Policy Expectations and Institutional Arrangements in the American States

Ohio State University Research Foundation -Do Not Use, Columbus OH

Investigators

Abstract

Existing studies of voter behavior are based on the premise that if a voter is issue-oriented. she should vote for the candidate whose personal position or campaign platform is closest to her own preferences. In a democratic system in which a lone elected official makes all policies. such a view of issue voting may make sense. But in a democratic system with multiple policymakers - such as an executive and a legislature and a separation of powers, it makes little sense for voters to imagine that a candidate will accomplish everything she says she will once in office. If voters are issue-oriented, as Downs (1957) argued. their goal should be to elect officials who will likely produce public policies that the voter prefers. The foundations of issue-voting are the expectations voters hold about the policies the government will adopt given the election of each of the candidates. In presidential and gubernatorial elections, these policy expectations associated with each candidate may differ from the candidate's personal position due to the institutional power of the executive relative to the legislature and to divided government. Furthermore, the extent to which voters use policy expectations or candidate position when deciding which candidate to support may also be influenced by the prospects of divided government and the voters perception of the power of the executive branch. In many cases the candidate whose personal position is closest to the voter's own will not be the candidate who would produce policies closest to the voter's preferences. The PI's conduct a telephone survey of 1000 registered voters in each of two states (New- Jersey- and Virginia) that, will have gubernatorial elections in 2001. The survey. which will take place the two weeks preceding the election. will present respondents with a series of questions asking them to place on an issue scale their own position. the positions of the gubernatorial candidates. the position of the state legislature. and the position of the state government under each gubernatorial candidate. Respondents will also be asked which party they believe will have a majority in the state legislature, how powerful they believe the governor is compared to the legislature, and for which candidate they intend to vote in their state's gubernatorial election. The survey will also collect data on respondents' party identification, socioeconomic characteristics, level of political information, attention to politics, and other relevant, data. The PI's will then measure the impact of policy expectations versus candidate positions on voters' choice of candidates. Across both states, they expect to find that once voters' policy- expectations are taken into account, voters are more issue-oriented than researchers have previously found. Also, candidate positions will play little role in the vote decisions made by voters unless the executive is likely to have tremendous control over policymaking or is unlikely to have any control. In the latter case, voters will cast an expressive vote for the candidate whose personal position they most prefer knowing full well that the candidate will have little influence over policy. Results from this project will contribute to research on voting behavior and state government. For the literature ore voting behavior. The PI's will provide the first true test of issue voting based on the theory that voter's preferences are defined over expected policy- outcomes rather than the positions of the candidates. With this research; the investigators' hope to provide empirical evidence relevant to controversies concerning both divided government and directional voting models. For studies of state government, the PI's will provide a new source of data on the relative influence of the executive branch of government across two different states. These data can also be combined with previous work by the PI's on Ohio and Texas state government. Data from the survey will be made available to other researchers and to the general public. The research promises to enhace substantially our understanding of the topic.