How Voters Decide: Information Processing in Election Campaigns

by Richard R. Lau , David P. Redlawsk

• ISBN13: 9780521613064
• ISBN10: 052161306X
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-26
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

This book attempts to redirect the field of voting behavior research by proposing a paradigm-shifting framework for studying voter decision making. An innovative experimental methodology is presented for getting 'inside the heads' of citizens as they confront the overwhelming rush of information from modern presidential election campaigns. Four broad theoretically-defined types of decision strategies that voters employ to help decide which candidate to support are described and operationally-defined. Individual and campaign-related factors that lead voters to adopt one or another of these strategies are examined. Most importantly, this research proposes a new normative focus for the scientific study of voting behavior: we should care about not just which candidate received the most votes, but also how many citizens voted correctly - that is, in accordance with their own fully-informed preferences.

Author Biography

Richard R. Lau is Professor of Political Science and Director of the Walt Whitman Center for the Study of Democracy in the Political Science Department at Rutgers University David P. Redlawsk is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Iowa

Table of Contents

Part I. Theory and Methods: 1. Introduction

2. A new theory of voter decision making

3. Studying voting as a process

4. What is correct voting?

Part II. Information Processing: 5. What voters do - a first cut

6. Individual differences in information processing

7. Campaign effects on information processing

Part III. Politics: 8. Evaluating candidates

9. Voting

10. Voting correctly

11. Political heuristics

Part IV. Conclusion: 12. A look back, and a look forward

Part V. Appendices and references.