Voting Behavior and Electoral Participation in the U.S.

Introduction

Suffrage is an integral component of every American citizen's democratic rights, and the law has given it top priority. Yet realities such as the difficulties encountered from the registration phase to the voting phase, the emphasis on registration as a bureaucratic task, political predispositions, election-specific forces, and other determinants of participation have produced unclear and inconsistent patterns of voting behavior, as well as inconclusive findings on turnout and voting choices. Political scientists and thinkers have attempted to sort out this situation through the use of models. Some argue that the electorate makes decisions either as a banker or a farmer; that aggregate forecasts are stronger than individual forecasts; that economic considerations have always decided or significantly influenced the outcome of presidential elections; that governments cannot predict the actions of consumers and firms despite their dominance over the economic scene; and that economic intelligence leads voters to adopt a retrospective, rather than a prospective, view of the future when making their choices.

Voter Turnout and Electoral Forces in the U.S.

Studies have acknowledged that registration and administrative forces have created barriers to electorate participation, as revealed by both single and hybrid models of voter turnout. The theory advanced by Rusk and Converse extends the hybrid approach and suggests that the legal-institutional properties of the electoral system — including ballot design, registration requirements, voting systems, and suffrage requirements — have influenced and shaped voting behavior (Timpone, 1998). From the registration phase alone, competing objectives coexist: preventing electoral fraud, ensuring that all eligible voters are included on the rolls, supporting the functions of the system, and providing credibility and legitimacy to the election process. The United States has traditionally given higher priority to minimizing or controlling corruption than to ensuring fuller registration. On the part of voters, this practice has merged with their individualism and distrust of intrusive government, resulting in their acceptance of a two-step process of electoral participation. They have come to accept that the individual bears the responsibility to register before going to the polls (Timpone, 1998).

While registering and voting have been linked acts, and registering has become far less burdensome than in the past, these two stages have remained distinct (Timpone, 1998). Registering has, in many respects, become more difficult than voting itself, as it requires a longer journey at a less convenient time to complete a complicated procedure. The institutional requirement of first registering and then voting leads to a process in which these two stages differ in place, time, and kind. Voters cast their ballots at a polling place in their home precinct, which is seldom the same place where they previously registered. Before the passage of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, many states allowed mail registration and deputized registrars. While the requirement for a difficult journey has been eased over time, obtaining mail registration still requires a separate trip or trips in several states operating under election-day registration systems. This condition has substantially affected voter turnout (Timpone, 1998).

The span of time between registering and voting has proved to be the strongest obstacle to registration (Timpone, 1998). The presidential period has been viewed as a moment of national crisis (Tocqueville [1850] 1969, as cited in Timpone, 1998), characterized by fervent efforts to enlist support, general campaigning, and increased media emphasis that peak on election day. In order to prevent fraud and ease administrative tasks, most states close registration records weeks before the polls open — typically three weeks in advance.

In addition, filling out a registration form functions more as an administrative and bureaucratic task than as a political decision, and this distinction makes some people uncomfortable (Timpone, 1998). Former President Clinton recognized this distinction in his remarks when signing the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, stating that voting should be about discerning the will of the majority, not about testing the administrative capacity of a citizen. This difference in the nature of the two tasks — and the temporal period during which they must be performed — has created distinct psychological determinants for each, since "registration does not usually provide the emotional gratification that voting does" (Glass, Squire, and Wolfinger, 1984, as cited in Timpone, 1998).

Political attitudes linked to longer-term predispositions appear different from those specific to the election at hand (Timpone, 1998). The more lasting attitudes found to be responsive to short-term factors are less likely to be as stable as those linked to election-specific decisions and choices. These long-term predispositions include external efficacy, internal efficacy, party differential, the strength of party identification, and the level of trust in government. They are more closely related to registration, while election-specific attitudes appear to exert a stronger influence on the decision to vote among those who have already registered. In other words, those with long-term political predispositions are more likely to register than to turn out on election day. Those with little general attachment to politics are less likely to overcome the hurdle of registration. The length of a voter's residence also draws substantial influence on registration. Other factors, such as marital status, determine how individual attributes interact with structural factors to a greater degree than previously recognized. Some researchers have argued that gender and racial differences in turnout could disappear when factors such as socioeconomic status are controlled. African Americans, for example, were more inclined to register but less likely to go to the polls for the 1980 election, probably because of fewer attractive options among the candidates. Women are also generally more hindered from registering than men, but those women who overcome this barrier are also more likely to vote, owing to resources such as finances, civic skills, and time — resources that appear to differ between men and women (Timpone, 1998).

