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Perceived Representativess and Voting: An Assessment of the Impact of “Choices” vs. “Echoes”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 March 1985

John F. Zipp
John F. Zipp*
Affiliation:
Washington University
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Extract

The persistent decline in voting in presidential elections since 1960 has resulted in serious scholarly attention being given to nonvoting. Despite the quality of these studies, however, the ratio of what we know about nonvoting to what we do not know is rather low. In the hopes of improving this situation, I advance the hypothesis that one reason that individuals do not vote is that their interests are not represented by any of the major candidates. To test this hypothesis, I used the SRC election studies (1968-1980) to construct measures of individuals' perceived distance from the major candidates on a variety of issues. Net of an extensive set of factors usually invoked to explain participation, increased distance from candidates significantly decreases the probability of voting. The implications of these results are discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 79 , Issue 1 , March 1985 , pp. 50 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1985

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