People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign

The Peoples Choice is a landmark psychological and statistical study of American voters during the 1940 and 1944 presidential elections, originally published in 1948. It found that media such as newspapers, radio, and campaign advertising did not have a profound influence on individual voting habits, but interpersonal interactions and word of mouth were more significant. The study paired the same interviewers and interviewees over time, offering additional insight into the American electorate.

\n Format: Paperback / softback
\n Length: 224 pages
\n Publication date: 19 January 2021
\n Publisher: Columbia University Press
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The Peoples Choice, a groundbreaking psychological and statistical study of American voters during the 1940 and 1944 presidential elections, was originally published in 1948. Amid a growing interest in statistics and population sampling, it marked the first systematic effort to trace voters' behavior throughout a presidential campaign and follow up on this data years later.

During the 1940 campaign, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet tracked a sample population of six hundred people from Erie County, Ohio. They conducted monthly interviews with these individuals in the seven months leading up to Election Day. In 1944, their study expanded the sample to include a nationwide cross-section of two thousand voters. Contrary to prevailing fears at the time, Lazarsfeld, Berelson, and Gaudet found that media such as newspapers, radio, and campaign advertising had a limited influence on individual voting habits. Instead, interpersonal interactions and word-of-mouth played a more significant role for most voters. They argued that mass media reached a small but crucial subset of people, who then passed information on to less avid media consumers.

The study employed the same interviewers and interviewees over time, resulting in remarkable extended conversations that featured more casual and exploratory discussions than typical of social-scientific research. Quoted verbatim, these conversations offer additional insight into the American electorate. As a groundbreaking work of empirical political science, The Peoples Choice continues to hold immense importance in an era characterized by concerns about the influence of media on voting behavior.

\n Weight: 312g\n
Dimension: 152 x 229 x 16 (mm)\n
ISBN-13: 9780231197953\n
Edition number: Legacy Edition\n