ABSTRACT
Chapter 2 explains the role of short-term forces–the candidates and the issues. They are like the wind that can bend party identifiers away from their partisan predisposition and cause Independents to be moved in one partisan direction or the other. If there were no short-term forces, vote would be based solely of party identification. This hypothetical party-based vote is known as the Normal Vote. Chapter 2 has a figure which shows how much the Short-term forces moved the electorate to one side or the other of the Normal Vote in elections from 1960 to 2016. The figure also shows that between elections, when there are no Short-term forces, the electorate “springs back” to its Normal Vote position. There is no permanent change, each election is sui generis.
At election time, these winds blow almost every demographic group in the same direction; all groups move in tandem. It is not the group that a voter is in that explains his or her vote, it is the Short-term forces. The winds also blow across state boundaries–across the whole country. This is why many states temporarily change partisan color–either from blue to red or red to blue depending on the predominate direction of the Short-term forces.
