The People's Choice

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The People's Choice is the short title of a monograph that was first published in 1944 by Paul Felix Lazarsfeld and his colleagues Bernard R. Berelson and Hazel Gaudet under the title “The People's Choice. How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign ”was published. A German-language edition appeared in 1969 in the book series Sociological Texts under the title “Elections and voters. Sociology of Voting Behavior ". With the publication of the book, Paul Lazarsfeld established the microsociological school of thought to explain voter behavior in political elections , which is one of the three main streams of electoral research . It is therefore considered a key work in both political and communication science .

content

The work "The People's Choice" was based on an analysis of poll data for the American presidential election of 1940 , which had been collected by Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues in Erie County , Ohio . This election analysis, carried out by the Bureau of Applied Social Research (BASR) at Columbia University and also known as the Erie County Study, laid the foundation for what would later become the Columbia School of thought in electoral research . The aim of the work at the BASR was to recognize general laws of social behavior through the use of novel quantitative and qualitative research approaches . In the study on which the book is based, which was later supplemented by the Elmira study on the presidential election of 1948 , Paul Lazarsfeld and his colleagues examined the origins of individual voting decisions. The focus on a specific local population group also made it possible to analyze the local context in a way that would not have been possible in a nationwide survey .

The study design was based on seven surveys at monthly intervals, which made it possible to document the opinions of the interviewed people over time. The authors derived a number of rules from the results. The findings presented in the work included, among other things, that voter behavior is influenced to a large extent by socio-structural characteristics of people, i.e. that social characteristics determine political preferences. According to Lazarsfeld, the decisive of these factors are socio-economic status , religious affiliation and the size of the place of residence. These were combined by the authors to form an “index of political predisposition” which, in their opinion , would enable an assessment of individual voting behavior long before an election .

In addition, in “The People's Choice”, Paul Lazarsfeld described a communication model that was later named after him , with which he postulated a two-stage process of opinion leaders and the actual recipients of information for the dissemination of information through the mass media . The messages of the candidates' election campaigns would therefore be filtered through conversations in the personal environment of a voter, such as his family, his work colleagues and social groups such as associations. The choice of interlocutors is influenced by socio-structural characteristics. Lazarsfeld described the effect of the election campaign in the formation of preferences that ultimately lead to voting decisions as an “activation effect ”, while he described the campaign function as a “reinforcing effect ”, arguably securing a preference until election day. He also postulated the follower effect , according to which in an election an expected success of a candidate influences the willingness of voters to vote for this candidate. The situation of voters, the different social groups with conflicting interests belong, he described with the term cross pressure ( cross print ). Such voters find it more difficult to choose one of the options, which could result in a late voting decision or non-participation in the election.

criticism

Although the methodology on which the Erie County study was based was considered innovative at the time, the model derived from it by Lazarsfeld was criticized as being too schematic, as it presented the voting decision as very static and did not take into account factors that had a short-term effect. After the presidential election of 1948 , for example, Lazarsfeld was blamed for the widespread failure of the election forecasts, as the polling institutes had not conducted any polls in the final phase of the election campaign on the basis of his theory and therefore did not predict the short-term change in mood in favor of incumbent Harry S. Truman, which was decisive for the election . The thesis of the two-stage flow of communication postulated by Lazarfeld in his communication model was largely overtaken by the spread of modern mass media such as television and later revised by Lazarsfeld himself in some aspects.

meaning

With the work “The People's Choice” Paul Lazarsfeld laid the foundations for microsociological approaches to explain voter behavior. These apply in addition to the Ann Arbor model that Angus Campbell developed together with his colleagues Philip E. Converse , Warren E. Miller and Donald E. Stokes in their treatise " The American Voter ", and that by Anthony Downs in the book " An Economic Theory of Democracy ”established rational choice theory as one of the three mainstreams of electoral research. The Michigan School , which goes back to Angus Campbell, was also influenced by Paul Lazarsfeld's work in terms of its methodology.

literature

  • Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, Hazel Gaudet: The People's Choice. How the Voter Makes Up his Mind in a Presidential Campaign. Duell, Sloan and Pearce, New York 1944 (other editions: Columbia University Press, New York 1948 and 1968)
  • Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, Hazel Gaudet: Elections and voters. Sociology of Electoral Behavior. Series: Sociological Texts . Volume 49. Luchterhand, Neuwied and Berlin 1969
  • Rüdiger Schmitt-Beck: Paul F. Lazarsfeld / Bernard Berelson / Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice. How the Voter Makes Up his Mind in a Presidential Campaign, New York / London 1944. In: Steffen Kailitz (Ed.): Key works of political science. VS Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, Wiesbaden 2007, ISBN 978-3-531-14005-6 , pp. 229-233
  • Gerhard Vowe: Paul F. Lazarsfeld / Bernard Berelson / Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice. In: Christina Holtz-Bacha, Arnulf Kutsch (Hrsg.): Key works for communication science. West German Verlag, Wiesbaden 2002, ISBN 978-3-53-113429-1 , pp. 255-259