in the United States as in some other Anglo-American countries.' The parties in the United States are not explicitly linked to class-organizations and do not appeal for support on the basis of class. Nevertheless, the parties are seen by the electorate as linked to specific class-interests, and undoubtedly many people vote in accordance with an image of the parties as representing their economic interests. A number of characteristics of American society and its political system undoubtedly reduce the relation of class and vote. The enormous size of the country, its division into fifty states with real degrees of sovereignty, tremendous ethnic and religious diversity, combined with the decentralized party structure, all reduce the salience of national class-divisions as the main basis for party cleavages. That national class-divisions still exist, and divide the parties even as distinctly as they do, is a measure of the degree of economic and political integration the nation has achieved. The diversity of support for the political parties has been shown by a series of studies of voting. The initial study, setting a pattern for subsequent studies both in the United States and Great Britain, was The People's Choice, a survey of voting behavior in Sandusky, Ohio, in the 1940 presidential election.' Since this was a study of only one northern city and its environs, the regional economic and political diversity of the United States presumably did not affect voting behavior. Still, not only social class differences, but religious and rural-urban differences, were found crucially to affect the political loyalties of voters. Being in a low-income group, a Catholic, or an urban resident, all predisposed a voter toward the Democrats; being in a high-income group, a Protestant, or a rural resident predisposed a voter toward the Republicans. The consequences of contradictory social characteristics presumably pushing people in opposite political directions the now classic notion of cross-pressures were the main focus of this study. The point here is that a relatively high proportion of persons in Sandusky was was under cross-pressures, indicating that the diversity of sources of political loyalties is great in the United States.'