Trusting souls: A segmentation of the voting public

When a 30-year decline in the American voters' trust of political office holders and the election process is contrasted to their enduring trust of the democratic form of government, there is strong confirmation of the need to take a multidimensional approach in measuring political trust. To. this end, a segmentation scheme based on two well-established political trust measures (i.e., incumbent-based trust and regime-based trust) is proposed. In particular how two specific trust segments differ in terms of the time they spend on various political and election-related activities is examined. Among other things, the findings reveal that the dual-trusting segment (i.e., those who were regime trusting and incumbent untrusting) to watch television debates or speeches and have informal discussions with friends and co-workers on topics related to the election. There were no meaningful differences between the two segments when it came to giving or raising funds, or campaigning for a candidate or political party. However, when it came to voting-related decision making, the results suggest that dual-trusting individuals were significantly more likely to spend more than a little time considering how they were going to vote for President, U.S. Senate, and on particular political issues. The article ends with suggestions for future research, as well as some thoughts on how politicians and their advisers might more fully embrace the relational marketing paradigm, especially as it pertains to the connection between elected officials and the voting public. (C) 2002 John Wiley Sons, Inc.