RAPID - Valence Politics Meets Position Issues: The Dynamics of Electoral Choice in America, 2008-2010

拟议的数据收集是由意想不到的事件和条件，提供了一个重要的机会，以促进对影响美国和其他当代成熟的民主国家的选举选择的因素的科学认识的动机。 智力优势：这项研究利用了2008年全国六波美国选民调查提供的独特资源，研究了在这个有趣而重要的历史时期影响选举选择和变化的因素。 研究的重点是竞争对手的价格和空间模型的选举选择的解释力。 虽然空间模型的特点是立场问题，划分选民，效价模型的基础上，最近的研究在政治心理学和行为经济学强调选民的判断的重要性，对竞争对手的政党的能力，提供显着的和广泛同意的政策目标。 这些政党表现的判断，连同线索（政治学）提供了选民的政党领导人的形象和潜在的可变党派附件，是选举选择的效价政治模型的主要组成部分。 对美国和其他地方的投票行为的实证研究表明，效价模型优于空间竞争对手。尽管效价问题通常主导着选举议程，但它们的优势并不是注定的。 新的立场问题可能会变得突出，已经在政治议程上的问题可能会随着时间的推移从价转变为立场问题（反之亦然）。 今年早些时候，这种转变出乎意料地发生了，从而为研究政治问题的演变如何影响选举选择提供了一个极好的机会。 拟议中的研究将使竞争对手的效价和投票行为的空间理论的解释力的测试，在政治背景下，正在塑造辩论的几个主要问题的权衡条款，在异常尖锐的方式。 这些问题包括经济、环境（因墨西哥湾漏油事件而戏剧化）、医疗保健、移民和阿富汗战争。 拟议的数据收集扩展了2008年进行的六波全国调查，另外两波调查涵盖2010年中期国会选举。 由此产生的多波面板数据集允许编组先进的统计技术，如混合马尔可夫潜在类分析和潜在增长曲线分析，以调查这些问题如何影响2008-2010年期间的选举选择的动态。更广泛的影响：该研究侧重于当代美国政治中极其重要的实质性问题-经济，环境，医疗保健和移民。旨在解决这些问题的公共政策对美国人的生活质量有重大影响，并具有全球影响。在一个月内扭转数据的能力具有潜在的变革性，因为它提供了科学有效的数据，可以迅速告知学术界和政策界这些不同因素的重要性。

The proposed data collection is motivated by unanticipated events and conditions that provide a significant opportunity to advance scientific understanding of factors affecting electoral choice in the United States and other contemporary mature democracies. Intellectual Merit: The study leverages unique resources provided by a 2008 national six-wave survey of the American electorate to study factors affecting electoral choice and change during this interesting and important historical period. The research focuses on the explanatory power of rival valence and spatial models of electoral choice. Whereas spatial models feature positional issues that divide the electorate, valence models based on recent research in political psychology and behavioral economics emphasize the importance of voters' judgments about rival parties' abilities to deliver salient and widely agreed upon policy goals. These party performance judgments, together with cues (heuristics) provided voters' images of party leaders and potentially mutable partisan attachments, are the major components of the valence politics model of electoral choice. Empirical research on voting behavior in the United States and elsewhere demonstrates that valence models outperform spatial rivals.Although valence issues typically dominate electoral agendas, their preeminence is not foreordained. Novel positional issues may gain salience and issues already on the political agenda may be transformed from valence to positional ones (or vice versa) over time. Such a transformation occurred in an unanticipated way earlier this year, thus providing an excellent opportunity to study how the evolution of political issues affects electoral choice. The proposed research will enable tests of the explanatory power of rival valence and spatial theories of voting behavior in a political context that is shaping debate about several major issues in trade-off terms in unusually sharp ways. These issues include the economy, the environment (dramatized by the Gulf of Mexico oil spill), health care, immigration, and the war in Afghanistan. The proposed data collection extends a six-wave national survey conducted in 2008 with two additional survey waves bracketing the 2010 mid-term congressional elections. The resulting multiwave panel data set permits the marshalling of advanced statistical techniques such as mixed Markov latent class analyses and latent growth curve analysis to investigate how these issues affect the dynamics of electoral choice over the 2008-2010 period. Broader Impact: The research focuses on extremely important substantive issues in contemporary American politics--the economy, the environment, health care, and immigration. Public policies designed to address these issues have major effects on Americans' quality of life, and have global ramifications. The capacity to turn the data around within a month is potentially transformative because it makes scientifically valid data available that can quickly inform the academic and policy communities about the importance of these different factors.