Richard W. Boyd

Critical elections and the mainsprings of American politics

Ibid., ¶ 3– “... eras of critical realignment are marked by short, sharp reorganizations of the mass coalitional bases of the major parties which occur a periodic intervals on the national level; often preceded by major third-party revolts which reveal the incapacity of ‘politics as usual’ to integrate, much less aggregate, emergent political demand; are marked by ideological polarizations and issuedistances between the major parties which are exceptionally large by normal standards; and have durable consequences as constituent acts which determine the outer boundaries of policy in general, though not necessarily of policies in detail...”

The Effects of Primaries and Statewide Races on Voter Turnout

The decision to vote is affected by two elements of the election context. One is the frequency of elections. Presidential and state primaries divert resources away from the general election and reduce turnout among the peripheral electorate who are most dependent on a mobilization effort. Taken together, spring and fall primaries lowered general election by five percentage points nationwide in the 1976, 1980, and 1984 elections. A second element of context is the attractiveness of statewide offices on the presidential year ballot. Gubernatorial races increase the probability of voting by 6% in those states that still elect governors in presidential years. Thus, the postwar shift of gubernatorial races to the congressional election year is one explanation for declining turnout. Senatorial races do not attract additional voters to the November election. These hypotheses are tested on a pooled sample of the 1976, 1980, and 1984 CPS election studies

Decline of U.S. Voter Turnout: Structural Explanations

This article explores structural causes of the decline in turnout in American elections. One-quarter of the 10 percentage point decline in presidential turnout since 1964 is explained by a changing age distribution. Americas population is growing in just those young and old age groups that vote in low rates. A second structural cause is an expanding election calendar across federal, state, and local governments. A disaggregation of elections has increased the number of times electors are called to the polls, which has contributed to declining turnout in individual elections. Finally, tracing individual voter histories across a series of elections provides evidence of a core electorate, which is large as a proportion of the registered electorate and which votes at a reasonably high and equal level. The evidence for these voter histories is drawn from the CPS Voter Validation Study and from a sample of registered voters in a Connecticut town.

Election Calendars and Voter Turnout

This research examines the effects of election calendars and ballot forms on voter turnout. The ballot attractiveness hypothesis predicts that concurrent senatorial and gubernatorial races on a presidential-year ballot increase the likelihood that citizens will vote. The evidence in 1980 is that this hypothesis is true with respect to gubernatorial elections. The election frequency hypothesis predicts that the more frequently elections are scheduled, the less likely it is that citizens will vote in any of them. Presidential and state primaries are a major source of frequent elections. In 1980, presidential primaries, in particular those instituted since 1968, did depress turnout. Runoff primaries depressed turnout as well. State primaries held separately from presidential primaries did not depress turnout by an additional significant amount. These findings are based on validated turnout in the 1980 CPS Election Study.

Presidential Elections: An Explanation of Voting Defection

This paper proposes and tests a modest theory of voting defection, the act of voting contrary to party identification. The relevance of voting defection to popular control of government is clear. Except for the infrequent elections that Key calls “critical,” the identification of people with their parties is very stable over time. The percentage of Democrats and Republicans in the electorate changed only slightly in the four presidential elections from 1952 to 1964. Short term shifts in public attitudes, then, are reflected not in shifts in the distribution of party identification, but in the degree that people vote in accordance with their identification. When they are disenchanted with the President, defection will be high among members of the opposition party and low among members of the party in office. In 1952 people were weary of the Korean War; this weariness was apparent in the massive numbers of Democrats who thought Eisenhower a man capable of ending the conflict and who backed up their convictions with Republican votes. In short, in the rate of defection we have a mirror that reflects popular discontent with the politics of the President. My present concern is to explore some personal attributes of the voters who make up this critical electorate, to augment the propositions surrounding party identification with one explanation of why it is that people vote contrary to their party allegiance.

Electoral change and the floating voter: The reagan elections

This paper presents two perspectives on a fundamental issue of elections as mechanisms of democratic accountability. One is the interelection floating voter hypothesis, which implies that it is the least informed segment of the electorate that contributes most to electoral change. The second perspective is from V. O. Keys argument that vote switching is rooted in rational policy concerns. A direct test of Keys formulation of the problem on the Reagan election victories of 1980 and 1984 adds to the evidence supporting Keys perspective. The reasons why some voters hold firm to particular parties and candidates while others switch support is well explained by their different positions on matters of party, policies, and judgments of the candidates. Vote switching is not simply the by-product of an ill-informed segment of the electorate responding to its meager grasp of the short-term stimuli of a campaign. Vote switchers appear to judge the policies and the performance of an incumbent against their best estimates of these qualities in the competing candidate. The data are from the 1980 and 1984 CBS/New York Times exit polls.

The 1984 election as Anthony downs and Stanley Kelley might interpret it

This paper is an analysis of two rational choice theories of elections. Anthony Downs and Stanley Kelleys theories yield complementary interpretations of the 1984 U. S. election. Reagans victory was based on both prospective and retrospective judgments as well as on candidate and policy considerations. Reagan won that element of an incumbents reelection that is a referendum on his performance as president. However, people also voted on the basis of domestic and foreign policy preferences for the second term. On these issues voters preferred Mondale as much as Reagan. Reagans victory owed remarkably little to his conservative agenda and to a warm regard for his personal qualities as a leader. His landslide was deceptive. The two Reagan victories were among the weakest of the six landslides of the postwar period by Kelleys test of decisiveness. The Reagan elections have not set the United States on the course of a long-term conservative agenda in either domestic or foreign affairs.

Presidential and Congressional Response to Political Crisis: Nixon, Congress, and Watergate

This research tests a series of hypotheses on the congressional response to Watergate and explores Nixons counter-impeachment strategy. As Neustadts theory of presidential influence predicts, the sequence of Watergate disclosures contributed to a decline in congressional support for Nixons legislative program in 1973. Partisan and regional differences in support for Nixons program were also significant. The electoral marginality of representatives was not an important factor: competitive-seat Republicans voted as consistently for Nixons program as safe-seat Republicans. The presidents own electoral strength was a significant factor early in the 93rd Congress: Republicans in districts where Nixon ran strongly give Nixon his greatest legislative support. Nixon responded to the impeachment threat by withdrawing from legislative leadership and abandoning the “Administrative Presidency.” In 1974 Nixon added only five proposals to his domestic legislative agenda, took positions on only 15 percent of House...

Election Studies, 1988, 1992

Gerald M. Pomper, Ross K. Baker, Walter Dean Burnham, Barbara G. Farah, Marjorie Randon Hershey, Ethel Klein, and Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Election of 1988: Reports and Interpretations. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1989. Pp. vi, 221.

Popular Control of Public Policy: A Normal Vote Analysis of the 1968 Election *

12.95 softbound. Gerald M. Pomper, F. Christopher Arterton, Ross K. Baker, Walter Dean Burnham, Kathleen A. Frankovic, Marjorie Randon Hershey, and Wilson Carey McWilliams, The Election of 1992: Reports and Interpretations. Chatham, NJ: Chatham House Publishers, 1993. Pp. ix, 230.