Showing papers on "Voting behavior published in 1974"

Basis for Decision: An Attitudinal Analysis of Voting Behavior1

Abstract: A psychological theory which suggests that a person's attitude toward any object is a function of his beliefs about the object and the evaluative aspects of those beliefs is presented. Thus, in the political arena, a person should like or dislike a given candidate because (a) he believes the candidate has certain personal characteristics, is affiliated with certain reference groups, or is for or against various issues; and (b) evaluated these characteristics, groups, and issues positively or negatively. Evidence from a local survey in the 1964 presidential election supports this theory and its application to voting behavior. In addition, the data clearly indicate that voters do take partisan stands on some issues, do clearly discriminate between the candidates vis-a-vis certain issues, and do change their beliefs during the course of a campaign. These data suggest that a new protrait of the American voter is overdue.

The psychology of politics

Abstract: Based on personal experience in the field of politics, observations of political life in the United States, his professional background in psychology, and his wide reading in the field, the author attempts to present an integration ofselected contributions from social and personality psychology relevant to an understanding of political behavior. He tries to make this book undemstandable to undergraduates. In view of the chaotic political scene of today and the apparent misapplication of political power, any attempt to help us understand man’s motivation for public life and the factors that determine people’s choices should be applauded. Stone’s attempt is admirable in this respect; it is also largely successful. In part 1, Introduction to the Study ofPolitical Behavior, the author ranges from an analysis of factors that led to the growth and eventual deterioration ofthe Oneida community, one of the early communes, to a whirlwind tour of political psychology through the ages. He touches upon the ideas of Plato, Hobbes, Machiavelli, and, of course, Freud, Marx, Lasswell, and Lane. He also notes a modern survey research on the habits of Amencan voters. All these areas are dealt with rather superficially (as the sophisticated psychiatric reader will realize instantly when he peruses the section titled Psychoanalysis and Society), but this seems consistent with the author’s goal of educating the bright young mind. Pant 2 focuses on the individual and the way he learns political attitudes. Here we are introduced to Lewin’s field theory, factors influencing character development, and the ways in which the individual eventually learns politically colored socLal reactions. In part 3, Personality and Motivational Factors, the author discusses self-esteem, power, competence, the Machiavellian personality type, the authoritarian and democratic personality disposition, and the liberal-conservative dimension. The reader will gain insight into the rationale for selecting these particular personality variables for dissection, the technology of their measurement, and their possible use in predicting how specific individuals will behave in the political arena. Part 4 takes us into the psychology of participation, leadership, ambition, changing political attitudes, and political choice. In the author’s discussion of barriers to political panticipation, we learn that Americans suffer from severe voter apathy and that even in the most heated campaigns participation is disappointingly low here in comparison with other countries. In light of this fact, the author discusses at some length patterns of leadership, the traits of leaders that attract or repel the public, and the elements that made up the charisma of such personalities as Lenin, Gandhi, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and John F. Kennedy. The ways of approaching measurement of these subtIe factors will intrigue the research-minded reader. The author examines the concepts of image and attitude, particularly in relation to the acknowledged difficulty in changing political ideology and voting preferences. If we are to foster public enlightenment and concern for the quality and efficiency of government, these components must receive greater stress in the future. The volume bears upon great and pervasive public issues. It asks: Can the world powers live in peace, or is war and nuclear annihilation inevitable? How long can the depletion of natural resources and the pollution of the environment continue? Can citizens have faith in their government? How can we induce men and women of great ability and integrity to pursue high office? How does one foster informed, concerned citizen participation so that excellent candidates are recognized and elected? The theme of the individual in the community is seen as applying to four distinguishable groups: the masses, the elite, the national leaders, and dissident minorities. These groups and their many subgroups are striving for self-interest within a cornplex society directed by a political system full of foibles, tangles, and tensions. The search for a truly participatory form of democratic society always goes on; although our forefathers left us with a workable and imaginative instrument for self-government, its application to our changing world requires considenable modification. Hopeful developments that appear to increase political awareness of the American electorate are summarized in Stone’s quotation from McCloskey (1964):

Theory and Voting Research: Some Reflections on Converse's “Change in the American Electorate”

Abstract: Philip E. Converse has challenged the findings of a 1965 article, “The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe,” and other work by Burnham. Converse asserts that most of the very high voter participation which occurred before 1900 can be explained by a combination of electoral corruption, the absence of personal-registration requirements and other “undramatic” factors, and thus that the anomalies which Burnham reported are largely spurious. Issues of major importance for social-science explanation are joined. The present article attempts to demonstrate that intervening structural variables cannot come close to explaining all the post-1900 decline in voting participation and that the genuine existence of universal nineteenth-century rural corruption has yet to be demonstrated. These efforts to explain away anomaly are held to be unpersuasive. The weight of evidence supports the objective reality of the phenomena originally reported. This in turn means that more adequate conceptualizations are needed to integrate empirical findings than those which have hitherto dominated the voting-behavior research community.

