3 - The social dynamics of political preference

Summary

This chapter reviews the McPhee (1963) model of partisan dynamics in an election campaign. The model is used as a vantage point from which to address several questions. What is the relationship between social structure and the dynamics of political preference? What are the conditions under which social structure might generate either durability or change in the distribution of political opinion? How can we reconcile social influence and social structure with rational individuals and democratic citizenship?

What is the engine that drives the dynamics of public opinion and political preference during an election campaign? Should we focus on issues and issue development (Carmines and Stimson 1989)? On media coverage and agenda control (MacKuen and Combs 1981; Erbring, Goldenberg, and Miller 1980)? Or on the state of the economy and pocketbook voting (Tufte 1975; Kramer 1975; N. Beck 1989)? All these questions must be answered in the affirmative because each set of factors provides one answer to the question regarding why preferences change. Each explanation is persuasive, and others are as well, but all must be understood within the context of how people obtain and process information about politics.

How do people obtain political information? Do they depend primarily on politicians' speeches, newspaper editorials, Federal Reserve reports? Or is such information better seen as the raw stimuli of politics – stimuli that must be processed and integrated on the part of citizens?