Why Should You Vote? No Voice. There Is Power In Numbers Increasing the number of people that vote in each election means better representation, more funding to our communities, and a better quality of life. Lets Create A Positive Change!
Top 10 Reasons to Vote Even if you went to a polling location and only voted for one person, it will be counted. It's Your Right. Voting Affects Your Job. Vote to Improve Your Child's Education Local and state school board members who you elect will make decisions on policies and budgets that will affect how well prepared your children will be for their future. Healthcare is Affected by Your Vote.
Social Security is Affected by Your Vote Whomever you elect for president and Congress will decide how much payroll tax you pay and what Medicare services you receive and share payment for. Vote to Improve the Safety of Your Neighborhood. Vote to Improve Your Highways. Register Sign Up Now. Voter Lookup View Your Registration. Volunteer Get Involved. Contact Get in Touch. Liberalism and conservatism are the most common ideologies in the U. Individuals embrace each ideology to widely varying extents.
Liberals and progressives commonly advocate strong civil liberties, social progressivism, cultural pluralism, government ensuring of positive rights education, health care, etc. Conservatives commonly defend the notional status quo of some point in the past, believing that the US has deviated significantly from it, and advocate more traditional stands on social issues, protection of gun rights and much less government intervention.
Moderates, who may be left or right leaning, incorporate different aspects from liberalism and conservatism into their personal perspective. Moderates are commonly defined through limiting the extent to which they adopt liberal and conservative ideas. Even though liberals as a whole tend to be the most educated ideological demographic as indicated by Pew research , moderates tend to become increasingly conservative with increased economic prosperity, causing the professional class to be split between Republicans and Democrats.
Libertarians commonly hold liberal views on social issues but conservative views on economic issues. In a study, the Pew Research Center identified nine typological groups.
While identifying with and believing strongly in a particular party or political ideology can be important in explaining why and how people vote, these factors seldom decide elections alone. Party identities become less important when voters base their decisions on short-term, election-specific factors, such as the leadership qualities of a candidate.
This is often called a partisan dealignment. A partisan dealignment may be occurring today, as more people are identifying as independents and more voters choose based on personal traits of candidates, such as honesty. Bush and Democrat Al Gore during the presidential election influenced public perceptions.
Bush was depicted as being unintelligent by news organizations that compiled lists of his gaffes and malapropisms. Gore was construed as being dishonest for allegedly claiming that he invented the Internet. When people decide to vote based on candidates rather than party identification or political ideology, candidate image can be very important. Candidate images consists of the background, experiences, and personal qualities of people running for elected office.
Voters expect the president to have leadership skills and to be principled, decisive, and honest. Other qualities, such as military service and compassion, may be deemed by the public and the media to be important as well. Candidate images are not entirely malleable. Age, gender, race, and military service cannot be changed easily, but they can be manipulated by selective accounting and shrewd presentation of the facts.
Images are easiest to create early in a campaign when many people may not know much about a candidate. In some elections, voters are motivated to vote a certain way based on specific policy preferences, which is called issue voting.
Differentiate between issue voting and party voting and the reason s a voter would opt for one or the other. Rather than voting based on political ideologies, political parties, or candidates, sometimes voters cast votes based on specific policy preferences.
Issue Voting: Education : Some voters cast their ballots according to specific policy issues, for example, education reform. A voter does not need to have an in-depth understanding of every issue or know how a candidate stands on every issue, rather a voter should have a sense of which candidate he or she agrees with the most. Voters use many different tactics to rationalize their view on a particular issue. Some people look at what has happened in the past and predict how they think a particular issue will affect them in the future.
Issue voting is often contrasted with party voting. A University of California, Davis study found that voters switch between issue voting and party voting depending on how much information is available to them about a given candidate. Low-information elections, such as those for congressional candidates, would thus be determined by party voting, whereas presidential elections, which tend to give voters much more information about each candidate, have the potential to be issue-driven.
In order for an issue to create the foundation for party choice, a voter must first be concerned about a particular issue and have some knowledge about that issue.
In order for a person to be an issue voter, they must be able to recognize that there is more than one opinion about a particular issue, have formed a solid opinion about it, and be able to connect their opinion to a specific political party.
According to some studies, only 40 to 60 percent of the informed population even perceives party differences, and can thus partake in party voting. This would suggest that it is quite common for individuals to develop opinions of issues without the aid of a political party. Many factors can complicate issue voting. Firstly, issues are not always dichotomous; there are often many stances one could take.
Voters must often settle for the candidate whose stances are closest to their own. For example, education spending is a topic that is difficult to issue vote on. A voter may have a drastically different opinion from the available candidates on how much money should be spent on schools. This differing of opinion could lead the individual to vote based on party affiliation instead.
