The History of American Electoral Behavior 9781400871148

Table of contents :
Cover
Contents
Series Preface
Preface
Introduction
Part 1: Electoral Sequences in American History
Introduction to Part One
1. Partisan Realignment: A Systemic Perspective
2. Toward a Theory of Stability and Change in American Voting Patterns: New York State, 1792-1970
3. Third Party Alignments in a Two Party System: The Case of Minnesota
Part 2: Popular Participation in Elections
Introduction to Part Two
4. The Maryland Electorate and the Concept of a Party System in the Early National Period
5. Party, Competition, and Mass Participation: The Case of the Democratizing Party System, 1824-1852
6. The Effect of the Southern System of Election Laws on Voting Participation: A Reply to V.O. Key, Jr.
Part 3: Determinants of Popular Voting Behavior
Introduction to Part Three
7. The Electoral Foundations of the Political Machine: New York City, 1884-1897
8. In Search of Wisconsin Progressivism, 1904-1952: A Test of the Rogin Scenario
9. Retrieval of Individual Data from Aggregate Units of Analysis: A Case Study Using Twentieth- Century Voting Data
Part 4: The Impact of Popular Voting Behavior on Public Policy
Introduction to Part Four
10. The Impact of Electoral Behavior on Public Policy: The Urban Dimension, 1900
List of Participants in the Conference on Electoral Behavior at Cornell University, June 1973
The Contributors
Index

Citation preview

THE HISTORY O F AMERICAN ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR

HISTORY ADVISORY COMMITTEE OF

MSSB:

Richard A. Easterlin, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania Robert William Fogel, Departments of History and Economics, Harvard University Ronald Lee, Department of Economics, University of Michigan Gilbert Shapiro, Departments of History and Sociology, University of Pittsburgh Stephan Thernstrom, Department of History, Harvard University Charles Tilly, Departments of History and Sociology, University of Michigan (Chairman)

MSSB Quantitative Studies in History:

FORTHCOMING VOLUMES IN THE

SERIES

Demographic Processes and Family Organization in Nineteenth-Century America International Trade and Internal Growth PUBLISHED:

Essays on a Mature Economy: Britain After 1840 (Princeton, 1971) The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History (Princeton, 1972) Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton, 1975) The New Urban History: Quantitative Explorations by American Historians (Princeton, 1975) The History of Parliamentary Behavior (Princeton, 1977) Historical Studies of Changing Fertility (Princeton, 1978) The History of American Electoral Behavior (Princeton, 1978)

The History of American Electoral Behavior EDITED

BY

Joel H. Silbey, Allan G. Bogue, and William H. Flanigan CONTRIBUTORS Lee Benson—David A. Bohmer—Walter Dean Burnham William N. Chambers—Jerome M. Clubb—Philip C. Davis Robert R. Dykstra—Phyllis F. Field—William H. Flanigan J. Rogers Hollingsworth—John J. Kushma—David R. Reynolds J err old G. Rusk—Martin Shefter—John L. Shover—Joel H. Silbey John J. Stucker—Nancy H. Zingale

PRINCETON

UNIVERSITY

PRESS

Copyright © 1978 by The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California ALL BIGHTS BESEKVED

Reproduction, translation, publication, use, and disposal by and for the United States Government and its officers, agents, and employees acting within the scope of their official duties, for Government use only, is permitted. This material was prepared with the support of National Science Foundation Grant No. GS-3256. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the view of the National Science Foundation. Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data will be found on the last printed page of this book. Printed in the United States of America by Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey

TO

V. O. Key Paul Lazarsfeld and Angus Campbell

Series Preface THIS volume is one of a series of "Quantitative Studies in History" sponsored by the Mathematical Social Science Board and published by Princeton University Press. Other volumes in the series are listed on p. ii. The Mathematical Social Science Board (MSSB) was established in 1964 under the aegis of The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences "to foster advanced research and training in the application of mathematical methods in the social sciences." The following fields are each represented on MSSB by one member: anthropology, economics, history, geography, linguistics, political science, psychology, and sociology. The three methodological disciplines of mathematics, statistics, and computer science are also represented. Members of MSSB are appointed, subject to the approval of the Board of Trustees of the Center, for a term of four years. At the present time the members of MSSB are: E. A. Hammel, Department of Anthropology, University of California—Berkeley Richard A. Easterlin, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania Edward A. Feigenbaum, Computer Science Department, Stanford University Samuel Goldberg, Department of Mathematics, Oberlin College Gerald Kramer, Department of Political Science, Yale University Kenneth C. Land, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois Marc Nerlove, Department of Economics, Northwestern University Barbara H. Partee, Department of Linguistics, University of Massachusetts Thomas W. Pullum, Department of Sociology, University of California—Davis Frank Restle, Department of Psychology, Indiana University Herbert A. Simon, Department of Industrial Relations, CarnegieMellon University Waldo Tobler, Department of Geography, University of Michigan MSSB has established advisory committees to plan its activities in the various substantive fields with which it is concerned. The current members of the History Advisory Committee are: Richard A. Easterlin, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania

vii

SERIES PREFACE

Charles Tilly, Center for Research on Social Organization, University of Michigan Daniel Scott Smith, Department of History, University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Peter H. Smith, Department of History, University of Wisconsin Supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, MSSB has organized five major classes of activities: (1) Training Programs, which have lasted from two to eight weeks during the summer, and have been designed to provide young pre- and post-Ph.D.s with intensive training in some of the mathematics pertinent to their substantive field and with examples of applications to specific problems. (2) Research and Training Seminars, which have typically lasted from four to six weeks, have been composed of both senior scientists and younger people who have already received some training in mathematical applications. The focus has been on recent research, on the intensive exploration of new ideas, and on the generation of new research. The training has been less formal than in (1); the research and training seminars have had the apprentice nature of advanced graduate work. At present MSSB is not conducting training programs or training seminars, because of lack of funds for that purpose. (3) Advanced Research Workshops, which typically last from four to six weeks, and are almost exclusively restricted to senior scientists. They are devoted to fostering advanced research. They afford the possibility of extensive and penetrating contact over a prolonged period among scholars who are deeply involved in research. (4) Preparation of Teaching Materials. In some areas, the absence of effective teaching materials—even of suitable research papers—is a barrier to the development of research and teaching activities within universities. The Board has, therefore, felt that it could accelerate the development of such materials partly through financial support and partly through helping to organize their preparation. (5) Special Conferences. Short conferences, lasting a few days, are organized to explore the possibilities of the successful development of mathematical theory and training in some particular area that has not previously been represented in the programs, or to review the progress of research in particular areas when such a review seems warranted. MSSB has played an important part in recent historical research. The Board, for example, regularly sponsored the meetings during the 1960s at which the newly active importers of econometric methods into economic history forged their agreements, identified their disviii

SERIES PREFACE

agreements, and worked out agendas for their inquiries. More recently MSSB has sponsored a number of activities in American political and social history: conferences and seminars on the use of quantitative methods in the study of the history of legislative behavior, on the family in the process of urbanization, and on formulation, estimation, and testing of behavioral models in historical demography. Some earlier volumes in the MSSB-sponsored "Quantitative Studies in History," such as Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History, Aydelotte, W. O., Bogue, A. G., and Fogel, R. W., eds. (Princeton University Press, 1972), included substantial analyses of political processes. This is, however, the first volume in the series to concentrate entirely on American politics. It shows, we think, that mathematically informed analysis, coupled with sound knowledge of the historical sources, can renew our understanding of old questions. Charles Tilly and Richard A. Easterlin History Advisory Committee, MSSB

IX

Contents Series Preface

vii

Preface

xiii

Introduction JOEL H. SILHEY, ALLAN G. BOGUE, AND WILLIAM H. FLAOTGAN

3

PART O N E : ELECTORAL SEQUENCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Introduction to Part One

31

1. Partisan Realignment: A Systemic Perspective WALTER DEAN BURNHAM, JEROME M. CLUBB, and WILLIAM H. FLANIGAN

45

2. Toward a Theory of Stability and Change in American Voting Patterns: New York State, 1792-1970 LEE BENSON, JOEL H. SILBEY, and PHYLLIS F. FIELD

78

3. Third Party Alignments in a Two Party System: The Case of Minnesota NANCY H. ZINGALE

106

PART T W O : POPULAR PARTICIPATION IN ELECTIONS

Introduction to Part Two

137

4. The Maryland Electorate and the Concept of a Party System in the Early National Period DAVID A. BOHMER

146

5. Party, Competition, and Mass Participation: The Case of the Democratizing Party System, 1824-1852 WILLIAM N. CHAMBERS and PHILIP C. DAVIS

174

6. The Effect of the Southern System of Election Laws on Voting Participation: A Reply to V. O. Key, Jr. JERROLD G. RUSK and JOHN J. STUCKER

198

PART THREE: DETERMINANTS OF POPULAR VOTING BEHAVIOR

Introduction to Part Three

253

7. The Electoral Foundations of the Political Machine: New York City, 1884-1897 MARTIN SHEFTER

263

xi

CONTENTS

8. In Search of Wisconsin Progressivism, 1904-1952: A Test of the Rogin Scenario ROBERT R. DYKSTRA and DAVID R. REYNOLDS

299

9. Retrieval of Individual Data from Aggregate Units of Analysis: A Case Study Using Twentieth-Century Voting Data JOHN L. SHOVER and JOHN J. KUSHMA

327

PART FOUR: T H E IMPACT OF POPULAR VOTING BEHAVIOR ON PUBLIC POLICY

Introduction to Part Four

343

10. The Impact of Electoral Behavior on Public Policy: The Urban Dimension, 1900 J. ROGERS HOLLINGSWORTH

346

List of Participants in the Conference on Electoral Behavior at Cornell University, June 1973

372

The Contributors

374

Index

379

xii

Preface IN the past two decades an increasing number of historians have diligently applied quantitative techniques to a great many problems of historical description and analysis. Since 1969 the History Advisory Committee of the Mathematical Social Science Board (MSSB) has encouraged this development by sponsoring conferences bringing together scholars from various fields to discuss each other's research and to examine the state of the art of applying quantitative methods in their area of historical analysis. Ten conferences dealing with such topics as the history of legislative behavior, the economics of American slavery, the new urban history, social mobility in historical perspective, and the nature of the British economy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, among others, have brought scholars to various campuses for a few days of critical discussion. In each case Princeton University Press has undertaken to publish suitably revised and edited papers from each of the conferences. This volume is a part of that series. It developed from an MSSB sponsored conference held at Cornell University in June, 1973. Like the others in this series, it shows by concrete illustration how mathematical methods are currently being used to attack a particular kind of historical problem, in this case the study of popular voting behavior. The editors of this volume served as the planning committee for the conference. In their call for contributions their desire was that the papers demonstrate the utility of quantitative methods by showing their application to specific problems of interest rather than by exhortation. As W. O. Aydelotte has written, "the thing that matters in quantitative research . . . is not the refinement of methods for their own sake but, rather, the contribution that can be made, by using these methods, to the solution of problems of historical interpretation." 1 The planners did not try to impose a unifying theme for all papers but to select and present the most interesting and revealing examples of current work in progress in electoral history. Forty-one historians, political scientists, and sociologists gathered to hear nine papers and engage in two and a half days of sustained discussion. The papers were circulated in advance to both the formal 1 In a personal communication to the editors, discussing his contribution to this series, William O. Aydelotte, ed., The History of Parliamentary Behavior, Princeton, 1977.

xiii

PREFACE

commentators and to the other participants. The result was wideranging, brisk and often intense debate, all of which was considered in the significant revisions the papers have undergone since the conference itself. It proved impossible to include either at the Conference or in this book, papers representing the full geographic range of the current work being done about elections outside the United States. We have chosen, therefore, to focus exclusively on the American historical experience, but this collection reveals quite well, the range and depth of the work presently being done by historians and other scholars using systematic quantitative methods, theoretical propositions about social conflict and political behavior, and vast quantities of aggregate electoral and social data to explore and explain past electoral behavior. The contributors address problems of improving conceptualization and classifications of electoral patterns, of accounting for electoral outcomes, examining the nature and impact of constraints on participation, and considering the relationship of electoral behavior to subsequent public policy. They also use the various kinds of data such analysis needs and which have become more and more available: time series of election returns, census enumerations, providing the social and economic characteristics of voting populations, and individual poll books and other lists which record whom the individual voters actually supported. In addition, the authors utilize appropriate statistical techniques to order their data and evaluate relationships among them. The result is, in our view, both a presentation of important research findings and a demonstration by example of how quantitative methods have enriched the study of popular voting behavior. Although this collection deals with electoral behavior in the United States only, it has broad chronological focus, and the contributions cover most of our national history. Popular electoral activity was highly restricted in America before the late eighteenth century and little electoral data have survived from any earlier periods. But fortunately the interest in popular voting has been contemporary with the growth in collecting and preserving political and socio-economic data in official and private archives. Our one limitation was to decide that we would not include papers dependent upon contemporary polling or related research. Although such data have provided a rich source of knowledge about elections and electoral behavior, they are of limited utility to historians as methodological guides for research (although they do provide many cues and useful insights regardless of the period being studied). The editors believed it appropriate that a volume devoted to historical interests and explanations should emphasize research xiv

PREFACE

based on the kinds of data that historians in general have available to them. Robert Fogel and Charles Tilly, successive chairmen of the History Advisory Committee of the Mathematical Social Science Board enthusiastically supported the planning committee at every stage of planning, organizing, and completing both the conference and the book. Preston Cutler of The Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, administered the funds available from the MSSB most efficiently. William O. Aydelotte, Lee Benson, Jerome Clubb, and Samuel McSeveney were helpful with advice and counsel at every stage. At Cornell, Alan Kraut, Robin Hurwitz, and Madelyn Rhenisch significantly lightened the administrative responsibilities of the chairman of the planning committee. The editors, of course, share full and joint responsibility for the contents and organization of the volume. Joel H. Silbey Allan G. Bogue William H. Flanigan

xv

THE HISTORY OF AMERICAN ELECTORAL BEHAVIOR

Introduction JOEL H. SILBEY, ALLAN G. BOGUE, AND WILLIAM H. FLANIGAN I contests in the United States have always mobilized hosts of curious observers: interested journalists, casual travelers from abroad, and plain citizen bystanders, all enthralled by the succession of dramatic national political campaigns that have enlivened our history. Through time, a growing cadre of professional analysts also have watched with equally intense interest. Reflecting such fascination, history books abound with descriptions of the preliminary skirmishing before the conventions, the selection of candidates, the writing of platforms, and the details of the months of intense campaigning culminating in the ultimate drama of election day itself as long weeks of fervent activity end in either triumph or despair. Most of this historical literature is narrative or descriptive in character, reflecting a persistent and valuable commitment to retelling the key moments of our political past. To some of the authors in this tradition, the election is the crucial event in the polity, shunting old warhorses into the pastures of retirement, while providing the skillful or lucky politicians with a renewed permit to operate the engines of the American leviathan. Other writers interpret elections as mandates at the municipal, state, or national level to implement a new agenda or conversely as the request of a complacent electorate for more of the same. But some scholars have approached elections differently. They have considered them to be symbolic reaffirmations of fundamental values or as expressions of public opinion, an important form of social comment in a democracy. At a very basic level, these scholars have seen in the pattern of the vote what Stuart Rice described as "useful indexes of political attitudes." Rice devoted Part Four of Quantitative Methods in Politics to explaining how the scholar could use voting returns in establishing the relative importance of different possible determinants of attitudes, such as region, rural or urban residence, economic status, sex, religion, nationality, race, and other miscellaneous factors.1 The ELECTION

1

Stuart Rice, Quantitative Methods in Politics, New York, 1928. The quotation is from page 93.

3

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

essays in this volume originate in this tradition, developed by the scholars who have viewed the electoral statement as a means of penetrating the outer structure of political life and charting the subterranean arena of conflicting values, interests, and desires that exist in most societies. In the United States, in particular, which for most of its history has been a mass participation society, this approach seems particularly appropriate. Since federal elections were instituted at the end of the eighteenth century, and particularly since the introduction of widespread manhood suffrage in the first third of the nineteenth century, Americans have had ample opportunity to express and record their opinions on the issues of the day and era. Contemporary observers certainly believed that election day provided an occasion for the meaningful expression of political beliefs. Subsequent analysts agreed with them. "As a general rule," Lee Benson has written, "voting for public office provides the single best indicator of public opinion."2 Given its importance, there are many approaches possible to the study of electoral behavior. We can begin with the political atom, the individual member of the electorate, and examine the process of political socialization that shapes his political attitudes or belief system. We can probe for the psychological determinants that activate the voter or try to distinguish those social influences—whether exerted by members of family, ethnic, religious or class groupings—that determine the character of political action. Or we can study the mobilizing agencies, the parties, party auxiliaries, and interest groups that activate important elements of the electorate. Of interest too is the institutional framework, that is the fabric of law and precedent, that Americans have fashioned to order their political activities.3 Ordered rather arbitrarily here, these dimensions of the electoral process are interrelated in ways that are both complex and perplexing. Fortunately, given the intrinsic interest in studying voting behavior, scholars are blessed with a wealth of electoral and social data waiting exploitation. Many official and unofficial compendia of voting returns and census data exist and are available for use in conjunction with other materials in archives, attics, and cluttered offices. The information contained in these resources include actual election returns, most numerously at the county level of aggregation for all federal and most state elections, as well as a great many other contests going well 2

Lee Benson, Toward the Scientific Study of History, Philadelphia, 1972, 151. Two recent brief discussions of the perspectives from which the electoral process may be viewed are William H. Flanigan, Political Behavior of the American Electorate, 2d ed., Boston, 1972, and J. Rogers Hollingsworth, "Problems in the Study of Popular Voting Behavior," in Lee Benson et al., American Political Behavior: Historical Essays and Readings, New York, 1974, 1-25. 3

4

INTRODUCTION

back into our past.* In addition there are scattered series of electoral returns available at the precinct and ward levels of observation, and in some states even individual poll books recording the party preference or actual voting decisions of individual citizens. Included in the available census data are social and economic descriptions of populations by states, counties, and minor civil divisions. Other compilations of similar material such as city directories, lists of church members, tax rolls, and the like add to the resources available. Although much of the material remains incomplete, fugitive or unsystematically reported, the data necessary to develop socio-economic explanations of voting behavior are plentiful enough to whet the appetites of concerned historians.5 Indeed, such materials have been used extensively. Some historians always have counted and spent much time dipping into those data to tally the results of individual elections or to relate the outcomes to other available data, particularly those characterizing voting groups in the population. Much of the research based on these materials has been of high quality and has provided an accumulation of information and insights which are still useful today. But in much of the work dealing with elections there was usually something missing no matter how firm the author's commitment to penetrating externalities and reaching the realities of the underlying political conflict. Most authors lacked the ability to measure systematically all returns and all populations and to relate the multiplicity of involved variables to the actual election results. They were either uninterested in coping with the masses of rich but perversely intractable data or lacked the expertise necessary to do so. As a result, historians tended to base their treatments of elections on a common sense reading of part of the record, often ignoring long-run voting trends, or similar behavioral phenomena in comparable geographic or political settings. The result was a fragmentary and episodic treatment of discrete political phenomena. II IT was Lee Benson who devastatingly demonstrated the shortcomings of traditional historical electoral analyses in his pathbreaking "Research 4

Such compendia include annual almanacs such as the Whig later Tribune Almanac, first published in 1838, and other similar summaries compiled by other newspapers subsequently. Among these were the Albany Evening Journal Almanac, Chicago Daily News Almanac, and most recently and steadily, the World Almanac. 5 An early attempt to survey electoral resources was Walter Dean Burnham, Sources of Historical Election Data: A Preliminary Bibliography, East Lansing, 1963.

5

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

Problems in American Political Historiography," which has been called "the first important contribution to a new' American political history, dealing with popular voting and related institutional developments." 6 In that article and in a major research project that soon followed, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, he emphasized earlier failures to develop rigorous methods of testing the wide variety of explanations scholars have advanced to explain the outcomes of American elections and called for a more precise, systematic, and comparative use of the masses of available data. 7 The authors of most studies of politics, he argued, had attempted to explain mass political phenomena in terms either of the public expressions, memories, and behavior of a few important individuals or by occasional and unsystematic forays into a limited range of sources reflecting mass behavior. To Benson, such methods were inadequate if we were to appreciate the full nature of electoral behavior.8 The use of electoral time series and various aggregation techniques, on the other hand, Benson believed, would allow us to examine the behavior of whole groups rather than that of selected and perhaps unrepresentative or deviant examples; would allow us to place any individual election in the context of previous and subsequent electoral outcomes, thereby catching the wider-ranging process of electoral movement. Finally, such methods would permit us to compare and contrast behavior at different levels of action and in different places. The source materials for such studies were available in profusion in the mass of electoral and social data waiting to be systematically exploited. Illustrating his argument with excerpts from the work of historians who had generalized about the elections of 1824, 1860, 1884, and 1896, Benson showed how various hypotheses used to account for the outcome of these elections could be tested, refined, or discarded by simple quantitative analysis. Benson also suggested that such quantitative analysis of elections would be fortified if historians utilized propositions about social conflicts and electoral behavior developed in the other social sciences. The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy was a masterful if still elementary demonstration of the fusion of social science theory and his6 William O. Aydelotte, Allan G. Bogue and Robert W. Fogel, The Dimensions of Quantitative Research in History, Princeton, 1973, 32. 7 The article was published in Mirra Komarovsky, Common Frontiers of the Social Sciences, Glencoe, Hl., 1957, 113-183. The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy was published in 1961. 8 See also his Turner and Beard: American Historical Writing Reconsidered, Glencoe, IU., 1960.

