Paul R. Abramson

The Decline of Electoral Participation in America

Since 1960 turnout has declined in presidential elections, and since 1966 it has declined in off-year congressional elections. These declines occurred despite several major trends that could have increased electoral participation. An analysis of the eight SRC-CPS presidential election surveys conducted between 1952 and 1980 and of the six SRC-CPS congressional election surveys conducted between 1958 and 1978 suggests that these declines may result largely from the combined impact of two attitudinal trends: the weakening of party identification and declining beliefs about government responsiveness, that is, lowered feelings of “external†political efficacy. Between two-thirds and seven-tenths of the decline in presidential turnout between 1960 and 1980 appears to result from the combined impact of these trends. Data limitations hinder our efforts to study the decline of congressional turnout, but approximately two-fifths to one-half of the decline between 1966 and 1978 appears to result from the combined impact of these attitudinal trends.

Who Overreports Voting

The effects of respondent characteristics with regard to the propensity of nonvoters to report that they voted are examined by analyzing the vote validation studies conducted by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center in 1964, 1976, and 1980. Previous research has suggested that vote overreporting derives from the respondents wish to appear to engage in socially desirable behavior. This earlier research suggests that the only respondent characteristic that is strongly related to overreporting is race; measures of socioeconomic status and of general political attitudes are said to be at most weakly related to the tendency to exaggerate voting. These earlier conclusions are incorrect. We measure the extent of overreporting for the population “at risk†of overreporting voting: those who did not actually vote. Respondents most inclined to overreport their voting are those who are highly educated, those most supportive of the regime norm of voting, and those to whom the norm of voting is most salient—the same characteristics that are related to the probability that a person actually votes. Blacks are only slightly more likely to overreport voting than whites. The pattern of relations between education and vote overreporting is opposite what would be found if those who falsely reported voting fit the typical image of the uneducated, uninvolved, “acquiescent†respondent who is concerned primarily with pleasing the interviewer.

Economic Security and Value Change

Confirming Ingleharts prediction (1971) of an intergenerational shift toward postmaterialist values, a time series analysis controlling for the joint effects of inflation and unemployment demonstrates that there is a statistically significant trend toward postmaterialism in all eight West European countries for which data are available over the past two decades. Evidence from the 1981–83 and 1990–91 World Values Surveys indicates that this value shift occurs in any society that has experienced sufficient economic growth in recent decades so that the preadult experiences of younger birth cohorts were significantly more secure than those of older cohorts. Large intergenerational differences tend to be found in societies that have experienced rapid growth in gross national product per capita, and are negligible in societies that have had little or no growth. Accordingly, postmaterialism increased in 18 of the 20 societies on five continents for which we have comparable data over the past decade.

Generational Change and the Decline of Party Identification in America: 1952–1974 *

A large and growing proportion of Americans claims to be neither Republican nor Democratic, and partisan independence is most wide-spread among young adults. A time-series cohort analysis of eleven surveys conducted by the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan between 1952 and 1974 strongly suggests that the low level of partisan identification among young adults results largely from fundamental differences between their socialization and that of their elders. The overall decline in party identification results largely from generational change. High levels of partisan identification persist among persons who entered the electorate before World War II, but among those who entered the electorate more recently levels of identification are low. The analysis strongly suggests that overall levels of party identification will continue to decline, and permits examination of one process by which party loyalties among mass electorates gradually are transformed.

Race-Related Differences in Self-Reported and Validated Turnout

Black Americans are less likely to participate in politics than white Americans are, but many studies argue that low levels of black participation result solely from racial differences in socioeconomic status. Analyses of the 1964, 1976, 1978, and 1980 SRC-CPS election surveys show that racial differences in reported turnout are greatly reduced or even reversed when controls for region and level of education are introduced. However, substantially different results obtain when turnout is measured by the SRC-CPS voter validation studies in which local registration and voting records are used to measure individual-level participation: the zero-order differences in turnout are larger, and controls for region and level of education only moderately reduce these differences. Analyses of the voter validation data suggest that blacks are less likely to vote than similarly situated whites.

