POLITICAL SOPHISTICATION AND THE USE OF CANDIDATE TRAITS IN CANDIDATE EVALUATION

Most research on voting behavior has attempted to explain how individuals, in general, determine their candidate preference. Recently, however, some scholars have concluded that we must recognize that different individuals make these evaluations differently. Knight (1985) found that political sophistication affected the extent to which individuals rely on issues and ideology when evaluating presidential candidates. This paper finds that political sophistication has little systematic impact on the relative use of candidate's personal traits in evaluating th e candidates. The results provide some evidence that the extent to which voters engage in rationalization involving candidate personal traits and issue positions is related to political sophistication.