6

INTRODUCTION

torical data, informed and enriched throughout by the use of a wide variety of findings and ideas from contemporary social theory, especially Robert K. Merton's work in reference group theory, and the election research of the Bureau of Applied Social Research and the Survey Research Center. But as an eclectic scholar of formidable energy, Benson also had sampled the wares offered by such diverse shopkeepers as Alexis de Tocqueville, Karl Marx, Robert Dahl, Seymour Martin Lipset, Louis Hartz and the practicing pollster, Samuel Lubell, as well as honing his ideas on those of such contrasting historians as James C. Malin and Richard Hofstadter. Benson's position, both in regard to quantitative analysis and the use of behavioral theory, was a renewal of a long dormant tradition of empirical research that had deep roots in both political history and in a number of the social sciences. Actually the provenance of the behavioral analysis of popular voting behavior goes back a long way. Political party actives and a varied collection of statisticians and geographers, in the government and out, devoted considerable attention to election returns in the late nineteenth century. Party organizations and newspapers even conducted individual polls. Most of these activities had little impact on the scholarly community, but the creative cartographic analysis of county level census data by analysts in the office of the Census influenced the development of a major thrust in historical analysis. By far their most important impact on scholarship lay in changing the questions that historians asked about electoral behavior. From our perspective various geographers and historians of the late nineteenth century raised basic questions for electoral research that have persisted to the present. Among the first generation of professional American historians during the last years of the nineteenth century, there were some who sought ways of obtaining greater precision in describing the behavior of large groups of actors on the historical stage, and of relating underlying causal factors to political action, including voting. To these scholars, part of the answer lay in the application of systematic quantitative techniques to such subjects as the study of popular voting behavior.9 In 1885 J. Franklin Jameson argued that "the true history of 9 Several excellent surveys of scholarship on election analysis are available and we shall not attempt to cover those topics again. Two articles by Richard Jensen are especially useful in this regard. We prefer to emphasize a few recurring themes in reviewing the literature of a century of election analysis without bothering to remind the reader of all the many scholars in several disciplines who have contributed to these developments. See Richard Jensen, "American Election Analysis: A. Case History of Methodological Diffusion," and "History and the Polit-

7

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

our nation will not be written until we obtain a correct and exhaustive knowledge of the history of public opinion upon politics, the history of the views and actions of the ordinary voter. . . . What combination of circumstances so affected the political molecules in Massachusetts or in Virginia as to give a new complexion to the political tissue?"10 At the University of Wisconsin in the 1890's and later at Harvard, Frederick Jackson Turner persuaded many students to engage in the quantitative measurement of political behavior. He had carried with him to graduate school a strong interest in political geography, kindled originally in discussions with his politician father and by examining the population cartography of the United States Bureau of the Census. At Johns Hopkins, the well-stocked history and geography research collections and the stimulating seminars of the history graduate program reinforced his enthusiasm. From Baltimore he carried to the University of Wisconsin the strong conviction that maps showing the distribution of demographic, economic, and political variables could be used as powerful tools in explaining the past political behavior of the people of the United States. Turner's emphasis remained focused on the empirical study of human behavior and the interaction between electoral behavior and the socio-economic environment. 11 Make detailed studies, one student recalled him as telling his classes, "of the correlations between party votes, by precincts, wards, etc., nationalities and state origins of the voter, assessment rolls, denominational groups, illiteracy, etc. What kind of people tend to be Whigs, what Democrats or Abolitionists, or Prohibitionists, etc."12 Turner and his students mapped election returns at the local level, compared them to soil maps, census materials and a wide variety of socio-economic characteristics of the voting population. In the course of the research for his projected magnum opus, The United States, 1830-1850: The Nation and Its Sections, Turner prepared voting maps in profusion, and the illustrations in his book include an eye boggling example in which the results of four presidential elections are combined to provide a "national party preponderance" variable, which was in turn mapped in concert with white illiteracy and areas of low land values. 13 ical Scientist," both in Sevmour Martin Lipset, ed., Politics and the Social Sciences, New York, 1969, 226-243, 1-28. 10 Quoted in Jensen, "Election Analysis," 231. 11 Ibid., 232-234. ™ Quoted in ibid., 233. 13 Frederick Jackson Turner, The United States, 1830-1850: The Nation and its Sections, New York, 1935, Plate 4 at the end of the book. Turner's first Wisconsin

8

INTRODUCTION

In his incisive study of these developments Richard Jensen has identified twenty-eight scholars as "Turnerian historians of elections," —not all of whom, however, actually studied with Turner. 14 In addition Turner had a hand in shaping such eminent political scientists as Frederick Ogg and Wilfred Binkley and retained a keen interest in the social sciences into his later years.15 One of his faithful students and disciples, Joseph Schafer, mustered election data in percentage form as late as 1941 in trying to answer the question, "Who Elected Lincoln?"16 But, by this time most American political historians' interests lay elsewhere. This is to be explained, according to Jensen, partly in terms of a breakdown of communication between the disciplines. Turner's abundant data were intractable and could not be handled easily without recourse to systematic mathematical procedures. Analysts dealing with masses of quantitative data require summary scores that reduce their material to manageable size without losing so much information that interpreters are misled. The early cartographic techniques of electoral analysis were more overwhelming than manageable and did not generate useful summary measures. (Although, parenthetically, the complete dependence on visual inspection of maps had the advantage of keeping the analyst close to the data, an advantage usually lost in modern computer processing.) Neither Turner, nor other political historians kept up with advances elsewhere which would have lightened the task of statistical analysis. Much more effective statistical tools were available by the 1920's than the cumbersome system of map analysis.17 But Turner's continuing interest in the social sciences was selective, remaining unpiqued by the parsimony, precision and comparative rigor inherent in the use of correlation and regression analysis. And elsewhere, interest in electoral analysis among historians almost died altogether as interest in other varieties of history increased. Whatever the reasons, the historians' commitment to studying mass voting behavior by systematic quantitative means was suppressed during the twenties not to reappear for several decades. doctoral candidate, Orrin G. Libby produced a widely acclaimed and still used investigation, Geographical Distribution of the Vote of the Thirteen States on the Federal Constitution, 1787-8, Madison, Wise, 1894. 14 Jensen, "Election Analysis," 242. 15 Ray A. Billington, Frederick Jackson Turner: Historian, Schohr, Teacher, New York, 1973, 493-497. 16 Joseph Schafer, "Who Elected Lincoln?" American Historical Review, 47 (October 1941), 51-63. 17 Jensen, "Election Analysis," 234-235.

9

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

Fortunately, as historical interest waned, psychologists and political scientists took up the slack. Although some of those involved were influenced or taught by Turner, the next development probably should be viewed as ahistorical, and occurred in the social sciences. Here, political analysts developed a new set of questions and techniques during the 1920's. At the University of Chicago, strongly influenced by new psychological studies of attitudes and recent advances made in the measurement of human perception and outlooks, a number of social scientists eagerly accepted the tools developed by British statisticians and added embellishments of their own. During the 1920's, also, William F. Ogburn was greatly interested in voting analysis, and Quantitative Methods in Politics published by Stuart A. Rice in 1928 became a classic. Rice argued in the introduction to this volume that "quantitative method is one among various means of discovering truth. In political science, it is a comparatively new and rare means." He pointed out that as yet there was no book available "dealing with political statistics as a separate group of applications of statistical principles." Nor did he believe that the time was ripe for such a volume, rather the work in hand was to be "preparatory to" such an endeavor. He described his own recent research as lying in the field of "behavioristic political psychology" and argued that politics as a science was "concerned among other things with the nature, content and distribution of attitudes among individuals, and with the manner with which they have practical effect in the machinery of government."18 In the political science department at the University of Chicago at the same time, a number of teachers and their students undertook close and systematic quantitative analyses of popular voting behavior. Harold F. Gosnell was particularly active from the early 1920's onward, and the publication of Why Europe Votes in 1930 and his Grass Roots Politics in 1942 mark a most fruitful period in the career of a brilliant analyst of electoral processes.19 In the latter book he analyzed the nature of voting and the changing composition of the political parties in six representative American states from 1924 to 1940. Gosnell primarily was interested in describing and assessing the developments of the 1930's, but on occasion he pushed the historical context back as far as 1896. In addition to its particular substantive findings, this book included a discussion of the merits of polling and a defense of the use of 18

W. F. Ogburn and N. S. Talbot, "A Measurement of the Factors in the Presidential Election of 1928," Social Forces, 8 (December 1929), 175-183. The quotations are from Rice, Quantitative Methods, 5, 8, 9, 53, 93. 19 Harold F. Gosnell, Why Europe Votes, Chicago, 1930; Grass Roots Politics: National Voting Behavior of Typical States, Washington, 1942.

10

INTRODUCTION

correlation and regression analysis in addition to the development to some degree of a generalized model of American voting behavior. This flurry of activity in the 1920's and 1930's set continuing guidelines for much subsequent behavioral research on the subject of voting and elections. During these years a commitment to systematic quantitative analysis had developed and scholars had produced a number of stimulating analyses using aggregate historical data. But, as in history, interests were changing rapidly. The marked lessening of concern with electoral behavior among historians was paralleled by a similar turning away by social scientists from the historical dimension of that analysis. The tools of modern statistics were utilized by a few scholars to explore aggregate data and to answer questions about voting patterns but perhaps because the technical skills were never widespread among political scientists or because the questions asked by political scientists moved away from electoral analysis, statistical analysis of aggregate data did not flourish. The earlier convergence of methods, data and approach in history and the social sciences was replaced by an increasing divergence of activity and a compartmentalization of research and interests that took decades to overcome. At the core of the divergence was the increasing reliance by the Chicago social scientists on a new tool, the actual polling of living voters— systematic survey research—as the best if not the only means of measuring and understanding voting behavior. Harold Gosnell had discussed the possibility that electoral behavior might be studied more effectively by polling voters than by statistically analyzing the actual vote. But he also pointed out that even the better managed polls had been inaccurate and contended that voters might not take the pollster seriously, thus enhancing the chances of error in the results.20 Despite Gosnell's skepticism, the poll served as the foundation of a type of research that became dominant from the 1920's onward and has greatly influenced the perspectives that students of past voting behavior bring to their work today. By the late 1920's such presidential polls as that of The Literary Digest had become a standard feature of election reporting. 21 Although the reputation of the Digest 20

Gosnell, Grass Roots Politics, 1-5. At least as early as the early national period, Americans were using the poll or straw vote and some politicians made heavy use of it during the late nineteenth century. The editors of various newspapers and periodicals learned that straw votes were of great interest to their readers and by the early twentieth century a number of such polls had attained national reputation. These matters are discussed in George Gallup and Saul Forbes Rae, The Pulse of Democracy: The Public Opinion Poll and How It Works, New York, 1940, 3-55. 21

11

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

poll was irretrievably ruined after the presidential campaign of 1936 (when it predicted Alfred Landon's victory and Landon lost in one of the greatest landslides in American history), the reputation of "scientific" pollsters like George Gallup of the American Institute of Public Opinion, and the managers of the Crossley poll and the survey conducted by Fortune were correspondingly enhanced when they predicted that the Digest poll would miss the mark by an amount very close to the actual error. Such commercial polls canvassed the nation by interviewing a few thousand respondents selected as representative on grounds that were advertised to be scientific but probably were more admirable as efficient and successful. Such polls achieved their success through "quota sampling" in which the interviewers selected respondents according to characteristics like race, sex and education in order to produce a sample with the same distributions on these controls as the population. Additional refinements in polling techniques followed, paving the way for even more rigorous analyses of electoral behavior. Unfortunately, historians had few opportunities to poll living people and their problems were compounded by the fact that as the use of contemporary polls increased, political scientists abandoned the use of time series of election returns as unimportant for understanding contemporary voting behavior. Of eminent social scientists, only V. O. Key, Jr., originally trained by Gosnell at Chicago, retained a lively interest in using historical voting data in the course of his research.22 The chasm between political historians and social scientists widened dramatically. Yet some reconvergence was not far off. At the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University, the sociologist Paul Lazarsfeld, quite by accident, diverted his theoretical concerns from consumer behavior to voter choice. He stimulated and directed a series of voting behavior studies of presidential elections that had far-reaching effects among both historians and social scientists.23 In its study of the decision-making process among voters in Erie County, Ohio, in 1940, Lazarsfeld's team applied a panel technique of polling which involved, "the repeated interweioing of the same people." This method, Lazarsfeld explained, was a "more effective method of getting at the important questions. What is the effect of 22 Examples of Key's work can be found in Southern Politics in State and Nation, New York, 1949; American State Politics: An Introduction, New York, 1956; Politics, Parties and Pressure Groups, New York, 1942, 5th ed., 1964. 23 The first of these was Paul F. Lazarsfeld, Bernard Berelson, and Hazel Gaudet, The People's Choice: How the Voter Makes Up His Mind in a Presidential Campaign, New York, 1944, 3d ed., New York, 1968.

12

INTRODUCTION

social status upon vote? How are people influenced by the party conventions and the nominations? What role does formal propaganda play? How about the press and the radio? What of the influence of family and friends? Where do issues come in, and how? Why do some people settle their vote early and some late? In short, how do votes develop? Why do people vote as they do?"24 The panel technique was ideal for examining attitude change during a campaign, provided the opportunity for cumulative analysis as the canvass developed, and gave researchers greater opportunity to identify and measure the role of the mass media and other influences on the voter's decision. As a result of the publication of The People's Choice, students of voting behavior became more keenly aware of the importance of the social reference group in voting decisions, the tendency for information to be diffused in a two-step process, and the cross pressures which might play upon the individual voter. The Bureau of Applied Social Research followed the Erie County study of 1940 with one carried out in Elmira, New York, in 1948 which, when published as Voting, amplified and reinforced some of the findings of the 1940 study.25 Although the authors of these studies did not escape without some criticisms of both their methods and findings, their research clearly constitutes one of the great breakthroughs in the history of American political science. During the 1950's the new developments in electoral analysis began to penetrate the world of the political historian. In one respect at least the process received a gentle nudge from the Bureau of Applied Social Research. To Paul Lazarsfeld the techniques of the political historian in the United States appeared extremely flaccid, and as a result he provided Lee Benson with modest support for a period of time on the understanding that Benson would address the problems involved in formulating a more rigorous methodology in American political history. Benson's "Research Problems" study and his book on electoral politics in the Jacksonian era were direct outgrowths of his work with Lazarsfeld. But if Benson was truly part pioneer, part prophet, and part proselytizer, he was also symptomatic of an era when other historians had become dissatisfied with a political history that suddenly seemed excessively subjective and imprecise. Certainly some historians had long been discontented with the way members of the profession treated ^ Ibid., 6-7.

25 Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, and William N. McPhee, Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign, Chicago, 1954.

13

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

politics, the "documentary determinism" that led scholars to probe the few surviving manuscript collections in unsystematic ways to generalize about political behavior, and the "presidential synthesis" that focused almost exclusive attention in political studies on great national issues and presidential administrations at a time when, in their research, social scientists were emphasizing the importance of neighborhood, family, class, and local issues in the determination of the way voters, at least, made up their minds.26 In the fifties a number of such scholars became identifiable. At the University of California Charles Sellers became interested in the work of the political scientists as he tried to make sense out of the election of 1844 while writing a biography of James K. Polk.27 Richard McCormick began to use election returns to examine the process of voter mobilization and voter choice in the Jacksonian era.28 The eminent political historian, Roy F. Nichols of the University of Pennsylvania, encouraged the Social Science Research Council, then under the sympathetic direction of W. Pendleton Herring, to fund a small conference on political history at Rutgers University in 1957 where an exciting exchange of ideas took place among these and other such historians. At the University of Iowa, a number of historians, William O. Aydelotte, Allan G. Bogue, Samuel P. Hays, and their students, were experimenting with the findings and methods of other disciplines while trying to make sense of past politics, addressing in the process, electoral and demographic data with an enthusiasm unmatched since Frederick Jackson Turner's seminars.29 In 1960, Hays published the first in a series of papers in which he groped toward the application of behavorial analysis to political history.30 26 See Thomas P. Cochran. "The 'Presidential Synthesis' in American History," American Historical Review, 53 (July 1948), 748-759. The development of this mood is traced in Allan G. Bogue, "United States: The 'New' Political History," The Journal of Contemporary History, 3 (January 1968), 5-27. 27 Charles Grier Sellers, Jr., "The Equilibrium Cycle in Two-Party Politics," Public Opinion Quarterly, 29 (Spring 1965), 16-38. 28 Richard P. McCormick, "New Perspectives on Jacksonian Politics," American Historical Review, 65 (January 1960), 288-301; "Suffrage Classes and Party Alignments: A Study in Voter Behavior," Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 46 (December 1959), 397-410. 29 The activities of the scholars at the University of Iowa are briefly discussed in Robert Swierenga, ed., Quantification in American History: Theory and Research, New York, 1970, 3-4, and Bogue, " 'New' Political History." 30 Samuel P. Hays, "History as Human Behavior," Iowa Journal of History, 58 (July 1960), 193-206; "New Possibilities for American Political History: The Social Analysis of Political Life" (prepared for presentation at the Meeting of the American Historical Association, December 29, 1964 and lithoprinted by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research), subsequently published in Seymour Martin Lipset and Richard Hofstadter, eds., Sociology and

14

INTRODUCTION As such historians began their work, they paid proper obeisance to the memories of Turner and Charles Beard but were more concerned with the action taking place outside of history. The results of survey research provided well-informed insights into popular voting that his­ torians could use in exploring their own material. In this they turned not only to the work of the Columbia group but benefitted also from the research being done at the Survey Research Center of the Uni­ versity of Michigan. The agency that developed into the main institution of electoral analysis from the 1950's to the present had origins even more remote from political science and history than the Bureau of Applied Social Research. The Survey Research Center was an offspring of the Depart­ ment of Agriculture and its personnel entered the field of election studies as accidentally as the Columbia sociologists. But once there they came to dominate the field. Directed first by the social psycholo­ gist Angus Campbell, aided later by Warren Miller, Philip Converse, and Donald Stokes, the staff of the Survey Research Center con­ ducted sequential election surveys that contributed both to a metho­ dological revolution and to the development of a highly interesting body of generalizations and theories about voting. 31 Intrigued by the closeness of Harry Truman's victory in 1948 and the conflicting explanations of "the biggest upset in American political history," Angus Campbell decided to reinterview the 610 respondents who had participated in a poll, taken by the Survey Research Center, on American foreign policy shortly before the election. Each had also been asked incidentally about their intentions in the forthcoming elec­ tion. Another round of interviews would make it "possible to relate attitudes and demographic characteristics to voting behavior, and at History: Methods, New York, 19Θ8, 181-227; "The Social Analysis of American Political History, 1880-1920," Political Science Quarterly, 80 (September 1965), 373-394; "Political Parties and the Community-Society Continuum," in William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, eds., The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, New York, 1967, 152-181. 31 Directed by Robert L. Kahn under the general supervision of Campbell, the Michigan research team issued a preliminary report of their findings in April 1949 as "A Study of the Presidential Vote: November 1948. A National Survey," Ann Arbor, 1949 (mimeographed). This was republished as Angus Campbell and Robert L. Kahn, with ed. assistance of Sylvia Eberhart, The People Elect a Presi­ dent, Ann Arbor, 1952, and followed by Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and War­ ren E. Miller, The Voter Decides, Evanston, 111., 1954. A useful background survey of the development of research in voting behavior is Peter H. Rossi, "Four Land­ marks in Voting Research," in Eugene Burdick and Arthur Brodbeck, eds., Ameri­ can Voting Behavior, New York, 1959, 5-54. 15

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

the same time discover to what extent voting behavior differed from pre-election statements of voting intentions." The exercise would also, Campbell hoped, lay the foundation in various respects for "more substantial studies of the presidential vote in the future."32 The 1948 study did indeed prove to be the forerunner of more such activity at the Survey Research Center. In 1952 scholars there conducted a more elaborate national panel survey of the voting process in the presidential election of that year and they continued the practice in subsequent contests for the presidency, ultimately studying the offyear elections as well. Campbell and his colleagues at Michigan have drawn upon this research in publishing a succession of analyses of the electoral process. Their two books, The American Voter and Elections and the Political Order have become authorities for researchers, regardless of discipline.33 Both systematically articulated the cumulative findings about electoral behavior derived from panel interviews with voters over four presidential elections.34 Throughout the late 1950's and early 1960's a number of intrigued historians made contact with the Survey Research Center. But neither the researchers of the Survey Research Center nor of the Bureau of Applied Social Research used aggregate electoral returns to any degree as was routinely done by voting analysts through the 1920's, highlighting a basic research problem that confronted historians. Although we now know that the use of relatively limited collections of election poll books allow a type of individual correlation analysis once thought impossible, historians obviously cannot use a pure form of panel research in dealing with periods preceding the era of modern survey analysis. Fortunately, while the development of the panel survey was a great advance in modern political research, it had not led all American students of the political process to repudiate the tradition of aggregate analysis of voting returns established prior to 1940. Although contributing an enthusiastic foreword to the Survey Research Center's study of the 1952 election, so distinguished a scholar as V. O. Key, Jr., 32

"A Study of the Presidential Vote," 2; Voter Decides, xii. Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren Miller and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter, New York, 1960; Etections and the Political Order, New York, 1966. 34 A series of rapid advances in statistical methods and engineering greatly aided these efforts. The introduction of computer technology allowed examination of ever larger masses of materials and formulation and reformulation of ideas that could then be tested. Similarly, the development of sophisticated measuring techniques allowed examination ever more precisely, of relationships between different variables and the ordering of materials with greater degrees of confidence. 33

16

INTRODUCTION

continued to argue that the survey method had to be supplemented by the use of time series of election returns. Panel analysis, he noted, left "many questions to be dealt with by older modes of political analysis."35 Aggregate analysis, for example, allowed the investigator to incorporate a time dimension in electoral research that was impossible in the consideration of survey research analysis. In a pathbreaking article published with Frank Munger in 1950, Key showed how voting patterns in Indiana remained stable during a generation of vast social and economic changes in the state.36 As historians came into contact with the Survey Research Center, Key's message was reinforced. Their increasing interest reinvigorated concern about aggregate election returns and longitudinal series of census data among the social scientists at the Survey Research Center. The historians' concern with quantitative data led to the formation of a Committee for the Collection of the Basic Quantitative Data of American Political History by the American Historical Association. At the Survey Research Center, personnel pledged assistance in collecting the available returns for American federal elections as well as historical census materials and in coding and processing them into machine readable form. The fruition of this cross-fertilization was the creation of an historical archive at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at Michigan to collect, process and make available the political and social data series researchers anywhere in the world might wish to use in systematically analyzing elections.37 By the early 1970's the Historical Archive of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research was an established concern housing datafilesof unprecedented importance in the field, and distributing millions of card images of data to researchers each year. With the growth of interest and the accumulation of data resources, a gradual but clearly accelerating increase in the number of historians utilizing systematic quantitative methods in analyzing voting behavior became apparent. They began to study voting behavior in all eras of 35 V. O. Key, Jr., "A Theory of Critical Elections," Journal of Politics, 17 (February 1955),4. 38 V. O. Key, Jr., and Frank Munger, "Social Determinism and Electoral Decision: the Case of Indiana," in Eugene Burdick and Arthur J. Brodbeck, eds., American Voting Behavior, Glencoe, IU., 1959, 281-299. See also V. O. Key, Jr., "Secular Realignment and the Party System," Journal of Politics, 21 (May 1959), 198-210. 37 The work of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research can be traced in Jerome Clubb and Howard Allen, "The Inter-University Consortium for Political Research: Progress and Prospects," Historical Methods Newstetter, 2 (June 1969), 1-5.

