Showing papers on "Voting behavior published in 1979"

Whites' Opposition to “Busing”: Self-interest or Symbolic Politics?*

Abstract: This article contrasts the “self-interest” and “symbolic politics” explanations for the formation of mass policy preferences and voting behavior. Self-interested attitudes are defined as those supporting policies that would maximize benefits and minimize costs to the individual's private material well-being. The “symbolic politics” model emphasizes pressures to make adulthood attitudes consistent with the residues of preadult socialization. We compare the two models in terms of their ability to account for whites' opposition to busing school children for racial integration of the public schools, and the role of the busing issue in presidential voting decisions, using the 1972 Center for Political Studies election study. Regression analysis shows strong effects of symbolic attitudes (racial intolerance and political conservatism) on opposition to busing, and of the busing issue on presidential voting decisions. Self-interest (e.g., having children susceptible to busing) had no significant effect upon either. It is concluded that self-interest is often overestimated as a determinant of public opinion and voting behavior because it is too rarely directly assessed empirically.

Response Validity in Surveysof Voting Behavior

Abstract: This paper presents the results of a project which validated the reported registration and voting behavior of respondents in a national election study. The accuracy of reported voting behavior in the 1976 general election is assessed in terms of the demographic characteristics of the respondents to the Center for Political Studies National Election Study as well as the extent of their participation in a survey panel begun in 1972. Increased levels of registration and turnout are observed in association with the number of interviews in which respondents participated, and three alternative social psychological models of the effects of preelection interviews are evaluated. Although the interview apparently served as a stimulus to voting, neither a model associated with self-concept theory nor alienation theory appears to explain the phenomenon adequately. The interview effect is significant and appears to be cumulative, indicating that researchers using the survey method with panel designs should be sensitive to the effects of their method on the behavior which they are trying to measure. Michael W. Traugott is Study Director in the Center for Political Studies and Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, and John P. Katosh is Assistant Study Director in the Center for Political Studies, The University of Michigan. Portions of the data utilized in this research were made available by the Interuniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research. The data for the CPS 1976 American National Election Study were originally collected under a grant from the National Science Foundation. Neither the original collectors of the data nor the Consortium bears any responsibility for the analyses or interpretations presented here. Public Opinion Quarterly ? 1979 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/79/0043-359/$1.75 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.156 on Sat, 10 Sep 2016 05:44:08 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 360 MICHAEL W. TRAUGOTT AND JOHN P. KATOSH first national study to replicate that effort based upon the panel study of the American electorate conducted by the Center for Political Studies from 1972 to 1976. The presentation includes a discussion of the magnitude of the misreporting of registration status and voting behavior as well as the characteristics of those who are most likely to misreport their registration or voting. It also includes an evaluation of three competing explanations of an apparent "interview effect" on voting behavior. Estimating Registration and Voting from Surveys Clausen's report on the results of the 1964 vote validation study stands to date as the only major investigation of the validity of voting reports in surveys. Clausen began his analysis by examining the relationship between estimates of voting derived from the Survey Research Center's (SRC) 1964 Election Study and the Census Bureau's Voting Supplement to the November 1964 Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1965). He attempted to explain the overreport of turnout by respondents in two surveys by differences between the samples and the electorate as a whole. This resulted in adjustments to both the numerator and denominator of the official turnout estimate to make them more comparable to the sampled populations in both of the surveys. He then compared that "revised" official estimate of voting with the turnout estimates from each of the surveys. Finally, he reported on the results of an official records check in an attempt to ascertain the sources and consequences of the remaining differences in turnout estimates. The data reported here are based upon equivalent surveys conducted in conjunction with the 1976 presidential election. We have attempted to replicate in our study the procedures Clausen used in 1964. The two survey sources are (1) the Center for Political Studies (CPS) 1976 National Election Study, which yielded an estimated turnout rate of 72 percent, and (2) the Census Bureau's Voting Supplement to the November 1976 Current Population Survey (U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1978), which yielded an estimated turnout rate of 59 percent. Both of these turnout estimates exceed the official estimate of turnout of 54 percent, which was based upon actual election re-

A Cause in Search of Its Effect, or What Does Political Culture Explain?

Abstract: Elkins and Simeon are less specific than Almond (in chapter 1) and Ross (in chapter 3) about defining political culture. But by way of clarification, they provide us with a series of topics that political cultures routinely address. They are also careful to distinguish between a narrow conception of culture (e.g., certain mental predispositions) and the behaviors or political institutions (what other analysts sometimes call cultural artifacts) that may stem from them. More important, they alert us for the need to be careful in applying political culture theory to the explanation of social phenomena and warn us against unrealistic expectations. In the process, they produce several caveats.

