The New American Voter - Hardcover

Miller, Warren

2.86

7 ratings by Goodreads

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0674608402 ISBN 13: 9780674608405

Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1996

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In this study, Warren E. Miller and J. Merrill Shanks present a comprehensive, authoritative analysis of American voting patterns from 1952 through the early 1990s, with special emphasis on the 1992 election, based on data collected by the National Election Studies. For example, Miller and Shanks reveal that: the loudly trumpeted "dealignment" of the 1970s and 1980s, along with the decline in voter turnout, was in fact an acute "nonalignment" and noninvolvement of new cohorts entering the electorate; the social correlates of the Republican/Democratic divisions on party identification among Southern voters have changed dramatically over a 40-year period; enduring cultural and ideological predispositions play a major role in shaping voters' reactions to election campaigns and their choice for President; personalities of presidential candidates and their poisitions on campaign issues tend to matter far less than is often claimed; and Perot's appeal in 1992 can be attributed to the same factors that distinguished between supporters of Clinton and Bush. In an analysis of individual elections and long-term trends, and of changes within regions, ethnic groups and gender and age categories, "The New American Voter" presents a social and economic picture of partisanship and participation in the American electoral process.

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Review:

I n "The New American Voter" we have a book every bit as grand and ambitious as its predecessors. The breadth of research is impressive. The authors have two of the most distinguished careers in American social sciences. -- Michael C. Dawson "Chicago Tribune" For those struggling to understand and explain the voting behavior of Americans, Miller and Shanks, two prominent academic political scientists, offer one of the most comprehensive analyses of the subject. Not since the classic" The American Voter" was published in 1960 has a book attempted such a sweeping examination of American voting patterns...[This book] is an excellent example of [voting] research and should become the standard reference work in the field. It should be no surprise that this long-awaited volume will become an instant classic among voting studies. This effort by Miller (one of the field's founders) and Shanks (an accomplished scholar) caps more than four decades of using survey research to explain individual voting behavior in US presidential elections...Every page shows sophisticated minds at work, raising multiple explanations, sorting them out with cutting-edge methodologies, and thereby moving knowledge forward. All this is made possible by the rich data generated by National Election Studies, one of Miller's many legacies to political research...[A] pathbreaking study. [I]n "The New American Voter" we have a book every bit as grand and ambitious as its predecessors. The breadth of research is impressive. The authors have two of the most distinguished careers in American social sciences.--Michael C. Dawson "Chicago Tribune " This is an important book by two important political scientists...The genius of Miller's and Shanks' telling of the tale...lies in the careful unfolding of [their] theses in an almost tangible texture of human context in which the American electorate takes on the flavor of the real, breathing and behaving organism that makes politics--as distinguished from the study of mass political behavior. The authors' ability to touch those dimensions simultaneously is, in very large part, what makes this a landmark book..."The New American Voter" is unquestionably a major contribution, and will be a touchstone for scholars making their way along our generation's paths to understanding the reasons and the meaning of political behavior in the last half of the twentieth century.--Michael Kahan "Presidential Studies Quarterly "

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