17

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

American history, many showing quite sophisticated use of computer technology and well digested expertise in statistical techniques. By the mid-1960's the results of these developments were apparent in the journal literature and as early as 1966 one author discerned a "new political history" assembling rather formidable footnote citations to buttress his contention.38 Problems, of course, remained. Ideas and concepts developed in the social sciences challenged historians of past political behavior to test their implications on the data of earlier eras. But could these conceptual perspectives and theories built on a foundation of panel analysis be used to explain electoral developments in the pre-polling era? Could techniques of aggregate analysis be devised that would allow historians to use theory derived from survey research in a world of aggregate data? These remained perplexing issues. Cautionary warnings to the effect that the historian's data were too fragile for use in the models of the social scientists were frequently voiced.39 Nevertheless, as work has progressed in historical data sources, such problems have been confronted and usually satisfactory solutions have been found. But it was not only the historians who were advancing rapidly. While historians were deeply affected by the methods and conceptual framework of the political scientists, some of the latter saw that significant payoffs awaited the social scientists who incorporated a historical dimension in their analyses. In the work, for instance, of Walter Dean Burnham, trained by V. O. Key, Jr., historical data is used in ways little different from those of historians.40 Similarly, others such as Duncan MacRae, Jerrold Rusk, Gerald Kramer, and James Sundquist have also integrated historical data in their research.41 An interactive 38 Bogue, " 'New' Political History." This was initially presented as a paper at the meeting of the American Political Science Association in 1966. 39 W. S. Robinson, "Ecological Correlation and the Behavior of Individuals," American Sociological Review, 15 (June 1950), 351-357; Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., "The Humanist Looks at Empirical Social Research," American Sociological Review, 27 (December 1962), 768-771. 40 The most relevant Burnham pieces are, "The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe," American Political Science Review, 59 (March 1965), 7-28; "American Voting Behavior and the 1964 Election," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 12 (February 1968), 1-40; Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics, New York, 1970. 41 Duncan MacRae, Jr. and James A. Meldrum, "Critical Elections in Illinois, 1888-1958," American Political Science Review, 54 (September 1960), 669-683; Gerald Kramer and Susan J. Lepper, "Congressional Elections," in Aydelotte, Bogue and Fogel, Dimensions of Quantitative Research, 256-284; Jerrold Rusk, "The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split Ticket Voting: 1876-1908," American Political Science Review, 64 (December 1970), 1220-1238; James Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, Washington, 1973.

18

INTRODUCTION

process set in; historians were indebted to political scientists for their sophisticated technology and theories of voting. Political scientists, on the other hand, sought a greater historical perspective in applying their theories and stimulated the flow in the other direction.42 This confluence is well illustrated in this volume which includes essays primarily using historical aggregate data. The 16 authors include 8 historians, 6 political scientists, one geographer, and one Renaissance man, trained as a political scientist but now a professor of history. Ill Two contrasting theoretical models have dominated the study of American voting behavior both past and present. On the one hand, social determinism suffused the work of Frederick Jackson Turner and two generations of political historians who followed him. The social scientists at Johns Hopkins at the end of the nineteenth century were deeply influenced by the emerging populist-progressive concern with social conflict. They shared a commitment to uncover the underlying realities of political decision making rather than merely describing the superficial actions of the formal institutions of politics. Among the historians at Johns Hopkins during Turner's student years was Albion Small, later to found the Sociology Department at the University of Chicago. Small argued that "interest groups were the basis of society and of the political struggles for power in society." Understanding the nature of these interests and of the political conflicts that arose between them were standard elements in what one historian has called the "Progressive paradigm." 43 In The United States, 1830-1850, Turner wrote of Andrew Jackson's victory in the election of 1828 that ". . . it meant that an agricultural society, strongest in the regions of rural isolation . . . had triumphed, for the time, over the conservative, industrial, commercial, and manufacturing society of the New England type . . . a new aggressive, expansive democracy, emphasizing human rights and individualism, as against the old established order which emphasized vested rights and corporate action had come into con42

For a statement stressing the convergence theme see Robert Dahl, "The Behavioral Approach in Political Science: Epitaph for a Monument to a Successful Protest," American Political Science Review, 55 (December 1961), 763-772. 43 Jensen, "American Election Analysis," 232; Gene Wise, American Historical Explanations: A Strategy for Grounded Inquiry, Homewood, Ul., 1973. See also Lee Benson, "Group Cohesion and Social and Ideological Conflict: A Critique of Some Marxian and Tocquevillian Theories," in Allan G. Bogue, ed., Emerging Theoretical Models in Social and Political History, Beverly Hills, Calif., 1973, 123149.

19

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

trol."44 To Turner, geographic sections were the organizing elements of the economic conflicts that lay at the base of all politics including voting. But to others at the same time, classes were the basic organizing factors. As Charles Beard and others of similar bent saw it, a persistent class conflict between the underprivileged and overprivileged has determined the nature and shape of political confrontation in America. But whichever it was, classes or sections, the progressives believed that in politics, as Beard argued, "economics explains the mostest"—that there was a correspondence between economic selfinterest and political behavior. Most of the time, men pursued a clearly perceived, rationally defined self-interest rooted in their economic status. Inevitably, one historian has written, the haves and the havenots in our society "must possess differing ideologies and must oppose each other because of their economic background." 45 Political parties played a crucial role in this struggle. They were the repositories of the contending belief systems shaped by economic differences in the society. For example, in the Jacksonian period, the Democrats were "the party of poverty and numbers and the Whigs the party of property and talents."46 The Turner-Beard calculus, what one historian has called "the Americanization of [Karl] Marx," remained remarkably long-lived among American political historians.47 For several generations economic self-interest was "the all purpose explanatory formula."48 The perspective also received support in some of the early polling studies of presidential elections. Paul Lazarsfeld and his associates at the Bureau of Applied Social Research echoed a form of the social class imperatives of the progressive paradigm. Their work was heavily freighted with a social determinism that argued that social class equalled party choice. Voters, they argued, remained vulnerable to their social environment. Political preference was "a hitchhiker on social characteristics."49 Socio-economic status, not campaigns, candidates or issues was the crucial determinant of voting behavior. On the other hand, students of contemporary voting have been 44

Turner, United States, 30. Beard is quoted in John Higham et al., History, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1965, 230. The second quotation is from Robert F. Berkhofer, Jr., A Behavioral Approach to Historical Analysis, New York, 1969, 157. 46 The quote is from a standard textbook in American history, Samuel Eliot Morison and Henry Steele Commager, The Growth of the American Republic, New York, 4th ed., revised and enlarged, 1956, 554-555. 47 Benson, "Group Cohesion," 137. is Ibid. 49 Key and Munger, "Social Determinism," 298. 45

20

INTRODUCTION

heavily influenced by three different streams converging out of the work utilizing both panel survey polls and aggregate election returns since the 1940's. The psychological orientation of voting behavior studies first undertaken by the Chicago political scientists in the 1920's and 1930's and followed up by the Survey Research Center group since, dominates most contemporary studies of American voting behavior. The Chicago political scientists had been strongly influenced by the work of Graham Wallas and Walter Lippmann on human behavior to look for a psychological basis for electoral behavior. This contrasted with the Turner group's interest in socio-environmental explanations. In their publications the Michigan Survey Research Center group developed and expanded this approach into a complex psychological paradigm of voting choice. The Survey Research Center, one observer has noted, was "guided by the philosophy that the immediate determinants of an individual's behavior lie more clearly in his attitudes and his perceptual organization of his environment than in either his social position or other 'objective' situational factors."50 In their work researchers for the Survey Research Center have emphasized the importance of the attitudes of individual voters in the voting decision, although accepting the fact that such attitudes might correlate strongly with demographic and social groupings. Attitudes toward politics, including party identification, develop early in an individual's life through family, community and institutional influences. They are reinforced thereafter both by external factors and internal perceptions of reality (the coloring of events based on attitudes and partisan identification). The Michigan group have described an American electorate in which most voters are not sufficiently well informed to have a discerning grasp of party ideologies. "In this dilemma," they have noted, "having the party symbol stamped on certain candidates, certain issue positions, certain interpretations of political reality is of great psychological convenience."51 Political parties structure these materials into manageable forms understandable to the electorate. They provide the cues and signals that allow the electorate to decide what it should do in a given political situation. Party membership and identification thus reduce the cost for the voter in acquiring information and guidance by ordering his priorities and allowing him to see what is "right." Voters in general 50

Rossi, "Four Landmarks," 37. Campbell et al., Elections and the Political Order, 126-127. See also David Natchez, "Images of Voting: The Social Psychologists," Public Policy, 18 (Summer 1970), 553-558. 51

21

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN may be divided into two basic types—core voters, who identify strongly with one or the other of the parties and usually vote, and peripheral voters who are particularly common in certain segments of the electorate and who do not participate consistently in the electoral process. In some elections infusions of peripheral voters and new voters cause an upward surge in voting turnout followed, in turn, by a decline in the number of eligibles voting in later contests as the interest of the peripherals declines and the active electorate contracts toward the core of committed party identifiers. A second important conceptual theme originated in the work of V. O. Key, Jr. In his articles in the 1950's, Key used aggregate data to emphasize the long-run nature of the commitment to particular parties found in various regions. He argued that generally in the American past, voters merely reaffirmed earlier decisions. Political influences such as party attachments, although originally formed by social forces, subsequently developed roles independent of exterior social determinants to have a life of their own in determining voter choice. In the most influential of his pieces, he also concluded that there were crucial or "critical" elections in which voters ". . . are unusually deeply concerned, in which the extent of electoral involvement is relatively quite high, and in which the decisive results of the voting reveal a sharp alteration of the pre-existing cleavages within the electorate. Moreover, and perhaps this is the truly differentiating characteristic of this sort of election, the realignment made manifest in the voting in such elections seems to persist for several succeeding elections. AU these characteristics cumulate to the conception of an election type in which the depth and intensity of electoral involvement are high, more or less profound readjustments occur in the relations of power within the community and in which new and durable electoral groupings are formed."52 In this work, Key, using aggregate data, was drawing closer to the viewpoint developed in the polling analyses of the Survey Research Center, a convergence that developed and flowered throughout the 1960's. Angus Campbell used Key's concept of the "critical" election as the foundation of a typology of realigning, maintaining, and deviating elections. Elections in which significant elements of the electorate transfer from the incumbent party, insuring the election of its major rival, and then, for the most part, maintain their new allegiance thereafter, are considered to be "realigning" elections. When voters remain firm in their party allegiance, the result is a "maintaining" election, producing 52

22

Key, "Critical Elections," 4.

INTRODUCTION

the same general result as in the previous election. Contests in which the incumbent party loses as the result of temporary defections of the voters in its ranks are called "deviating" elections.53 The members of the Survey Research Center believed their typology (and its underlying causative factors) was applicable to contests of the presurvey period as well as to the present. Lee Benson showed how, thereby providing the third important conceptual influence affecting contemporary research. In The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, he worked to fuse hypotheses derived from the social analysis of the present to the available historical data from other periods. In a chapter entitled an "Outline for a Theory of American Voting Behavior," he suggested the determinants of voting behavior could be arranged in three categories: (1) the "pursuit of political goals by individuals or groups," (2) the "individual or group fulfillment of political roles," and (3) the "negative or positive orientation to reference individuals or groups."54 In such a heterogeneous society as that of the United States, Benson believed, determinants of every category might usually be found, and identifying the particular combination of causal factors at work at a particular time was the great challenge confronting the political historian. Benson's conceptual scheme obviously was capable of accommodating the progressive model as a special case in which stimuli of the type subsumed in category (1), "the pursuit of political goals by individuals or groups," were predominant. But in the analysis of mass voting behavior that appeared in The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, and in his later work, he explicitly assailed the progressive paradigm. He stressed instead the other two factors in his outline, which fell in with the Survey Research Center's conceptual approach. He argued that Turner and those who followed, "had ideologically inflated relatively minor, limited, transitory economic interest group fights into profoundly ideological, enduring 'class struggles in America.' "55 Instead, he concluded that the ethnocultural-religious reference group was a more important determinant of party affiliation and voting behavior during the Jacksonian era than the interest groups or class orientation emphasized by historians writing in the progressive tradition. Religious affiliation, national origin, or a combination of both was the stuff of political choice. Clashing religious and ethnic perspectives 53 The typology is discussed in Campbell et al., American Voter, 531-538; and in Gerald Pomper, "Classification of Presidential Elections," Journal of Politics, 29 (August 1967), 535-566. 5i Benson, Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, ch. 13, 270-287. 55 Benson, "Group Cohesion," 138.

23

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

shaped group values and attitudes toward politics. Due to these clashing perspectives and the persistent social and psychological competition between different ethno-cultural groups throughout American history, political confrontation had followed, certainly at the ballot box. These had been deep-rooted and long-lasting; they affected most American elections. If economic differences within the society occasionally influenced voting, it was primarily during periods of intense economic dislocation. Otherwise they were subordinate to the cultural tensions within the society.56 By the 1960's, then, American political historians had been presented with a range of explanatory variables affecting voting behavior, all of which had to be examined, measured, and refined. They had become aware of the importance of the structure underlying the voting universe and the need to root any analysis in terms of a time and space dimension. There were many hypotheses to be tested. So also was there a wide range of data and a richer variety of methods to help organize and advance the enterprise. IV IT is perhaps a tribute to the vitality of recent systematic research on electoral behavior that several major innovations in data collection and methods of analysis are associated with it. Most notable for analysts of American electoral history are the several archival collections organized and serviced by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research. Substantial support from private and public foundations as well as from many colleges and universities, not to mention years of work by skilled archivists, has built this unprecedented collection. A simple description of the election data in the Historical Archive of the Consortium makes clear why half of the chapters in this volume have drawn on them. There are nearly complete state and county returns for all elections for president, governor, senator, and representative from 1824 to the present for the entire United States, as well as substantial amounts of the same type of data from 1789 to 1823. These election data are organized so that for each unit the actual vote for every candidate and his party is available. In addition, the Inter-Uni56

"At least since the 1820's," Benson wrote in 1961, "ethnic and religious differences have tended to be relatively the most important sources of political differences." Concept of Jacfaonian Democracy, 165. See the introduction to Part Three below.

24

INTRODUCTION

versity Consortium for Political and Social Research contains a historical social archive. Data from every federal census since 1790, organized by counties, has been processed and merged with the election returns. 37 These two sets of data, the social and the electoral, permit both the description and explanation of particular election outcomes, the analysis of stability and change in party voting over time, calculation of turnout estimates for any of the elections covered, as well as the comparison of election behavior with a wide range of social and economic characteristics. Concurrently with the efforts to build the data banks of the InterUniversity Consortium for Political and Social Research advances of a major character in computer technology were also achieved which, in turn, facilitated electoral research. The massive data storage capability of modern computer systems permits handling millions of elements of information of the kind collected by the Consortium with speed and accuracy. At the same time, high speed computing permits complex statistical manipulations on large arrays of data. Quite simply, without computers large archives of usable election data would have remained unfeasible, and all but the simplest statistical analysis would have required impossible commitments of time and resources. As with data resources and machine technology, the statistical techniques developed for electoral analytical purposes are also quite rich if not without problems for the historical analyst. As efforts by both political scientists and historians have expanded, concerned scholars have published a series of how-to-do-it statistics books to keep pace with the available data, technology, and interest.58 The main statistical techniques currently used in electoral research are based on correlation and regression analysis. The relationship between the results of two elections is usually quite strong, so strong, in fact, that a weak relationship is taken to be a significant departure from expectation. This has permitted Gerald Pomper to use matrices of correlations between elections to mark realigning periods by the occurrence of weak relationships in the data between successive elections.59 A more common extension of correlation and regression has 57

The annual reports of the Consortium lists their data collections and additions to them through the years. 58 Louis Bean, How to Predict Elections, New York, 1948; V. O. Key, Jr., A Primer of Statistics for Political Scientists, New York, 1954; Charles M. Dollar and Richard J. Jensen, Historian's Guide to Statistics, New York, 1971. Both the Historical Methods Newsletter and the Journal of Interdisciplinary History have frequent articles on methodology. 59 Gerald Pomper, Ejections in America, New York, 1968.

25

J. H. SILBEY, A. G. BOGUE, & W. H. FLANIGAN

been to partial analysis in an effort to assess the independent impact of various variables. Partial correlation and regression introduce statistical control for the other independent variables under examination and, granted certain assumptions, assess the importance of each variable in explaining the variation in the dependent variable. Some of these methods have been used more than others; some have been used rarely if at all. Various forms of factor analysis, which can be viewed as the reduction of a correlation matrix, have been employed in electoral analysis since the work of Harold Gosnell.60 But most applications of factor analysis have not searched for over-time patterns which cluster similar units. Few historians have, as yet, ventured into the world of factor analysis at all. On the other hand, some historians have experimented with new methodological techniques to fit special problems. The essays in this volume reflect the variety and to some extent the popularity of some of these techniques as well as the venturesomeness of the current generation of historians of popular voting behavior. Clearly, the aggregate election and census data available for historical analysis are definitely better suited to some tasks than to others. Specifically, aggregate data can test hypotheses about relationships between voting and stable social or political characteristics better than they can explain specific voting decisions and individual political attitudes. With only aggregate data under examination the latter must remain a nonempirical link in the interpretation by the analyst. Obviously, also, not all of the data and methodological problems of the new breed of historical electoral analysis have as yet been resolved. Some may never be. But perhaps we should not be unduly pessimistic. Many advances have been made. What remains clear is that the ongoing efforts to analyze voting over time has to be done imaginatively and with constant awareness of the problems to be overcome.61 60

Harold Gosnell, Machine Politics: Chicago Model, Chicago, 1937. There are a number of historiographic analyses of recent quantitative work by historians. See, in particular, Robert P. Swierenga, "Clio and Computers: A Survey of Computerized Research in History," Computers and the Humanities, 5 (September 1970), 1-21; Joel H. Silbey, "Clio and Computers: Moving into Phase II, 1970-1972," Computers and the Humanities, 7 (November 1972), 6779; and Robert P. Swierenga, "Computers and American History," Journal of American History, 60 (March 1974), 1045-1070. For recent illustrations of social science approaches to electoral behavior, see: Richard Rose, ed., Electoral Behavior: A Comparative Handbook, New York, 1974; Louis Maisel and Paul M. Sacks, The Future of Political Parties, Beverly Hills, 1975; Everett Carll Ladd, Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions from the New Deal to the 1970's, New York, 1975; Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter, Cambridge, 1976; and Warren E. Miller 61

26

INTRODUCTION

It is usual to state that there are limits to the use of quantification in historical research: quantitative measurement cannot address every kind of historical problem even in political history.62 True enough. Only a fool would argue otherwise. But, on the other hand, the behavioral and quantitative revolution affords us an opportunity to widen and deepen our understanding of politics. The essays in this book do just that, we believe. They illustrate some of the kinds of research now underway in this field. To borrow a phrase of William O. Aydelotte's, they show a section of "the current fighting front" of quantitative work in the history of popular voting behavior.63 It is hoped that they fulfill, by example, the aims of the History Advisory Committee of the MSSB to show the utility of quantitative approaches for historians. and Teresa E. Levitan, Leadership 6- Change: The New Politics and the American Electorate, Cambridge, 1976. 62 For a reasonable statement assessing the value and limits of quantification, see William O. Aydelotte, Quantification in History, Waltham, 1971. 63 In a conversation with the editors.

