Chapter 9. Elections as Popular Control, OR, Are Elections a Sham

that only rewards the best campaign? -- 2013

Bob Botsch

Evidence that elections are a joke• Floating voters decide and they are demonstrably less well

informed and pay less attention • Paying less attention means they are much more likely to be

swayed by the stray campaign commercial they just happen to see late in the campaign

• A declining % of voters decide elections and they are mostly in the middle ideologically and in partisanship and in a few swing states, so with a decreasing # they are less likely to cancel each other out

• Even though they do not vote as much, enough vote to determine the outcome

• Around 40% of voters thought McCain was to the left of Obama in 2008 (see p. 268)—that is nearly half that had things totally backwards!

• That undecided voters go with the candidate who has momentum at the end suggests that they simply follow the crowd rather than think for themselves

Evidence that elections do make sense• Being uninformed does not mean that people are fools• They can choose party on the basis of family interests—most families come from

similar socio-economic classes—most do!• You do not have to understand ideology or have a party id to know what things

have gotten worse--and 90% correctly knew that things had gotten worse under Bush (see p.276) and the other 10% that had it wrong split about evenly—turning out those who were in power when it got worse is rational! The party in power usually wins when they improve economic conditions (p.282)

• When you look at a wide range of issues rather than the abstract notion of ideology, voters act pretty rationally (see p.271)—100% of all voters at the extreme ends voted on issues

• Those in the middle should not be expected to vote for the side they lean toward because some issues may be more important than others in their minds—that is their choice!

• Voting for the more attractive candidate is rational in that likeable leaders have a better chance of being effective—having persuasive power

• Going with the candidate who is winning may look like going with the crowd, but it also means going with the better leader, someone who can run an effective campaign organization will probably be an effective chief executive

Conclusions?

• The system works reasonably well: fits general preferences and rational reactions to performance (see next chapt)

• Though we do get some rather bad elected officials at all levels

• But system is resilient and because of limited powers protects us from poor leaders most of the time

• “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time.” Abraham Lincoln—we do a little better than this: do not fool most people most of the time