An article from the Wilson Quarterly, the Woodrow Wilson Center for scholars:

“The Irrational Electorate.”

By Larry Bartels who directs the Center for the Study of Democratic Politics in Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is the author of Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age, published earlier this year by the Russell Sage Foundation and Princeton University Press.

Now, when you print it out, it runs four or five pages.I’m not a scholar, and Mr. Bartels is, and, to me, the first part — I had to read this a bunch of times. It reads like gobbledygook, and what it is is an analysis of a whole bunch of studies worldwide over many, many decades of the electorates, the electorates in democracies.

Some excerpts.

One sentence in this piece — and this is about how people determine who they are going to vote for. People are very short term in their focus. They tend to vote based on how the economy is going, rewarding or throwing the bums out regardless of party.

But here’s some interesting bits for you.

“A team of psychologists led by Alex Todorov established that candidates for governor, senator, or representative who are rated as ‘competent’ by people judging them solely on the basis of photographs are considerably more likely to win real-world elections than those who look less competent. Brief exposure to the photographs — as little as one-tenth of a second — is sufficient to produce a significant correlation with actual election outcomes. A follow-up study showed that the electoral advantage of competent-looking candidates is strongest among less informed voters and those most heavily exposed to political advertising.” So, the follow-up study said the electoral advantage of competent looking candidates is strongest among less informed voters. One-tenth of a second, somebody looking at a picture, will form more of a lasting impression on how somebody’s going to vote than what their issues are? I know that’s how a lot of people get married. Well, it is. You know people make jokes about this, but a lot of people get married on the basis of one-tenth of a second, on how somebody looks. And if you’re going to make a decision on who you going to marry on the basis of one-tenth of a second looking at them or a picture of them, well, it’s a far less of a commitment to vote for somebody than to get married to them. But the less informed you are the more powerful the visual impression of somebody you think looks competent.

“A team from UCLA found that most of the effect of any given ad on voters’ preferences evaporated within one week, and that ‘only the most politically aware voters exhibited . . . long-term effects.'” In another study, “A major ad buy produced a seven-point increase in voter support for the featured candidate a day after the ads aired,” but two days later the lead was gone. So we can assume that, again, most people are not politically aware round the clock, 24/7, and those who aren’t can be moved by an ad for a day, and the ad’s effect vanishes after one day. Another paragraph here: Issues matter less than they seem. People attribute their views to the candidate they like and adopt their candidate’s views.

This and one more to explain Obama.

“Voters consistently misperceived where candidates stood on the important issues of the day, seeing their favorite candidates’ stands as closer to their own and opposing candidates’ stands as more dissimilar than they actually were. They likewise exaggerated the extent of support for their favorite candidates among members of social groups they felt close to. … Political scientist Gabriel Lenz found very little evidence that people actually changed their vote because of the Social Security debate. What happened, mostly, was that people who learned the candidates’ views on privatization from the blizzard of ads and news coverage simply adopted the position of the candidate they already supported for other reasons. The resulting appearance of ‘issue voting’ was almost wholly illusory.”

So if your candidate has one issue that you like, and you’ve seen one-tenth of a second of an audio or a picture of the guy, and you’ve determined you like him, and then he runs an ad that you really, really dig, you’ll forget the ad in one day, but it will make your support for him go way, way up. You won’t remember why you support him. The support will be even more profound and deep. Then the candidate comes out and voices something you totally disagree with. You’ll reject that because you like the guy.

“Ah, that doesn’t matter. I don’t care about that.”

He’s right on whatever issue that is most important to the person. Everything else is irrelevant, plus the likability factor.

Good voter behavior stories: Woodrow Wilson and shark attacks.

“In the summer of 1916 a dramatic weeklong series of shark attacks along New Jersey beaches left four people dead. Tourists fled, leaving some resorts with 75 percent vacancy rates in the midst of their high season. Letters poured into congressional offices demanding federal action.”

Now, we’re talking, again, 1916.

“Letters poured into congressional offices demanding federal action; but what action would be effective in such circumstances? Voters probably didn’t know, but neither did they care. When President Woodrow Wilson — a former governor of New Jersey with strong local ties — ran for reelection a few months later, he was punished at the polls,” because he didn’t do anything about sharks. “He lost as much as 10 percent of his expected vote in towns where shark attacks had occurred,” ’cause he hadn’t done anything about them.’

“The 1936 election has become the most celebrated textbook case of ideological realignment in American history. However, a careful look at state-by-state voting patterns suggests that this resounding ratification of Roosevelt’s policies was strongly concentrated in the states that happened to enjoy robust income growth in the months leading up to the vote. Indeed, the apparent impact of short-term economic conditions was so powerful that, if the recession of 1938 had occurred in 1936, Roosevelt probably would have been a one-term president. It’s not only in the United States that the Depression-era tendency to ‘throw the bums out’ looks like something less than a rational policy judgment. In the United States, voters replaced Republicans with Democrats in 1932 and the economy improved. In Britain and Australia, voters replaced Labor governments with conservatives and the economy improved. In Sweden, voters replaced Conservatives with Liberals, then with Social Democrats, and the economy improved. In the Canadian agricultural province of Saskatchewan, voters replaced Conservatives with Socialists and the economy improved. In the adjacent agricultural province of Alberta, voters replaced a socialist party with a right-leaning party created from scratch by a charismatic radio preacher peddling a flighty share-the-wealth scheme, and the economy improved. In Weimar Germany, where economic distress was deeper and longer lasting, voters rejected all of the mainstream parties, the Nazis seized power, and the economy improved. In every case, the party that happened to be in power when the Depression eased went on to dominate politics for a decade or more thereafter. It seems far-fetched to imagine that all these contradictory shifts represented well-considered ideological conversions.”

Ideology and issues had nothing to do with it.

SIMPLE TRUTH:

Whoever was in charge when the thing went south got punished. Whoever was in charge when it came back got rewarded.

This is a longer piece from the Wilson Quarterly. It’s a much longer piece than what I shared with you here by Larry Bartels, the Irrational Electorate. It’s a scholarly work trying to explain why voters do what they do when they do it in democracies.