The Third Electoral System, 1853-1892: Parties, Voters, and Political Cultures

Abstract: This analysis of the contours and social bases of mass voting behavior in the United States over the course of the third electoral era, from 1853 to 1892, provides a deep and rich understanding of the ways in which ethnoreligious values shaped party combat in the late nineteenth century. It was this uniquely American mode of "political confessionals" that underlay the distinctive characteristics of the era's electoral universe.In its exploration of the the political roles of native and immigrant ethnic and religious groups, this study bridges the gap between political and social history. The detailed analysis of ethnoreligious experiences, values, and beliefs is integrated into an explanation of the relationship between group political subcultures and partisan preferences which wil be of interest to political sociologists, political scientists, and also political and social historians.Unlike other works of this genre, this book is not confined to a single description of the voting patterns of a single state, or of a series of states in one geographic region, but cuts across states and regions, while remaining sensitive to the enormously significant ways in which political and historical context conditioned mass political behavior. The author accomplishes this remarkable fusion by weaving the small patterns evident in detailed case studies into a larger overview of the electoral system. The result is a unified conceptual framework that can be used to understand both American political behavior duing an important era and the general preconditions of social-group political consciousness. Challenging in major ways the liberal-rational assumptions that have dominated political history, the book provides the foundation for a synthesis of party tactics, organizational practices, public rhetoric, and elite and mass behaviors.

The Electability of Women Candidates: The Effects of Sex Role Stereotypes

Abstract: WOMEN HAVE ALWAYS HELD fewer political offices than men. Although comprising 53 percent of the total voting population, they hold only about 4 percent of all elective political positions. Moreover, the figures vary depending upon the type of political office. (More women hold state and local than national office.) These aggregate level data raise several important questions. Why do women hold so few public offices? Are certain political offices identified as being more "women oriented" than others? Can sex role stereotyping by individuals explain this trend? The data used here to answer these questions were taken from a survey conducted in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin in late 1976. The questions asked were about likely voting behavior in local elections where women had been candidates and were likely to be candidates in upcoming elections.

Learning About the Candidates: The 1976 Presidential Debates

Abstract: In this study of the 1976 televised Carter-Ford debates, the authors find that the debates produced a heightened political awareness in viewers in the critical days just prior to the election. The information obtained from the debates focused largely on candidate competence, performance and personality attributes rather than on issues, but some increase in information on issues and policies can be linked to the debates. The major impact of the debates may have been to reinforce partisan predispositions. Arthur H. Miller is a Senior Study Director at the Center for Political Studies, Institute for Social Research, and Associate Professor of Political Science, University of Michigan. Michael MacKuen is an Assistant Professor of Political Science, Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. Public Opinion Quarterly ?) 1979 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-Holland, Inc. 0033-362X/79/0043-326/$1.75 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:57:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 1976 PRESIDENTIAL DEBATES 327 mation holding and enhance the saliency of various issues and political objects. Because the 1976 televised presidential debates were widely viewed they provide a unique opportunity for studying the possible effects of the media on the level and type of information that voters had about the candidates. Contemporary voting behavior research has demonstrated that voter perceptions of candidate attributes and voter evaluations of the candidates have become increasingly important in determining the outcome of presidential elections, whereas the impact of partisan predispositions has declined (Kirkpatrick et al., 1975). Although the growing literature on candidate images has begun to explore the general dimensions underlying public perceptions of candidates (Nimmo and Savage, 1976; Miller and Miller, 1976), it has given only limited consideration to the relationship between media outputs and those perceptions. This study will investigate the public's cognitions and evaluations of the 1976 presidential candidates, how these assessments were influenced by the three televised debates, and how the debates affected cognitions of candidate attributes and feelings toward each candidate. Following the promising trends in current media research, the emphasis will be on the relationship between media usage and information holding. In general, we will want to know if watching the presidential debates increased the information that citizens had about the candidates. Did watching the debates affect the perception of differences or similarities between the candidates? What beliefs about the candidates endured as a result of having watched the debates? Did information obtained from the debates provide a contribution to the citizen's understanding of the candidates that was independent of other media sources such as newspapers and TV news? Likewise, did such information have any impact on evaluations of the candidates? Although the relationship between media outputs and the vote is not discussed, it is demonstrated that the debates, and the media more generally, did influence public cognitions and, to a lesser extent, evaluations of the candidates and thereby affected the 1976 presidential election. The data employed in the analysis come from the Center for Political Studies 1976 national presidential election survey of 2,875 adult citizens.2 The survey questionnaire included a series of structured and 2 The CPS 1976 national presidential survey was made possible by grant #SOC 7613562 from the National Science Foundation. Starting in mid-September respondents were interviewed prior to the election and again immediately after the election. The preelection sample was randomly divided into halves (September 15 to October 15, mid-October to election day); one half was interviewed in the first interview period, the This content downloaded from 157.55.39.35 on Fri, 02 Sep 2016 05:57:30 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 328 ARTHUR H. MILLER AND MICHAEL MacKUEN open-ended questions designed to measure reactions to the presidential debates, items measuring both newspaper and TV usage habits, and the usual extensive complement of political attitude questions.

