TY - JOUR
T1 - How voting is like taking an sat test
T2 - An analysis of American voter rolloff
AU - Wattenberg, Martin P.
AU - McAllister, Ian
AU - Salvanto, Anthony
PY - 2000/4
Y1 - 2000/4
N2 - Millions of American voters fail to complete their ballots each election year. These voters present a puzzle: After having incurred the costs of going to the polls, why do they choose not to vote on some of the items on the ballot? This paper considers voter rolloff between presidential and House races in an effort to understand the reasons why some voters abstain selectively. We consider this question by analyzing House rolloff based on aggregate data from the 1990s and national survey data from the 1980s. The results indicate that voters skip House contests not because they are lacking in education or members of minority groups, but rather because they do not have enough information to cast a vote. This finding offers new insight into how rolloff voters approach a ballot: They treat voting as if it were a test, picking out the questions that they can answer.
AB - Millions of American voters fail to complete their ballots each election year. These voters present a puzzle: After having incurred the costs of going to the polls, why do they choose not to vote on some of the items on the ballot? This paper considers voter rolloff between presidential and House races in an effort to understand the reasons why some voters abstain selectively. We consider this question by analyzing House rolloff based on aggregate data from the 1990s and national survey data from the 1980s. The results indicate that voters skip House contests not because they are lacking in education or members of minority groups, but rather because they do not have enough information to cast a vote. This finding offers new insight into how rolloff voters approach a ballot: They treat voting as if it were a test, picking out the questions that they can answer.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=0042346909&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/1532673X00028002005
DO - 10.1177/1532673X00028002005
M3 - Article
SN - 1532-673X
VL - 28
SP - 234
EP - 250
JO - American Politics Research
JF - American Politics Research
IS - 2
ER -