Idiosyncratic Issue Opinion and Political Choice

Abstract

What is the nature of mass opinion on public policies? And what role do citizens’ policy opinions play in their political choices? This book re-examines these questions, which lie at the heart of fundamental debates concerning whether democratic elections can make policymakers responsive to citizens’ policy preferences. Prevailing answers to these questions tend to reflect one of two contrasting perspectives. The ‘ideological voter’ account suggests that citizens’ opinions across different policies are ideologically organised, so that political choice reduces to comparing positions on a small number of ideological dimensions. This simplifies democratic policy responsiveness. The ‘innocent voter’ account suggests that most citizens lack meaningful policy opinions on most issues. They express policy opinions that lack stability and ideological organisation, except where they simply mimic the policies espoused by the parties they support. This severely limits democratic policy responsiveness. This book argues for a third perspective: an ‘idiosyncratic voter’ account. This says that citizens develop meaningful policy opinions on different sets of issues, but the combinations of opinions they form on those issues are often idiosyncratic rather than ideologically organised. An analysis of panel survey data from Britain shows that both the ideological and innocent voter accounts do explain important aspects of mass policy opinion and political choice. Nonetheless, idiosyncratic policy opinion is also widespread and significantly shapes political choices. This means that idiosyncratic opinion serves alongside ideological opinion as an additional starting point for democratic policy responsiveness. Yet it also means that electoral politics is highly multidimensional and therefore volatile.