Shared Attributes Between the Voter and the Candidate: a Look at the Us 2008 Democratic Primary Election
Shared Attributes between the Voter and the Candidate: A Look at the US 2008 Democratic Primary Election
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Jeffrey J. Lindstrom
Introduction
The correlations between a candidate running for election and a voter who participates in the election, in terms of support and participation, often involve the use of shared attributes to explain how said correlations have an impact on the outcome of the election. In a representative democracy such as the United States, the belief is that those who vote in elections wield the power to select government officials, who then in turn create, uphold, or interpret the law of the land accordingly. Those who participate in elections, therefore, believe that the candidate they select will make decisions or introduce legislature according to the beliefs that those who voted share with one another. A voter or a group of voters are more likely to support a candidate if they share at least one attribute with one another. In order to understand how candidate selection based on belief is accomplished, an account of how exactly comparisons between the candidate and the voter must be made to accommodate a multitude of potential attributes. Both physical attributes, such as race, and non-physical attributes, such as political ideology, can be used to compare and contrast a candidate with a voter. With this data, we can then predict the outcome between a certain attribute that a voter shares (or does not share) with a candidate and the support that candidate receives from that conglomerate. In this article, the idea of correlation between a candidate and a voter affecting support will be applied to the 2008 US Democratic Primary election between Barack Obama, an African American male, and Hillary Clinton, a Caucasian woman. The 2008 Democratic Primary was unique in that it features two presidential candidates that displayed contrasting physical attributes in both race and gender while
-------------------------------------------------
Jeffrey J. Lindstrom
Introduction
The correlations between a candidate running for election and a voter who participates in the election, in terms of support and participation, often involve the use of shared attributes to explain how said correlations have an impact on the outcome of the election. In a representative democracy such as the United States, the belief is that those who vote in elections wield the power to select government officials, who then in turn create, uphold, or interpret the law of the land accordingly. Those who participate in elections, therefore, believe that the candidate they select will make decisions or introduce legislature according to the beliefs that those who voted share with one another. A voter or a group of voters are more likely to support a candidate if they share at least one attribute with one another. In order to understand how candidate selection based on belief is accomplished, an account of how exactly comparisons between the candidate and the voter must be made to accommodate a multitude of potential attributes. Both physical attributes, such as race, and non-physical attributes, such as political ideology, can be used to compare and contrast a candidate with a voter. With this data, we can then predict the outcome between a certain attribute that a voter shares (or does not share) with a candidate and the support that candidate receives from that conglomerate. In this article, the idea of correlation between a candidate and a voter affecting support will be applied to the 2008 US Democratic Primary election between Barack Obama, an African American male, and Hillary Clinton, a Caucasian woman. The 2008 Democratic Primary was unique in that it features two presidential candidates that displayed contrasting physical attributes in both race and gender while
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