In this essay, I will explore how voters use credibility, an elites opinion, and others opinions from soft news to establish confirmation of their own opinion.

 People watch more television than anything else; their free time became their television time. Voters lack information or data therefore information shortcuts is a way for them to assess candidates, evaluate information in media, and run tallies on political parties. There are three types of shortcuts: evaluating, obtaining, and storing. Evaluating is when a person turns to other people’s opinions because they are uncertain. People use late night talk shows or entertainment oriented shows to get their information. Many tend to turn to elite opinion leaders on talk shows such as The Tonight Show, The Colbert Show, The View, etc. People trust these entertainment figures and usually confirm their own opinions after hearing theirs hence making the elite opinion leaders with a lot of power. Media provides information in which people obtain and that information is validated after it is discussed with others. Soft news programs covers the basic bottom line of issues, they do not go through the traditional political detail as hard news would. Information shortcuts save people effort in searching for facts.

Party identification is an example of an information shortcut. People judge a party by their own past and future benefits from the party. Candidates and parties use this as a medium to promote their campaigns because people use this as a shortcut for they both share the same ideologies. A change in one’s party identification is usually really rare, and if it does so happen, it is a slow process. People change their party identification when they feel that there is a change in economic and political conditions. For that reason, people do not vote for the common good but rather in the interest of themselves and their personal life conditions. Voters evaluate how well parties deal with different issues from their past performance. They want to make sure that these candidates are competent, sincere, and trustworthy. People will want to vote for the candidate with the position nearest to theirs and with the same preferences in policy. People care more about moral character when they are uncertain of a candidate.