Voting for a Political Candidate Under Conditions of Minimal Information

Abstract: Until very recently, the major focus of research in the field of consumer behavior has been on the selection of products, brands and decision choices primarily in the sphere of marketing. The purpose of this paper was to modify a model developed to measure market share to account for the variables that enter into the selection of a political candidate and predict voting behavior.

Ethno-Cultural Interpretations of Nineteenth-Century American Voting Behavior

Abstract: Beginning in the early 196os, and especially within the past half-dozen years, historians have offered strong evidence that the most important determinants of voting behavior in the American past have been the ethnic and religious identifications of citizens. Indeed, an ethno-cultural "school" of American political history has emerged, and its members have produced an impressive body of historical research and writing.1 In search of a grass-roots understanding of past politics, the ethno-culturalists have applied quantitative methods and behavioral theory to the political history of the United States. They have studied the complex relations between local and national orientations in politics, between leaders and masses, and between economic and cultural issues. More broadly, they have asked and answered questions about political salience: What are the sources of voter motivation? How do issues become politicized?

Voting Behavior and Aggregate Policy Targets

Abstract: The structure of the United States economy is generally thought to impose, in the short run, a trade-off between unemployment and price inflation. Regardless of the reasons for this social constraint (and opinion is widely varied on the structural relations underlying it), those who believe that monetary and fiscal policy can influence the performance of the economy along the price change and unemployment dimensions are confronted with the problem of choosing a single target. Voters are likely to have strong opinions on the matter. To the extent that these opinions systematically influence voting behavior, information regarding public preferences over unemployment-price-change targets is embedded in voting statistics.

Mobilization of Liberal Strength in the House, 1955–1970: The Democratic Study Group *

Abstract: In 1959 a number of progressive Democratic congressmen organized the Democratic Study Group (DSG) as a vehicle for countering certain conservative biases then present in the decision-making process in the House of Representatives. This paper presents brief descriptions of the difficulties faced by these congressmen in their efforts to pass more “liberal” legislation and of the organization and activities of the DSG. The analytical focus is on an assessment of DSG success in developing an effective communication network as a means of achieving its policy goals. The central hypothesis is that this communication network has had an impact on the voting behavior of DSG members. Roll-call data from the 84th through the 91st Congress are examined to ascertain whether longitudinal patterns in the voting of DSG members, non-southern non-DSG Democrats, southern Democrats, and Republicans tend to confirm or deny this hypothesis.

Revival Religion and Antislavery Politics

Abstract: Theories to explain empirical relationships between religion and political behavior (or other secular behavior) have generally asserted either that such relationships are spurious, explained by variations between religious groups in socioeconomic status, or that they are due to group identification with a religious community rather than a theology. The proposition that religious belief directly affects political attitudes and behavior is here tested with respect to revivals and antislavery voting in nineteenth-century Ohio. It has been claimed that revivals preached a new doctrine which demanded active opposition to slavery. The claim that revivalism had a direct, nonspurious effect on antislavery voting is tested in a multiple regression model which incorporates variables representing social structure, ethnicity, denominational membership, and prior political tradition. The effect of revivalism is strong despite all controls, the revivals transformed the religious orientations of those who experienced them, and this transformation affected their voting behavior.

A Causal Synthesis of Sociological and Psychological Models of American Voting Behavior

Abstract: A path model of the presidential vote involving social variables, party identification, issue orientations, and candidate evaluations is estimated using samples from the 1964 and 1968 elections. Social effects on voting behavior are channeled almost completely through party identification, which has the largest direct effect on the vote. Indirect effects of party identification through candidate evaluations are considerably larger than through issue orientations. The models for both years reveal similar effects, although issues and candidates were more important determinants of the vote in 1964. Two broad traditions have shaped the research efforts on mass electoral behavior over the past thirty years. From the mountain of articles, monographs and books reporting on the voting behavior of the American public, two perspectives stand out-the sociological and the psychological. While both seek to explain the same events-political participation or decision-making-they invoke different causal mechanisms and place different emphases on the importance of certain variables for understanding outcomes of the electoral system. Elements of the sociological approach to electoral behavior have existed for several decades, but the tradition received its sharpest formative influence in two community surveys carried out by scholars at Columbia. In both The People's Choice (Lazarsfeld et al., 1944) and Voting (Berelson et al., 1954), the authors devoted considerable effort to determining the effects of group membership on a variety of political behaviors, especially the partisan division of the presidential vote. In both volumes the researchers demonstrated deep and persistent political differences in major social categories. Such differences presumably develop initially from self-interest arising through major social identifications, associations, and memberships, and persist over time through withingroup interaction and cross-generational social-

Ethnic alienation: the Italian-Americans

Abstract: This timely and ground-breaking study of the political behavior of three generations of Italian-Americans deals with a fundamental issue in American society: Does the political system tend to exclude certain groups from sharing political power?

