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Consideration Sets and Political Choices: A Heterogeneous Model of Vote Choice and Sub-national Party Strength

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Abstract

This paper brings to political science a new decision-making model based on research in consumer behavior. Individuals do not necessarily make choices from the universe of alternatives; rather, they choose from a “consideration set,” a notion derived from both utility maximization and information processing theories. Here I apply a model of heterogeneous consideration sets to voting in the 2000 Mexican national election. I argue that the sub-national variation in the strength of Mexican parties leads to heterogeneous consideration sets, resulting in individuals with identical issue preferences and personal attributes making different voting decisions. Application of this model provides both interesting substantive conclusions about vote choice in Mexico and a more general theoretical innovation regarding vote choice.

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Notes

  1. The term consideration set comes from Wright and Barbour (1977).

  2. See Roberts and Nedungadi (1995) for a discussion of the differences between these approaches.

  3. I use the term party system to mean the set of competitive parties in a region. In the 1940s, the party system in the US South was different from that in the North. Although the national party system was a competitive two-party, at the sub-national-level, there were multiple party systems.

  4. In actuality, Alvarez and Nagler (1995) argue that Perot’s presence in the race benefited Clinton.

  5. The 1997 election data come from the web site of the Instituto Federal Electoral (http://www.ife.org.mx).

  6. Two exceptions are Hiskey and Bowler (2005) and Hiskey and Canache (2005), which look at the effects of local context on participation and sub-national institutional change in the 2000 election.

  7. An excellent more recent project on Mexican voting is the volume edited by Domínguez and Lawson (2004). While the book is eclectic, a number of pieces in it still conceptualize Mexican vote choice as the two-step process posited by Domínguez and McCann (see especially the chapter by Klesner).

  8. Participants in the Mexico 2000 Panel Study included (in alphabetical order): Miguel Basañez, Roderic Camp, Wayne Cornelius, Jorge Domínguez, Federico Estévez, Joseph Klesner, Chappell Lawson (Principal Investigator), Beatriz Magaloni, James McCann, Alejandro Moreno, Pablo Parás, and Alejandro Poiré. Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation (SES-9905703) and Reforma newspaper. Sampling techniques and survey procedures available on Chappell Lawson’s website: http://web.mit.edu/polisci/faculty/C.Lawson.html.

  9. These results are available from the author.

  10. The average difference in non-response/don’t knows for questions about the PRD and Cardenas between strong and weak PRD states is 31%. The average difference for questions about the PAN and Fox is 42%.

  11. The results in this paper are robust across different waves of the panel data and using past vote share as a measure of party strength, but there are concerns about possible endogenity.

  12. Magaloni and Poiré find 51 strategic voters. I cannot replicate this finding using their described method unless I consider each wave separately. Doing so would overestimate strategic voting. For example, a PRD identifier who intends to vote for the PRD in wave 1 but intends to vote for the PRI in waves 2, 3, and 4 would be counted three times. This would also code PRD identifiers who indicate a vote preference for the PAN in wave 2, but report their actual vote for the PRD in wave 4 as strategic voters. In order to avoid this over-counting I use the voter as the unit of analysis rather than the voter-panel. Thus strategic voters are PRD identifiers who intend to vote for the PRD in panel 1 but their last measured vote intention is for the PAN or PRI.

  13. Fox and Cárdenas were actually candidates for the major parties in coalitions.

  14. I use “conditional” to refer to models with attributes of both the choice and the individual.

  15. For a more detailed discussion of the models and the IIA assumption, see Alvarez and Nagler (1995, 1998); Greene (1997, Chapter 19); Hausman and McFadden (1984); Hausman and Wise (1978); and Whitten and Palmer (1996, Appendix).

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the helpful suggestions of Marianne Stewart, J. Matthew Wilson, Elizabeth J. Zechmeister and the anonymous reviewers.

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  1. Economic, Political and Policy Sciences, University of Texas at Dallas, GR31, P.O. Box 830688, Richardson, TX, 75083-0688, USA

    Carole J. Wilson

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Wilson, C.J. Consideration Sets and Political Choices: A Heterogeneous Model of Vote Choice and Sub-national Party Strength. Polit Behav 30, 161–183 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-007-9045-6

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