Australian Politics and Policy - Senior, 2019a

Voter behaviour
their conclusions, 15 and their acceptance of new evidence is clouded by motivated
reasoning. 16
Reconciling these findings with democratic theory
Concerns about the capacity of citizens to meaningfully participate in electoral
democracy are inconsistent with the general assumptions of classical democratic
theory, which requires citizens to be informed and attentive for democracy to
properly function. These concerns are typically reconciled with the normative
ideals of democratic theory through the wisdom of the crowd argument. Aggregate
opinion can be much more stable and, as a result, appear more ‘rational’ than
individual opinion. 17 Even large proportions of random error ‘cancel out’ when
aggregated, resulting in reasonably efficient and stable collective choices.
There may also be some problems with the concerns about voter competence
raised above. In a number of countries, representative democracy appears to be
working relatively well. Lau and Redlawsk 18 estimate that, at the five US presidential
elections between 1972 and 1988, approximately 75 per cent of citizens voted the
same as they would have if they had been operating with ‘full information’. Here,
full information is the decision they would make if they had the greatest possible
understanding of the choice they were making and the alternatives.
Lippmann and Converse may have been overly pessimistic about voters’
political sophistication. It is possible that unrealistic goals were set for the average
voter. There were also measurement problems with some of the earlier studies. The
period in which Converse studied may also have been one with unusually low levels
of ideological difference between the major political parties in the USA (where they
conducted their research), making it harder for voters to understand the difference
between the parties or to adopt strong positions on many areas of policy. 19
Gerald Pomper 20 studied the association between party identification and voter
preferences on six issues between 1956 and 1968. Consistent with Converse’s
findings, from 1956 to 1960 the relationship between party identification and
preferences was weak or non-existent. However, this relationship strengthened for
all six issues between 1960 and 1964. Regardless of starting position, from 1964
Democrats were more likely to be liberal and Republicans conservative in all of
these policy areas.
Earlier studies of voters’ political preferences also failed to take into account
the measurement error inherent in public opinion surveys. Responses to these
15 Gilovitch 1991.
16 Bartels 2002.
17 Page and Shapiro 1992.
18 Lau and Redlawsk 1997.
19 Nie, Verba and Petrocik 1976, 99, 179–80.
20 Pomper 1972.
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