I have questions about Swing Voters

[CTLawGuy]

1. Do they really pay attention to politics in more than a nominal sense?
2. Are they ideological, or practical?
3. Are they any less likely to vote than members of a party's base?
4. Could they be represented by any party or organized political group?
5. Are they monolithic, or diverse in opinion? (IOW, can they really be talked about as a single unit - swing voters)
6. Do they like candidates who have clear opinions which are zealously defended, or do they like candidates who don't rock the boat or stick their necks out?
7. Can they motivated to vote AGAINST someone, or only FOR someone? Will they vote if they dislike both candidates?
8. Where do they get their ideas about politics?
9. What would they do if given a choice between two extremist candidates, vote for the lesser of two evils, or stay home?
10. Is America tilted to the right of center on the world political spectrum?

[Mattforclark]

1. Ann Coulter once said something vaguely intelligent

"Swing voters are more appropriately known as the 'idiot voters' because they have no set of philosophical principles. By the age of fourteen, you're either a Conservative or a Liberal if you have an IQ above a toaster."

She of course presents "liberal" and "conservative" as the only possible sets of philosophical principles, however.

"2. Are they ideological, or practical?"

If they were practical, they would vote D. I don't feel fully qualified to answer the rest of your questions. :evilgrin:

[Lauren2882]

2. Some attempts at answers...

1. Actually they pay less attention, I believe.
2. They are not ideological, but I don't know about practical.
3. I think so (but I'm not completely sure).
4. Probably not ... the reason for the hesitancy in this answer is because of the speculative nature of the question, not any haziness of knowledge of the facts on my part.
5. I would say diverse.
6. I have no idea ... this characteristic might not make a difference at all.
7. Again, don't know.
8. The same places the rest of us do, for the most part: TV, print, & Internet news, friends & associates, upbringing... I think the difference lies more in the way its processed.
9. I don't know.
10. Well, we're to the right of almost all of Western Europe (save Spain and perhaps Portugal?), and I think it's difficult to compare our politics those of other socities on a single spectrum given the multitude of varying circumstances (in economies, culture, etc.)

These are good questions. I feel a little dumb that I can't come up with good answers to many of them, having received a degree in political science and all. But I do think for some of them, the research just isn't out there, or isn't definitive, or else the nature of the question is too speculative. A book published in 1960 titled The American Voter is a good place to start if you're interested in learning more about this.... that book kinda started public opinion research as we know it.

[ConservativeDemocrat]

3. My answers...

1. Typically, they pay much less attention, skipping all but the presidential election years.

2. All over the map. Some are ideological, some practical.

3. Typically they are less likely, but this depends on the situation. Sometimes the base is mad, or worse - satisfied, and so doesn't bother to vote.

4. Many have tried. Perot comes to mind. But typically they voe for people, not organizations. Jessie Ventura is an example.

5. Diverse. Some don't care. Some care, but have been convinced that "all politicians care about is themselves". Some have deep feelings, but are whiners - even voting is too much for them. Many think that a single vote doesn't matter, so why bother?

6. All American voters say they want the former, but that is only until they themselves get offended.

7. Many swing voters have a negative attitude. So they not only can be motivated to vote against someone, voting against someone can often be their only motivation. That said, if they don't like both candidates, they'll just stay home. Swing voters tend not to "hold their nose" while voting.

8. Mass media, largely. Dirty negative ad campaigns (they tend to believe any smear).

9. Stay home. Unless there were some other ballot issues that brought them out.

10. On the cultural axis, the U.S. is far to the right of all other developed nations, much closer to the belief systems currently prevalent in the developing world. If you substituted Jesus for Mohammad, you'd find the views of the Christian Right and the Wahabbist branch of Islam to be extremely similar. On the economic axis, we are to the right of everyone (although not extremely so).

- C.D.

[Lexingtonian]

4. we all have questions about swing voters

but, to answer 1.-9., by definition they're indecisive and all over the map on everything else.

Your question 10. is the most interesting. It's hard to say, really, but during the '90s most well-governed countries voted in right wing governments after a long period of mostly mucky, oscillating, moderate conservatives.

Mucky centrism was more or less a necessity of the Cold War- governments had to be ready to wage war on a few days' notice, so they couldn't dare too much reordering of the society. On the other hand, they had to keep on giving their Left and undertrodden small pieces of what they wanted at some fairly constant rate so that internal problems emanating out of an outdated social ordering wouldn't explode on them.

The shift Right after the Cold War was kind of inevitable. All the countries spent the middle and late Cold War going into and through technical and economic change (the Eastern Bloc countries later than the Western ones) that took them to the end of the Industrial Age economy. They stalled ideologically and psychologically. And at the end of the Cold War you have a quasi-generational split- two generations are generally defined by WW2 and the middle of the Cold War, largely unable to get beyond its conventions, and both differ from one defined by the late Cold War (and able to mentally emerge from it to some fairly large degree). In the U.S. the relevant separation point is demarcated as 'The Sixties'. In 1990-95 most societies stopped worrying about threats from outside forces and went back to their internal business, neglected to a serious degree since the 1940s. And so the internal detente broke down and the older two voter generations, roughly the Right, outnumbered the youngest one everywhere. It's a conflict of Modern versus pre-Modern attitudes - post-theism versus theism, really- at bottom.

But it wasn't a very large numerical advantage for the Right- around 60/40 in 1990 in the U.S. And as the pre-WW2 generation starts dying out but the cultural-political demarcation point remains fixed, the ratio starts to shift as new young voters join in. The U.S. tipping point was the 2000 elections, which was a pretty pure and unadulterated matchup of the two sides (not convoluted with e.g. incumbency)- Bush 48, Gore 48.5 (should have been 49). But it was close enough that the Right's control of governmental establishments eked out a win for the Right.

Zapatero's win in Spain was the first big tipping in Europe, I think, and Fox's victory in 1998 in Mexico and Lula's in Brazil in 2003 are also important. (Notice how young voters won it for Zapatero.) The U.S. is overdue for tipping, Great Britain is also very close, Italy is pretty close, Germany and France are slouching their way through in anti-climactic fashion it seems (maybe the EU expansion they permitted is the statement/counterpoint). Something is doing in Taiwan, Korea is close to some major change, Australia is fermenting against its right wing government. Israel seems a decade behind the West, Russia and South Africa appear to be on some schedule not coupled strongly to that of the West.

In short, Zapatero is right. A whole slew of Right wing governments are going get tossed out of office during the rest of the decade. I think the technological change is such that the traditional Left isn't going to be winners- it's the moderate Left that's going to have to clean up the mess left by the Right, worldwide. But good government is only popular until things are fixed up, clean, and humming- then it's time for the next house trashing party....