Generational Replacement and Value Change in Eight West European Societies

Surveys sponsored by the Commission of the European Communities are employed to study value change in West Germany, Britain, the Netherlands, France, Belgium and Italy between 1970–71 and 1990 and in Denmark and Ireland between 1973 and 1990. During these years generational replacement had a major impact on value trends in all eight societies. In Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Denmark generational replacement contributed to the growth of Postmaterialism, and in France, Italy and Ireland replacement was the major force creating the trend towards Postmaterialism. Even in Belgium, where there was only a slight move towards Postmaterialism, replacement may have prevented a movement towards Materialism. For the European public as a whole, replacement contributed to the growth of Postmaterialism. However, the impact of replacement is likely to be smaller in the coming two decades because relatively low birth rates during the late 1970s and the 1980s will contribute to lower rates of generational replacement.

Macropartisanship: An Empirical Reassessment

To evaluate the comparability of the Gallup and Michigan Survey Research Center measures for studying levels of partisanship among the U.S. electorate we compare the overtime distribution of partisanship and the correlates of partisanship using the results of Gallup surveys, the National Election Studies, and the General Social Surveys. Compared with the Gallup results, both the other two surveys reveal less short-term variation and also less total variation. Compared with the Gallup results, the National Election Studies partisanship results are less related to short-term electoral outcomes and do not appear to be strongly driven by short-term economic and political evaluations. These analyses suggest that scholars should be cautious about using Gallup results to revise conclusions based upon analyses that employ the Michigan Survey Research Center party identification measure

Progressive Ambition among United States Senators: 1972–1988

A rational-choice model is used to account for the decisions of United States Senators to run for president. The model predicts that senators will be more likely to run for president if their relative costs of running are low, if they have no political liabilities that might reduce their chances of winning, and if they have a propensity to take risks, which we measure by their past willingness to take risks in running for the Senate. The model works well in accounting for the decisions of Democrats to seek the presidency in 1972, 1976, and 1984, and can explain why few Republican senators ran in 1980. The model is used to predict which senators in the 99th Congress are relatively likely to run for president in 1988. The model works better in accounting for the past behavior of Democrats than Republicans, and also generates more plausible predictions about future Democratic presidential candidates. This partisan difference results largely from the different opportunity structures of the two parties. Finally, we discuss the changing dynamics of the nomination process and the implications of this change both for our model and for American electoral politics.

The Presence of Others and Overreporting of Voting in American National Elections

This study uses the 1978 and 1980 vote validation studies conducted by the University of Michigan Survey Research Center to test the extent to which false claims about voting are affected by the presence of third parties during the interview. The presence of third parties during interviews is far more frequent than is commonly as- sumed. But the tendency of respondents to give socially approved answers is not af- fected by the presence of others during the interview. Thus, additional efforts to avoid contamination of interviews by eliminating third parties are not likely to reduce the exaggeration of self-reported vote. The analysis suggests that the declared intention to vote is a far more important factor in whether people falsely report voting than is the presence of others. Additional effort to understand the motivational basis of voting and nonvoting could help to account for variation in voting overreports.

Comparing Strategic Voting under FPTP and PR

Based on recent work that suggests that voters in proportional representation (PR) systems have incentives to cast strategic votes, the authors hypothesize that levels of strategic voting are similar in both first-past-the-post (FPTP) and PR systems. Comparing vote intentions in majoritarian elections in the United States, Mexico, Britain, and Israel to PR elections in Israel and the Netherlands, the authors find that a substantial proportion of the voters desert their most preferred candidate or party and that patterns of strategic voting across FPTP and PR bear striking similarities. In every election, smaller parties tend to lose votes to major parties. Because there tend to be more small parties in PR systems, tactical voting is actually more common under PR than under FPTP. The findings suggest that whatever the electoral system, voters focus on the policy consequences of their behavior and which parties are likely to influence policy outcomes following the election.