27

PART O N E ELECTORAL SEQUENCES IN AMERICAN HISTORY

Introduction to Part One As WE have seen in the general introduction to this volume, there were American social scientists from the late nineteenth century onward to the 1950's who were intrigued by the ebb and flow of partisan control in the United States. Some of them produced trail-blazing empirical research, and various theoretical formulations such as the "law of the pendulum" enjoyed some vogue. 1 But it is also true that the number of outstanding practitioners with such interest was small, and the theoretical component in their work was less than satisfying. During this same period, historians generally considered themselves particularly qualified to deal with problems of periodization and the analysis of social processes occurring through extended periods of time, but most of them navigated the seas of American political history using charts in which presidential administration or presidential incumbencies provided the historical equivalent of longitude. Such procedures were not seriously challenged until 1948, when Thomas C. Cochran published a resounding attack upon the traditional method of describing American political history presidential administration by presidential administration, in the American Historical Review, arguing that the "Presidential synthesis should be replaced by a 'social science' synthesis of American history."2 Although Cochran's article inspired no immediate methodological revolution in the historical profession, it did help to inspire a number of younger historians to explore the utility of social science approaches to American political history. Thus, historians as well as social scientists were eager to explore the implications and further develop the concept of the critical or realigning election as articulated by V. O. Key, Jr. during the mid-1950's. As we have noted in the general introduction, Key used aggregate data in a series of articles to emphasize the long-run nature of the commitment to particular parties found in various illustrative regions, to show that such commitments might erode gradually over a considerable period of time, and also to argue, in the most influential of the pieces, that there were crucial or "critical" elections in which unusually 1 W. B. Munro, "The Law of the Pendulum," in The Invisible Government, New York, 1928, 58-84; Harold F. Gosnell, "Statisticians and Political Scientists," American Political Science Review, 27 (June 1933), 392-403. 2 Thomas C. Cochran, "The 'Presidential Synthesis' in American Political History," American Historical Review, 53 (July 1948), 748-759.

31

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

involved voters turned out in record numbers and fundamentally altered their previous partisan commitments into new and subsequently durable electoral groupings.3 Soon thereafter Angus Campbell of the University of Michigan's Survey Research Center elaborated Key's insights into a threefold typology, embracing realigning (Key's critical), deviating (where voters temporarily defect from their normal partisan behavior), and maintaining (where the electorate remains stable in its voting) elections.4 By the mid-1960's it was clear that the concept of the critical election provided a rewarding alternative scheme of periodization to the presidential synthesis, and since that time American historians have come increasingly to use realignments as the breaking points in periodizing American political history rather than presidential administrations. Meanwhile, the process of refining the concept goes on, and we should emphasize that the activity involves much more than taxonomy or taxonomic refinement. In concert with efforts to define and describe electoral patterns more precisely, scholars are attempting to derive more satisfactory theoretical formulations explaining changes in the behavior of Americans at the polls as well as shifts in their party preferences. The historian Charles Sellers provided one of the earliest systematic efforts in this direction when he delineated five equilibrium cycles in the period 1789-1960 in which electoral realignment introduced a period of ascendancy, followed by a period of equilibrium and minimal party majorities that was in turn succeeded by another electoral realignment. The basic mechanism, Sellers believed, was "a steady pressure toward equilibrium" generated by "the pressures of a system of competing coalitions built on such a diversity of groups" . . . that American politicians were compelled "to behave as though" they preferred "minimal majorities to overwhelming ones."5 Two years later, the political scientist, Gerald Pomper, used a number of measures to show the 3 V. O. Key, Jr., "A Theory of Critical Elections," Journal of Politics, 17 (February 1955), 3-18; V. O. Key, Jr. and Frank Munger, "Social Determinism and Electoral Decision: The Case of Indiana," in Eugene Burdick and Arthur J. Brodbeck, America Voting Behavior, Glencoe, HL, 1959, 281-299; V. O. Key, Jr., "Secular Realignment and the Party System," Journal of Politics, 21 (May 1959), 198-210. 1 Angus Campbell, "A Classification of the Presidential Elections," in Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter, New York, 1960, 531-538. Another version appears in Ehctions and the Political Order, New York, 1966, 63-77, by the same authors. 5 Charles Sellers, "The Equilibrium Cycle in Two-Party Politics," Public Opinion Quarterly, 29 (Spring 1965), 16-38. The quotations appear on p. 30.

32

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

relationships between American elections across the sweep of the republic's history. On the basis of this analysis, he suggested that an additional type of election should be added to the Key-Campbell typology. This was the converting election in which the incumbent party won reelection but obtained its votes from a significantly different coalition of voting groups than previously.8 Since Pomper's article, a number of authors have published studies of American electoral behavior in the years preceding and during particular realignments. Without calling the complete roll of such scholars we may note that Formisano's study of the development of parties in Michigan between 1827 and 1861 is a notable examination of the realignment of the 1850's.7 The books by Paul Kleppner and Richard J. Jensen focus on the realignment of the 1890's in the midwestern states, while Samuel T. McSeveney has rendered yeoman service in analyzing electoral developments in three northeastern states during the same era.8 At a different level of aggregation, Howard W. Allen and Jerome M. Clubb have examined electoral behavior in nineteen major cities of the United States between the early 1920's and the mid1930's in an effort to determine whether 1928 was indeed a critical election there. 9 More recently, John L. Shover, among others, has focused in detail on one major city, in this case, Philadelphia, seeking to establish the precise timing and mechanics of the New Deal electoral realignment.10 There have been relatively fewer attempts to trace electoral patterns in focal areas over more extended periods of time, despite the fact that Duncan MacRae, Jr. and James A. Meldrum set a commendable example in this respect as early as 1960 in the first of two articles on critical elections in Illinois from 1888 to 1958.11 Michael 6 Gerald Pomper, "Classification of Presidential Elections," Journal of Politics, 29 (August 1967), 535-566. 7 Ronald P. Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties: Michigan, 18271861. Princeton, 1971. 8 Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900, New York, 1970; Richard J. Jensen, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896, Chicago, 1971; Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Political Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-1896, New York, 1972. 9 Jerome M. Clubb and Howard W. Allen, "The Cities and the Election of 1928: Partisan Realignment?" American Historical Review, 74 (April 1969), 12051220. 10 John L. Shover, "The Emergences of a Two-Party System in Republican Philadelphia, 1924-1936," Journal of American History, 60 (March 1974), 985-1002. 11 Duncan MacRae, Jr. and James A. Meldrum, "Critical Elections in Illinois, 1888-1958," American Political Science Review, 54 (September 1960), 669-683; "Factor Analysis of Aggregate Voting Statistics," in Mattei Dogan and Stein Rokkan, Quantitative Ecological Analysis in the Social Sciences, Cambridge, Mass., 1969, 487-506.

33

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

P. Rogin and Shover provided an exception to this generalization in their study of critical elections in California between 1890 and 1966, published in 1970.12 To date Walter Dean Burnham has provided us with the most elaborate effort to synthesize and interpret contemporary knowledge of critical elections and their role in the American polity. Using more sophisticated methods of identifying critical elections than have most, Burnham identified the "great realignment peaks" in American political history, and generalizing he argued that: ". . . eras of critical realignment are marked by short, sharp reorganizations of the mass coalitional bases of the major party which occur at periodic intervals on the national level; are often preceded by third-party revolts which reveal the incapacity of politics as usual' to integrate, much less aggregate, emergent political demand; are closely associated with abnormal stress in the social economic system; are marked by ideological polarizations and issue-distances between the major parties which are exceptionally large by normal standards; and have durable consequences as constituent acts which determine the outer boundaries of policy in general, though not necessarily of policies in detail." Including an analysis of Pennsylvania as a case study, Burnham concluded that "each realignment [there] was in effect a set of constituent decisions by critical minorities within the electorate and by elites working within the majority brought into being by critical elections." In this study, Burnham proceeded beyond the point of developing the critical realignment concept to argue that there had been basic changes in the behavior of the American electorate since 1900 in addition and a distinct "trend toward decomposition of political parties as action instrumentalities," developments in which Burnham saw considerable apocalyptic potential. 13 Some three years after Burnham's book appeared, William L. Shade published Social Change and the Electoral Process, dealing with electoral realignments. This book is of interest to students of American electoral behavior in several important respects. Adapting Thomas Kuhn's theory of change in the scientific community to his own uses, Shade postulated a theory of political paradigms. "There are," he wrote, "periods of normal politics in which a certain belief system, or paradigm, dominates political activity. . . . Political paradigm shifts [rea12 Michael P. Rogin and John L. Shover, Political Change in California: Critical Elections and Social Movements, 1890-1966, Westport, Conn., 1970. 13 Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and, the Mainsprings of American Politics, New York, 1970, 10, 24, 68, 175.

34

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

lignments] occur when a new paradigm arises which, in the judgment of the electorate, better accounts for phenomena which were considered anomalous to the preceding paradigm, and which succeeds in attracting adherents (voters) away from competing modes of political activity." Limiting his analysis to the period, 1860-1968, since various supporting data indices could not be extended into the years prior to the first date or were highly unreliable in that period, Shade grouped American presidential contests by applying factor analysis to 27 electoral variables and posited the social and economic correlates of these elections by discriminant analysis of 54 additional variables, reflecting socio-economic change in America.14 On the basis of his analysis, Shade concluded that American presidential elections since 1860 are best grouped in three major categories: realigning, maintaining, and deviating elections. This typology he maintained might be still further subdivided into seven subtypes, thereby providing a more elaborate system of classification than most scholars have thus far used and one which both resembles and contrasts with earlier findings in a number of respects. The discriminant analysis allowed Shade to argue that "realigning shifts of the electorate did in fact coincide with periods of individual social conflict, economic decline, increased intellectual attentiveness, and an abnormal increase in the issue-distances or ideologies of the major parties." He suggested that a political paradigm reflecting political laissez faire was displaced in 1860 by Lincolnian nationalism, and followed in turn by the conservative protectionism of the McKinleyites, New Freedom liberalism, the economic individualism of the 1920's, and the positive governmental economic activism of the New Deal. "American political history since 1860 is best described," Shade concluded, "as a sequence of shifting ideological paradigms which define the rules of the game."15 Obviously the chronological period that Shade has studied and the elections examined in his research are but parts of a considerably larger whole. Some will find his use of the concept of paradigm less than a perfect analogy and he would undoubtedly admit that the relationships found between realignment and socio-economic trends require more study. But in once more demonstrating the utility of factor analysis in electoral analysis, in his efforts to place realignment in societal perspective, and in proposing various refinements in typology, Shade rendered a considerable service to students of the realignment process. 14 William L. Shade, Social Change and the Electoral Process, Gainesville, FIa., 1973, 14. 15 Shade, Social Change, 58, 62.

35

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

In the studies cited here we find a considerable range of social science theory and methodology harnessed to the tasks of delineating and explaining the realignment stability cycle in popular voting behavior in the United States. Although often admittedly empirical in tone, these researchers have drawn upon reference group theory, attitudinal analysis, the paradigm concept, and even structural-functional analysis and the modernization literature to some degree. In methodological terms, time series analysis, cross tabulations, correlation and regression, factor and discriminant analysis contribute to a level of analytical sophistication somewhat removed from that of the conventional political historian. Scholars seeking to apply the realignment stability cycle model of voting behavior appear to have found an organizing device and conceptual scheme of considerable utility and some explanatory power. Their research also makes it clear, however, that the level at which voting returns are aggregated and analyzed may bear some relation to the picture that emerges. The delineation of realigning and other types of elections on the basis of presidential elections has a straightforward character that becomes blurred when the off-year congressional results are included. Injection of a regional variable below the national level injects further complications. And when the investigator moves to county or other subunits of the individual state's electorate, it becomes clear that the concept of realigning eras is probably more useful than the concept of the single critical or realigning election. The realignment literature also suggests that the students of the process differ as to the degree of temporal regularity which they discern in the realignment process. Some are prepared to accept the idea of regular realignment-stability cycles while others wish to go no further than distinguishing certain electoral fluctuations with some common characteristics. In an interesting passage, Bumham has touched upon some of the implications of the realignment concept for further research. If the stability phase of the stability-realignment alternation reflects the existence of durable coalitions within the parties, these in turn provide clues to the composition of the real issue agenda. By focusing on the distinctive electoral eras lying between the realigning elections as well as upon the realignment process, one finds "new and interesting ways to think about the dynamics, not only in this country's electoral politics, but also of its political life as a whole." What are the actual processes by which various groups are mobilized into continuing coalitions or demobilized as the result of realignment? To what degree does the new typology allow us to link hitherto unrelated political phenomena

36

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

within the broader polity? And what are the dynamic relationships between party systems and realignment? 16 The recent nonquantitative study by James L. Sundquist is a stimulating effort to provide answers to the latter query, but we oan agree that in general Burnham's questions still stand unanswered or demand at least some additional research.17 The editors of this volume believe that the essays in this section move us closer to definitive answers in various respects. In their chapter in this volume, Burnham, Clubb, and Flanigan cite the gaps and uneven nature of the wide-ranging research on partisan realignments in the United States during the last generation as justification for their effort to generate and elaborate a broader systemic perspective within which to view American popular voting behavior. In their view this literature in general provides a "pattern of conflicting findings and non-cumulative results." Drawing upon a massive research project that they have currently under way, the authors move beyond the perimeters of previous endeavors to generalize about the long-run patterns in American electoral behavior. Burnham, Clubb, and Flanigan argue that both "permanent electoral changes favoring a party and sustained control of policy making institutions by that party" should be regarded as basic characteristics of critical realignments. They suggest that realignments occur within an electoral system in which some change is occurring at all times and that the relation between electoral change and partisan control of policy outputs has received much less scrutiny than it deserves. Using the states as their unit of analysis, these authors consider first the process of electoral change in the United States, then assess the nature and the significance of partisan control of the policy-making organs of government—that is, the legislative and executive branches—and in conclusion suggest a systemic perspective or theoretical orientation that explains various linkages between realignment and other elements of the political system and accounts for the spasmodic nature of realignment. In reviewing the processes of electoral change, Burnham, Clubb, and Flanigan first follow the simple procedure of examining the magnitude of the first differences between the votes received by the major American political parties in successive presidential elections. Then they use a method of two-way variance developed by Nancy 16

Burnham, Critical Elections, 69-70. James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, Washington, 1973. 17

37

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

Zingale that allows them to distinguish between voting shifts in which there was "net loss or gain for a party" ("surge") and change of the type in which constituency losses in one region were cancelled by compensating gains elsewhere ("interaction") and to distinguish further between "deviating" and "realigning" surge and between "deviating" and "realigning" interaction. These methods allow the authors to place the various types of electoral change in perspective one to another; to point up differences in the realigning patterns between the parties; to qualify the chronology suggested by some earlier researchers, and to note the growing contrast between measures of realignment based on the presidential vote since the 1930's and other indicators in which the results of the congressional races are utilized, the former increasingly volatile, the latter characterized by rather striking stability. In discussing the relationships between partisan realignment and the control of policy institutions, Burnham, Clubb, and FIanigan present data showing the relatively restricted duration of those periods in American history following realignment in which control of the presidency and both branches of the Congress was vested in the party benefited by the preceding realignment. Here they examine the degree to which capturing additional increments of the popular vote has rewarded victorious parties with an increased number of congressional seats and also find an extremely strong relationship between the national realignment phenomenon and party control of the American state houses. National realignments, they point out, produce reintegration of the political system at the state as well as at the national level. Realignments, Burnham, Clubb, and FIanigan suggest, flow from a combination of crisis, salient issues, the policy responses of incumbent parties, the emergence of appropriate leaders and the generation of symbols congruent with the time and issues. The crisis subsides as one party achieves effective control and implements a substantial part of the policy agenda generated by it. During this latter process the electoral coalition underlying the incumbent party solidifies and evolves its own variety of party orthodoxy, keyed to the symbols of the crisis and crisis solution. But stable party control does not last indefinitely; erosion in the electoral coalition supporting the incumbent party sets in as dissatisfaction rises, third parties ride again in the land, and ultimately crisis is accompanied by a new realignment. The periodic nature of partisan realignment is attributable, these authors believe, to a basic "disjunction" between a "fragmented, non-sovereign political system" and a remarkably dynamic "society, economy and technology." Ours, they argue, is a political system that does rot react smoothly and

38

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

rapidly to societal pressures but rather in slow, incremental, and inadequate fashion so that periodic "relatively large-scale and systemwide adjustments to accumulated tensions and dysfunctions" occur. In this perspective the partisan realignment is both the result of "accumulated tensions and dysfunctions" and the instrumentality of adjustment to them. Clearly Burnbam, Clubb, and Flanigan have covered a great deal of ground in their essay. They have provided us with several interesting data series that illustrate aspects of the realignment process accompanied by appropriate discussion. At the same time, they have suggested theoretical perspectives that are of necessity both wide-ranging and somewhat speculative. We have in their essay, therefore, both a contribution to substantive knowledge and to speculative theory. In effect these authors implicitly present their readers with a research agenda of very considerable magnitude. On the one hand some students of electoral behavior will wish to compare and contrast the results obtained by Burnham, Clubb, and Flanigan with those obtained by other methods or by conducting similar research using electoral returns at different levels of aggregation. On the other hand, investigators will surely accept the authors' challenge to explore the relationships between realignment and state level politics, as well as between realignment and those processes by which new politioal agendas are set, new symbolic configurations are created, and productivity of legislatures is increased or diminished. Benson, Silbey, and Field began the research underlying their chapter in this volume on the well-established premise that hitherto most students of electoral realignment have focused their attention either at the national level or the local level and have concentrated mainly upon the voting behavior of Americans since the late 1880's. As a result analysts have ignored the broader temporal currents in our political history and have failed to consider those elements of voting behavior attributable to the unique characteristics of regional or state political systems. What is particularly needed to improve our understanding of realignment phenomena, the authors argue, is research that focuses on all of the electoral subdivisions of a given type within particular states over extended periods of time, preferably the complete time span of the political history of the states under study. They, therefore, have analyzed voting returns in the state of New York from 1792 to 1970. Noting the tendency of past scholars to concentrate upon presidential and congressional races, Benson, Silbey, and Field have analyzed the election returns of contests for the highest state office contested in a 39

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

particular year usually that of governor, attorney general, or state senator. At the county level, Benson, Silbey, and Field have used interelection correlation procedures and analysis of the first differences of the percentages of the votes obtained by political parties in successive elections to establish the existence of five "different configurations of voters" in New York since the early 1790's. Transitions from one configuration to the next have occurred, they found, in the late 1820's, the mid1850's, the early 1890's, and 1918-1922. Within the five major time periods marked by those breaking points these authors believe that they can distinguish no less than thirteen suberas. As they point out, this picture does not conform to the symmetrical regularities discovered by some scholars who have generalized about electoral fluctuations using aggregate state returns. Although the New York pattern does bear a general similarity to the national picture of realignment presented by Pomper and by Burnham in 1970, the breaking points in the New York data are less than fully synchronized and internal subdivisions are far removed from the tidy midpoint discontinuities that Burnham found at the national level. These authors find more voter instability, and conversely less tendency for voters to stand firm within the new electoral coalitions than national level analysis suggests, and also they report very considerable temporal deviation from the realigning patterns in the nation. Although there is structure visible in the county level returns in New York, Benson, Silbey, and Field argue "that the real pattern of electoral 'order' in the American past is actually a high degree of disorder." They found the realignment-stability cycle to be present during the latter part of the nineteenth century more or less as posited by earlier writers but factionalism, third parties, and irregular movements on the part of voters disrupted the full development of such patterns during most of the remaining years between 1792 and 1970. As a result Benson, Silbey, and Field suggest that the most illuminating way of periodizing partisan alignments discovered in New York is to designate three major eras: (1) The 1789-1820's: Unstable Factional Politics; (2) The 1820's1892: Stable Partisan Politics, the "true" First American Party System-, (3) 1893 to date: Unstable Partisan Politics; that is, The Second American Party System. In this organization they see the possibility of a less threatening interpretation of partisan behavior in the years since the 1940's than Burnham suggested in 1970, for "to postulate the existence of highly regular, recurrent voting patterns may be to impose the exist-

40

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE ence of one arbitrary kind of order on the radically different kinds of behavior that constitutes American reality." We find in the chapter by Benson, Silbey, and Field a challenge to the rather stylized patterns that emerge in some earlier formulations and to some degree in the chapter provided by Burnham, Clubb, and Flanigan. Some perhaps will suspect that this latter difference in perspective may be in part attributable to disciplinary affiliation since the Benson, Silbey, and Field team is composed entirely of historians and in Burnham, Clubb, and Flanigan there are two political scientists and a historian. Generations of history seminar masters have tried to inculcate a deep reverence for the uniqueness of any particular process or phenomenon in their students, and perhaps even scholars as well versed in the related disciplines as Benson and Silbey may reflect this characteristic of the graduate history curriculum. The social scientist— even one so attuned to the historical dimension as Burnham—has been trained to distinguish and emphasize the patterned or recurrent elements in their data, sometimes—historians allege—at the cost to some degree of that data's integrity. Possibly we have in part also an illustration of the law of large numbers. Whereas the realignment-stability eras in the nation, based on aggregate state data, show a heartening periodicity, the New York pattern summarizes the behavior of a smaller, though substantial, electorate, and additional volatility and idiosyncratic departures from the whole are to be expected. Whether such queries have validity or not it seems clear that the alternatives neither obviate the findings of the study by Benson, Silbey, and Field nor negate the very substantial additional understanding of electoral behavior that it contributes. Clearly there is a need for additional studies at the same level of analysis. Various students of electoral realignment have noted that third party activity has typically characterized the early stages of the process. On the other hand, despite the formidable number of third parties listed in the electoral data codebook of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research, these phenomena have not yet been given the systematic and comparative analysis that they deserve. Such organizations were, after all, transients on the political scene, and many analysts have been content to accept Duverger's suggestion that they were destined to survive for substantial periods of time only in electoral systems based on proportional representation. But even at its simplest, the two party system in the United States that Duverger believed to be a reflection of victory by plurality in single member con41