Why Is Turnout Down

Abstract: The monotonic decline in turnout in presidential elections since 1960 is the subject of this analysis of survey data. After some common explanations for this decline were rejected, it was discovered that the decline occurred mainly among low-income and low-education whites. Two explanatory hypotheses were examined, but appropriate data for testing them were unavailable; however, in the 1970s nonvoters were more likely than voters at all income levels to express dissatisfaction with the political system. Nonvoting whites are not always a Democratic group, and their voting behavior is unpredictable over time. Their failure to vote may have an especially significant impact on Democratic party policies, and implies that palliatives like reform of voter registration laws may not have the desired effect. Howard Reiter is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Connecticut at Storrs. Financial assistance was provided by the University of Connecticut Research Foundation, and technical assistance was provided by the staff of the Social Science Data Center and the Roper Center of the University of Connecticut. The author is indebted to his colleagues Fred Kort and Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., for their advice. Anonymous referees were also helpful. Public Opinion Quarterly ?) 1979 by The Trustees of Columbia University Published by Elsevier North-HoDland, Inc. 0033-362X/79/0043-297/$1.75 This content downloaded from 207.46.13.28 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 05:28:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 298 HOWARD L. REITER with this decline, and to speculate on possible causes and effects. We should expect no simple answers, and in this relatively brief essay we will present some initial findings that demand further analysis at greater length. Because some of the variables we will investigate are not accessible in aggregate form, we are using the surveys conducted by the Survey Research Center of the Center for Political Studies of the University of Michigan.' SRC/CPS turnout is well above that reported by the Census Bureau's aggregate data, but the trend over time is parallel to the aggregate data trend, and as we examine groups in the population we must assume that the degree of overreporting is comparable among all of them. The political participation literature is filled with factors associated with high or low turnout. Some are demographic: nonvoters include disproportionate numbers of nonwhites, women, Protestants, southerners, the young and the old, rural dwellers, those of low education, income, and occupational status, and workers who do not belong to labor unions. Psychological factors come into play, too, as nonvoters are said to be disproportionately low in their sense of political efficacy, personal competence, political involvement (including media usage), and trust in government. Political factors associated with nonvoting include nonpartisanship, weak preference for one candidate over the other, and expectation of a landslide in which one's vote is especially unlikely to make a difference (Lane, 1959:46-52; Milbrath, 1965:58-62). We will examine all these factors2 except for registration requirements, because the SRC/CPS sample does not represent all states. For reasons to be discussed below, such laws probably did not affect the decline in turnout, and the most careful study that we have of the effects of these registration laws produces conclusions not far from our own (Rosenstone and Wolfinger, 1978:22-45). The first observation to be made is that blacks were not part of this trend, as Figure 1 demonstrates. The dramatic-rise in the turnout of Southern blacks from 1960 to 1968 was clearly the result of deliberate political mobilization and the destruction of the many barriers to the franchise, but even in the North, black turnout held fairly steady. As we have reported elsewhere, the period under scrutiny was one in which blacks became much more interested in campaigns than they had been earlier (Reiter, 1975). Whites in both regions experienced roughly parallel declines, with a rise only in the turnout of southern I The data were made available by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research, and neither the SRC/CPS nor the ICPR bears any responsibility for the present analysis or interpretation. 2 Limitations of space preclude discussion of our operationalization of these variables, but the author will be happy to respond to queries about it. This content downloaded from 207.46.13.28 on Wed, 31 Aug 2016 05:28:40 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms WHY IS TURNOUT DOWN? 299

The significance of voting cues in state supreme court elections

Abstract: low-salience elections. This article examines the effects these cues have in determining voter behavior in partisan and nonpartisan elections for state supreme court justices. The results show that party labels structure voter behavior along partisan lines. Without a party cue, however, voting decisions are relatively unstructured and, as examples show, often produce idiosyncratic results. The implications of these findings for the continuing debate over judicial selection are then explored.

