Third-party candidates are something of a puzzle for students of electoral behavior. In presidential elections, most voters cast their ballots for one of the major-party candidates, but many voters support candidates of minor parties, such as the Reform Party, the Green Party, the Constitution Party, the Libertarian Party, or the Natural Law Party, to name a few.20 What causes some people to vote for a major-party candidate and some voters to vote for a minor-party candidate? Voters can be measured by one of two values on this dependent variable: major-party voter and minor-party voter.

A. Think up a plausible independent variable that may explain differences between voters on the dependent variable. Write a paragraph describing an explanation for why some voters support the major parties’ candidates and some support the minor parties’ candidates. Make sure you connect the causal variable to the dependent variable and be sure to describe the tendency of the relationship.
B. Using proper form, state a testable hypothesis for the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent variable.