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USING PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORY TO PREDICT VOTING INTENTIONS
Author(s) -
Hennessy Michael,
Delli Carpini Michael X.,
Blank Michael B.,
Winneg Kenneth,
Jamieson Kathleen Hall
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
journal of community psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.585
H-Index - 86
eISSN - 1520-6629
pISSN - 0090-4392
DOI - 10.1002/jcop.21697
Subject(s) - voting , social psychology , respondent , normative , voting behavior , theory of reasoned action , psychology , action (physics) , ideology , variance (accounting) , ballot , politics , civic engagement , survey data collection , political science , economics , law , statistics , physics , mathematics , accounting , quantum mechanics
Voting is an essential component of civic engagement. To demonstrate the utility of a reasoned action approach to predict voting, we created an instrument that measured non‐normative political beliefs and voting intentions. We identified political beliefs and attitudes of the Republican Party, Democratic Party, Libertarian Party, Tea Party, and Occupy Wall Street Movement. A total of 2,637 participants from Mechanical Turk completed the survey using Survey Monkey. We identified the three political belief items best characterizing each political ideology and associated attitudes and beliefs. Regression analysis confirmed the utility of our approach to predict intentions to vote for candidates who were concordant with participants’ attitudes, beliefs, and norms. The reasoned action analyses accounted for a majority of the variance in intention to vote for candidates sharing respondent favored political beliefs and specific political positions. The study is the first to demonstrate that reasoned action approach is an effective tool for predicting civic engagement.