Why do Americans Vote the Way They Do?

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The right to vote, along with the freedom of speech, is a fundamental element of democratic political systems. Main intention of this essay is to examine literature and surf the web in order to provide a personal-opinionated answer to a question: Why do Americans vote the way they do? A question may be broken down into segments, each of a different meaning, yet same great significance towards Americans’ attitude towards voting. For example, why do Americans vote the way they do or rather why is there such low electoral turnout, in other words why so many Americans don’t vote?

America’s voter turnout has been significantly lower than in many other states throughout the recent years. For example, Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward prove this fact in their Voter Turnout Percentages in Democratic Nations (Most Regent Major National Elections as of 1983 Table. Voter Turnout in States (53%) is much lower than that of Belgium (95%), Luxembourg (89%), United Kingdom (76%) and others, setting it on 23rd place among other major democratic nations. So why the world’s strongest and richest state is so casual when it comes to choosing its leader?

Only a little more than half of the eligible population votes in presidential elections and fewer still vote in off-year elections. Moreover, those who vote are different in important respects from those who do not. Voters are better off and better educated, and non-voters are poorer and less well educated. Higher education means higher political capability. According to Piven and Cloward, this has been true for the most of XXth century. It is believed that higher percentage of well-educated citizens will lead to government take citizen’s opinions into account when making decisions, which in turn will affect citizens’ belief that they can affect the way the government works. There are some voting generalizations that are based mainly on differences between age, minority and gender groups. For example, it is believed that voting is more frequent to middle-aged people, it is a class-based activity, whites vote with greater frequency than blacks and hispanic people and people who work for the government are more likely to vote. Luckily society seemed to have overstepped the barrier between male and female population voting ratios in the recent years (that being mainly the second half of XXth century).

So what influences the way Americans vote?

A recent poll ran by The California Voting Foundation (CFV) found that family and friends influence how infrequent voters decide to vote as much as daily newspapers and TV news. Among infrequent voters, 65 percent said conversations with their families and local newspapers were “influential sources of information when it comes to making voting decisions”. Network TV news rated as influential among 64 percent, followed by cable TV news at 60 percent, and conversations with friends at 59 percent. Apparently, more than half of the infrequent voters surveyed, phone calls and door-to-door contact ...