The Volatile American Voter : Unstable Voting Behavior in American Presidential Elections, 1948-2004
Since the 1940s, studies of American voting behavior have repeatedly shown that voters make ballot choices in presidential elections predominantly on the basis of long-standing party preferences inherited from families of origin. In accordance with these findings, party choices at the individual level should appear stable in the electorate, and the overwhelming majority of studies of party loyalty in actual voting behavior show that voters who cross party lines to vote for presidential candidates are very much in the minority in the universe of American voters. The data presented in this paper, however, challenge this understanding of voting behavior. I find instead that party-loyal voting behavior in presidential elections is substantially less prevalent in the American electorate than has generally been reported in voting and elections literature. This paper provides analyses of data from the 1956-1960, 1972-1976 and 2000-2004* American National Elections Studies panel surveys showing that when analyzed across three consecutive presidential elections, and when accounting for nonvoters and occasional nonvoters, the frequency of non-party-loyal, or “inconstant” voting behavior substantially exceeds the levels reported in analyses across any two presidential elections within a panel study, and accounts for more than half of the American electorate. *The 1956-1960, 1972-1976 and 2000-2002-2004 ANES panel studies include voting-behavior data on the presidential election prior to each of these studies, respectively, those held in 1948, 1968 and 1996. I refer to these datasets as the 1948-1952-1956, 1968-1972-1976 and 1996-2000-2004 ANES panel studies in the paper
Year of publication: |
2009
|
---|---|
Authors: | Beckman, Arthur |
Publisher: |
[S.l.] : SSRN |
Subject: | Wahlverhalten | Voting behaviour | Volatilität | Volatility | Präsidentschaftswahl | Presidential election | Wahl | Election |
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