Gerald De Maio

Religious Outlook, Culture War Politics, and Antipathy Toward Christian Fundamentalists

Despite the societal trend toward religious comity and accommodation, sizable fractions of the American public hold antagonistic sentiments toward religious conservatives. Utilizing 1988-96 American National Election Study (ANES) data, this study explores the nature and depth of antipathy toward Christian fundamentalists. Data show that antagonism toward fundamentalists is significant today, and increasingly has become concentrated in segments of the populace that have distinct and overlapping characteristics. Multivariate analyses demonstrate that antipathy has religious as well as political sources. It is pervasive among the highly educated and among seculars. And recently, cultural progressivism has also become a significant predictor of antipathy. Antifundamentalism has declined among religiously conservative Catholics and Protestants, cultural traditionalists, and self-reported Republicans. Beginning in 1992, attitudes toward this religious group have become polarized. These results have implications for the American party system and religious pluralism.

The Anti-Christian Fundamentalist Factor in Contemporary Politics

Utilizing data from the 1988-96 American National Election Studies (ANES) and the 1997 ANES Pilot Study, we will show that voters have begun to orient their political attitudes and behaviors according to their feelings toward Christian fundamentalists. This is particularly the case with antifundamentalists, the roughly one-fifth of the white nonfundamentalist public who, significantly more so than other nonfundamentalists, intensely dislike fundamentalists and who perceive members of this religious group as militantly intolerant, ideologically extreme, inegalitarian with respect to womens rights, and monolithically Republican. These associations coincided with a marked shift in the proportion of antifundamentalists who became concerned about cultural and religious issues in national political life. Multivariate analyses show that feelings toward Christian fundamentalists are now a significant predictor of relative party assessments, adverse to the Republican party. Moreover, logistic regression analyses demonstrate that antipathy toward Christian fundamentalists has become a significant explanatory variable of vote choice in recent presidential elections. Antifundamentalism today has joined ideology as a predictor of presidential vote choice, and its impact surpasses the effects of traditional economic variables, such as attitudes toward government activism and retrospective assessments of the economy. Our findings lend support to scholars who contend that the 1992 presidential election quickened or heightened cultural and religious forces that to this day structure attitudes toward the two major parties. The data attest to the power of negative religious out-group affect in shaping political perceptions, attitudes, and behavior during periods of cultural ferment

Mapping Candidate Systems Via Approval Voting

HE REFORMS in the presidential selection system since 1968 have resulted in primary-centered, candidate-oriented campaigns. One -JL significant consequence of this shift has been the proliferation of candidates in the pre-primary and early primary seasons. Political scientists and other students of American elections have become increasingly concerned with the possibility that large fields of primary contenders can result in the selecton of a party designee who can capitalize on the intensity of a cohesive minority during the primary season but who may be unrepresentative of the party or an electorate as a whole. ~ I

APPROVAL VOTING Some Recent Empirical Evidence

Approval voting has been offered by a number of formal theorists, notably Steven Brams and Peter Fishburn (1983), as a solution to problems occasioned by multicandidate elections. The formal development of approval voting has spurred a number of empirical studies. This note adds to the empirical literature on approval voting by presenting recent evidence in the form of CPS data on the 1980 elections and exit poll data on the 1981 New Jersey gubernatorial primaries. The New Jersey exit poll was the first survey designed specifically to tap the potential consequences of approval voting. These data reveal that plurality voting obscured the acceptability of Reagan and Carter to their respective party identifiers. They also confirm John Andersons victimization by the “wasted vote” syndrome, and the fact that the victors of the New Jersey gubernatorial primaries were Condorcet candidates. Additional data on public receptivity to approval voting are also presented.

The Equal Rights Amendment, Public Opinion, & American Constitutionalism

The defeat of the Equal Rights Amendment, given the fact that national surveys of public opinion regularly showed majorities in support of it, has raised questions about the responsiveness of American political institutions to the popular will. This article analyzes national survey data from 1976 through 1982 and concludes that, although a nationally distributed majority initially favored ratification, popular support for the ERA was unstable and, indeed, declined over time. And when the quality of opinion-the levels of intensity and knowledge-and the quality of political experience are considered, the opponents of ERA, especially in the rejecting states, matched the strength of supporters in the early years and increased their strength over time. The outcome, the authors argue, is less an indictment of American political institutions than it is a testimony to a constitutional system, designed to check passion in the interests of moderation, that worked as the Framers intended.