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

stituencies is more complex than the two party rubric might suggest. What may seem to be a simple division of political cadres within a state in a national presidential election may prove to be a good deal more complex when the state races or county level activity are examined. In "Third Party Alignments in a Two Party System: The Case of Minnesota," Nancy Zingale ponders the general circumstances that encourage both third party development and survival and investigates the interplay between the national and state party system, the extent of divergence between the two, and the forces that act to pull them into concert. Zingale developed the system of two way analysis of variance, used by Burnham, Flanigan, and Clubb in the first chapter, that allows the identification and measurement of realigning surge and interaction and deviating surge and interaction. She has employed this technique in charting changes in party alignments in Minnesota from 1888 to 1948 and in comparing and contrasting such developments at the state and national level. During the Populist era in Minnesota, cleavage between the metropolitan "center" and the agrarian "periphery" were apparent, Zingale discovered, at both the national and state levels of electoral activity. Realignment in other words had a regional basis in a state where ethnocultural factors had seemingly served as the major binding force of the party until this time, reflecting the fact that the farmers of the graingrowing western counties faced more trying economic conditions than did those in the southeastern counties where the agricultural system had a greater degree of balance. The durable changes in Minnesota voting alignments that occurred as a result of these developments were attributable, Zingale believes, to the impact of Populism and not the 1896 campaign of William Jennings Bryan. But paradoxically the realignment of the 1890's was such in Minnesota that the most heavily Republican counties shifted most perceptibly toward the Democrats and vice versa and cleavages within the county electorates were actually reduced rather than increased as a result. As a whole the state stayed solidly Republican despite some "Popocrat" success. In this case a third party protest was in effect absorbed by one of the two old parties, a development "typical of such movements in a two-party system." Minnesota entered a second major phase of three party politics when the Farmer-Labor Party emerged in 1918 but in this case the protest movement temporarily replaced one of the two major parties. As in the case of Populism this political movement represented a protest of Minnesota farmers against a financial and commercial system that they

42

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE believed to be oppressive. As Populism had grown from the Fanners' Alliances so the Farmer-Labor Party had its roots in the Non-Partisan League and found its champions in the old Populist areas of western Minnesota. Correlation was high between the Farmer-Labor vote of 1918 and the La Follette presidential ticket of 1924. The elections of 1930 and 1932 produced realignments that brought major elements of the labor vote of the Twin Cities and the Iron Ranges into the FarmerLabor Party at the state level and into the Democratic party at the national level. Both attained state control as a result. Although Al Smith's candidacy of 1928 seemed to reactivate Democratic loyalties in traditionally German Catholic areas in Minnesota it did not trigger the urban and industrial voting shifts that were an essential part of voting realignment in Minnesota during the early 1930's. Although western economic and political protest was too localized in the era of World War I to force the national parties to make accommodations, Zingale raises the question of why the state Democratic Party in Minnesota was unresponsive, speculating that the emergence of third parties at the state level may reflect the failure of the political leaders in the old line opposition party, in this case the Democrats, to recognize the opportunity to adapt their party agenda to the needs of the dissidents. Zingale also noted James L. Sundquist's corollary to Duverger's maxim to the effect that voters are uncomfortable in a political system in which they support one party at the national level and a different political organization at the state level. She suggests that the relatively long history of the Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota (some twenty-six years) suggests that Sundquist's generalization holds true only when "the terms of political discourse" are the same in both arenas. Thus as long as the members of the Farmer-Labor Party focused on essentially agrarian issues and the Democratic Party concerned itself with a different political agenda voters felt no internal conflict in maintaining dual loyalties. But when the national Democratic Party developed similar policies to that of the Farmer-Labor Party, it was only a matter of time until the two coalesced. Thus Zingale has specified conditions under which a third party may persist for a considerable period of time within the American electoral system and has proposed a perceptive modification of Duverger's seminal insight. She also suggests that if the issue agenda of American politics is becoming increasingly nationalized, as has been suggested, the possibilty of third parties persisting at the state level for periods of time equivalent to that enjoyed by the Farmer-Labor Party will become increasingly remote. It is clear that Zingale's conclusions must remain tentative until the

43

INTRODUCTION TO PART ONE

relationships between state third parties and the national political system are investigated in other states where there is a history of third party activity. It will be particularly interesting to compare the experience of third parties that have been essentially urban in origin with those that have had agrarian foundations. Political historians will also wish to check Zingale's hypotheses against the evidence found in conventional historical sources, particularly newspapers and the manuscript collections left by Minnesota politicians, active in the third-party eras of the state's history.

44

1 Partisan Realignment: A Systemic Perspective WALTER DEAN BURNHAM, JEROME M. CLUBB, AND WILLIAM H. FLANIGAN DTJEING recent decades major progress has been made toward improved knowledge of American mass political behavior. Intensive investigations, relying primarily upon the techniques of survey research, have produced extensive systematic information bearing upon popular political attitudes and behavior and upon the electoral process more generally. Well developed conceptualizations which emphasize the socialpsychological basis of mass political behavior have appeared. They are marked by considerable predictive and explanatory power and have gained widespread acceptance. 1 Nor has research been limited to the phenomena of the contemporary era. Historians and other social scientists have increasingly explored popular political behavior in earlier historical contexts, in order to establish a broader, empirically grounded knowledge of political behavior. But despite progress, knowledge of popular political behavior is currently marked by some disarray. Various investigators drawing on survey research analysis suggest that significant tensions have developed within prevailing theories of mass politics.2 Since the early 1950's "de-

The authors are indebted to Dr. Nancy Zingale, College of St. Thomas, and to Messrs. Erik W. Austin, and Michael W. Traugott of the Center for Political Studies, the Institute for Social Research, for their numerous substantive suggestions and their skilled technical assistance. The research on which this chapter is based was made possible by National Science Foundation Grants GS 20436, GS 28913, and GS 28911. The National Science Foundation, of course, bears no responsibility for the findings and interpretations presented here. 1 The basic works are Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, and Warren E. Miller, The Voter Decides, Evanston, 111., 1954; Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, The American Voter, New York, 1960; and Angus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, Elections and the Political Order, New York, 1966. 2 Gerald Pomper, "From Confusion to Clarity: Issues and American Voters, 1956-1968," American Political Science Review, 66 (June 1972), 415-428; Richard A. Brody and Benjamin I. Page, "Comment: The Assessement of Policy Voting," American Political Science Review, 66 (June 1972), 450-458; and Norman Nie, "Mass Belief Systems Revisited: Political Change and Attitude Structure," University of Chicago, 1972.

45

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN viating" presidential elections have been the rule rather than the ex­ ception, and the imminence—indeed the occurrence—of "partisan rea­ lignment" has been frequently proclaimed and has been just as frequently rejected. There is no doubt that segments of the American electorate are today in an exceptional state of flux. Individual iden­ tifications with political parties have declined in recent years, and group partisan loyalties have apparently eroded. 3 An increase in issue awareness and in ideological orientation on the part of the mass elec­ torate has been observed and has been taken by some as incompatible with the prevailing theory of voting behavior. These developments have led several scholars to suggest that widely accepted views of mass electoral processes may be "time bound" and limited in their applicabil­ ity to the narrow temporal period from the late 1940's to the early 1960's.4 It can be expected that systematic investigations of mass political behavior in differing historical contexts will contribute to reduction of theoretical tensions and to movement from special to general theory. These goals have not yet been achieved. Historical investigations have been marked by conflicting findings and have, if anything, worked to increase conceptual confusion. Investigations of historical voting be­ havior have tended to focus rather narrowly upon periods of sharp elec­ toral change. 5 While partisan realignments have received major schol­ arly attention in these historical studies, the other election types— maintaining, deviating, and converting—that complete the typology suggested by V. O. Key, Jr., developed by Angus Campbell, and ex­ panded by Gerald Pomper have been less carefully considered. 6 In 3 See, for example, Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Main­ springs of American Politics, New York, 1970, 120-128; and Teresa E. Levitin and Warren E. Miller, "The New Politics and Partisan Realignment," paper presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association, Washing­ ton, D.C., 1972. * Arthur H. Miller, Warren E. Miller, Alden S. Raine, Thad A. Brown, "A Majority Party in Disarray: Policy Polarization in the 1972 Election," paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Political Science Association, New Orleans, 1973. 5 There are exceptions. See, for example, Melvyn A. Hammarberg, "The Indiana Voter: A Study in Nineteenth Century Rural Bases of Partisanship," unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Pennsylvania, 1970; and to a lesser degree, Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture; A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 18501900, New York, 1970; and Richard J. Jenson, The Winning of the Midwest: Social and Political Conflict, 1888-1896, Chicago, 1971. 6 V. O. Key, Jr., "A Theory of Critical Elections," Journal of Politics, 17 (February 1955), 1-18; Angus Campbell, "A Classification of the Presidential Elections," in Campbell et al., Elections and the Political Order, Θ3-77; Gerald Pomper, "Classification of Presidential Elections," Journal of Politics, 29 (August 1967), 535-566.

46

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

general, much less attention has been directed to the electoral phenomenon of interrealignment periods than to those of realignment eras. The periodic recurrence of partisan realignments has been widely recognized. Most notably the recent work by James Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, concentrates on major and minor realignments with particular attention to the issues involved.7 Realignments have been dated as occurring in the 1820's, the late 1850's and 1860's, the 1890's, and in the late 1920's or 1930's. Considerable scholarly effort has been directed to determining the exact timing of these realigning electoral shifts. It is fair to say, however, that definitions of partisan realignments have been marked by a lack of conceptual clarity. Key provided what still remains one of the most clear and comprehensive descriptions of realignments when he spoke of "an election type in which the depth and intensity of electoral involvement are high, in which more or less profound readjustments occur in the relations of power within the community, and in which new and durable electoral groupings are formed."8 In his discussion he suggested that realignments occur in the course of a single critical election, but elsewhere in the same essay he suggested that realignments may occur over a longer span of elections. And, indeed, some scholars have expressed preference for the latter view of the realignment phenomenon. In an early essay, for example, Duncan MacRae, Jr., and James A. Meldrum submitted substantial evidence to demonstrate that in Illinois, partisan realignments could best be seen as occurring across a series of elections which they described as constituting critical periods. 9 In a subsequent essay, Key also added further complications when he described a process of secular realignment by which particular groups—or, conceivably, a majority of the electorate—gradually shifted their allegiances from one political party to the other.10 These characterizations of the realignment process are, of course, not necessarily in contradiction with each other, nor should they in themselves lead to a lack of conceptual clarity. It is obviously possible to conceive of partisan realignments as occurring in all three ways in different areas and time periods. But much of the literature has been in the form of case studies aimed at dating the precise temporal location 7 James L. Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System, Washington, D.C., 1973. Sundquist takes for granted these three major realignments and examines several minor shifts as well. 8 Key, "Theory of Critical Elections," 4. «Duncan MacRae, Jr. and James A. Meldrum, "Critical Elections in Illinois: 1888-1958," American Political Science Review, 54 (September 1960), 669-683. 10 V. O. Key, Jr., "Secular Realignment and the Party System," Journal of Politics, 21 (May 1959 ),198-210.

47

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

of partisan realignment in particular and often highly limited areas. Nowhere is this characteristic of the literature more clear than in the debate that has raged over the status of the presidential election of 1928. Since the appearance of Samuel Lubell's Future of American Politics in 1952, numerous scholars have sought to demonstrate that 1928 was or was not a critical election in particular areas. 11 Others have persisted in the view that realignment occurred in the 1930's—again, usually in particular areas. It is fair to say that each of the elections of that decade has its supporters as the critical election of the period. Furthermore, various scholars have also suggested that partisan realignment actually occurred, once again in particular areas, during elections prior to 1928. This is not the place for extended commentary on the methodological characteristics of these studies. However, several issues do require discussion at this point. Since each of these studies has tended to focus on a different geographical area or population group, direct confrontations between conflicting findings for the same population group or area have rarely occurred. Even more important, the findings for different particular areas do not aggregate to a view of partisan realignment as a national phenomenon. With some exceptions, such studies have focused exclusively upon presidential contests, while neglecting elections to lesser federal and to state and local offices.12 These comments refer, of course, primarily to studies of the so-called 11 Samuel Lubell, The Future of American Politics, New York, 1951. Lubell's findings were anticipated in some respects by Samuel J. Eldersveld in "The Influence of Metropolitan Party Pluralities in Presidential Elections Since 1920: A Study of Twelve Key Cities," American Political Science Review, 43 (December 1949), 1189-1206. See also Key, "Theory of Critical Elections"; MacRae and Meldrum, "Critical Elections"; Irving Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933, Baltimore, 1960; Carl N. Degler, "American Political Parties and the Rise of the City: An Interpretation," Journal of American History, 51 (June 1964), 41-59; David Burner, The Politics of Provincialism: The Democratic Party in Transition, 1918-1932, New York, 1968; John L. Shover, "Was 1928 A Critical Election in California?" Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 58 (October 1967), 196-204; Jerome M. Clubb and Howard W. Allen, "The Cities and the Election of 1928: Partisan Realignment?" American Historical Review, 74 (April 1969), 1205-1220; Ruth B. Silva, Rum, Religion and Votes: 1928 Reconsidered, University Park, Pennsylvania, 1962; John M. Allswang, A House for All Peoples: Ethnic Politics in Chicago, 1890-1936, Lexington, Ky., 1971; Michael P. Rogin and John L. Shover, Political Change in California: Critical Elections and Social Movements, 1890-1966, Westport, Conn., 1970; Bruce M. Stave, The New Deal and the Last Hurrah: Pittsburgh Machine Politics, Pittsburgh, 1970. 12 The exceptions include MacRae and Meldrum, "Critical Elections"; Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics; Gerald Pomper, Elections in America: Control and Influence in American Politics, New York, 1970; and Clubb and Allen, "The Cities and Election of 1928."

48

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

New Deal realignment whenever that realignment is dated. The growing body of literature on earlier realignments suggests much the same pattern of conflicting findings and noncumulative results. With some important exceptions, critical realignments have rarely been studied empirically as a national systemic process.13 The nationallevel consequences of realignments are sometimes asserted, but rarely are the linkages between grass roots behavior and these national-level consequences investigated. Furthermore, it is often asserted that realignments are a product of national crises, but such crises have been more common historically than realignments. Very little effort has been devoted to explaining why some crises give rise to realignments while others do not. Few scholars have attempted to explain, much less to demonstrate, why the American political system periodically undergoes these large-scale readjustments or to discover their effects on the political system as a whole. From any perspective, moreover, realignments have constituted only brief episodes in the political life of the nation. Narrow preoccupation with the realignment phenomenon leads, in other words, to neglect of by far the largest part of Amercan political life and development. Narrow concern with realignments has inhibited exploration of the relationships between the interrealignment period and the realignment process itself. In this chapter we suggest a more comprehensive definition of partisan realignment. Generally, we argue that permanent electoral changes favoring a party and sustained control of policymaking institutions by that party should be viewed as central defining elements of critical realignments. We attempt to report on research in progress and to develop a broader and more comprehensive conceptualization of American political processes. Our definition of partisan realignment is an element in that larger conceptualization. In suggesting that definition, and in attempting to demonstrate its congruence with basic empirical data, we do not mean to rule out other definitions or to argue that realignments can only occur in a single way. We do mean to assert two propositions. First, realignments should be viewed as parts of a longer sequence which is marked by more or less considerable electoral variability at all times. Second, the linkage between electoral change—even marginal change—and durable transitions in partisan control over policy institutions has been seriously underexamined. For the purposes of this chapter we have employed data bearing upon the patterns of partisan control over the federal and state gov13

Pomper, Elections in America; Burnham, Critical Elections.

49

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

ernments and aggregate election returns at the state level.14 The reasons for choosing this level of analysis are obvious. The American constitutional structure is such that states are both constituencies and major policymaking units in their own right. Our purposes here, moreover, are explicitly macroanalytical; for such a system-level strategy, states are peculiarly appropriate units of analysis. I ELECTORAL CHANGE

TRADITIONAL political historiography treats elections as unique events determined by the reactions of an informed citizenry to the specific issues, candidates and occurrences of the day. More recent investigations of historical voting behavior have placed less emphasis upon the unique character of elections. Such a shift in emphasis is a valuable corrective to the view of traditional historiography, but it can be carried to an extreme. Both partisan continuity and change have characterized American electoral history. Partisan change, including lasting change, has not been confined to periods that have been identified as eras of critical realignment. It is true, of course, that the major-party distribution of the presidential vote, for example, has tended to fluctuate within a relatively narrow range across the course of American history. Usually the winning candidate has received lass than 60 percent of the total vote; by the same token, the losing candidate's share of the total vote has seldom fallen as low as 40 percent. 15 Even so, it is clear, that the partisan distribution of the presidential vote has consistently fluctuated, frequently by a considerable magnitude, from one election to the other. Perhaps the simplest way to assess the variation in a series of proportions, such as the Democratic share of the vote for president, is to examine the first differences in the series.16 Figure LlA displays the 14

AU data employed in this paper were provided by the Inter-University Consortium for Political Research. The Consortium bears no responsibility for the findings and interpretations presented here. 15 Donald E. Stokes and Gudmund R. Iverson, "On the Existence of Forces Restoring Two-Party Competition," in Campbell et al., Elections and the Political Order, 180-193. 16 The procedure involves subtracting the percentage value in an election at t — 1 from the value in an election at t. This yields a new series of values which represents the difference in percentage of the vote between each election and its predecessor. When the first differences are computed for all the states, they may then be averaged and give a summary measure of how dissimilar support was from one election to the next on the average.

50

FIGURE 1.1 A State Averages of Absolute Values of First Differences of the Democratic Proportions of the Vote for President, 1828-1968

Source Historical Archive of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

average of the absolute values of the first differences in the percentage of the vote received by Democratic candidates in all states from 1828 through 1968. Figure LIB presents the same data for the Republicans from 1860 through 1968 and for Whig candidates from 1840 through 1852. The higher the scores in Figure 1.1, the more the states departed, on the average, from the previous election in the percentage of the vote cast for the presidential candidates of a given party. The departure, or first difference for a particular state, may be either an increase or decrease in the share of the vote received in the previous election; the direction of this change is ignored. In some instances, such as the Democrats in 1932, the difference scores reflect increases in the vote received by the party, in this case the Democrats, in all states in 1932 as compared with 1928. In other instances the difference scores reflect decreases in all states as compared with the preceding election, and in still others the scores reflect a combination of decreases in some states and increases in others.17 The data presented in Figure 1.1 convey an overall impression of considerable electoral volatility. Of course, some of this variation could be eliminated. The high Republican score in 1912 reflects the Bull Moose schism and could be greatly reduced, if not eliminated, by combining the loyal Republican vote with the Progressive vote. Republican 17

The partisan divisions of the vote cast for the various offices, which were used in all tables and figures in this chapter, reflect as closely as possible the configuration of parties that appeared on the ballot. When, for example, the Democratic percentage of the vote cast in a particular election is utilized this figure usually represents only the proportion of votes cast for a candidate (or candidates) running on the Democratic label. Votes cast for minor party candidates have generally not been assigned to a major party total. Thus the Republican vote for president in 1912 is that cast for Taft alone; votes cast for Theodore Roosevelt on the Progressive or Bull Moose ticket were not considered "Republican" for analytic purposes in this chapter. Similarly assigned to the "other" party total (and not combined with either of the major parties) were the votes cast for the Constitutional Union and Southern Democratic tickets in 1860; the Populists in the 1890's; the Progressives around 1910 and 1924; the States Rights Democrats in 1948; and the American Independents in 1968. An exception in the case of the presidential vote should be noted. Because party labels may vary somewhat from state to state, the votes reported for the major parties for president represent those cast for the national candidate of the respective major parties. The votes received by Humphrey in 1968, for example, were classified as "Democratic" whether they were cast for the DemocraticFarmer Labor label (in Minnesota) or the National Democratic ticket (in Alabama as opposed to the "straight" Democratic party in that state, which was pledged to Wallace). Dual nominations of one presidential candidate by both a major and a minor party has frequently occurred in New York and appeared in a number of states occasionally in the 1890's in connection with the Populist party. The presidential vote is therefore to be interpreted as a candidate vote rather than a strict party vote.

52

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

Source- Historical Archive of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

FIGURE 1.1B State Averages of Absolute Values of First Differences of the Whig and Republican Proportions of the Vote for President, 1840-1852, 1860-1968

Turnout Percentage

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN division, however, decided the outcome of the election of 1912, and the difference score is a valid reflection of shifts in partisan voting behavior. Other elections marked by high difference scores are less susceptible to such combinatorial remedies; the variability remains. It should be clear, moreover, that the procedures and data employed underestimate variations in voting behavior. Comparison of the aggregate vote at the state level undoubtedly masks shifts in voting behavior on the part of individuals and smaller units within the various states. The aggregation process, however, cannot introduce spurious variation. Examination of Figure LlA indicates sharp changes in the Democratic vote in 1836, 1860, 1896, 1932, and 1968, as might be expected, with above-average variability in the elections of 1864, 1920, 1928, 1948, 1952, and 1964. In the Republican case the elections of 1912, 1916, 1920, 1932, 1952, and 1964 are all marked by high levels of variability, and only slightly lower levels of variability are found in the elections of 1864, 1896, and 1968. In some elections, in other words the vote for both parties was marked by considerable variability; in others shifts are observable only in the vote for one party, reflecting in most instances the intrusion of third party movements. If we summarize the patterns of variability for both parties, we can also observe periods of relative stability in presidential voting which include the elections from 1868 through 1892, from 1900 through 1908, from 1936 through 1944, and in the elections of 1956 and 1960. The period prior to the Civil War also appears stable in the case of the Democratic and Whig vote; however, the other parties of those years, which are not displayed, were marked by considerable volatility. It can also be noted that each of the presidential elections that have been identified as partisan realignments—1860, 1896, and 1932—involved sharp electoral change, usually more marked in the case of one party than the other. However, other elections were also marked by electoral change of at least approximately equal magnitude. The first differences were also computed for the Democratic and Republican congressional vote on a biennial basis (Figures 1.2A and 1.2B). The congressional returns were aggregated to the state level. In most cases, this means that votes from more than one district are combined. These data were treated in the same fashion as the statelevel presidential returns above. When compared with the fluctuations characteristic of the presidential vote, the congressional series appear considerably more stable. Perhaps the most striking difference between the presidential and congressional series is to be found in the decades 54

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

CM OO

co

to m

CO

FIGURE 1.2A State Averages of Absolute Values of First Differences of Democratic Proportions of the Vote for Congressmen, 1826-1968

Source Historical Archive of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

FIGURE 1.2B State Averages of Absolute Values of First Differences of the Whig and Republican Proportions of the Vote for Congressmen, 1840-1852, 1858-1968

Source· Historical Archive of the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research.

