How Voters Make Decisions

Popkin proposes a theory of low information rationality in his book, The Reasoning Voter. His theory is based on the idea that voters engage in practical thinking to form conclusions.  He argues that people assess government, parties and candidates and then form preferences based on their judgments. 

He bases his theory on presidential studies conducted at Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research in the 1940’s, Anthony Downs’ book, An Economic Theory of Democracy and contemporary research on the psychology of cognition.

To make assessments, voters use low-information rationality. They draw on past experiences, daily life, the media, and political campaigns to form their opinions, and then they substantiate them with the opinions of national figures and people they trust. They use shortcuts because the costs associated with gathering, analyzing and evaluating information on their own outweighs the benefits of using “free” information. Voters acquire information as a by-product of their daily lives. In other words, they learn as they go.

Voters select, assemble and incorporate free information into narratives, and these narratives help them choose between candidates. Information that the voter recently used is added to their narrative, along with information consistent with their point of view. Popkin says that people assemble information based on representativeness, Gresham’s law of political information, framing and availability, and calculation shortcuts.

Representativeness refers to how well a candidate fits into the voter’s mold. Popkin refers to this as the representativeness heuristic. Voters determine if their candidate will do the right thing based on how they imagine a person that does the right thing to be. They do not consider how likely the person will do based on their record.

Because voters’ narratives are based on how they view different kinds of people, they reference this first in evaluating a candidate rather than focusing on the candidate’s policies and political facts. Because of this, some voters predict presidents’ future success based on their appearance. People form opinions by what they see in a person physically, and respond to that person accordingly.

While representativeness is based on how information gets used, framing determines how people think about gaining and losing information. Voters decide what to incorporate in their narrative depending on the frame they use. Different points of view bring forth different information and attitudes.

In addition to how voters assemble information about people using frames, Popkin argues that voters use calculation aids as they search among candidates in their decision-making. Their goal is to maximize expected value. “In fact, voting is like buying a television set. Voters are public investors, not private consumers. They expend effort voting in the expectation of gaining future satisfaction.” (Popkin, 10) The problem is that these calculations are complex, and it is difficult to assess probabilities.  Because of the difficulty associated with calculating factors, voters use calculation shortcuts. They conduct a “drunkards search” to avoid the mental strain of complicated calculations. To compare candidates, voters are likely to use on-dimensional searches, focusing on a single issue or attribute.

The mass media influences what voters think about. They don’t tell voters how to think, but they do set the agenda. Political evaluations and votes depend on voters’ views of the problems that the national agenda considers most important. Voters monitor the news for personally relevant information, so not only is information filtered by the media, but by the voter as well.

Some argue that the news media fails to provide voters with sufficient information to make decisions about candidates, and instead disseminate entertainment-oriented “soft news.” But the Oprah Effect argues that even though the media provide limited quantities of political information, information shortcuts allow voters to act as competent Democratic citizens. “Hard” news is unappealing to politically inattentive individuals and news quality depends upon how well it enables citizens to determine which candidate best fits their own preferences. So soft news is more efficient than traditional hard news. (Baum, 2006)

Some people are in the upper echelon of political knowledge though, and gather specific details about bills and programs of interest to them. Popkin calls these people issue publics. As Jon Krosnick notes, “Only a small proportion of people are likely to be knowledgeable about and to have potent attitudes regarding any single policy option or another.” (Popkin, 28) But the majority of voters have only general impressions about an issue without knowing specific legislative details.

Voters use political campaigns to help them connect issues to government and parties. Campaign communications help voters understand the policy differences between parties and candidates and how government affects their lives. Very few voters pay attention to political news and know the basic facts of government. “Half of the American public cannot name the two U.S. senators from their state, and 20 percent of college graduates think Russia belongs to NATO, and a large majority of Americans do not know that Japan has a democratic system of government.” (Popkin, 42) So although research shows that voters misperceive campaign messages in ways that increase the accuracy of their own perceptions, they are still useful for learning the differences between parties and candidates.

The challenge for campaigns then becomes to create information shortcuts that connect issues to candidates, the office, and important consequences for the voter. To do this, campaigns use concrete symbols that represent their position on the larger problem. For this to be successful, campaigns have to use symbols that are already clear and well known. Herman Cain’s 999 plan for economic growth is a great example of a concrete symbol that serves as an information shortcut. 999 is Cain’s plan for a 9% flat tax on business transactions, personal income and federal sales. Popkin would argue that most voters do not know the specifics of 999, but they use the symbol to reinforce their beliefs either for or against Cain’s economic policy. Tax codes are complicated, but if voters think about them in terms of three simple numbers, they are much easier to understand.

To recap, voting is not simply the result of information acquired from daily life and the media. It also involves connecting information about government performance, specific government policies, immediate needs, needs for insurance against future problems, private goods, collective goods, their immediate needs, their future needs, economic issues, and family, residential, and consumer issues. Voters use a combination of variables to assess candidates, and although they lack knowledge about the basic operations of government, they know enough about other aspects of government to consider issues without high levels of information.

Some students of public opinion have questioned Popkin’s theory, asking if uninformed voters actually manage to make similar choices to voters who are better informed. Their skepticism stems from survey research conducted in the 1940s. The survey data highlights citizens’ lack of political capabilities and their lack of political knowledge and sophistication. Students of public opinion became skeptical of the citizen’s ability to make intelligent political decisions or to participate effectively in the political process (Kinder, 1983). But more recent research agrees that competent democratic citizens do not need to be policy experts, siting Popkin’s low information. They need a basic level of knowledge, below which the ability to make a full range of reasoned civic judgments is impaired.

Popkin spends the last three chapters supporting his theory based on data from the Democratic primaries of 1976, 1984, and the Republican primaries of campaigns in the 1980’s, however, he fails to discuss who uses given shortcuts and the conditions in which they are likely to be used. His argument is logical but not perfect.

Baum, M. A. and Jamison, A. S., 2006. “The Oprah Effect: How Soft News Helps Inattentive Citizens Vote Consistently.” The Journal of Politics.

Kinder, D. R. 1983. “Diversity and Complexity in American Public Opinion.” In A. Finifter, ed., Political Science: The State of the Discipline. Washington, DC: American Political Science Association.

Popkin, S. L. 1991. The Reasoning Voter: Communication and Persuasion in Presidential

Campaigns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.