As we discuss elections in most of my current classes, we ought to take a critical look at one of the assumptions of elections. The electorate - the argument goes - can direct the actions of government by making choices between candidates that will determine that direction. But this assumes that people know which party and which candidate stands for what.
A YouGov study throws water on that assumption. People determine which candidate they like - for whatever reason - and change their positions on issues to match that. In all honesty, this finding is not novel.
In deciding between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, we hope that voters are choosing between candidates based in part on candidates’ policy stances, such as their positions on taxes and war. In a book I have coming out this month, Follow the Leader (press release), I find surprisingly little evidence that policy stances matter to voters. Specifically, I find that voters’ prior policy views rarely lead them to change votes or even approval of candidates during campaigns. Instead, voters usually choose candidates for some other reason, such as the election-year economy, and then follow their preferred candidate on policy issues, adopting that candidate’s stances as their own. Rather than leading politicians on policy, voters mostly follow.
Are voters choosing between Obama and Romney on policy issues such as healthcare, taxes, and the war in Afghanistan? Or are they merely following, adopting their preferred candidates' views? Determining whether citizens are leading or following on policy is tricky—it's a “chicken and egg” problem. In the book, I use repeated interviews with the same individuals. But I can illustrate this tendency to follow with a surprising pattern that shows up in a single survey.
In a recent YouGov poll, I asked participants about their views on abortion policy and what position they thought Obama, Romney, the Democratic Party, and the Republican Party took on abortion. Only about 60% of respondents knew that Obama and the Democrats supported more pro-choice policies than Romney and Republicans. Given that the parties have had clear and long-standing positions on this issue, it's astonishing that 40% of Americans don't know this basic fact (other surveys find even higher levels of ignorance).
