Voting, Parents, and the Importance of Your Candidate Winning Your State

Supplement to this Feature

Compiled by David Pakman

          We surveyed 1050 Bush and Kerry voters (no third party voters in this one) and asked them about their voting preference, how they voted compared to their parents, and how important it is to them to live in a state where the candidate they voted for won. Some of the results were as I expected, while some were the exact opposite. Here are the results:

          Your Vote versus Your Parents' Vote

1. Kerry voters are more likely to vote the opposite party as their parents:

          At first glance, a 9% difference between Bush and Kerry voters may not seem like much. However, it's important to consider that by default, it is not equally likely that children would vote with or against their parents' vote, but actually more reasonable that children vote the same way as their parents. While 21% of Bush voters had parents who voted for Kerry or typically voted Democratic, 30% of Kerry voters had parents who voted for Bush or typically voted Republican. This is almost 50% more Kerry voters than Bush voters casting a ballot the opposite direction as their parents.

          Maybe more interestingly is how it breaks down by age. Before starting this research, I fully expected that the younger voters are, the more likely they are to vote the other way as their parents. However, I couldn't have been more wrong in that pre-survey hypothesis.

2. Older voters are more likely to vote the opposite way as their parents than younger voters:

          25% of voters ages 18-44 voted the opposite way as their parents, compared to 33% of voters ages 44 and up. In other words, older voters vote against their parents' traditional political orientation by a rate 33% higher than younger voters. What is interesting is that in the survey, age was broken down into six age brackets. The youngest three all had just about 25% voting against their parents, while all three of the older brackets were at just about 33%, so these numbers represent not only the mean, but the mode of the data as well.

          Importance of Living in a State Your Candidate Won

1. Kerry voters find it more important to live in a state where the candidate they voted for won compared to Bush voters:

          When given the four options listed, Kerry voters indicated by almost a 66% higher rate than Bush voters that living in a state their candidate wins is "very important." Even more interesting is when it is broken down into just two options, "more" or "less" important:

          While Bush voters specified more-to-less important by a 3-to-2 ratio, Kerry voters said that by a 4-to-1 ratio, living in a state where their candidate won is more important. Lastly, the importance of who wins your state compared to age.

2. Older voters find it more important to live in a state their candidate wins than younger voters:

          The trend clearly indicates that the older the voter, the more likely to indicate "very important," and accordingly, less likely to indicate "not at all important." As of yet, I have no theories about why this may be.

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