--- Dan Minette <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've got a question about your analysis. The years > you didn't mention > really didn't fit the pattern. Yes, '68 was quite > high, but so was '60 and > '64. In fact, every year in from '52-'68 saw higher > turnout higher than > any year from '32-'44 (max '32-'44= 58.8%; min > '52-'68= 59.4%). While > I won't argue that good times/bad times is not a > factor, I think that the > data suggests it is not the dominent factor. > > Dan M.
There are two exogenous variables, I believe, one of which I mentioned briefly in an earlier post - generational shifts in voting behavior. Also, in 1952 we were at war (Korea) which probably drove the rates up a bit. Different generations vote at different base rates. The generation of people who reached political maturity at the period running from the start of the Great Depression to the end of the Second World War tend to vote at extremely high rates, so as they became a larger portion of the American population you see turnout rising (during the 1960s) and then starting to fall afterwards. In general you have to compare from election to election to take that into account - for example, 1940, when the world was going to hell, is a higher turnout than 1944, when we were at least winning and the Depression was over, which has a much higher turnout than 1948, when things were pretty good all around. If you take that out to 1960, though, the demographics of the electorate have changed _a lot_ and so you'd have to split the sample up demographically. Fiorina and Peterson actually did in their lecture. The second is, of course, the Civil Rights revolution. Turnout goes up during the period you cited because of both the debates _over_ Civil Rights (issues other than economics can drive turnout, as the Democratic Party just found out) and because more and more African-Americans were given the right to vote. The base rate might be a more important effect over the long run, but I have no idea which one was stronger in the 1950s. I don't do voter turnout stuff - I'm not an Americanist. But the base rate of by generation voter turnout does vary, which is why I think the data actually supports the model I was trying (not very well, apparently) to express perfectly. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Check out the new Yahoo! Front Page. www.yahoo.com _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
