, or think that voting will have no impact on
government policy. Citizens who hold these beliefs are unlikely to care about the
outcome of the election, are unlikely to feel guilty for abstaining, and are unlikely to
see voting as an obligation.^52 Thus, while it is possible to increase turnout somewhat
by changing laws, the biggest gains come from convincing individual Americans that
voting is something they should feel obligated to do.
These findings demonstrate the importance of mobilization in elections. As we
discussed earlier, many candidates for political office spend at least as much time
trying to convince their supporters to vote as they do attempting to persuade others
to become supporters in the first place. Because many Americans either do not vote or
vote only sporadically, mobilization is a vital strategy for winning elections.How Do People Vote?
Some people are highly interested in politics, collect all the information they can about
the candidates, and vote based on this information; they are known as issue voters.^53
But most citizens are not interested enough in politics to spend their time that way,
and they don’t care enough about the details of politics to find out which candidates
come closest to their preferences. Reliable information about candidates is also often
difficult to find. Although candidates, parties, and other organizations produce a
blizzard of endorsements, reports, and press releases throughout the campaign, much
of this information may be difficult to interpret. It is a daunting task, even for the rare,
highly motivated voter.Voting Cues This combination of a lack of interest and the relatively complex task of
seeking information leads the majority of American voters to base their voting decision
on easily interpretable pieces of information, or voting cues.^54 Voters in American
national elections use many kinds of cues, such as party ID (voting for the candidate
who shares your party identification, as we discussed in Chapter 8), the personal vote
(voting for a candidate who has helped you get assistance from a government agency61.2%
Voter turnout for African Americans
in the 2016 presidential election.
Source: Calculated by author from exit
polls and historical data.DID YOU KNOW?
issue voters
People who are well informed about
their own policy preferences and
knowledgeable about the candidates,
and who use all of this information
when they decide how to vote.voting cues
Pieces of information about a candidate
that are readily available, easy to
interpret, and lead a citizen to decide
to vote for a particular candidate.During campaigns, candidates often
seek to strengthen the perception that
they share (or at least are sympathetic
to) average Americans’ beliefs and
interests. Here, Senator Bill Nelson
(D-FL) talks to Hispanic voters in the
Little Havana neighborhood in Miami.Full_10_APT_64431_ch09_296-339.indd 327 16/11/18 1:46 PM