Voting Your Values and Moral Visions1

Kyle Bernard for helping with the literature review. I am indebted to Jim Lepkowski for assistance with the construction of sampling weights. I thank Michael Traugott for comments. Voting Your Values and Moral Visions Controversial exit polls from the 2004 elections reported that “values voters ” swung the election in favor of George W. Bush. The controversy about “values voters ” is an indication of questions about the changing social bases of political behavior. American politics appears to be becoming less social structural (membership in groups based on class, religion, gender, race, etc.) and more cultural (shared values that cut across groups). This study contributes to research on the cultural or “values ” approach. Using data from the 2003 Detroit Area Study, I find that two values scales (traditional/secular-rational values and survival/self-expression values), as well as “moral visions ’ (absolutism/relativism), are significantly related to voting, party identification, and political ideology, controlling for the social structural bases. For example, voters with traditional values and absolutist moral visions are more likely to vote for Bush and to identify as very or moderately conservative, compared to those with secular-rational values and relativist moral visions. This study suggests that (1) better measures of values may help to understand the role of “moral values ” in politics, and (2) “shared values ” are a source of social capital—resources that may be mobilized for social action