Election-specific forces exerted substantial influence on electoral participation in the U.S., underscoring the importance of politics in the act of political participation (Timpone, 1998). Studies showed that the greater the perceived difference between the candidates, the greater the perceived benefits of participation. The short-term mobilization effect of candidate differences was identified as the primary force driving recent movers to register. The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 made possible the registration of millions of new voters for the 1996 elections, which could fundamentally change registration trends in the U.S. Key determinants of participation — particularly long-term political attitudes and education — played a much stronger role in registration than in actually going to the polls. However, disinterested chronic non-participants are still unlikely to go to the polls simply because barriers to registration have decreased (Timpone, 1998).

Economic Voting: Banker or Farmer?

How does the American voter behave or think when making political judgments on the handling of the economy? Findings show that the electorate decides with the sophistication of a banker — evaluating the president on its informed view of the nation's economic prospects rather than its current standard of living (Mackuen et al., 1992). The traditional model of measuring presidential approval would have the electorate respond to current economic shocks and adjust voter approval immediately, with effects deteriorating over time. A second model, however, would accumulate past and current economic shocks while accounting for the effects of past events, with effects taking time before they decay. The difference between these two models lies in the nature of the economic shock they intercept: the traditional model translates economic shock as the realization of an economic change, while the second views it as at least partly an anticipation. Under the latter, the electorate is both foresighted and retrospective.

When citizens are retrospective, their politics become grounded in reality, whether personally experienced or observed in others. When citizens decide based on expectations, they rely on an informed imagination. This shift from reality to imagination points to the role that information plays in politics. Under the newer model, the potential of politicians manipulating economic and political outcomes can be counteracted by checking outcomes against subsequent data, such as leading indicators. The electorate could also modify its approval according to a forecast that later proves wrong, since rational expectations can incorporate self-correction. Because the electorate is not myopic, it cannot be easily fooled by short-term budgetary strategies; it is equipped with sufficient sophistication to consider and evaluate the motivations of political leaders (Mackuen et al., 1992).

The results of the 2000 election put an end to the assumption that economic considerations always decide the outcome of presidential elections (Norrander and Wilcox, 2002). That election indicated that economic evaluations possess changing dynamics, which led voters to conclude that the 1991–1992 recession was too distant to matter. Although the special circumstances prevailing in 2000 worked against the emergence of economic issues as decisive, those issues still influenced voters' choices. Moreover, the 1992 and 1996 elections underscored that economic considerations tend to crucially determine how presidential elections turn out.

Conclusion

Inconsistent voting patterns and voter turnout levels can be traced to the obstacles that hamper electorate participation and discourage voting — chief among these are the difficulties encountered in simply registering. Added to these obstacles are the inherent individualism and distrust of voters toward government, as well as the undue emphasis placed on registration as an arduous administrative and bureaucratic task. Further complicating the picture are long-term and short-term predispositions, along with voters' marital status, gender, and socioeconomic status.

There have been ongoing efforts to explore whether the U.S. electorate thinks, behaves, and decides as a banker — with national economic welfare in mind — or as a farmer, concerned primarily with immediate standards of living. It has also been established that the economic intelligence of voters is stronger when their forecasts are aggregated than when considered at the individual level.

Political thinkers have theorized that governments cannot predict the decisions and actions of consumers and firms under them, and have therefore offered a model proposing that all democratic governments rationally act to maximize political support.

Prevailing political opinion holds that the economic intelligence of the U.S. electorate has guided it to adopt a retrospective view of the future — wherein it judges the future on the basis of the past and acts according to that judgment. Yet competing evidence and models suggest that voters are capable of greater foresight and sophistication than the purely retrospective framework acknowledges, particularly when political information and aggregated signals are taken into account.

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