Social structure and voting choice: hypotheses, findings, and interpretations

Abstract

To explain voting patterns in recent Presidential elections in the United States, I analyze data from the 1984 National Election Survey, and apply core hypotheses from an axiomatic theory. The hypotheses, which connect social statuses to issues of economic equity and social equality, focus my research on how occupational class, socioeconomic status, and ethnicity affect voting. I define ethnicity as social diversity not due to age, social class, or gender and measure it as a composite of religious and racial differences. I study African-Americans, Jews, white Catholics, and white Protestants and find that ethnicity thus defined has stronger overall effects than socioeconomic status. To explain why Jews have remained loyal Democrats and why white Catholics have not, I also analyze Alford's data about the Eisenhower-Stevenson election of 1952 and exit polls for elections in the 1980s and for the 1992 Clinton-Bush-Perot election. The Jews' interests in social justice, shaped by their ethnicity, affect their vote; the white Catholics' economic interests, shaped by their recent affluence, affect their vote.