Materialists, Postmaterialists, and the Criteria for Political Choice in U.S. Presidential Elections

Abstract

The theory of value change suggests not only that materialists and postmaterialists make different political choices but that, more fundamentally, they use different criteria for making those choices. Specifically, it is argued that materialists rely mainly on economic criteria to make political decisions whereas postmaterialists are motivated primarily by noneconomic concerns. Using data from the 1976-1992 National Election Studies (NES) presidential year surveys, this article estimates a series of logit models in which presidential choice is the dependent variable, and the effects of economic and noneconomic issues are assessed separately for materialists and postmaterialists. The results indicate that noneconomic issues do exert an impact on postmaterialists, but they also tend to be significant for materialists as well. Similarly, economic issues, when they exert an impact, are significant for both materialists and postmaterialists. Thus, although the evidence in this article does not support the proposition that materialists and postmaterialists employ a different political calculus, it does indicate that noneconomic concerns have come to play a significant role in U.S. presidential elections.