On april 8th 2013, democrat senator Tim Johnson announced his support for same sex marriages and argued that religious beliefs cannot interfere with the equality of the law and be allowed to discriminate those with different sexual orientations. On the other hand, there are three other democrat senators with the opposite opinions: Joe ManchinIII, Mark Pryor and Mary L. Landrieu.
According to the concept of reasoning voters, voters consider their premises to determine their support for a certain party or candidate. In this case, reasoning voters use the low-information rationality (gut), experience, life conditions and personal opinions to decide whether or not they support candidates that favor same sex marriage. Aside from that, they use these “shortcuts” to read politicians and validate their political opinions with those familiar to them.This is useful for political campaigns, and could be used by democrat politicians to sway public opinion on gay marriage and generate support for their cause. This can be achieved by modifying campaigns and focusing them on informing voters about how same sex marriage would affect them andmaking them brief and interesting to attract voters that aren’tvery interested in politics. Campaigns can be a good strategy to attract attention tothe issue of same sex marriage and to reach out and shape voters’ opinions that have limited knowledge on the topic, the campaign will “educate them”, mold their preferences and gain their vote. Voting is a public choice just like any other decision; it is not based on a “right answer”, but on the consumer’s personal choice, if we compare it to commercial decisions. In this analogy, voters are investors and opposing candidates must convince them to invest with them, to take a risk because the outcome cannot be easily predicted and the payoff may not be what they expect.
Conclusión: In other words, if people were truly informed, they would benefit from voting for a certain candidate, and be able to make educated choices collectively regarding same sex marriage. Their perception could be influenced by other people’s opinions and by the uncertainty of the success of a policy, in this case, allowing same sex marriage. In order to decide, a voter can consider what a candidate has done in the past. The media plays an important role as well because it communicates information to the public, and that information can be manipulated to shape public opinion because not all of it is absorbed by voters if they lack incentive. Cues and symbols are greatly effective, as well as emotionally presenting data. In this case, a commercial targeting people’s emotions may portray same sex marriage as a symbol of love and equality, earning sympathy from many and achieving collective goals that benefit all.
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