When votes are words not deeds: Some evidence from the Nuclear Freeze Referendum

According to our empirical results, voting patterns in the NFR were consistent with the central thesis of an expressive model, that moral expression dominates consequentialist behavior when choice is costless. While consequentialist theory would predict that owners of capital would favor nuclear weapons, capital owners could afford to vote contrary to their interests, and in line with common morality, because the costs of moral expression in the NFR were so low. Just as the capital ownership variables do not work in the direction predicted by our consequentialist model, neither does income. Does this mean that wealthy voters cast votes diametrically opposed to their self-interest? Not at all. The expressive model contends that when voting is costless, people do not have interests, but, rather, moral judgments which now cost very little to express. Indeed, when votes involve words, not even individuals' interests in government expenditure can be detected. Copyright Kluwer Academic Publishers 1988