Models of voting behavior | Political participation | US government and civics | Khan Academy

What we're going to do in this video is start to think about voting behavior. In particular, we're going to start classifying motivations for why someone votes for a particular candidate. I'm going to introduce some terms that will impress your political science friends, but you'll see that they map to things that we see every day or even behaviors that we see in ourselves in a pretty intuitive way.

So one pretty clear reason why someone might vote for one candidate or another is because of their political party. This would be referred to as party line voting. Party line voting means that if your family has always been a Republican and you're a Republican, you just always support the Republican candidate. That would be party line voting.

Now, another behavior that political scientists will often talk about is the idea of rational choice. Rational choice is the idea that someone would choose to vote for one candidate or another based on a perception of which candidate is going to benefit them the most. Essentially, which one would it be rational for their own well-being?

For example, if you said, “Hey, you know what? I really care about the corporate tax rate. I'm the CEO of a corporation. If my corporate tax rate were to go down, then I would be able to have a more thriving business. I think one candidate is going to do better for me on the corporate tax rate, so I'm going to vote for them because of that.” That would be your rational choice. Your model, your reasoning behind your voting behavior is based on what's going to benefit you.

Now, another classification that you will hear talked about is retrospective voting. Retrospective voting is the idea that you will vote for someone if it seems like they've been doing a good job, or if it seems like things have been improving under their watch. You're looking in retrospect. This will often be for incumbents, saying, “Hey look, yeah, the last term was pretty good with them, so I'm going to vote for them again.”

Now the last classification we will introduce in this video is the opposite of retrospective voting, and this is looking into the future: prospective voting. Prospective voting means looking at one candidate and saying, “Look, I think that they will be better for the country over the next four years.” You’re not even necessarily thinking about your own personal benefit; you're thinking about the country as a whole. But you're looking forward, you're looking prospectively and thinking about which candidate you believe is going to do a better job, so you're going to vote for her.

So with these classifications out of the way, let's look at some statements that you might hear from folks when they think about who they are voting for. So here it says, “The economy has been growing under Clinton, so he has my vote.”

Pause this video, and how would you classify this motivation for voting? Well, here, the voter is talking about the economy in the recent past. So this is retrospective voting. I’ll draw a line right over there: that is retrospective voting. Clinton seems to have been doing a good job, or the economy's been going under him, so he has my vote.

Now, what about this statement: “I am a lifelong Democrat, so Obama has my vote”?

Pause this video. What type of voting behavior is that? Here, the individual is clearly motivated by their party line. They're not talking about Obama being good for them in particular; they're not talking about what Obama’s going to do in the future or what he's done in the recent past. They're just talking about his party, and that being the motivation for voting for him. So that would be party line voting.

Now what about this statement: “Bush has ideas that will be really good for this country, so I'm going to vote for him”?

Pause this video. What type of voting behavior is that? Here, the voter is thinking prospectively—thinking about what will Bush do for the country in the near future. Ideas that will be really good for this country—so that is prospective voting.

And then one more example: if someone were to say, “I think Mitt Romney will lower my taxes, so I'm going to vote for him,” what would that be?

Pause the video again. Well, we have one choice left here, and that is indeed rational choice. This voter is voting based on what is going to benefit them. Mitt Romney is going to lower their taxes, so they're going to vote for him.

To be clear, it's not that everyone's behavior falls clearly into one of these categories. It oftentimes will be a mix of these categories. In fact, oftentimes someone might say, “Hey, I like Obama because he's a Democrat, and I think he's going to be good for me. Things might have been good under him, or the perception is that things are good under him, and they might believe that it's going to be good going forward.” Many voters will be motivated by a combination of these factors.