City Politics and Racial Polarization: Bloc Voting in Cleveland Elections

Abstract: It was in the turbulent 1960s that blacks in Northern industrial cities became powerful contenders in electoral politics, occasionally capturing the top elective offices in the cities. Carl B. Stokes in Cleveland and Richard Hatcher in Gary won the mayoralty races to become the first negro mayors of the respective cities in 1967, while Kenneth Gibbson was elected mayor of Newark in 1970.' Many social and political changes, some of which have been in progress for decades, have contributed to such a dramatic climax of black political victories. Some of the more salient changes to this effect include the urbanization of black population, voting rights legislation, and the achievement of a remarkable cohesion in black voting behavior. The settlement concentration of black population has shifted drastically from rural areas to urban and from the South to the North during the last fifty years as a result of black migration, most notably during and after World War 11.2 A series of civil rights legislation in the postwar years has successively lowered the barriers disenfranchising many blacks. A vigorous civil rights movement and other varieties

Individual and Contextual Variables in British Voting Behavior: An Exploratory Note*

Abstract: This note reports the results of an initial exploration into the significance of the social environments (“contexts”) in which people live in the shaping of their individual political behavior. Many scholars have argued that social scientists should pay more serious attention to contextual variables when they go about constructing social theories. But there have been few systematic efforts to demonstrate empirically the overall importance of contextual variables as predictors of individual behaviors, especially relative to the importance of personal (“individual”) predictors. Here the relative potency of two sets of predictors—one individual and one contextual—is investigated for a sample of British voters by means of a well-known multivariate search strategy, “tree analysis.” The results suggest that contextual variables have little to add to explanations of voting behavior based on individual variables—at least for these data.

Middle-Class Voters and Progressive Reform: The Conflict of Class and Culture*

Abstract: The middle-class character of the leadership of American reform movements has been well established. While leaders of the progressive movement in early twentieth-century America also conform to this pattern, the nature of the voting base of support for progressivism has not yet been established. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to examine whether or not middle-class voters supported progressive candidates at the polls; and secondarily, to test the relative strength of cultural factors (i.e., ethnicity and religion) versus class considerations as determinants of voting behavior in the early twentieth century. The results demonstrate that, at least in the key progressive state of Wisconsin, middle-class voters failed to support progressive candidates in either general or primary elections; to the contrary, they provided the bulwark of support for conservative opponents of reform. Using bi-variate and partial correlational analysis, the paper also shows that ethnocultural factors remained as the most powerful determinant of voter choice among urban voters in general elections, but that class considerations often proved more influential in motivating voters in primary election contests.

Impact of Socialization and Personality On the Female Voter: Speculations Tested With 1964 Presidential Data

Abstract: T HE EXISTENCE of sex differences in political behavior is one of the most consistently repeated findings in empirical studies of political socialization, voting behavior and political participation. However, the necessity for more complete explanation of the political female becomes obvious upon reading the sparse, relevant literature. While the extant research in this area has focused on female political attitudes and voting, little attention has been devoted to explaining the origin of these attitudes and rarely, if ever, has the female voter been the object of intense investigation. The purpose of the present investigation is twofold: (1) to present a theoretical explanation for the existence of distinctly female political attitudes, and; (2) to derive and initially test some hypotheses about the nature of these attitudes and their possible relation to the female vote.

The Future of the Gaullist Majority: An Analysis of French Electoral Politics

Abstract: The theoretical contribution of this paper involves a reformulation and a generalization of the view of voting behavior originally expounded in The Voter Decides. The basic variable of party identification has been expanded to include any belief which constitutes a standing commitment to vote in a certain way. Hence, differences across political cultures which involve the basic belief systems about partisan competition may be recognized and taken into account. The short-term forces which accompany any election are seen as motivational vectors which may deflect the basic commitment of the individual, bringing about a desertion from the normal partisan vote in certain cases. This general model of voting has been applied to the case of France in the late 1960s. One variable essential to the achievement of long-term political stability in France is the willingness of the electorate to continue its support of the current Gaullist majority in the Assembly, or alternately, to fall in line behind a coherent majority on the Left. By grouping the electorate according to the strength of standing commitment, those voters who contributed to the Gaullists' 1968 victory are examined to explore the likelihood that they will remain loyal to the Gaullists in the long term.