The Structure of Electoral Political Participation

Abstract: Research on electoral political participation frequently combines voting and campaing activity into a single scale and adopts the Michigan social-psychological perspective on political behavior. Using Canadian data, we find that (1) voting and campaing activity are qualitatively different forms of activity that need to be examined separately, and (2) the Michigan model, with its emphasis on individual interests and beliefs as the primary determinatn of political activities, applies to voting behavior but not to campaing activity. A "public-arena" model that distinguishes whether an individual was contacted to participate in campaign activities is suggested in its place. Results indicate hta, net of all else, being recruited to participate in campaing activity by 50%. Analyses suggest that an explanation of who is likely to be recruited should include both individual status and social network characteristics. Implications of the findings for a democratic polity are noted.

Dynamic models of the voter's decision calculus: Incorporating retrospective considerations into rational-choice models of individual voting behavior

Abstract: Since Kramer's article (1971), a growing body of literature indicates that US national elections can be viewed as referenda on the performance of incumbent administrations Retrospective considerations, however, have not been explicitly incorporated into a spatial model of party competition

Mass Media Use and Voting Behavior: The Accuracy of Political Perceptions among First-Time and Experienced Voters

Abstract: This path analysis of 1972 presidential voting data suggests that first-time - voters are more likely than experienced voters to respond to campaign stimuli and to learn about candidates and issues through the newspaper. In more experienced voters, accuracy of political perception is predicted better by stable characteristics such as education and a day-to-day interest in politics, and newspaper use appears to have little independent impact. Network news viewing is not correlated with accuracy.

Office Ambitions and Voting Behavior in the U.S. Senate A Longitudinal Study

Abstract: Joseph Schlesinger's ambition theory of political behavior argues that differing oppor tunities and the aspirations of politicians for them cause politicians to make political choices today in terms of the office or status they aspire to gain in the future. We have looked at the behavior of continuing members of the Senate from 1967-1972 to establish norms of roll call behavior among southern and nonsouthern Democrats and Republicans on major dimensions of policy. We have looked specificially at the behavior of several subsets of senators: aspirants for party leadership positions and nominations to the U.S. presidency and the committee leaders of each party for the prestigious committees. The data rather clearly show that behavior conforms to hypotheses based upon ambition theory. The theory has applied significance for possible legislative reforms.

Socioeconomic Environment, Political System, and Educational Policy Outcomes A Comparative Analysis of 102 Countries

Abstract: While the structure and functioning of national political systems has always been a central concern of political scientists interested in comparative politics, the content of public policy is also a dependent variable which political scientists must endeavor to explain. Policy outcomes express the value commitments of political systems and these commitments are important political data. The task of comparative politics is to identify and assess the forces that shape and explain variations in public policy, and this includes educational policy. Mounting concern over the achievements of public education in the developed countries has drawn attention to the relationship between politics and educational policies in these countries.1 The growing recognition of the role of education in the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East in providing the requisite skills, aspirations, resources, and values essential to the development of modern societies has been documented in many recent studies.2 All of this tends to greatly accentuate the need for examining policy outcomes in public education in the developed and developing countries. To date very little research has been reported which attempts to bring some of the conceptual models and statistical tools of political science to a comparative study of the independent variables that relate to educational policy outcomes in a large number of countries of the world.3 The purpose of the research reported below was to explore some of the determinants of educational policy outcomes in 102 national political systems for the 1964-65 period. Specifically, we wished to assess the impact of political system variables on educational outcomes, and to compare the effect of these political variables on educational outcomes with the effect of socioeconomic

The Politics of Benevolence: Revival Religion and American Voting Behavior

Abstract: This book examines the phenomenal wave of revivals which swept the early nineteenth century, and shows the impact they had on several ideological movements. This study asks whether religious beliefs genuinely influence people's political positions or whether, instead, what appear to be religious motivations for political behavior are merely an outgrowth of their social positions. This book establihes the influence of religious beliefs and the revivalist movement on the political behavior of the past century.

The Marginality Hypothesis Electoral Insecurity, Self-Interest, and Voting Behavior

Abstract: The issue of legislative pay raises offers several advantages as a perspective from which to study the connection between voting behavior and electoral insecurity (the marginality hypothesis). The ...