Republican

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

following the 1930's. During these years both congressional series are characterized by a high degree of stability, and, indeed, for both parties these deoades were marked by the greatest and most prolonged stability of the entire period. In sharp contrast, the presidential vote during these same years was marked by increasing volatility beginning in the 1950's. The congressional series for both parties reflect variation during periods that have been identified as partisan realignments. As in the case of the presidential series, however, other periods were also marked by considerable variation. The highest levels of variation in Democratic voting occurred in the middle years of the nineteenth century especially in the years before the Civil War. Subsequently, only the elections of 1894 and 1896 reflected comparably dramatic shifts in the Democratic vote for Congress. Substantially less variation characterized the peaks of twentieth century Democratic variability that occurred during the elections from 1920 through 1932. In general, the shorter Republican series reflects lower levels of variability than does the Democratic series. The peak of Republican variability came in 1860 and in several of the elections during the two decades that followed. Several elections during the years from 1912 through 1932 were also marked by variability of about the level of the 1860's and 1870's.18 The simple arrays of data presented in Figures 1.1 and 1.2 suggest a central but obvious point. Variation in partisan voting behavior has been a consistent fact of American political life. It is to be remembered that the procedures employed above underestimate rather than exaggerate electoral variation. The overall distribution of the presidential and congressional vote has fluctuated within a relatively narrow range, but within that range the vote has been characterized by increasing stability over much of the period, while the presidential vote has not and as a consequence has increasingly diverged from the congressional pattern. The series presented suggest that this divergence has become more marked during the decades of the 1950's and 1960's.1B Change xs

As we have said above, both Democratic and Republican first differences in the congressional vote have shown a long-term tendency to decline. There is a recent tendency toward landslide victories for incumbents of both parties in contested elections and, correspondingly, an increasingly sharp bimodal distribution as well as a systematic tendency for incumbents seeking reelection to increase as a proportion of all contestants in congressional elections. See, e.g., David Mayhew, "Congressional Elections: The Disappearing Marginals," paper delivered at the annual meeting of the New England Political Science Association, 1973. 19 There is a host of other evidence to support this proposition, and the data of the 1972 election reveal that this divergence has reached all-time highs. See,

57

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

and variability in voting behavior has obviously been a characteristic of periods identified as realigning but change and variability have not been confined to those periods. Such factors must be taken into account in any comprehensive analysis. Obviously, we cannot treat all electoral change as indicative of partisan realignment. Equally obviously, the phenomenon of critical realignment survives all this chaotic variability. Of course, measurement of gross electoral change does not allow identification of the timing of realignments or assessment of the dynamics of the process. Short-term electoral fluctuations must also be differentiated from more enduring change; it also goes without saying that the partisan direction of change must be taken into account. In other words, we must attempt to determine whether a period of variation is followed by a new pattern of voting or a return to the previous pattern. For this purpose we have employed a modified form of twoway analysis of variance developed by Nancy Zingale.20 The concepts and procedures used in Figure 1.3 are discussed in a technical note at the end of the chapter. Briefly the technique permits us to partition electoral change into (1) uniform shifts for or against a party in the entire nation and (2) compensating shifts where gains in some states are matched by losses in others. Across-the-board shifts which Zingale labeled "surge" reflect a net gain or loss for a party; compensating change called "interaction" represents no net change nationally. This procedure also allows statistical discrimination between short-term, "deviating," change on the one hand, and long-term, "realigning" change on the other. With this procedure, elections that are marked by variance that is unlike that of elections that precede and follow reveal temporary or deviating change; elections that are unlike those that precede but are like those that follow are seen as realigning and mark the establishment of a new pattern. The amount of change in voting patterns is then classified as "deviating surge," or "realigning surge," "deviating interaction," or "realigning interaction." Our attention will focus on the two types of realigning change as appropriate to our evaluation of electoral change. The results of this technique applied to presidential and congressional returns for both parties for elections from 1840 to 1968 are presented in Figures 1.3A, 1.3B, 1.3C, and 1.3D. The same state-level proe.g., Burnham, Critical Elections, esp. 108-110. In 1972, for example, approximately 43 percent to 44 percent of congressional districts had split "partisan" results for President and Congress; and all but two of these cases involved the simultaneous victories of Nixon and a Democratic congressman. 20 Nancy H. Zingale, "Electoral Stability and Change: The Case of Minnesota, 1857-1966," unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1971.

58

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

FIGURE 1.3A Electoral Change in Democratic Vote for President, 1840-1952, Using States as Units (top) FIGURE 1.3B Electoral Change in Republican Vote for President, 1872-1952, Using States as Units (bottom)

59

FIGURE 1.3D Electoral Change in Republican Vote for Congress, 1872-1952, Using States as Units (bottom)

FIGURE 1.3C Electoral Change in Democratic Vote for Congress, 1840-1952, Using States as Units (top)

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

portions are employed as were used above. In this analysis, however, the data are weighted in terms of the magnitude of the raw vote cast in each state. The Democratic series begins with 1840 and the Republican series with 1872, and both end with the 1952 election. (Since each election is compared with a set of prior elections and another set of subsequent elections, observations are lost at each end of a series.) Figure 1.3 presents for each election an estimate of deviating and realigning change for both surge and interaction in the vote cast for Democrats and Republicans. Conceptually, the figure partitions the variability indicated in Figures 1.1 and 1.2 into four types of change. Figure 1.3 indicates much less in the way of lasting, or realigning, electoral change than of change in general. Each presidential election displayed was marked by deviating change, although clearly deviating interaction was about the same throughout and deviating surge was substantially greater in some cases than in others. But in terms of the presidential vote, the technique also suggests that realigning surge and interaction occurred in a number of elections other than those that have been commonly identified as realigning.21 In terms of the Democratic presidential vote, the elections of 1840 and 1848 were marked by realigning change as were the elections of 1860, 1864, and 1868. Realigning change was also characteristic, again in terms of the Democratic presidential vote, of the elections of 1896, 1904, 1928 through 1936, 1948, and 1952. In the case of the Republican presidential vote the pattern is somewhat different. The elections of 1872 and 1876 are each marked by realigning change as are the presidential elections of 1884, 1892, 1920, 1932, and 1952, although in general the Republican series is marked by less in the way of lasting change than is the Democratic series. This overabundance of realigning change is further complicated when we consider the congressional series (Figures 1.3C and 1.3D). As in the case of the first differences presented above, the congressional series gives an impression of greater stability than does the presidential series. AU of the congressional elections were marked by deviating changes in the vote for both parries, although the magnitude of change 21 Those who are familiar with the literature will recognize the results of application of the analysis variance technique (Figure 1.3) suggests much more in the way of electoral change and instability, both of a deviating and a realigning nature, than do the correlational analyses. Correlations are most sensitive to changes in the ordering of' units from one election to the next. They are less sensitive, or even insensitive, to changes that involve a relatively uniform increase or decrease in the values of all units involved in the analysis, and to changes that do not affect the position of the units in relation to each other.

61

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

is smaller than in the case of the presidential vote. The lasting change reflected in the figure is also of lesser magnitude, but as in the case of the presidential series we can also note the occurrence of a limited amount of such change in a number of elections in addition to those that are usually identified as realigning. When applied to the decade of the 1890's, moreover, the analysis of variance procedure provides little evidence of lasting change, although most scholars have agreed that these years were marked by major realignment. The Democratic presidential vote in 1896 and the Republican presidential vote in 1892 were marked by limited realigning interaction, but aside from very moderate change in the Republican vote in 1894 the congressional vote provides little indication of realignment during the decade. There is a discrepancy between the considerable variation in the first differences in 1896 for the Democratic presidential vote in Figure 1.1A and the small amount of electoral change in Figure 1.3A. Two factors seem to account for this, the weighting of states and the impact of new states on the first differences. Several states were granted statehood in 1889 and 1890 and did not include Democratic presidential candidates on the ticket in 1892. As a consequence, the first difference between the Democratic vote in 1892 and 1896 were high for these states and contributed disproportionately to the high Democratic difference score for 1896.22 Moreover, for reasons discussed in the technical note at the end of the chapter, new states do not immediately enter the analysis displayed in Figure 1.3. In the 1890's, many of the larger and more heavily populated states remained relatively stable in terms of the partisan distribution of the vote, while change tended to be concentrated in the western and less populous states. Since the data employed in Figure 1.3 are weighted in terms of the magnitude of the total vote in each state, the impact of change in the less populous states is appropriately reduced. What we have described are the modal tendencies of partisan realignment—or, in other words, partisan realignments viewed from a national or systemic perspective. Such a perspective obviously conceals 22 The Democratic percentage of the vote in states entering the Union in 1889 and 1890 was as follows: 1892 1896 1900 Idaho 0% 78.1« 50.8¾ Montana 39.8 79.9 58.4 North Dakota 0 43.6 35.5 South Dakota 12.7 49.7 41.1 Washington 33.9 57.0 41.7 Wyoming 0 51.6 41.1

62

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

numerous complexities and suggests that historical realignments have involved more coherent change than they did in fact. We know as well, although the point cannot be demonstrated here, that individual states and smaller areas within states deviated from that pattern. When viewed from the perspective of individual states and other smaller units, the realignment phenomenon quite naturally lacks the uniformity that appears when viewed from a national perspective. These shifts in individual subunits combine to favor one or the other party at the national level. During a realignment some of the shifting toward the advantaged party can be viewed as deviating in nature, since those states and other units that underwent realignment were usually marked by temporary surges toward the advantaged party. In summary form these effects can be seen in Figures 1.3A and 1.3B for the nation where deviating surges are evident around the realignment elections. Thus, if partisan realignments are viewed as involving shifts in individual partisan loyalties, and we consider it appropriate to do so, it appears that not all shifts in individual voting behavior were accompanied by changes in underlying loyalties. It is likely that during partisan realignments some individuals deviated temporarily from their underlying partisan identifications and voted for candidates of the opposite party, later returning to their traditional allegiance. Viewed as a whole, however, partisan realignments both strengthen partisanship in the electorate and modify its aggregate balance, locally and nationally. Such simultaneous strengthening and modification seems to be of the essence of the realignment phenomenon in American electoral history. The requirements of the analysis of variance technique are such that it cannot be used to assess the magnitude of deviating and realigning change for elections after 1952. This is an unfortunate loss in several respects, for it is obvious that electoral changes of considerable magnitude have been at work in the past decade. As we have said, when viewed together the simple first differences presented above show increases in volatility at the presidential level and declines in congressional election volatility; and these patterns are occurring simultaneously. We can examine this divergence through another analysis procedure. Table 1.1 displays the correlation coefficients between Democratic percentages of the state-level presidential and congressional vote for each election in the same year from 1940 through 1972. The divergence of the two voting patterns is revealed by the declining values of the coefficients over time. The decline is most marked when the entire nation is considered. It is less extreme when only nonsouth-

63

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN TABLE 1.1

INTERCORRELATION OF DEMOCRATIC PERCENTAGE

OF THE VOTE CAST FOR PRESIDENT AND UNITED STATES HOUSE

OF REPRESENTATIVES, 1940-1972

(states as units of analysis)

Year 1940 1944 1948 1952 1956 1960 1964 1968 1972

Product-moment correlation of President and U.S. House of Representatives: Southern states Southern states included excluded .87 .94 -.22 .85 .71 .38 -.18 -.24 .02

.54 .77 .72 .81 .72 .66 .58 .47 .32

ern states are considered, reflecting the greater volatility of recent southern electoral behavior. II CONTROL OF POLICY INSTITUTIONS

EXAMINATION of the partisan distribution of election outcomes is necessary to gain a more adequate view of the place of realignments in the political process. The realignments of 1860, 1896, and 1932 were all associated with major and lasting shifts in the pattern of partisan control over the federal and state governments. To a large extent, this pattern of change in governmental control allows identification of these years as realigning. It is clear, in other words, that the peculiar distribution of shifts in voting behavior and the level of electoral competition are of critical importance. Even major shifts in popular voting behavior can occur without bringing about change in governmental control. The structure of the electoral and governmental systems can work to reduce or amplify the impact of changes in popular voting behavior. The point is most obvious where patterns of partisan control over the agencies of the central government are concerned. The lasting shifts in voting behavior in 1860, 1896, and 1932 were followed by prolonged periods of united partisan control over the House, the Senate, and the Presidency by the parties advantaged by these voting shifts (Figure 1.4). Democratic victories in 1932 marked the beginning of a period of

64

Party In Control of: Presidency Senate House 1828 1830 1832 1834 1836 1838 1840 1842 1844 1846 1848 1850 1852 1854 1856 1858 1860 1862 1864 1866 1868 1870 1872 1874 1876 1878 1880 1882 1884 1886 1888 1890 1892 1894 1896 1898 1900 1902 1904 1906 1908

D

D D

D

mD

D

D D W W D D D D D D D D R R R R R R R R R D

W D W D D R R R R R R D R D

m mR R R R D

E] R R R R

R R R R R R R

D D D D

mD W D D W

mD D R

m mR R R R R R R D D D R D D D R D D R R R R R R R R

Presidency Senate House 1910 1912 1914 1916 1918 1920 1922 1924 1926 1928 1930 1932 1934 1936 1938 1940 1942 1944 1946 1948 1950 1952 1954 1956 1958 1960 1962 1964 1966 1968 1970 1972

R

R D D D R R R R R R

D

m D

D D R R

D D D D R R D D R R

D D D D D D R D D R R D D D D D D D D D

D =

Democrats

R =

Republicans

W =

Whigs

D D D

mR R R R R R D D D D D D D D R D D R D D D D D D D D D D

CJ = Dominant party lacks clear majority

FIGURE 1.4 Party Control of the Presidency, Senate and House of Representatives, 1828-1972

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN united control that endured until 1946. Moreover, beginning in 1932 the Democrats enjoyed extraordinary majorities in both houses of Congress that continued until the elections of 1946. The elections of 1896 ushered in a period of united control that lasted until 1910; in 1896 Republicans gained solid, although not extraordinary, majorities in both houses of Congress which marked the end of the pattern of divided partisan control that had characterized much of the latter 1870's, the 1880's, and the early 1890's. The pattern of the 1850's was more complicated. Except for the 35th Congress (1857-59), the former Democratic ascendancy in the House was eliminated, but without a stable majority to replace it. This was the consequence of a sectional realignment which left the Republican party in a large majority in the free states but with virtually no seats in the slave states. The deadlock was broken by the secession of the southern states after Lincoln's election. The Republican capture of all three branches in early 1861 followed as a direct consequence of that act; as did the extraordinary Republican majorities which dominated both Houses of Congress through the rest of the 1860's. Indeed, the restructuring effects of electoral change in these years worked, as is well known, to convert the southern states into the Republican column. Even so, partisan realignment during these years was associated with the termination of a period of divided partisan control over the federal government and marked the beginning of a prolonged period of united Republican control. The shifts in governmental control associated with the election of 1896 were relatively small in comparison with those of the 1860's or the 1930's. Yet the political conditions in the late nineteenth century were such that even these relatively limited electoral shifts produced a pronounced change in the partisan distribution of seats in Congress. In 1896, 19 percent of the total House seats changed in party control. In 1894, 36 percent changed party control. In contrast, the massive electoral realignment in 1932 produced only a comparable change, 21 percent, in partisan control of total House seats. As a consequence of the closely competitive conditions in some nonsouthern states in the late nineteenth century the impact of even slight electoral shifts was greatly amplified. On the other hand, the less competitive conditions of the 1920's in many nonsouthern states worked to reduce the impact of much greater shifts in 1932. Overall, and as we will explore more fully in another place, contested American legislative elections have shown a very strong tendency to translate increases in votes for a given major party into increases in the party's legislative seats according to the transformational ratio of

66

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT 23

about two or three for one. That is, for each increase of one percent received by a party in its share of the two party vote it wins approximately an additional 2 to 3 percent of the seats. In the years from 1884 through 1892, a national maximum was reached: an increase in 1 percent of the two party vote then yielded an increase of over 8 percent of the seats in Congress. By contrast, the ratio in the years from 1924 through 1932 had fallen again in the nonsouthern states, such that an additional 1 percent of the two party vote earned a given party an increase of less than 3 percent of the congressional seats.24 Tufte shows that in addition to these effects in the late nineteenth century identical swing ratios yielded many more turnovers in congressional seats than in the twentieth century. 25 Examination of the three national realignments of the latter half of the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries indicates, in other words, that in each realignment one party gained relatively lasting control of the Presidency and both houses of Congress. Thus it is possible to speak of the somewhat dissimilar popular voting shifts of these years as bringing about unified and effective partisan control over the agencies of the federal government. Realigning and deviating shifts in popular electoral behavior during other periods, however, did not have a similar impact upon patterns of governmental control. Somewhat similar generalizations bearing upon patterns of partisan control over state governments can also be made. Figure 1.5 displays shifts in the proportion of nonsouthern states characterized by united control over the state executive and both legislative houses by the parties advantaged by the three historical realignments. 26 It is clear 23

This is not strictly speaking the cube law frequently cited, but rather a linear model with a slope of about 3.0. Our analysis confirms similar work by Tufte which convincingly demonstrates the widespread inapplicability of the cube law to U.S. electoral patterns. See Edward Tufte, "The Relationship between Seats and Votes in Two-Party Systems," American Political Science Review, 67 (June 1973), 540-554. Our analysis for shorter time periods supports Tufte's rejection of non-linear transformations; that is, we get good linear fits although we find even greater variation in translation ratios than Tufte—especially in the late nineteenth century. 24 In the very long run, the empirical transformation of votes into seats in American congressional elections has remarkably closely approximated the nearlinear transformation ratio posited by the cube law within the forty to sixty percent ("competitive") range. (See James G. March, "Party Legislative Representation as a Function of Election Results," in Paul F. Lazarsfeld and Neil W. Henry, eds., Readings in Mathematical Social Science, Cambridge, 1966, 220-241.) 25 Tufte, "Relationship Between Seats and Votes," 552. 26 Solid Democratic control over southern state governments was attained in the 1850's and continued, with the exception of the Reconstruction period, through the realignments of the 1890's and the 1930's. Thus presentation of patterns of partisan control in southern states serves no useful purpose.

67

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN 80.0 62.5

Percentage of

70.3 58.1

55.9

18621863

41.9

states controlled by Republicans η the Non-South 856-

1858-

1860-

857

859

1861

18641865

1866 1867

76.3 65.8 Percentage of states controlled by Republicans in the Non-South

35.1

27.0

1890-

1892-

1894-

1891

1893

1895

67.6 60.5

18961897

41.7

Percentage of

18981899

1900 1901

44.7

47.2

states controlled by Democrats in the Non-South

7.9

10.5 2.7

mmsn 19261927

19281929

19301931

FIGURE 1.5 Percentage of Nonsouthem States with One-Party Control of Execu­ tive and Legislature in Years Surrounding Realignments

68

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

that in each of these realignments control over state governments tended to shift toward the advantaged party, although the magnitude and form of these shifts varied considerably from one realignment to the other.27 In the state elections of 1858 and 1859, the new Republican party gained unified control over approximately 62 percent of the nonsouthern state governments. Republican control declined somewhat in the years that immediately followed but remained at comparatively high levels. Shifts in partisan control of state governments during the subsequent realignments were even more pronounced. In 1894 and 1895, Republicans gained united control over almost 66 percent of the nonsouthern state governments, and in 1932 and 1933 Democrats gained unified control over almost 42 percent of these state governments as compared with the approximately 10 percent that they had controlled in 1930 and 1931. In both cases, moreover, these patterns of control by the advantaged parties continued during the years that followed. We can push our discussion of shifts in partisan control over state governments somewhat further. In the course of the major historical realignments, the magnitude of state legislative majorities was also affected. Table 1.2 presents for the parties that were electorally advantaged by each realignment the percentage of the upper and lower houses of nonsouthern state legislatures in which those parties attained majorities of 60 percent or more. Here again, shifts in partisan control TABLE 1.2 PERCENTAGE OF UPPER AND LOWER HOUSES OF NONSOUTHERN STATE LEGISLATURES WITH MAJORITIES IN EXCESS OF 60 PERCENT FOR ELECTORALLY ADVANTAGED PARTIES DURING YEARS SURROUNDING PARTISAN REALIGNMENTS

Republican Upper Lower

Republican Upper Lower 1856-1857 1858-1859 1860-1861 1862-1863 1864-1865 1866-1867

48.0 60.4 56.0 54.6 78.2 75.7

44.0 57.2 44.0 60.0 78.2 59.9

1890-1891 1892-1893 1894-1895 1896-1897 1898-1899 1900-1901

40.5 43.2 76.4 67.5 60.5 73.8

35.1 35.1 92.1 51.3 63.2 71.1

Democratic Upper Lower 1926-1927 13.2 1928-1929 8.1 1930-1931 10.5 1932-1933 33.3 1934-1935 42.1 1936-1937 44.4

10.5 5.4 18.5 52.8 44.7 50.0

27 Historically, elections of governors and state legislators have not been held consistently at the same time across the various states, and terms of office have varied widely from state to state and from one time period to the other. The data presented in Figure 1.5 and Table 1.2 summarize the outcomes of elections held at various times during the years indicated.

