Macrointerest

Abstract

An interested and engaged electorate is widely believed to be an indicator of democratic health. As such, the aggregate level of political interest of an electorate – macrointerest – is an essential commodity in a democracy, and understanding the forces that change macrointerest is important for diagnosing the health of a democracy. Because being interested in politics requires time and effort, the article theorizes that the electorate's level of political interest will be highest when the electorate believes the government cannot be trusted or is performing poorly. To test hypotheses derived from a proposed theory against rival explanations, the study develops a measure of macrointerest using a quarterly time series of aggregated survey items (1973–2014) of political interest. The authors find support for the theory that the electorate responds as reasonable agents when determining how closely to monitor elected officials: interest is positively related to decreases in trust in government.

Are Newsjunkies More Likely to Vote? Intrinsic Need for Orientation and Voter Registration, Intention to Vote, and Voter Conscientiousness

“…1 ( never ); 6 ( several times/day ). Peterson et al (2020) highlighted several prior studies that use political news consumption as a measure of interest in politics, and we also employ such a measure to ensure that INFO is sufficiently divergent from interest in politics.…”

“…We chose political news consumption primarily because it turned out to be the strongest specific news use predictor of political participation. Additionally, Peterson et al (2020) showed political news consumption has been used in multiple prior studies to measure interest in politics.…”

“…Multiple prior studies have used political news consumption as a measure of interest in politics (see Peterson et al, 2020), and we included political news consumption in the regression models assessing relationships between INFO and political participation. We also tested the relationship between INFO and political participation when political news consumption is evaluated as a mediating variable:

RQ1 : Does INFO still positively predict the three political outcome variables after political news consumption is added in mediation analyses as a mediating variable?

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“…Other future scholarship could scrutinize the association between INFO and certain political attitudes. For example, while we controlled for interest in politics as it has been measured in several prior studies (see Peterson et al, 2020), interest in politics has also been assessed in other ways, like research that simply asks respondents how interested they are in politics on a scale from “not at all” to “very much,” and future research on the relationship between INFO and political behavior can control for such measures also.…”

“…The INFO measure does not mention politics or consumption of political news, and thus it differs from interest in politics. In the current study, we control for frequency of consuming political news, which has been used in prior studies to measure interest in politics (Peterson et al, 2020), like Gallup's "How closely do you follow news about national politics?" A newsjunkie may have a strong interest in politics, but someone who checks news frequently could also be interested in financial news, international affairs, sports outcomes, gambling or wagering results, or news about any number of hobbies or topics.…”