Indifference, Voting, and Abstention in the 1976 Presidential Election

This paper develops a statistical model of voting and abstention and applies it to the presidential election of 1976, a contest between incumbent president Gerald Ford and Democratic challenger Jimmy Carter. Our model is grounded in random utility theory, and, unlike many extant models of voting and abstention, its treatment of turnout focuses on the distinction between political extremists and individuals who were close to indifferent between Ford and Carter. We expect that individuals close to indifferent abstained at lower rates than political extremists. And, in light of research which highlights relatively high abstention rates among Democratic supporters, our model allows politically–left extremists to abstain at different rates than politically– right extremists. We uncover some evidence that indifference between Ford and Carter exerted a downward influence on voting propensity in 1976. However, there is much stronger evidence that individuals who were politically–left extremists abstained at higher rates than all others. We also find that individuals who anticipated a close election in 1976 voted at higher rates than those who expected a lopsided victory. The value of the paper’s model is its focus on the relation between abstention and strength of preference. Generalizations and applications of the model to additional presidential elections should foster a determination of whether indifference is as important to abstention as is politically–left extremism. Within the empirical literation on voting in presidential elections, there has recently been a fair amount of attention devoted to abstention. For example, Herron (1998b) examines the 1972 presidential election, Dubin and Rivers (1989) study the 1984 race, Herron (1998a) considers the 1988 election, Burden and Lacy (1998) and Herron (1998c) study the three–candidate 1992 election, and Lacy and Grant (1998) examine abstention in 1996. All of these papers share the perspective that statistical models which seek to link individual preferences and candidate choice to voting behavior should model abstention as a viable alternative rather than disregarding altogether individuals who abstain.1 As discussed in the aforementioned papers, modeling rather than ignoring abstention is important because individuals who abstain from voting in a given election may have different preferences and demographic characteristics than voters. Consequently, presidential election studies that use voters only risk problems associated with selection bias. In addition, such studies are unable to comment on the importance of low voter turnout rates, and this is a serious lacuna given the low turnout rates that traditionally characterize American presidential elections. For these reasons and others, it is becoming recognized that quantitative voting analyses should include both voters and abstainers. A limitation inherent in practically all the abstention papers cited above is that their motivations as to why individuals might choose to abstain are not very compelling. For example, the view adopted by Burden and Lacy (1998) and Lacy and Grant (1998) is that individuals receive utility for abstaining. If an individual believes that the utility she would receive from abstaining is greater than the utility for voting for any of the relevant candidates, then she abstains. This conceptualization of abstention is rooted in utility–maximization and this constitutes a viable micro–level foundation for Burden and Lacy (1998) and Lacy and Grant (1998). The difficulty with Burden and Lacy’s (1998) and Lacy and Grant’s (1998) combination of abstention with utility–maximization is that we typically think of individuals as