69

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN over state legislative bodies varied in magnitude and pattern from one realignment to the other. As Table 1.2 makes clear, however, each realignment was associated with a surge in the state legislative strength of the party advantaged nationally. In the course of each realignment the advantaged party gained extraordinary legislative majorities in an increased proportion of the states. This extraordinary legislative control persists, moreover, across the immediately following years. A major characteristic of realignments as nationwide phenomena, distinguishing them from deviating and other types of elections, has been that they produce profound changes in the pattern of partisan control over government. These changes operate not only at the national level but also in a large number of states; and they tend to produce results which last over more or less extensive periods of time thereafter. The classic nationwide critical realignment serves to reintegrate the political system in new ways, and across both the boundaries established by the separated-powers and by federal structures imposed by the Constitution. Party is clearly at the center of this reintegration process. Ill SYSTEMIC PERSPECTIVES

IN the preceding pages certain rather obvious characteristics of three historical partisan realignments have been described. In particular, these realignments have been seen as marked by both deviating and enduring shifts in popular voting behavior and by lasting change in the patterns of partisan control over government. The scholarly literature allows addition of other elements to this description. Realignments have also been seen as related to pervasive and system-wide crisis, although major national crises have occurred without partisan realignment. Moreover, national realignments have been treated as productive of innovative policy actions in response to crisis. These actions have frequently been taken as involving shifts in political goals and values and as marking major changes in the course of public policy and, indeed, in the direction of national life. It is in these respects, of course, that realignment periods have been considered as great historical watersheds. This broader perspective suggests further formulations bearing upon the dynamics of historical partisan realignments. Both crisis and policy action that reduces crisis are vital elements of the realignment process.

70

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

The shifts in electoral behavior and the achievement of power by one of the parties that results from crisis provides the conditions of effective government that allows innovative policy action at the level of the central government and parallel action in various states.28 National crisis leads, moreover, to the formation of a single issue dimension, or a limited set of tightly constrained issue dimensions, along which parties, individuals, and groups align themselves and toward which they direct their primary political attention and concern. Thus one of the consequences of a crisis is to suppress issue concerns that are not perceived as related to the crisis. This narrowing of issue concerns facilitates compromise and policy action on the part of a newly elected partisan majority. The combination of crisis, issues, policy response, and political leaders creates, furthermore, a symbol (or set of symbols) around the realignment which also alludes to perceived explanations for the crisis and to policies that are seen as remedies. Examples of these symbol patterns are obvious. The Great Depression, Herbert Hoover, Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal, and social security were all elements of the symbol pattern generated by the crisis and realignment of the 1930's. Similarly, the symbols of the 1860 realignment included those of national union, secession, Civil War, Lincoln, slavery, and the yeoman farmer. The symbol patterns of the 1890's are less easy to specify reflecting, as we view it, the particular circumstances and nature of that realignment. That pattern surely included, however, symbols of business and industrial growth, national modernization, the infant industries and the tariff, party loyalty, and the symbols of the Civil War realignment. In these terms, policy actions that are seen as responsive to crisis and that can be perceived as justification for earlier shifts in voting behavior are necessary elements in the formation of the new configurations of political attitudes and partisan loyalties that support the new electoral coalitions emerging from the national realignments. In other words, effective policy action by the party that is advantaged by crisis-produced voting shifts is necessary to the formation of new 28 It should be obvious, of course, that when we refer to innovative policymaking as associated with realignments we do not imply that these actions were necessarily positive in character involving, perhaps, greater intervention by government in the social and economic sectors. In terms of the present formulation, policies that were essentially negative or even those which looked toward preservation of the status quo could be perceived as innovative. The critical factor is that the policies were perceived as an effective response to pressing problems and issues. The policy innovations associated with the realignment of the 1890's, for example, were apparently seen as removing governmental and political obstacles to business and industrial growth and expansion.

71

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

partisan attitudes and loyalties and to the consummation of realignment. During the years following realignments, moreover, these symbol patterns were dominant elements of political persuasion and rhetoric and were used in both positive and negative ways. Although we cannot demonstrate the point, it is likely that systematic content analysis of party platforms, of political speeches and documents, and of the writings of political elites would demonstrate, if such an effort were conceivable, the prevalence of these symbols following realignments. Such an analysis would also reveal gradual diminution of the use of these symbols with the passage of years reflecting their diminishing capacity to rally the troops of the old realignment. These characteristics of historical partisan realignments lead rather straightforwardly to a broader but as yet highly tentative conceptual framework for cross-temporal comparative analysis of American politics. As a beginning, much of American political history can be seen as characterized by recurring and generally comparable sequences of elections. In broad terms, these sequences have involved a national partisan realignment, a post-realignment period of stability marked by the electoral alignments produced by the realignment, and a period of deterioration of these alignment patterns which has historically been followed in turn by a new realignment. 29 At the beginning of this sequence we can see realignments as involving a precipitating crisis, the achievement of effective governmental control by one or the other of the parties, policy action in response to crisis, and the formation of new partisan attitudes and electoral coalitions. In each historical realignment, the newly dominant party disrupted major bases of support of other parties and assembled a new coalition of electoral forces. At the same time, the dominant party became identified with public policies addressed to the precipitating crisis, and the disadvantaged party became associated with negative symbols surrounding the crisis. These periods, in our view, can be seen as involving the deterioration of an existing partisan alignment. And historians have attached labels, in most cases pejorative, to some of these periods. "Sectional conflict and compromise" has been used to describe the politics of the 1840's and 1850's; "The Politics of Dead Center" to describe the years from 29 This concept of electoral sequences as well as a number of other key elements of this formulation were first developed, although in somewhat different form, by W. Dean Burnham; see Critical Elections, and "The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe," American Political Science Review, 59 (March 1965), 7-28. The other two authors are indebted to him for his original insights.

72

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

the latter 1870's through the early 1890's; and the "Age of Normalcy" to describe the 1920's. To our knowledge, no equivalent term has yet been applied to the 1950's and 1960's, but we suspect that when such a term is devised it will convey a sense of futility and unsolved national problems. These periods have been characterized, at least in modal tendencies, by ineffective government, by frequent governmental deadlock. Consequently policymaking has tended to be incremental rather than innovative. Deviating elections, third party activity, and increasing divergence in the partisan outcomes of eleotions have been common. If a page is borrowed from contemporary survey research, these periods can be viewed as marked by the deterioration of partisan identifications and by increasing issue awareness on the part of the mass electorate.30 The realigning shifts and the "secular realignment" of particular population groups during such periods do not work to strengthen the existing partisan alignments nor do they necessarily look toward the emergence of a new alignment. Rather, they reflect the appearance, or resurgence, of issues and tensions that were not subsumed under the symbols of the old realignment. They look, in other words, toward loss of partisan structure and toward deterioration of the conditions of effective government. Of course we can expect substantially different patterns of electoral behavior and governmental performance during the different phases of the historical sequences that have been postulated. One very important direction which future research can—and in our opinion should—take is to analyze these changes within each longitudinal party system from one realignment dike to the next, and to compare the processes at work across these party systems. It has been argued that the American political system typically underresponds to human needs and to emergent social and economic tensions. As stated, the formulation is a truism and applies to all political systems. There is reason to believe, however, that this general tendency of political systems to underrespond to human needs and to suppress political demands is exaggerated in the case of the United States. The reasons are several and, for the most part, obvious. The complex arrangement of multiple and overlapping constituencies and jurisdictions defined in geographical terms has the effect of dividing groups marked by similar needs and interests and thus works to nullify their political voice. Similarly, the complexly layered federal system creates what amounts to a series of "concurrent majorities" each with capacity to prevent or 30 See, for example, Arthur H. Miller et td., "Majority Party in Disarray," and Norman Nie, "Mass Belief Systems Revisited."

73

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

to gain governmental action within particular policy areas. The longterm capacity of the South to prevent civil rights legislation and the ability of a diminishing agricultural sector to demand and receive a disproportionate share of societal benefits can be cited as obvious examples of these phenomena. We can also follow Samuel Huntington and argue that the system of checks and balances and the division of powers within the federal government similarly works to prevent effective governmental action.31 If we take these characteristics in combination, we can view the American political system as fragmented in critical ways, as lacking national articulation, and as marked, in some senses of the word, by relative absence of effective governmental power. Such a fragmented system lacks resources of power which are at the same time sovereign and accountable. In any political system, the functions of political parties as socializers, mobilizers of mass opinion and demand, legitimators and instruments of policy articulation are of crucial importance. In this fragmented, nonsovereign political system, the performance of these functions by political parties becomes peculiarly problematic, as most observers of American parties have noted.32 Moreover, the problematics deepen when we reach the present era. For the first time, something like "sovereignty" appears to be gathering about the Presidency, at precisely the moment when parties are experiencing substantial erosion, if not disintegration. The disjunction between these aspects of the American political system, on the one hand, and the remarkable dynamism of society, the economy, and technology, on the other, constitutes in our view the systemic bases of the electoral sequences which we have described and of their realignment phases. Normally the political and governmental systems react slowly and imperfectly to social, economic and technological change. As a consequence, unmet human needs increase without adequate governmental response, tensions mount, and social and economic dysfunctions remain unreconciled until crisis conditions are reached. Historically partisan realignment have occurred under conditions of national crisis and have produced a level of political integration and articulation sufficient to allow effective and coordinated governmental response, albeit usually within a relatively limited and 31 Samuel P. Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, 1968. 32 Robert A. Dahl, "The American Oppositions: Affirmation and Denial," in Robert A. Dahl, ed., Political Oppositions in Western Democracies, New Haven, 1966, 34-69; Huntington, Political Order; Burnham, Critical Elections.

74

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

well-defined issue area. To put the matter briefly, under normal conditions the American political system historically has adjusted only slowly, in incremental fashion, and inadequately to social and economic change. Periodically relatively large-scale and system-wide adjustments to accumulated tensions and dysfunctions have occurred in association with partisan realignments. Partisan realignments work to articulate and integrate the national political system along partisan lines and thereby facilitate these adjustments. Partisan realignments can thus be seen as both the products of accumulated tensions and dysfunctions and as instrumentalities through which adjustment to these dysfunctions occur. IV TECHNICAL NOTE

SOME of the analysis of electoral change presented above depends on a technique originally developed by Nancy H. Zingale.33 The classification of electoral change is somewhat different from earlier schemes and depends on two distinctions, the pattern of shift in support and the duration of change, while ignoring majority-minority status and the party of the winner. Four categories of change are isolated although they were not all presented above.

Uniform shift in vote

Temporary change Deviating surge

Permanent change Realigning surge

Compensating shift in vote

Deviating interactive change

Realigning interactive change

To apply this conceptual scheme the analysis of variance technique must discriminate between temporary and permanent shifts in a party's support and must distinguish surge gains or losses from interactive compensating changes. The more straightforward aspect of Zingale's technique is a weighted two-way analysis of variance with surge estimated by the election effect and interactive change estimated by the subunit election interaction effect. The data used are the percentages of 33 Nancy H. Zingale, "Electoral Stability and Change: The Case of Minnesota, 1857-1966," unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1971.

75

W. D. BURNHAM, J. M. CLUBB, & W. H. FLANIGAN

the total vote for a particular party in each election in a series for a set of subunits (states within the nation in the results reported above.) The subunits may be weighted according to size and within limits subunit boundary changes are tolerated for the series of elections. Moving sets of elections (five elections in these results) are successively utilized to make an assessment of a particular election in comparison with those before and after. The total variation of the percentages around the grand mean of an array can be partitioned into the portion attributable to the variation of the election means around the grand mean (the election effect), the portion attributable to the variation of the subunit means around the grand mean (the subunit effect), and the portion attributable to the differential effect of elections and subunits upon the percentages (the interaction effect).34 Placing this in the context of the conceptualization of electoral change, in any set of elections there is variability around the normal voting patterns of the electorate (the normal vote is estimated by the grand mean of the entire array). Part of this variability is accounted for by differences in the normal voting patterns of the subelectorates (the normal voting patterns of these subelectorates are measured by subunit means and variations attributable to these differences are estimated by the subunit sum of squares). Part of this variability is also due to the fact that the observations come from different elections; that is, a particular election will tend to move all the subunits in the electorate in one direction or the other by a certain average amount. This is labeled "surge," and the total amount of surge change in a series of elections is measured by the election sum of squares. The remainder of the variation in the array, variation not accounted for by either the differences in the normal voting habits of the subunits or by the uniform impact of the election on the subunits, is attributed to the nonuniform impact of particular elections on particular subunits; that is, in a given election, some units may move more or less than the average amount. This is designated interactive change and the total amount of this type of change in the series of elections is measured by the interaction sum of squares. The election sum of squares and the interaction sum of squares measure the total amount of surge and interactive change in a whole set of elections, not the amount attributable to each election individually, which, of course, is what is needed. The terms for both the election sum of squares and the interaction sum of squares represent sum34 William H. Flanigan and Nancy H. Zingale, "The Measurement of Electoral Change," Political Methodokgy, 2 (Summer 1974), 49-82.

76

PARTISAN REALIGNMENT

matron across all elections in the set. In order to find the amounts of surge and interactive change in each election, these summations are decomposed and the appropriate sums of squares are assigned to each election. These, then, are the means for measuring two general types of change, surge and interaction, but the distinction between deviating and realigning change has not been incorporated yet. To make this very crucial distinction, a moving cross-section of elections is used giving a number of estimates for the change occurring in each election, and differences in the patterns of these estimates yields a basis for distinguishing deviating change from realigning change. Of particular significance in this context is the comparison of each election with those that follow it and those that precede it. For both surge and interactive change there is a set of rules for distinguishing permanent from temporary change. First, if the amount of change attributed to an election when compared with four subsequent elections is greater than when it is compared with the four prior elections, there is no realigning change and the amount of deviating change is equal to the amount attributed to the election when it is compared to previous elections. Second, if the amount of change attributed to an election when compared with four subsequent elections is less than when it is compared with the four prior elections, some realignment has occurred. Deviating change is equated with the amount of change attributed to the election when compared with subsequent elections. The realigning change is the amount attributed to an election when it is compared with four prior elections minus the amount of deviating change. Several further adjustments are made to correct for the impact of realigning change. There are difficulties in assessing elections which immediately follow a realigning election since the realignment which has already occurred would be measured a second time. Consequently the moving set of elections is temporarily abandoned and a post-realignment election is compared with two sets of elections, one set subsequent to the realignment and one set subsequent to the election itself. The moving set of elections for comparison means that a number of observations at the beginning and end of the series are lost. It should be reiterated that each party must be analyzed separately so no single assessment for the system emerges. The Civil War break as well as the late entry of states causes missing data problems throughout the analysis.

77

2

Toward a Theory of Stability and Change in American Voting Patterns: New York State, 1792-1970 LEE BENSON, JOEL H. SILBEY, AND PHYLLIS F. F I E L D OVER the past two decades, the study of the historical dimensions of American voting behavior has become a well-developed and sophisticated enterprise. Much work in nineteenth- and twentieth-century aggregate electoral data has significantly added to our knowledge of past politics. It also has clarified and improved some of the general theories of mass voting behavior first elaborated in studies of contemporary electoral patterns. 1 The concept of voting cycles, for example—long intervals of partisan stability occasionally broken by temporary disruptions or rare periods of critical change—has been particularly well-established by research in the available historical data. Beginning with the examination of time series of election results by V. O. Key, Jr. in the 1950's, a number of analysts have illuminated the structural regularities in the behavior of the electorate and codified their observations into the status of a theory of American voting behavior over time. 2 They had classified all elections into five

This chapter is the first of a series based on research supported by grants from the National Science Foundation (GS-2879 and GS-2880). We gratefully acknowledge the foundation's assistance. We also wish to thank Ronald Formisano, John McCarthy, and especially Samuel T. McSeveney for useful critical comments. 1 Some examples of this work are compiled in Joel H. Silbey and Samuel T. McSeveney, Voters, Parties, and Elections, Waltham, Mass., 1972; and Jerome M. Clubb and Howard W. Allen, Electoral Change and Stability in American Political History, New York, 1971. 2 V. O. Key, Jr., "A Theory of Critical Elections," Journal of Politics, 17 (February 1955), 3-18; idem, "Secular Realignment and the Party System," Journal of Politics 21 (May 1959), 198-210. Some of the other important published works include Duncan MacRae Jr. and James A. Meldrum, "Critical Elections in Illinois, 1888-1958," American Political Science Review, 54 (September 1960), 669-83; Charles Sellers, Jr., "The Equilibrium Cycle in Two Party Politics," Public Opinion Quarterly, 29 (Spring 1965), 16-38; Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, New York As A Test Case, Princeton, 1961; Michael Holt, Forging A Majority: The Formation of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, New Haven, 1969; Ronald Formisano, The Birth of Mass Political Parties, Michigan, 1827-1861, Princeton, 1971; Michael Rogin and John Shover, Political Change in California:

78

TOWARD A THEORY OF STABILITY AND CHANGE categories—realigning (or critical), maintaining, deviating, reinstating and converting—and delineated five different party systems, corresponding to the stable eras in our electoral past. Each period contained a stable core of four to six maintaining or deviating presidential election. Each era was bounded by a voter realignment. 3 The most extensive attempt to synthesize all of this research and to expand its theoretical dimension has been made by Walter Dean Burnham, a former student of Key's.4 Burnham reaffirmed that despite important "fundamental" differences "in style and substance" between each of the party systems, electoral behavior throughout the course of American history showed striking regularities. 5 These alternating rhythms of long periods of voter stability followed by "short-lived but very intense" critical moments of realignment have been clearly cyclical, not fortuitous. ReaCritical Elections and Social Movements, Westport, Conn., 1970; Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900, New York, 1970; Samuel T. McSeveney, The Politics of Depression: Voting Behavior in the Northeast, 1893-1896, New York, 1973; John L. Shover, "Was 1928 a Realigning Election in California?" Pacific Northwest Quarterly, 58 (October 1967), 196-204; and his, "The Emergence of a Two-Party System in Republican Philadelphia, 1924-1936," Journal of American History, 60 (March 1974), 985-1002; Jerome M. Clubb and Howard W. Allen, "The Cities and the Election of 1928: Partisan Realignment?" American Historical Review, 74 (April 1969), 1205-1220; Allan J. Lichtman, "Critical Election Theory and the Reality of American Presidential Politics, 1916-40," ibid., 81 (April 1975), 317-351. 3 The classification is found in Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter, New York, 1960; Philip E. Converse et al, "Stability and Change in 1960: A Reinstating Election," American Political Science Review, 55 (June 1961), 269-280; and Gerald Pomper, "Classification of Presidential Elections," Journal of Politics, 29 (August 1967), 535-566. The five party systems are elaborated in William Nisbet Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, The American Party Systems, Stages of Political Development, New York, 1967. See also Thomas Jahnige, "Critical Elections and Social Change: Towards a Dynamic Explanation of National Party Competition in the United States," Polity. 3 (Summer 1971), 465-500; and James Sundquist, Dynamics of the Party System: Alignment and Realignment of Political Parties in the United States, Washington, 1973. 4 Critical Ekctions and the Mainsprings of American Politics, New York, 1970. See also James F. Ward, "Toward a Sixth Party System? Partisanship and Political Development," Western Political Quarterly, 26 (September 1973), 385-413. Burnham, "American Politics in the 1970's: Beyond Party?" in Chambers and Burnham, American Party Systems, New York, 2d ed., 1975, 308-357; Walter Dean Bumham, "Insulation and Responsiveness in Congressional Elections," Political Science Quarterly, 90 (Fall 1975), 411-435; Gerald Pomper, Voters' Choice: Varieties of American Electoral Behavior, New York, 1975; Everett C. Ladd, Jr., with Charles D. Hadley, Transformations of the American Party System, New York, 1975. 5 Burnham, Critical Elections, 69. Burnham's sophisticated analysis does rely, in part, on an examination of voting patterns in the state of Pennsylvania. But his primary focus is across states and nation. 79

L. BENSON, J. H. SILBEY, & P. F. FIELD lignments "recur with rather remarkable regularity approximately 6 once a generation, or every thirty to thirty-eight years." He located the realignments in those periods on which much of recent research has focused: the 1820's, 1850's, 1890's, the 1928-1936 period and perhaps again beginning in the late 1960's. Each stable period between these points, he observed, was also likely to have a subrupture, or miniature realignment, at its midpoint, about every nineteen years or so. He con­ cluded by noting that this traditional structure of popular voting has disintegrated noticeably in the third quarter of the twentieth century: "the political parties are progressively losing their hold upon the elec­ torate." The resulting decay of the behavioral regularities that have characterized our electoral history suggests the end of realigning sequences and a patternless future, strikingly different from America's past history.7 Burnham's ambitious analysis is a most sophisticated statement of the nature of electoral cycles in American history. The conceptual scheme he develops is generally persuasive and rests on research of the highest quality. But it seems unlikely that the last word has been or will soon be written on electoral cycles. Our picture of stability and change in American electoral behavior is far from being as clear-cut or as sharp as it might be. Once past the general outline of the cyclical phenomenon there are troublesome differences of emphasis and con­ flicting conclusions in some of the research to date. Indeed the numer­ ous modifications and additions made to Key's original theory suggests that it preceded the generation of much of the evidence needed to substantiate it. Perhaps we are seeing in recent work more than a fur­ ther elaboration of Key's original concept, and instead a groping for a new, more satisfactory model. Whatever the case may be, one thing is clear. Although the research into voting cycles is impressive and 6

Ibid., 6, 26. Ibid., 130. See also Burnham's "The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe," American Political Science Review, 59 (March 19Θ5), 7-28; his "The End of American Party Politics," Transaction, 7 (December 1969), 12-22; and the debate between Burnham and a number of critics beginning with Philip E. Con­ verse, "Change in the American Electorate," in Angus Campbell and Philip E. Converse (eds.), The Human Meaning of Social Change, New York, 1972, 263337; followed by Walter Dean Burnham, "Theory and Voting Research: Some Reflections on Converse's 'Change in the American Electorate,' " American Political Science Review, 68 (September 1974), 1002-1023; Philip E. Converse, "Comment on Burnham's Theory and Voting Research," ibid., 1024-1027; Jerrold G. Rusk, "Comment: The American Electoral Universe: Speculation and Evidence," ibid., 1028-1049; Burnham, "Rejoinder to 'Comments' by Philip Converse and Jerrold Rusk," ibid., 1050-1057. 7

80

TOWARD A THEORY OF STABILITY AND CHANGE

extensive it is not enough. We believe that as yet we do not really have the body of comprehensive and cumulative work in aggregate election data needed to tell us exactly what happened in American elections from 1789 to date and necessary to sustain well-grounded theories of electoral behavior. The problems we see include the almost exclusive reliance upon the national electoral experience in the development of a theory of voting cycles and the relative down-playing of the possibility that individual states may pass through different cycles from the nation as a whole. Each state may be a separate political system with its own individual behavior pattern only tangentially related to the patterns elsewhere. The onset, length, and ending of periods of stability and realignment may differ, for instance, suggesting different causative factors or the predominance sometimes of unique local conditions over national political controversies in electoral behavior. We do not know, although there is certainly some indication of this already in the description of the behavior of California and Massachusetts in the realigning sequence that created the New Deal coalition.8 Most studies have also been inadequate in terms of temporal reach. The majority have focused on the period since the 1890's, the era of the fourth and fifth party systems. A few analysts have ventured back to the 1850's to examine the breakup of the second party system. But little else has been done, certainly not in any sustained fashion. There is, therefore, a very large terra incognita embracing much of the first century of American electoral politics under the Constitution. Yet that period contained one of the major realignments in our history as well as the crucial period of party development before the 1830's. By not sufficiently developing the data for the first three quarters of the nineteenth century, scholars have not been in a position to engage in one of the key elements of empirical research: the comparison of apparently similar phenomena in different periods of time. The delineation of different "party systems" is itself an admission that different eras had different political styles. We need to examine whether these carried over into different forms of electoral behavior, and to do this we must extend our voting studies chronologically as much as we can. At the same time, analysts have also worked primarily with one kind of electoral data. Facilitated by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research's magnificent collection of presidential 8 See Key, "Theory of Critical Elections," for Massachusetts, and Shover, "Was 1928 a Realigning Election in California?" for California.

