Issues, Partisanship, and Valence in Elections

• In Event: Ambiguity and Issues

Abstract

Voters in the United States cast ballots for individual candidates, not bundles of policies or political parties. It is therefore important to understand how Americans consider candidates' personal traits, relative to their issue positions and partisanship, when voting. Using a conjoint survey experiment, I examine the weights voters place on issues, party, and personal qualities in mock elections. Beyond this evaluation of marginal effects on candidate support, I use this design to study the relationship between issue proximity and valence in voting. I find evidence, in line with standard modeling assumptions, that voters weigh personal traits less heavily the larger the issue advantage one candidate holds over the other and that this finding extends to trade offs between partisanship and personal quality. These findings have implications for our understanding of the role of personal traits in elections and how we should consider them when evaluating candidate performance in an observational context.

Author

• William Smith, Oberlin College