Bandwagon Effect On Elections

According to the UCLA Theory of Parties, most voters are inattentive of politics. The Huffington Post reports that 73% of Americans admitted to not caring about politics to any extent in 2015, yet about 60% actually vote (Jackson). Americans have the mindset instilled in their heads from a young age that voting is a civic duty, yet so many are uninterested in government. The act of voting takes a significantly less amount of time than becoming informed of candidates and their policies, so many voters simply show up to vote uneducated. Achen, Bartels, and Somin are correct in their argument that public policy has no effect on elections due to the irrational ignorance of voters from information shortcuts. In American politics, there are four

The bandwagon effect occurs due to voters supporting a candidate solely because he or she is regarded as popular or successful. Generally, the candidates who wins the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary experience the impacts of the bandwagon effect, otherwise known as momentum. The winning candidates gain free publicity from media, which increases their national visibility. Name recognition can be established, which is where the candidate becomes a household name. After winning the early primaries, this heightened coverage leads to the trend following voters to follow the media and support the popular candidates. For example, the bandwagon effect was experienced in the 2004 Democratic election between John Kerry and Howard Dean. Throughout the year of 2003, Dean was the front-runner with the majority of polls ranking him as first place. However, Kerry pulled ahead and won the Iowa caucus and New Hampshire primary. Because of this momentum, more Americans hopped on the bandwagon and supported Kerry to the point where he won most of the other states and became the Democratic Party’s nominee of 2004 (Schnabel). The bandwagon effect is an easy source for voters to become familiar with candidates, but not informed of the important information of their

Many Americans look at a candidate’s past performance and are more interested in policy outcomes rather than policy instruments. One aspect that voters scrutinize is the nature of the times and what state the economy is in during election time, what Somin refers to as sociotropic voting (Somin). When the economy is doing relatively well, Americans are more likely to reelect the incumbent candidate than if the nation was in a recession. The complication with this sort of ignorant voting is that the average American who is unknowledgeable in economics cannot tell what factors affect the economy; whether it was from the policies of the current government, the predecessors’ policies, or uncontrollable circumstances outside of the government. For example, in 2008, President George W. Bush was not up for reelection because he had already served two terms. But if he was, Bush would have been treated significantly more harsh by voters than they treated John McCain (Donovan). McCain and democratic nominee Barack Obama were running closely in the race during the majority of 2008 until September when the Wall Street meltdown occurred. Even though that catastrophe was not directly Bush’s fault, Americans still blamed it on him, causing his approval ratings to significantly drop. According to experts from the University of Buffalo, Bush would have been considerably behind Obama in the polls from