The literature on voting behavior may well be the largest literature in all of political science, especially given that it is closely conjoined with the literature on public opinion. From the standpoint of the public choice scholar much of the mainstream voting behavior literature uses arcane language and addresses topics of minimal relevance and importance. Nevertheless, there is much in this literature that should be of interest to the public choice scholar. This essay begins with a general review of the development of the literature and the different intellectual perspectives within it, then proceeds to a more selective review of some specific topics relevant to the study of public choice. Readers interested in more extensive (if less recent) reviews should consult Converse (1975) and Kinder and Sears (1985).

Intellectual background

The practical interest in voting behavior undoubtedly dates to the time the first candidates contested the first election. In Britain and the United States political operatives polled constituencies and studied aggregate voting returns in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and elections prior to the secret ballot provide some detailed case studies of individual voting behavior. In the late nineteenth century Frederick Jackson Turner adapted European cartographic techniques to construct electoral maps (Turner 1932). Some impressive pioneering work was carried out at the University of Chicago in the 1920s (Merriam and Gosnell 1924; Gosnell 1927; Rice 1928). Notwithstanding such pioneering early efforts, however, what today is recognized as the modern scientific study of electoral behavior is largely a product of the past half century.