Issue Voting
Rather than voting based on political ideologies, political parties, or candidates, sometimes voters cast votes based on specific policy preferences. In "issue voting," voters cast their vote based primarily on specific political issues . In the context of an election, issues include "any questions of public policy which have been or are a matter of controversy and are sources of disagreement between political parties." According to the theory of issue voting, voters vote based on policy preferences; they compare the candidates' respective principles against their own in order to decide who to vote for.
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 2010 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.
A voter's understanding of parties' principles is strengthened and developed over time as a person gains experience with more political events. 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.
Complications with Issue Voting
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. This can prove difficult when two or more candidates have similar opinions, or when candidates have positions that are equally far from a voter's beliefs. 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 1980 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 2008 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.
Issue Voting: War in Afghanistan
Some voters vote for a candidate based on that candidate's stance on a particular issue, such as the war in Afghanistan or healthcare.