More importantly, the nation does not have to have a high level of consensus for some campaign issues to be more salient than others. A second complexity is that, oftentimes, problems do not line up on linear bases. That is, some issues may make it hard to even determine the candidate with the closest position. For example, in the United States presidential election, the growing threat of Communism in the Eastern Hemisphere was a salient issue for voters.
There were many proposed solutions to this problem. For instance, Ronald Reagan endorsed military intimidation through increased spending and innovation the Reagan doctrine , Jimmy Carter proposed diplomatic efforts to keep peace, and the independent John Anderson advocated a return to the containment strategy.
None of these answers are mutually-exclusive, and they cannot be linearly plotted. The voter instead had to choose the candidate whose opinion represented the closest mix of possible solutions to his or her own.
A third problem complication of issue voting is if there are multiple issues that are equally salient to the voter. A candidate may have a similar position to a given voter on one issue, but may take a considerably different stance on another. During United States presidential election, the two issues the dominated attention were the economy and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Many viewed these issues as equally salient, and had a hard time picking one issue to vote on. Privacy Policy. Skip to main content. Political Participation and Voting. Search for:. Why People Vote. Socioeconomic Factors Depending on socioeconomic factors like wealth, education, or occupation, people are more or less likely to vote. Learning Objectives Describe the relationship between socioeconomic status and voting behavior.
Key Takeaways Key Points Wealthier people are more likely to vote, as they generally possess the resources and time to be active in politics. Of all the socioeconomic factors impacting voter turnout, education has the greatest impact. The more educated a person is, the more likely they are to vote, as they have a better understanding of how the system works, how to influence the system, and why participation is important.
A person is more or less likely to vote depending on their occupation. Managerial or professional workers are more likely to vote, and the unemployed are the least likely group to vote. Key Terms vote : To cast a vote; to assert a formalised choice in an election. Exactly who is eligible varies by country, and should not be confused with the total adult population.
Additional Factors: Gender, Age, Religion, Race, and Ethnicity Certain factors like age, gender, race, and religion help describe why people vote and who is more likely to vote. Learning Objectives Describe the voting patterns of various demographic subsets of the American electorate. Key Takeaways Key Points Traditionally people ages 30 to 65 are most likely to vote, but recently young people have been coming out to the polls more frequently, in part due to mobilization via social media.
Since the s, women have voted as much or more than men, removing the idea that there is a gender gap in certain types of political participation like voting. Different ethnic groups also have unique voting trends. African-American voters vote as much as other voters of the same socioeconomic status, and Asian voters have lower voter turnout rates.
Because the Constitution did not specifically say who could vote, this question was largely left to the states into the s. In most cases, landowning white men were eligible to vote, while white women, black people, and other disadvantaged groups of the time were excluded from voting known as disenfranchisement. While no longer explicitly excluded, voter suppression is a problem in many parts of the country.
Some politicians try to win reelection by making it harder for certain populations and demographics to vote. These politicians may use strategies such as reducing polling locations in predominantly African American or Lantinx neighborhoods, or only having polling stations open during business hours, when many disenfranchised populations are working and unable to take time off.
It was not until the 15 th Amendment was passed in that black men were allowed to vote. But even so, many would-be voters faced artificial hurdles like poll taxes, literacy tests, and other measures meant to discourage them from exercising their voting right. This would continue until the 24 th Amendment in , which eliminated the poll tax, and the Voting Rights Act of , which ended Jim Crow laws. With these amendments removing the previous barriers to voting particularly sex and race , theoretically all American citizens over the age of 21 could vote by the mid s.
Later, in , the American voting age was lowered to 18, building on the idea that if a person was old enough to serve their country in the military, they should be allowed to vote.
Why Your Vote Matters If you ever think that just one vote in a sea of millions cannot make much of a difference, consider some of the closest elections in U. The election came down to a recount in Florida, where Bush had won the popular vote by such a small margin that it triggered an automatic recount and a Supreme Court case Bush v. In the end, Bush won Florida by 0. Had more pro-Gore voters gone to the polls in Florida that November, there may have been an entirely different president from — Your vote may not directly elect the president, but if your vote joins enough others in your voting district or county, your vote undoubtedly matters when it comes to electoral results.
There are also local and state elections to consider. While presidential or other national elections usually get a significant voter turnout, local elections are typically decided by a much smaller group of voters. A Portland State University study found that fewer than 15 percent of eligible voters were turning out to vote for mayors, council members, and other local offices.
Low turnout means that important local issues are determined by a limited group of voters, making a single vote even more statistically meaningful. You may not be able to walk into a voting booth, but there are things you can do to get involved:.
Participating in elections is one of the key freedoms of American life. Many people in countries around the world do not have the same freedom, nor did many Americans in centuries past. No matter what you believe or whom you support, it is important to exercise your rights. The audio, illustrations, photos, and videos are credited beneath the media asset, except for promotional images, which generally link to another page that contains the media credit. The Rights Holder for media is the person or group credited.
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