Character, policy, or partisanship? valence dimensions in American presidential elections
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This paper argues that affective valence dimensions play an important role in determining the vote choice of individuals. It hypothesizes that individuals will vote for a candidate who they consider to better exemplify affective valence characteristics. Survey data from the American National Election Studies for 2016, 2020, and 2024 are utilized to create policy and non-policy (valence) dimensions as a predictor of presidential candidate vote choice. Both policy and valence or non-policy dimensions are related to vote choice. Among non-policy factors, evidence associates perceptions of honesty with vote choice in all three cycles. The other three valence dimensions used here (knowledge, leadership, and if a candidate really cares) are associated with voter decisions in some years but not others. Valence dimensions are more significantly related to vote choice than any of the policy dimensions. Party ID is still by far the strongest predictor of vote choice, and ideology is generally a strong predictor as well.
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M.A.