A Method for Political Communication Research.

Abstract: This paper suggests the applicability of metric multidimensional scaling for research within the political arena. The measurement technique has certain advantages over' traditional unidimensional politicalipolls. Multidimensional scaling allows the researcher to simultaneously observe change and rates of change within the polity's attitudes toward the candidates and issues in election campaigns. Multidimensional scaling also reveals which dimensions the voters use to differentiate the candidates and their stand on various issues. Thus, the candidate can get very accurate feedback on the salience of issues involved in a constieiency's voting decision. By observing the trajectories of the candidates' move ent through multidimensional space, it becomes possible to accurately predict the outcome of an election. The paper also proposes a study using this techniOe to measure the variable effects the media have in political advertising. Finally, it reports the results of a study using multidimensional scaling to plot thechanges in voters' attitudes toward the major political figures and issues in the,1972 presidential election. A random sample of the voters from Champaign County, Illinois, scaled sixteen concepts at five points in time. At each time thriee dimensions emerged. The trajectories of the two major candidates suggests a lawful motion through the space, which yields a prediction of the outcome of that election.

Familiarity Breeds Success: A Field Study of Exposure and Voting Behavior

Abstract: a period of 25 days. The frequency of exposure of the Turkish words was varied. Subjects contacted through undergraduate classes and mail questionnaires, increased their rating of the goodness of the Turkish words as the frequency of the exposure of the word in the newspapers increased. This study provides evidence that mere exposure can enhance attitudes under more naturalistic conditions than are in the laboratory; however, several major questions remain regarding the ecological validity of the exposure research to date and the effects (if any) of exposure on behavior in natural settings. (1) Can the results be replicated in curcumstances that are more socially meaningful? In order to study the phenomenon of mere exposure precisely (independent of the effects of content), the stimuli in most exposure studies have been neutral and/or meaningless, and the social meaning and context of the stimuli were sterile. (2) Are the exposure literature findings valid under conditions involving nonreactive and unobtrusive measures? (3) Are the effects of exposure

The rhetoric of the challenger: George Stanley McGovern

Abstract: The authors examine the traditional expectations of a political challenger and Senator McGovern's failure to fulfill those expectations.

Patterns of Partisanship in a Nonpartisan Representational Setting: The Illinois Constitutional Convention*

Abstract: Roll call voting in the convention was highly structured. Using MacRae's clustering and scaling techniques, 78 per cent of the roll calls with disagreement fitted into 13 substantive dimensions. Although members were elected on a nonpartisan ballot, and did not organize the convention in a partisan fashion, partisan identification of the members was the best of several political, social, career, and constituency variables in accounting for roll call voting variance on most dimensions. Multiple regression analysis reveals that the other independent variables account for little roll call voting variance on dimensions not explained by partisanship. Recent literature on roll call voting has indicated that the key explanatory variable is ordinarily the party identification of the legislators. Where partisans are clearly identified, this variable seems to outweigh the effects of others in both structuring and explaining the roll call voting behavior. In essentially one party legislatures, researchers have found relatively little structure to voting.' In his study of the Oklahoma House of Representatives, Patterson found that there were few discernible dimensions of voting, and that those which could be identified related only weakly to one another. What dimensions there were, were modestly related to a variety of independent variables and the explanations offered for the various dimensions were unique. The inference was that, "in the absence of party as a reference group, the legislator is likely, consciously or unconsciously, to respond to

Political Community, Legitimacy and Discrimination

Abstract: Relating the notion of political community to those of discrimination and legitimacy — and, consequently, setting up a typology which will contrast communities by the criteria they use to distinguish members from non-members and by the location they give to legitimacy, placed either in a ruler or in a process — will be made easier if we consider first of all certain striking similarities which exist between the most private of social groups, the family, and the most public, the state, similarities which probably facilitate the transfer of the ideological constructs formed in infancy and childhood into the political expectancies and assumptions of adulthood. Let us distinguish communities defined through the brothers from communities defined through the father: communities centered around a leader from those centered on themselves. These contrasts will suggest to us a natural/ artificial continuum along which political communities can be ranked, those most resembling the family in their ideas about legitimate authority and legitimate membership being closer to the ‘natural’ end of the continuum. I will explain later the reasons for this distinction between ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’, but I must at the outset make it absolutely clear that the use of these terms does not in any way imply an evaluative preference on my part.

A Politicization Paradigm: the Case of Yugoslavia

Abstract: This study uses data gathered in Yugoslavia to develop a predictive technique used to determine a person's combined degree of political participation and supporting political attitudes. The primary...