Criticism, Cynicism, and Political Evaluation: A Venezuelan Example

Abstract: Political trust and political efficacy are concepts currently undergoing considerable discussion and revision. The discussion of voting behavior in Campbell et al. (1954), Almond's and Verba's (1965) version of the participation hypothesis, Gamson's (1968) trust-efficacy hypothesis, and Verba's and Nie's (1972) standard socioeconomic model represent quite distinct and contrasting stages in the treatment of these concepts, but share some assumptions requiring additional discussion and clarification. One of these pertains to treatment of political criticism, measured with low scores of trust in government, as political cynicism. This is not so much an operational or methodological question as a theoretical framework that has never had much to say about the role of criticism in contemporary democratic societies. This essay proffers a case in which, high levels of interpersonal distrust and high levels of government criticism notwithstanding, it is possible to make this basic distinction. Path analyses of data from a national-sample survey show that criticism is triggered by predominantly political orientations, while cynicism is a rigidified form of criticism inseparable from the social circumstances of individuals. In addition, the evidence suggests that the sense of political efficacy does not play the pivotal role assigned to it in the literature.

The History of American Electoral Behavior

Abstract: Concentrating on the American historical experience, the contributors to this volume apply quantitative techniques to the study of popular voting behavior. Their essays address problems of improving conceptualization and classifications of voting patterns, accounting for electoral outcomes, examining the nature and impact of constraints on participation, and considering the relationship of electoral behavior to subsequent public policy.The writers draw upon various kind of data: time series of election returns, census enumerations that provide the social and economic characteristics of voting populations, and individual poll books and other lists that indicate whom the individual voters actually supported. Appropriate statistical techniques serve to order the data and aid in evaluating relationships among them. The contributions cover electoral behavior throughout most of American history, as reflected by collections in official and private archives.Originally published in 1978.The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

The formation and structure of political belief systems

Abstract: Do large numbers of people possess the ability to relate to political events in a systematic way? Is this ability shown in the formation of relatively coherent systems of beliefs about politics? To deal with these questions, this article develops and tests a model of the cognitive process by which individuals form and organize beliefs about politics. The model explains the formation of political belief systems and successfully predicts their structure. The model also provides an integrative focus for the literature on political rationality and “issue voting,” and on the relationship between political attitude and political behavior.

Leadership Succession and Policy Innovation in the Soviet Republics

Abstract: In his diagnosis of the prevailing ills of political science in general, and comparative politics especially, Lucian Pye has concluded that political scientists all too often "have been more interested in analyzing sources and causes than in studying consequences and outcomes."l This criticism is particularly apt with respect to the analysis of leadership succession: Political scientists have been far more inclined to treat succession as a dependent variable than as a process which affects the policy outputs of the political system.2 Thus, for example, scholars have studied voting behavior in order to explain why one candidate wins over another; whether who wins actually affects policy is treated as a secondary issue at best. For political scientists, at least, the analysis of leadership succession tends to end with its resolution. A similar criticism can be directed towards studies of communist successions. The process-that is, the jockeying for position among major contenders-is the central concern in most of these analyses, to the detriment of the impact of succession." Moreover, when impact has been noted, it is usually from a broad and rather negative perspective; as William Zimmerman summarizes,

New Approaches to Aggregate Electoral Data

Abstract: New Approaches to Aggregate Electoral Data Aggregate data analysis is a necessary tool for the study of electoral behavior. Most of our knowledge of electoral behavior is derived from survey data, but reliable surveys exist only for the most recent elections, only for some countries, and, with rare exceptions, only for national elections. Election statistics, however, have been officially collected for longer periods, for more areas, and for smaller political units. There are many elections which can be studied only on the basis of these statistics. Moreover, the study of past electoral behavior makes it possible to determine the range of applicability of general propositions about voting behavior. Propositions which have been found to be valid for the electorate in the mid-twentieth century should be tested on past electorates as well.1

The Political Participation of Women in Brazil: Female Mayors

Abstract: Studies of the political, social, and economic participation of women in Brazil routinely face great difficulty in collecting data. Published statistics about the voting behavior of the population, for example, do not make distinctions by sex, and this information can only be obtained by appealing directly to the Superior Electoral Court. Without such data, an estimate of the number of women elected to political office at the federal, state, and municipal levels becomes a very difficult task. The form in which such data are published reflects the ideological notion that politics is a male realm. Hence, the classification of voters and elected officials by sex is assumed to be unnecessary. By the same token, the assumption that Brazilian women are remote from the political arena prevails, and it makes it arduous for any female to run in an election. In this climate, it is extremely surprising that in the period 1972-76 sixty women were elected mayors in Brazil, a phenomenon which this study aims to explore and explain.

