ABSTRACT
Chapter 6 is about how the average person decides who to vote for, yet the chapter is much more complicated than that simple question implies. It covers the political elements that move people to vote in a particular way, the central attitudes involved in voting, how people process political information, the debate concerning political sophistication in America, political socialization, and some of the dramatic changes in the American electorate that have produced the election of such diverse candidates as Barack Obama and Donald Trump. Electoral patterns in the United States are also compared with elections in Great Britain.
