Voters aren't Stupid
DIIULIO, JOHN J. Jr.
Voters Aren't Stupid by John J. DiIulio, Jr. AS THE 96 ELECTION SEASON HEATS UP, policy elites of both parties are wondering out loud about the intelligence of the electorate, whether voters can...
...Meanwhile, the country's few remaining yellow dog Democrats were voting for Clinton because he was a Democrat, and the thickening ranks of rock-ribbed Republicans were voting against him because he was not a Republican...
...First, recall that the American tradition of attacking one's political opponents is at least as old as the Federalist attack on the defenders of the Articles of Confederation as "Anti-Federalists...
...support for the proposition that the average worker is not fairly paid increased from 26.6 percent to 40.4 percent...
...Warts and all, the system works because the people play their part...
...First, there are parties' and candidates' real or perceived positions on policy questions-extend affirmative action or end it, protect life or the right to abortion, increase foreign aid or cut it, balance the budget now, later, or never...
...And there is a second crime connection...
...Still others may have voted in valence terms, for Clinton (new blood...
...Others, however, don't want the voters to shut up...
...In 1988, Public Agenda conducted a deliberative poll of 422 Alabama residents that pushed support for incarcerating armed robbers and shooters down 12 points, for incarcerating burglars down 49 points...
...In my view, however, the American people do not deserve to be either bashed by pundits or reeducated by issues experts...
...Those who are not informed and don't vote but still "crab, bitch, and kvetch" about government Cohen advises to "just shut up...
...James Fishkin of the University of Texas at Austin concluded that the untutored voice of the American people is not "a voice worth listening to...
...So it's not the economy, stupid...
...opposition to cutting foreign aid rose from 9.3 percent to 20.6 percent...
...They examine the rival candidates' views on the issues of the day and then cast their ballots (or file their columns) accordingly...
...Virtually all of the evidence shows that the American people are not easily duped by high-paid media spin doctors or political consultants...
...After intensive briefings, many participants changed their views...
...Not really...
...Such blathering ignorance ought to be condemned...
...Sure enough, support for the flat tax among Fishkin's "truly representative sample of the American people" fell from 43.5 percent to 29.8 percent...
...Whether induced by negative ads or other things, the decision not to vote can be as much a rational act of political self-expression and self-interest as the decision to vote...
...Others may have voted retrospectively for Clinton, about whom they knew nothing, because they were hurting economically and Bush hadn't helped them...
...Most citizen-voters can filter out bogus information and smell a rat in candidate's clothing...
...Voters universally disapprove of all these, just as they universally approve of rising standards of living, love of country, and honesty in office...
...Crime was not on the Austin agenda, but Fishkin has written glowingly of a 1994 British deliberative poll that saw support for fighting crime through incarceration drop from 57 percent to 37 percent...
...A study just published by political scientists Stephen Ansolabehere and Shanto Iyengar, based on experiments involving 3,500 potential voters, confirms that the main effect of "going negative" is not to change voters' minds or weaken partisan loyalties but to make voters more likely to sit out an election...
...Ronald Reagan encouraged voters to do this in 1980, when he asked them whether they were better off than they had been four years earlier...
...There is no constituency for economic distress, unpatriotic beliefs, or using public office for private gain...
...He was appealing to them for a retrospective vote...
...and support for increasing foreign aid rose from 36.1 percent to 50.7 percent...
...It's that the voters aren't stupid, stupid...
...is director of the Brookings Institution's Center for Public Management and adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute...
...In the three decades since he wrote, the best empirical studies of political participation in the United States have found that average Americans are quite capable of figuring out their own values and needs in relation to electoral politics and policy choices...
...Such a poll could allow a country, "acting through an engaged microcosm, to offer itself advice at a moment when it can make a real difference-before a primary, referendum or general election...
...That's why we have constitutional machinery built to restrain and refine the will of temporary voting majorities but empower the will of majorities that persist through staggered legislative elections, presidential contests, and judicial appointments...
...Rival candidates and parties try to get voters to think of the other side in negative valence terms and of themselves in positive valence terms...
...To be sure, media mavens and policy wonks make a living debating "the issues...
...In January, Fishkin-backed by distinguished bipartisan advisers, diverse funders, and PBS-held a National Issues Convention in Austin...
