Political science paper discussion time! Woo! I was saving string on the Bartels/Achen paper (pdf) on how voters rationalize their decisions, but I decided to do my column on S-CHIP instead, so lets talk through things a bit here.
There are basically three theories of how voters think about issues when casting their ballot for a candidate. The first is "policy-oriented voting," in which a voter examines the various candidates on offer and votes for the one whose policy proposals most closely match the voter's own preferences. The second is "persuasion," in which the voter alters their own opinions to more closely conform with those of the candidate or party they favor. And the last is "projection," in which voters convince themselves that the candidate or party they favor really does possess the same beliefs that they do.
Sadly, persuasion and projection are much more common than policy voting. Voters aren't stupid. They're just much more committed to political parties and candidates than they are to issues. And we're not talking about the faceless rubes in the hinterlands. The effects of partisan bias actually become stronger as a voter's level of political information rises. High information voters, then, are actually more likely to warp their opinions based on their political allegiances. An example of this comes with the trajectory of the budget deficit during Clinton's first term. Bartels and Achen write:
