# Voting Behavior **Voting behavior** is the study of how citizens decide whether to vote and whom to vote for — the empirical core of [[Political Behavior]]. A century of research has produced three classic models, each emphasizing a different driver, and the contemporary picture is a synthesis weighted heavily toward party identity. ## The three classic models - **Sociological (the Columbia model).** Lazarsfeld and colleagues in the 1940s found vote choice predicted by **social group membership** — class, religion, region, ethnicity. "A person thinks, politically, as he is, socially." Voting is an expression of group belonging more than individual deliberation. - **Social-psychological (the Michigan model).** *The American Voter* (1960) put **party identification** at the center: a durable, often inherited psychological attachment formed early (see [[Political Socialization]]) that acts as a perceptual screen, coloring how voters judge candidates and issues. Party ID remains the strongest single predictor of the vote. - **Rational choice / economic (the Downsian model).** Anthony Downs modeled voters as choosing the party closest to them in ideological space (the logic behind the [[Median Voter Theorem]]). Morris Fiorina's **retrospective voting** refined this: voters need not master policy detail; they reward or punish incumbents for results — especially the economy ("are you better off than four years ago?"). ## What actually moves the vote Modern research treats these as complementary. **Party identification** is the anchor and has only grown more powerful as the parties have sorted (see [[Partisan Sorting]]); **retrospective economic judgment** moves a decisive sliver of swing voters; and **out-party hostility** ([[Negative Partisanship]]) increasingly substitutes for in-party enthusiasm as the turnout motive. Short-term forces (candidates, scandals, events) operate within the gravitational field of these long-term attachments. ## KB Significance Voting behavior is where the KB's claims about persuasion meet electoral reality. It clarifies why the right's information apparatus targets **identity and retrospective judgment** rather than detailed policy preference, why a sorted electorate produces stable, high-floor partisan loyalty, and why marginal economic and turnout effects decide elections at the edges. It is the behavioral substrate beneath the `2026 Midterms/` race analysis and the party-system history in the [[Parties Hub]]. ## See Also - [[Public Opinion]] — the attitudes that feed the vote. - [[Negative Partisanship]] · [[Partisan Sorting]] · [[Voter Turnout]] - [[Median Voter Theorem]] · [[Political Behavior]]