...Political scientists call these "valence" issues, and increasingly electoral victory turns on them...
...Which of these voters should be counted as unreasonable, irrational, or uninformed...
...It's as old as the charge that Thomas Jefferson was a "howling atheist" and that Grover Cleveland had fathered a child out of wedlock (he had...
...We the people look at how things have gone in the recent past and then vote for the incumbent if we like what has happened, against the incumbent if we don't...
...Still, "The good news is that the more a person knows, the more he's likely to vote...
...But there are other issues that do not pose either-or policy choices and do not divide the electorate along partisan or ideological lines...
...In his 1966 classic The Responsible Electorate, the late Harvard political scientist V.O...
...or against him (bad character...
...A central message of the empirical literature on national elections is that most citizens-whether they are moved by position issues, valence issues, or both- make political choices that coherently reflect their personal views and interests...
...In his 1991 book Democracy and Deliberation, Prof...
...They want them to wise up, and they're willing to teach...
...These include resolute leadership, political corruption, a robust economy, and good character...
...Briefing materials for the Austin conference were prepared in part by Public Agenda, a Manhattan research organization...
...Spared the "steady drumbeat of sound bites and paid advertising," they were offered instead three days of all-expenses-paid "deliberation" about "the economy, the state of the family, and America's role in a post-cold war world...
...Average citizens vote retrospectively...
...Inside-the-Beltway pundits, political activists, and people whose ideology governs their voting decisions need to know all that and more, because they tend to vote prospectively...
...But there are at least two types of issue that matter in a representative democracy...
...That's why James Madison and company gave us a representative democracy designed so that leaders mediate, not mirror, public views...
...I say, none...
...Key analyzed voters who switched parties from one presidential election to another and found that most of them switched in a direction perfectly consistent with their own beliefs and interests...
...Princeton's Professor John J. DiIulio, Jr...
...In his 1981 book Retrospective Voting, Harvard political scientist Morris Fiorina echoed Key's insight that the electorate could learn a good deal of what it needed to reach an informed decision simply by monitoring the performance of those in power...
...Some 459 randomly selected citizens accepted an invitation to "grapple with key issues by engaging in serious dialogue with each other and with presidential candidates...
...Still, aren't the American people misled by eight-second sound bites and super-negative ads...
...According to a recent textbook by political scientists Edward S. Greenberg and Benjamin I. Page, "recent research has indicated that Americans' collective policy preferences react rather sensibly to events, to changing circumstances, to new information, so that we can speak of a 'rational public.'" Indeed we can...
...But most folks are not political junkies or party activists...
...Key concluded, "Voters are not fools...
...AS THE 96 ELECTION SEASON HEATS UP, policy elites of both parties are wondering out loud about the intelligence of the electorate, whether voters can tell a Clinton from a Dole, and how much average folks know about "the issues...
...Key's responsible electorate was no mirage...
...These "position" issues are what political journalists, think tankers, and strategists eat, sleep, and scold the voters for not knowing or caring enough about...
...Thus, in 1992 some Americans may have voted prospectively and in position-issue terms for Clinton because they had read up on his middle-class tax-cut plan and liked it better than Bush's alternative...
...A remedy Fishkin has championed is the "deliberative poll," designed to "sample public opinion toward specific issues both before and after people have had the opportunity to learn about and discuss those issues...
...Unlike an old-fashioned opinion survey, referendum, or election, a deliberative poll "overcomes the conditions that foster rational ignorance," Fishkin writes...
...By the end, most participants did not want most criminals locked up for most crimes...
...His pioneering research painted "an image of an electorate moved by concern about central and relevant questions of public policy, of governmental performance, and of executive personality...
...For starters, you don't need to know the names of your senators or how much gets spent on what to participate well and vote rationally...
...Still, it remains true that voters are not Wise Men, and whatever the issue, the tyranny of the majority is always a threat...
...Most Americans think Washington spends more on foreign aid than it does on Medicare, sniffed Cohen...
...In a recent Washington Post column, for example, Richard Cohen called America "the dumbest nation on earth," a country "peopled by dolts who bellow at their government" but can't even name their senators...
Vol. 1 • March 1996 • No. 27
