Rethinking Voter Preferences: A New Approach to Understanding Election Day Choices

Ah, Election Day. We’ve all been there and know it well. I’m sure you can picture it.

You walk into your local polling station, slide the curtain aside, and step into your private booth. You’re presented with a long list of candidate stances on pressing and pertinent issues, which you read and consider carefully. The graphite in your pencil begins to glow as you move furiously down the list, pausing briefly at each line to indicate the extent to which each option aligns with your political views. After wiping the sweat from your brow, you return your ballot and leave, fulfilled by having dutifully completed your civic duty.

At the end of the day, the powers that analyze the results and decompose our presidential candidates into their constituent pieces assemble a new candidate—an amalgamation of our contenders that most closely reflects the will of the people. We then rejoice, satisfied by knowing that we will be led by an individual who perfectly encapsulates the complex and dynamic will of we, the people.

Wait… hang on a second… that’s not quite right, is it?

Elections are a discrete choice, in which voters may choose between one of a finite set of options. Candidates have a set of (hopefully) defined and consistent positions on the pressing issues we care about. This means that our ability to pick and choose is limited. For most voters, the decision of where to allocate their vote involves some degree of tradeoff, in which we must decide which candidate best embodies our nuanced preferences and accept them for what they are, rather than as we wish they were. 

Yet, when we poll issues, that nuance is difficult to fully consider. For instance, Quinnipiac University’s February 21st poll reports that 67% of surveyed voters believe that Joe Biden is too old to effectively serve another term as president. At face value, that seems somewhere on the spectrum of problematic to disastrous. Reality, however, is never as simple as a single data point. Only 37% of surveyed voters feel that Trump has the kind of personality and temperament it takes to serve effectively as president. Only 35% of voters feel that Biden has the physical fitness to serve. Have you considered that 71% believe that Trump’s stance towards NATO is a bad idea? As you continue to layer on conflicting perspectives on issues relevant to the voting public—Gaza, the economy, reproductive rights, immigration, the southern border, the health of American democracy—we are left with a convoluted picture.

Everything matters in isolation, but understanding how much influence this complex web of interactions has on voters’ decisions is difficult to decipher.