Judgments of Equity and Vote in a Presidential Election

This paper extends certain notions of equity theory to help explain the votes of residents of “Middletown” in a presidential election, A stratified sample of two-hundred and thirteen people from Muncie, Indiana were interviewed a week before the 1976 presidential election. The results indicated that these respondents had a strong tendency to vote for that presidential candidate, either Ford or Carter, whom they thought would be willing and capable of eliminating a perceived unfair advantage of an undeserving segment of American society. This tendency was independent of political party affiliation, social class and subjective social status. Further analysis of the data showed that economic class conflict played an important role in the respondents' choice of undeserving groups in American society and in the respondents' perception of the candidates' willingness and capability to change this unjust situation.