Religion, Ethnicity, and Party Affiliation in the U.S.: Evidence from Pooled Electoral Surveys, 1968-72

Abstract

By analyzing a white Christian subsample of pooled national survey data collected in 1968, 1970, and 1972 (subsample's n = 4,142), we try to determine whether ethnicity has a direct effect on party identification net of parental party identification. In so doing, we raise a number of subsidiary issues: (1) how best to measure ethnicity, (2) the need to distinguish between ethnically identified and ethnically assimilated respondents, and (3) possible regional variation in the impact of ethnicity. We find that religion alone (Protestant versus Catholic) is an adequate measure of ethnicity for this analysis, there being little intrareligious variation in party identification by national origin. Second, religion's effect is largely limited to the ethnically identified. Third, its effect holds up when controlling for parental party identification and SES. Fourth, regional variation in the impact of religion is understood as largely flowing from regional variations in the distribution of Catholics. That parental party affiliation affects one's own identification is by now a virtual truism, well-documented in the social science literature. But the question still unresolved is whether ethnicity's effect on party affiliation is largely transmitted by the parents, or whether ethnicity exerts an influence independent of parental party affiliation. An argument in favor of the existence of a direct ethnic effect can be constructed from various sources. For example, a survey of much of the pertinent research on America's nineteenth and twentieth centuries notes, historians have offered strong evidence that the most important deter*Work on this paper was supported by a grant from the Research Foundation of the City University of New York, No. 11387. We want to gratefully acknowledge the editorial suggestions provided by Paul Ritterband and Eleanor Singer.