Abstention in two-candidate and three-candidate elections when voters use mixed strategies

Abstract: In re-analyzing the Ferejohn and Fiorina (1974) examination of ‘rational’ abstention we found that admitting mixed strategies does not affect findings as to the optimal behavior of voters who are expected utility maximizers but does significantly affect our expectations as to behavior of voters using a minimax regret rule. We found that minimax regretters with admissible mixed strategies would always have some probability of voting rather than abstaining, except under the quite restrictive condition that c > 1/2. Thus, to the extent that some voters can be seen as operating from a minimax regret perspective, a decision to vote on their part can be understood without recourse to ideas like the ‘psychic benefits of voting’ or ‘citizen duty’.

Social constraints in the political arena: A theoretical inquiry into their form and manner

Abstract: In the past three different paradigms or, more loosely, frames of reference, have been used by students of politics to interpret various dimensions of mass political participation. Each of these, which are referred to as the political socialization, the group interests and beliefs, and the political party/organization paradigms, has received empirical support for its scheme of interpretation; yet recent political events also suggest that these frames of reference may be inadequate, and may need to be complemented, if not replaced, by other schemes. The present paper outlines one such scheme, drawing upon recent writings on social networks and social influences on political participation. It relies on the metaphor of a political arena, and proposes two simple propositions to account both for conventional and unconventional participation in this arena.

Nonlinear optimization and equilibria in policy formation games with random voting

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter describes nonlinear optimization and equilibria in policy formation games with random voting. Random voting has been analyzed in spatial models of electoral competition. The existence of a pure condidate equilibrium has been shown when strong assumptions of concavity and convexity are made on individual probability functions. The general conclusion, however, is that the introduction of indeterminancy in voter behavior has rendered the median voter results of deterministic models to the status of artifacts. When individual probability functions satisfy a weak symmetry condition, there exists a median voter result under the same conditions that yielded this result in the earlier models. The chapter presents an extension of the Davis–Hinich models to include probabilistic voting. The structure for voting behavior follows the assumptions explored in Hinich (1977). The results are derived for elections with abstentions because of pure indifference and, hence, include the full participation model of Hinich as a special case.

From the Populist Era to the New Deal: A Study of Partisan Realignment in Washington State, 1889-1950

Abstract: Study of the popular response to the political parties and candidates of nineteenth- and twentieth-century United States history has made significant progress since the 1950s. Samuel Lubell in The Future of American Politics was certainly one of the first to show historians that much understanding about the voting behavior of past generations could be gleaned from an imaginative examination of county and precinct election data. Lee Benson, in his now classic essay on “Research Methods in American Political Historiography,” persuasively demonstrated to many that systematic analysis of quantitative data could improve the accuracy and quality of generalizations about past voting practices. Benson’s subsequent study of early nineteenth-century New York politics, The Concept ofJacksonian Democracy, which quickly became a model of excellence in research design and methods, concluded, among other things, that “socioeconomic cleavages” were less important in explaining how New Yorkers voted after about 1820 than were “ethnic and religious” factors. At least in part inspired by Benson’s findings in New York, other historians pursued the study of the relationship between voting behavior and ethnocultural and religious factors by examining, for example, political behavior in Michigan during the Jacksonian era, the Midwest and Northeast during the 1890s, and Chicago in the early twentieth century. While the emphasis upon the importance of ethnocultural and religious factors in voting has engendered some criticism and dissent, it seems fair to conclude that this approach to the study of the voting process has produced significant work that has substantially influenced interpretations of American political history.

The Education of Citizens: Reflections on the State of Political Science

Abstract: By virtue of their teaching and publications, political scientists are engaged in political discourse and presumably affect the public's perception of the political world. Such perceptions include man's role as citizen, political possibilities, and ultimately fundamental ideas about human nature. Although the political impact of their scholarly activities implies a high degree of public responsibility, political scientists fail to give proper consideration to the consequences of their work in the practice of their discipline. Donald Hanson argues here that such neglect is inconsistent with the tasks of teacher and publicist and admonishes political scientists to accept the political and intellectual responsibility for the political education of citizens, which these tasks imply.