Dollars and Sense: Does Economic Self-Interest or Emotional Attachment Better Explain Vote Choice?

摘要

This paper seeks to understand voter choice using a dichotomous model differentiating between economic self-interest and emotional attachment. Using survey data from the American National Election Studies (ANES) database, this paper first utilizes a unique scaling technique and then a pseudo R-Square method to determine which independent variable, economic self-interest or emotional attachment (affect), contains more explanatory power in predicting voter choice. The findings support the hypothesis that economic self-interest contains the most explanatory power in predicting voter choice, though the degree of difference varies across elections.