How do voters make decisions? In many of my political science, statistics and sociology courses, we have considered how identity, economics, history and world views converge to impact political perceptions and voter choice. This summer, I had the unique opportunity to work with Professor Ryan Dawkins in the Political Science department who is currently collaborating with Professor Adam Cayton from the University of West Florida to write a book about how partisanship and polarization impacts democracy. I supported their project with data interpretation and research and this experience helped me form a more holistic understanding of voter choice in the United States.
At the start of the summer, my initial focus was data interpretation. I used rstudio to code data from the American National Election Studies and the Cooperative Congressional Election Study in order to facilitate the creation of graphs and tables for one quantitative section of the book. This particular chapter explores how American citizens think about politics using Ellis’ and Stimson’s theory of “operational-symbolic disconnect” as a framework. This suggests that political parties operate on two levels, a symbolic level that is focused on identity and ideology, as well as an operational level that is manifested in concrete policies and actions.
I gained experience coding and cleaning the CCES data in order to inform a bivariate OLS regression that examines the distribution of operational ideology among voters identifying as liberal, moderate and conservative. The findings suggest that most self-identifying liberals and moderates have overwhelmingly liberal policy preferences and most conservatives have generally moderate policy preferences. This was an interesting discovery as it suggests that voter identity does not always align with policy preferences.
The second portion of the summer was research-oriented. My primary goal was creating a literature review that explored recent research on the ways in which intersectional identity impacts voting blocs and voter turnout. I found it fascinating to do a deep dive into this complex issue. Not only was it interesting to read the literature that had been published on intersectionality and voter choice, but it was just as informative to notice the absences in the literature where there is room to grow this conversation. Researching this unique and important issue as well as contributing my own thoughts to this academic conversation provided me with a rich and meaningful summer experience. I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to investigate and explore these academic questions and I look forward to continuing these academic conversations!