The New American Voter - Softcover

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 "

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.