AbstractThe vote on Massachusetts' Proposition 2½—and by extension the votes to restrain or roll back taxes in other states as well—should not be interpreted simply as expressions of the narrowly defined self‐interest of the voters. This study shows that other characteristics such as sex, race, religion, occupation, educational background, and political orientation also have an important influence on voting behavior. These characteristics combine with self‐interest measures such as public sector employment and voters' likely gains from tax reduction to push individual voters in different directions on the issue of tax limitation. Consequently, we find little polarization in the electorate along demograph