The Political Cultural Field of the 2000 Presidential Vote

This paper examines the connection between people’s trust or cynicism in major U.S. institutions and their vote cast for President in the 2000 election. The absence of confidence and trust fuels cynicism, an attitude that may lead elites to exploit institutional resources and the public to withdraw their support from important institutions. We examined the 13 measures of confidence-trust in the 2002 GSS to model the ‘cultural field of institutional trust’ and learn how trust/cynicism was embedded in the 2000 vote. We found that trust/cynicism toward all institutions, not just political ones, were implicated in the 2000 vote. Specifically: 1] trust/cynicism in institutions has a component based in a general disposition as well as components oriented toward different types of institutions: political, technocratic, media, (and perhaps human/social welfare). 2] Those not voting in the 2000 election are an amalgam: they had greater, moderate, levels of uniform trust in institutions, not more general cynicism than voters; but they also were more likely to express higher levels of cynicism toward Political and Technocratic institutions. 3] Cynicism focused on political institutions was associated with either not voting or a Nader vote. 4] Cynicism for the Media was strongly associated with Bush vote in 2000, as well as political conservatism and religious fundamentalism. 5] Bush voters in 2000 were more than 3 times as likely as Gore voters to express trust in Technocratic institutions. 6] Gore voters in 2000 expressed cynicism toward federal institutions of government at a rate 3 times higher than Bush voters. 7] Controlling for political orientation (liberal/conservative) and religious fundamentalism only slightly diminished these effects. Thus, the broad field of institutional trust/cynicism is embedded in electoral politics. Existing data won’t allow us to disentangle causal direction, but we think institutional trust operates both as a ‘cognitive dissonance’ mechanism to rationalize past votes as well as a cultural force than induces voting for particular candidates. A reasonable speculation is that these “fields of institutional trust’ have been manipulated by political campaign rhetoric. Paper Presented at the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, Panel on Political Culture, Montreal Quebec, CAN., Aug. 12, 2006. Paper available in PDF form at: http://www.socqrl.niu.edu/cappell. Last edited Aug. 9, 2006.