Mandatory Voting In The United States

The subject of voting behavior and campaign effects has been studied and expanded upon by political scientists for decades now, beginning in 1944 with a study by Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet. In the study, they sought to better understand voting behavior following public opinion in Ohio during the 1940 election. While it was not their original focus, they analyzed how media coverage and campaign events affected voters. They found that most voters indicated how they would vote based on political predispositions held in the spring before the campaign had begun and voted accordingly in the election. Their study concluded that few people changed their vote intentions during the campaign; instead, the campaign served to reinforce early-deciders’

His findings created the concept of party identification, which suggests that people hold a long-term attitude that orients them toward a particular political party and affects vote choice and attitudes toward candidates and issues. Campbell argued that since party identification is unlikely to change in the short-term, political campaigns are unlikely to affect party identification. In fact, Campbell found that voters are most likely to make up their mind about the election by the end of the party conventions. In 1966, Key’s study created the idea of retrospective voting. This idea suggests that when voters cast their votes, the main influence on their vote choice is their personal experiences in the past four years, not what has just transpired in the past several months on the campaign trail. Fiorina, in 1981, gave some support to Key’s idea but carried it further by incorporating party identification into retrospective voting. Fiorina suggested that votes are referendums on party performance and not an outcome from the campaign. Markus found in his analysis of the 1988 presidential election that prevailing macro level economic conditions were strongly related to vote choice and had much more effect than