Government and Politics (GOPO) Practice Test

The main idea here is how voters decide who to support. In political science, three classic ways are used to describe voter reasoning: Rational Choice Voting, where a voter weighs costs and benefits and picks the candidate who offers the best net payoff; Prospective Voting, where a voter chooses based on predictions of how candidates will perform in the future and what they’ll do if elected; and Retrospective Voting, where a voter evaluates past performance and reelects or ousts the incumbent accordingly.

Issue voting describes voting based on preference for specific policy positions. While it’s a real and important pattern, it isn’t treated as one of the three standard decision-making models because it’s a type of criterion a voter might use within those frameworks, rather than a distinct cognitive model of how the vote is decided. So the option focusing on issues is not counted among the three main voting models.