Ideology and spatial voting in American elections /
"Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections addresses two core issues related to the foundations of democratic governance: how the political views of Americans are structured and how citizens' voting decisions relate to their ideological proximity to the candidates. Focusing on test...
Clasificación: | Libro Electrónico |
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Autor principal: | |
Formato: | Electrónico eBook |
Idioma: | Inglés |
Publicado: |
New York :
Cambridge University Press,
2012.
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Temas: | |
Acceso en línea: | Texto completo |
Sumario: | "Ideology and Spatial Voting in American Elections addresses two core issues related to the foundations of democratic governance: how the political views of Americans are structured and how citizens' voting decisions relate to their ideological proximity to the candidates. Focusing on testing the assumptions and implications of spatial voting, this book connects the theory with empirical analysis of voter preferences and behavior, showing Americans cast their ballots largely in accordance with spatial voting theory. Stephen A. Jessee's research shows voters possess meaningful ideologies that structure their policy beliefs, moderated by partisanship and differing levels of political information. Jessee finds that while voters with lower levels of political information are more influenced by partisanship, independents and better informed partisans are able to form reasonably accurate perceptions of candidates' ideologies. His findings should reaffirm citizens' faith in the broad functioning of democratic elections"--Provided by publisher "The central feature of democracy is that the will of the people determines the policies enacted by the government. In representative democracies such as the United States, citizens influence the government primarily through voting in elections. The success of democratic governance, therefore, rests in large part on the ability of citizens to select leaders who will act in accordance with their policy preferences. In the end, a government lives up to this democratic ideal (or doesn't) through the enactment of specific policies. How, then, do citizens' votes relate to their preferences over government policy outputs? What intervening factors either assist or interfere with voters' selection of candidates who espouse views closest to their own? Understanding the relationship between citizens' policy views and their voting behavior is central to the evaluation of elections and of democratic governance more generally. This book studies the opinions of ordinary citizens on specific policies and the relationships between these policy views and people's vote choices in presidential elections. Specifically, I focus on testing the empirical implications of spatial theories of voting, which, in their simplest form, assume that each citizen's policy views can be represented by a location on some liberal-conservative policy spectrum, with candidates in a given election each taking a position on this same dimension. Each voter then casts his or her ballot for the candidate whose position is closest to the voter's own ideological location"--Provided by publisher |
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Descripción Física: | 1 online resource (xiii, 242 pages) : illustrations |
Bibliografía: | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
ISBN: | 9781139526463 1139526464 1107232155 9781107232150 1283528509 9781283528504 1139531131 9781139531139 1139527665 9781139527668 9786613840950 6613840955 1139532324 9781139532327 1139198718 9781139198714 1139528858 9781139528856 |