scholarly journals What's the Value of Partisan Loyalty? Partisan Ambivalence, Motivated Reasoning, and Correct Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua Robison
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Motivated Reasoning ◽  
Correct Voting

An Exploration of Correct Voting in Recent U.S. Presidential Elections

2008 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 395-411 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. Lau ◽  
David J. Andersen ◽  
David P. Redlawsk
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Correct Voting

Polarization and correct voting in U.S. presidential elections

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 ◽  
pp. 102048 ◽  
Author(s):  
Douglas R. Pierce ◽  
Richard R. Lau
Keyword(s):  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Correct Voting

Voting Correctly

1997 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 585-598 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard R. Lau ◽  
David P. Redlawsk
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Data ◽  
Political Science ◽  
Survey Data ◽  
Presidential Elections ◽  
Democratic Theory ◽  
Present Experimental Data ◽  
Correct Voting

The average voter falls far short of the prescriptions of classic democratic theory in terms of interest, knowledge, and participation in politics. We suggest a more realistic standard: Citizens fulfill their democratic duties if, most of the time, they vote “correctly.” Relying on an operationalization of correct voting based on fully informed interests, we present experimental data showing that, most of the time, people do indeed manage to vote correctly. We also show that voters' determinations of their correct vote choices can be predicted reasonably well with widely available survey data. We illustrate how this measure can be used to determine the proportion of the electorate voting correctly, which we calculate at about 75% for the five American presidential elections between 1972 and 1988. With a standard for correct vote decisions, political science can turn to exploring the factors that make it more likely that people will vote correctly.

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