81

L. BENSON, J. H. SILBEY, & P. F. FIELD

and congressional election returns, most current research has concentrated on the contests for federal office. Returns for state offices have seldom been utilized although they perhaps are a more logical choice for analysis when the state is the unit under study. Certainly, in the early nineteenth century, state elections drew more voters than national contests. They were often held on different days from national elections too, further adding to the probability that they were seen by voters as a different form of political expression. Their study seems essential to any serious analysis of the period prior to 1830. In a number of states, too, particularly in the nineteenth century, state elections were held more frequently than national ones. This should allow scholars to pinpoint the beginning or end of an electoral sequence more precisely. At least it gives us more observations of the transition than are now available. There are, then, a number of matters worth exploring further in order to improve the foundations on which our conceptual scheme of past voting behavior rests. As part of a larger study of American political conflict, we have assembled a longitudinal file of election returns for the state of New York between 1792 and 1970. This data base consists of the returns for the highest state office contested in each year: Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, State Senator, and occasionally others.9 From this material we have precisely elaborated the patterns in New York's electoral behavior since 1792 and reexamined from the vantage point of one state, current ideas about electoral oscillations. Our aim has been to give as intensive and detailed a description of the trends present as possible on the assumption that the complexity of American voting behavior can be properly gauged in no other way. It is in our view a necessary preliminary to the eventual development of a comprehensive theory of stability and change in American voting patterns. 10 9 We have been unable to locate returns for a number of statewide elections particularly, but not exclusively, in the earlier years of New York's history. In addition, there were several years in which there were no statewide elections. The data were initially processed under the supervision of Erik Austin at the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research at Ann Arbor. Subsequent rather elaborate merging operations and the actual computing was done at Cornell University. We are grateful to Jerome Clubb and Erik Austin for facilitating our work technically. The data were collected by a number of research assistants, particularly Gail Sussman Marcus, David Hughes, Joan Harris Winterkorn, and Susan Ewing Barber. 10 In what follows, we of course do not make any claim that the pattern of New York's elections is necessarily typical of the country as a whole. On the other hand, New York is a state of more than uncommon interest due to its size, its social heterogeneity and its substantial history of political conflict.

82

TOWARD A THEORY OF STABILITY AND CHANGE

1 T H E SHAPE OF THE VOTE IN N E W YORK STATE 1792-1970 SUSTAINED and vigorous party competition has been the rule rather than the exception throughout New York's political history. Despite occasional periods when one party has been relatively more successful than the other, there has seldom been a time when sudden reversal of party fortunes has not been possible. In 75 gubernatorial elections over a 180 year span the Democrats have averaged 46.1 percent of the vote, never rising higher than 59.2 percent (except for two one party elections early in the state's history) or sinking lower than 21.1 percent (in a three party race in 1848). The Democrats have obtained between 45 percent and 55 percent of the vote in 48 elections, relatively high numbers when one considers that only 61 of the gubernatorial contests have been free of significant third party activity.11 For long periods from 1826 to 1852, between 1860 and 1892, and for most of the first third of the twentieth century, the differences between the two parties' shares of the vote have been uniformly small, at times infinitesimal. Statewide percentages can only begin to establish the complexity of New York's electoral politics, however, and may, in fact, conceal much of the dynamics of the state's voting behavior. Offsetting county shifts, for example, can easily mask major electoral changes. Similarly, one or two unusual elections may give an impression of change when none has actually occurred. In our elaboration of New York's electoral history, therefore, we have used interelection correlations of the distribution of the vote for each of the major parties to detect territorial fluctuations in partisan support which may have been obscured at the state level. We have also measured changes in the percentage of each party's vote between successive elections at the county level in order to get another indication of the volatility of the electorate. Those county figures, in conjunction with the statewide figures, may also reveal surge movements toward one party or the other not revealed by the correlations.12 11

The multiparty gubernatorial races include 1848, 1854, 1856, 1912, 1914, and all of the elections since 1942. 12 We recognize that correlations are not the only methods of displaying this behavior—or even necessarily the best. It has been persuasively argued that they are best at showing linear relationships between electoral units but not good at detecting near uniform surge shifts towards a single party. They thus underestimate the amount of actual change by showing only interactive changes. See Nancy Zingale, "Electoral Change and Stability: The Case of Minnesota, 1857-1966," unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Minnesota, 1971.

83

L. BENSON, J. H. SILBEY, & P. F. FIELD The employment of these measurements of change yields a portrait somewhat at variances with other descriptions of American voting cycles. Our calculations indicate that there were five different electoral periods in New York's past: 1792-1827, 1828-1853, 1854-1892, 1893-1917, and 1918 to date. 13 But this classification may be still further refined. There were thirteen "suberas" as well, within the larger framework.

PERIOD 1: 1792-1827 In 1792 New York held its first gubernatorial election under the new Federal Constitution. John Jay, the Federalist candidate, defeated George Clinton, Anti-Federalist, in a close race. In the succeeding thirty-five years there were twelve more gubernatorial contests plus races for other offices on an almost annual basis.14 It was a period in which two different political groupings contested every election at the state level.15 But this statewide equilibrium pattern concealed an extremely volatile political situation. Although a party system of a sort emerged in New York in the 1790's, it was highly unstable and only shallowly rooted in the electorate. Up until 1827, with one brief exception, the pattern of support a party received varied considerably between succeeding elections.16 On the other hand, recognizing that correlations do not capture all forms of electoral change, we have also computed the variations in county partisan percentages between each election in order to catch surge changes towards one party. As Philip Converse recently wrote, "A number of statistical techniques of varying elegance can, after all, be brought to bear on . . . a single series of aggregate electoral data to elucidate crude properties of change." Philip Converse, "Change in the American Electorate," in Angus Campbell and Philip Converse, eds., The Human Meaning of Social Change, New York, 1972, 264. 13 Correlation matrices of the Democratic and Federalist-Whig-Republican vote for all elections were generated for this study. To reproduce all of the correlation coefficients obtained is clearly impossible. We have displayed both realigning and stable periods as well as other critical relationships for the Democratic vote first. When the Whig-Republican correlations have closely paralleled the Democratic correlations they have not been included. Readers interested in obtaining the full set of correlations should contact the authors. 14 From 1792 to 1827, for example, the mean percentage of the winning party's total in every race (excluding the two one-candidate elections) was 51.1 percent. 15 We have combined the Anti-Federalists, Jeffersonians, Democratic Republicans and Democrats in the Democratic matrices. The Federalists, National Republicans, Anti-Masons, Whigs and Republicans are likewise combined in the other party's matrices. 16 The rapid population growth and significant migration to the western part of the state may obscure to some extent the degree to which individual voters were consistent in their party preferences.

84

TOWARD A THEORY OF STABILITY AND CHANGE

In fact, this long period can be subdivided into three shorter eras. From 1792 to 1808 instability was the rule. Interelection correlations were low. Although occasional elections did correlate well with each other, especially after 1801, this was essentially a murky and unsettled period of voting behavior. The mean correlation of the Democratic vote was .49 (see Table 2.1). At the county level there was great variability in party strength. Although the statewide change in the vote in successive elections averaged less than 3.7 percent between 1792 and 1808, most counties changed by far greater amounts. From one half to two thirds of them shifted more than 5 percent in their vote distribution in successive elections between 1792 and 1809.17 In addition, the average annual shift at the county level was 10 percent for the whole period, but individual changes between two elections ranged as high as 26.1 percent. Between 1809 and 1816, there was an interlude of relative electoral stability. For a time, interelection correlations were high. In three gubernatorial, one lieutenant gubernatorial, and four state senate races, the mean Democratic correlation was .80, the median .83. Significantly, correlations grew stronger as the period progressed and factionalism quieted. Counties were more consistent in their partisan support too. From 1792 to 1827 the average county deviation from the mean of each party's popular support for the whole period was 9.7 percent, but it was only 3.8 percent in the years between 1809 and 1816.18 This was not a completely stable period by any means. The election of 1811 correlates poorly, and in two elections troublesome factional flareups led to splits in the Democratic-Republican vote between different candidates. A significant number of counties, one third, continued to shift their vote by more than 5 percent between elections, although this number fell sharply after 1811. Even if we remove the possibly more volatile state senate elections from the computations, the internal county shifting remains at about the same level. Nevertheless, the behavior of New York's voters had become more structured, albeit incompletely, in these years. This incipient stability abruptly ended in the one candidate gubernatorial election of 1817. Bitter Republican in-fighting and increasing Federalist disintegration resulted in what Richard McCormick has 17

We have combined the separate Democratic factional tickets in 1811 and 1812 in the matrix. 18 The mean deviation is calculated by taking the absolute difference between the percentage a party received in each election and its mean for the whole period and then averaging these differences.

85

1792 1795 1801 1803 1804 1807 1808 1809 1810 1811 1812 1813 1814 1815 1816 1817 1818 1819 1820 1821 1822 1823 1824 1825 1826

1804

1803

1801

1795

.34 .25 .31 .30 .68 .60 .52 .80 .61 .68

.19 .31 .52 .56 .62

1—I

5 00

1808

.29 .37 .48 .53 .61 .64

1809

.44 .60 .70 .81 .73 .65 .77

1810 .40 .46 .63 .71 .63 .66 .57 .81

.36 .33 .42 .52 .44 .48 .55 .54 .70

1812 .53 .30 .54 .66 .59 .53 .62 .75 .75 .86

1813 .50 .20 .59 .68 .57 .55 .61 .84 .77 .67 .84

1814 .63 .37 .72 .78 .66 .58 .62 .81 .75 .65 .80 .86

1815 .42 .48 .63 .80 .70 .64 .71 .86 .95 .75 .88 .91 .88

1820

1819

1818

1817

1816 .46 - . 3 1 - . 0 7 .44 .46 .38 - . 2 6 .07 .13 .27 .64 .18 .47 .49 .23 .74 .31 .48 .13 .53 .44 .50 .42 .69 .09 .53 .11 .25 .38 .33 .68 .11 . 4 0 .40 .43 .29 .85 .18 .58 .64 .73 .15 .17 .65 .49 .68 - . 1 2 .28 .05 .13 .29 .52 .89 .11 .64 .91 .08 .58 .64 .28 .85 .19 .10 .63 .73 .94 .21 .63 .58 .19 .26 .61 .62 .23 .26 .34 .34 .07 - . 1 0 .74

1821 .39 .27 .57 .66 .57 .42 .64 .77 .62 .11 .51 .75 .73 .74 .80 .27 .19 .68 .84 .41 .16 .32 .26 .19 .16 .15 .21 .23 .12 .15 .23 .22 .19 .19 .20 .04 .25 .09 .09

1822

1792-1827

-.01 -.07 -.15 .09 -.08 -.34 -.11 -.14 -.13 -.16 -.01 .08 -.01 -.01 -.01 .00 -.28 .21 .30 .17 .14

1823

T A B L E 2 . 1 CORRELATION MATRIX OF DEMOCRATIC VOTE, TI81 1826

1825

1824 .19 .18 .30 .02 .22 .29 .23 .05 .12 .34 .31 - . 1 0 .28 .57 - . 1 0 .52 .19 .35 - . 0 4 .33 .31 .27 .24 - . 1 4 .30 - . 0 4 .28 .07 .40 .05 .41 .11 .32 - . 1 3 .13 .33 .29 .35 .29 .40 .21 .36 .43 .13 .46 .20 .53 - . 0 2 .48 .23 .48 - . 1 2 .47 .54 - . 0 7 .20 .18 .54 - . 0 2 .43 .16 - . 0 7 - . 1 2 .34 .04 .22 .03 .25 .04 .52 .23 .11 .70 .22 .50 - . 1 5 .64 .60 .23 .00 .09 - . 1 6 - . 0 8 - . 2 0 .16 .40 .30 - . 0 5 .57 .71 - . 1 2 .58 - . 0 9 .00

1827

TOWARD A THEORY OF STABILITY AND CHANGE

aptly described as a period of "bewildering shifts in the party allegiance of prominent politicians [and] violent factional strife."19 Although party institutionalization and mass participation in elections also increased steadily, progress in organizational development was not reflected in stable voting patterns. Once again, there was litde continuity in the sources of support for each party. Interelection correlations were lower than they had been before 1809. The mean correlation of the Democratic vote was .26. The number of counties changing their vote sharply in successive elections once again climbed. In five of the eight election pairs between 1819 and 1828, more than four-fifths of the counties shifted their vote more than 5 percent. The amount of shifting was also very high. The average fluctuation in one of the more extreme years (1819-1820) was 29.4 percent, in a quieter year, the mean shift fell to 6.6 percent. 20 In sum, this was a decade of enormous electoral change. It capped an era which, despite brief moments of relative party stability, showed no persisting pattern of voter alignment. The period after 1792, usually defined as containing the first American party system, did not have, except briefly, one of the major elements of such a system: a stable partisan electorate. Whatever stability had merged in the period 1809 through 1816 had been transient and impermanent. The significance of this for current voting cycle theory is clear. Since persistent voter stability was never a norm, there could be no critical elections or eras to disrupt it. The concept of electoral cycles, therefore, lacks meaning for analyzing this portion of our electoral past; the pattern of New York's voting behavior before 1827 can perhaps be best described as precyclical.

PERIOD 2: 1828-1853

During the 1820's and 1830's the intermittent tendency toward structural stability in New York's political world came to fruition.21 Both 19 Richard McCormick, The Second American Party System, Chapel Hill, N.C. 1966, 104. 20 For the entire period from 1817 to 1837, the average shift was a massive 29.5 percent. Unlike the earlier era, excluding the multi-candidate state senate election reduces the fluctuation somewhat. More than half the counties continued to shift more than 5 percent between elections. But the average annual shift of all the counties ranged only from 4.4 percent to 9.8 percent. 21 Constitutional changes may have helped to promote stability too. In 1828, for the first time, the people of New York voted for Governor and President on the same day. The two offices were now contained on the same ballot as were other offices as well, making it increasingly difficult to split tickets. The election of presidential electors by the people had been legislated after the election of 1824 and the gubernatorial elections, formerly in May, were moved to early November by the Constitutional Convention of 1821.

87

L. BENSON, J. H. SILBEY, & P. F. FIELD the Democrat and Whig parties assumed permanent form. Although third parties persisted throughout the period, they drew a very small percentage of the vote. 22 As the parties matured, they took deep root in the electorate. The election of 1828 marks an important turning point in New York's political history. Thereafter Democratic correlations became dramatically high and remained so thereafter (see Table 2.2). 23 Popular voting stability now became the norm of New York TABLE 2.2 CORRELATION MATRIX OF DEMOCRATIC VOTE, 1824-1841 1> CO

OO

-splitting did not favor either party and the behavior of the ticket-splitters in the subsequent presidential election did not produce even the impact that those fully changing their votes displayed. In other words, ticket-splitting had even less of an impact on the election-to-election change here and was therefore excluded from the discussion.

167

DAVID A. BOHMER percent of the overall electorate who voted only in 1800 had returned to the polls in April of 1801 to vote as they had previously, the Federalist party would have again carried the county. Single-election voters not only made up over half of the total number who voted in this pair of elections, but also decisively determined the outcome of the second election in this electoral sequence. The same phenomenon can be observed in Kent county between 1798 and 1800. The Federalists had carried the congressional election in 1798 with over 59 percent of the vote. While turnout declined by only 10 percent in the house of delegates election in 1800, the Federalist percentage of the vote fell by 13 percent. A larger segment of the electorate than usual (4.5 percent) changed their votes in the two elections and the overwhelming majority of this group switched from Federalist to Republican. Nevertheless, this group was dwarfed by the number of individuals moving into and out of the electorate. Almost 50 percent of all persons involved in the two elections fell into this latter category. Over 60 percent of the dropouts had favored the Federalists in 1798 while more than 60 percent of those casting straight party ballots and voting for the first time in 1800 favored the Republicans. As was the case in Frederick county, most of the change in the aggregate vote was provided by persons who participated in one of the two elections. In all of the cases described, the victorious party in the first election lost the next election, but the findings have meaning even in contests when the winning party did not change. Changes in the aggregate distribution of the vote were largely a reflection of fluctuations in turnout and not the result of defection among voters. In none of the comparisons considered here did switchers constitute either a sizable segment of the electorate or a group that held the balance of power between the two parties in Frederick and Kent. Election results did not appear to have been decided by changes in allegiance on the part of the voters. Since the analysis thus far has included the entire population voting in each pair of elections, some of the fluctuations in turnout would reflect the coming of age of young voters, the arrival or departure of others, and the death of still others between the elections in each sequential pair. Consequently, it is possible that the influence of turnout patterns upon election outcomes was largely a function of demographic changes. To assess fully the impact of fluctuations in turnout upon electoral change, it was necessary to control for such demographic effects. By concentrating upon those individuals who lived in 168

MARYLAND ELECTORATE: THE CONCEPT OF A PARTY SYSTEM

the two counties during the entire period, we could better assess the relative impact of fluctuations in participation and fluctuations in the direction of the vote. Focussing upon full-term residents did, in fact, appear to make some difference in the relative importance of turnout and voting fluctuations (see Table 4.9 and Table 4.10). One notable distinction here is that the percentage of individuals voting in both elections for the same party was greater by 3 percent to 17 percent than it was for the entire electorate in the same comparisons. The percentage of individuals who changed their votes, on the other hand, was approximately the same. The tables, therefore, reveal a decrease in the percentage of singleelection voters. Nevertheless, this group still remained substantially larger than the switcher group. More important, the partisan character of the voters in the single-election categories was the same as that found in those categories of the electorate in general. In the cases in which the aggregate vote changed most dramatically, the strongest party divisions appeared among those leaving and those entering the electorate. Even when we controlled for demographic factors, therefore, fluctuation in participation was still the key determinant of electoral outcomes. To summarize, the strong tendency of voters to maintain their partisan allegiance, revealed in consideration of the seven-year period as a whole, becomes even more striking when we make election-to-election comparisons. Regardless of the factors involved in any given contest, few individuals actually changed the direction of their vote. The few persons who did switch parties apparently had no marked impact on the results of any of the elections in this period. Essentially, when the aggregate figures fluctuated, the changes were far more a function of inconsistency in individual patterns of participation than of instability in party support.27 27 The variations in patterns of participation, the composition of the irregular voters and the influence of short-term factors upon election outcomes are subjects that require more detailed examination than can be allowed in this study. Briefly, a summary sketch can be presented of that group of voters who most affected electoral change. First, by definition, most of the change was caused by those persons voting irregularly. Put another way, election results were most heavily influenced by those persons who were less active in the electoral process. Secondly, these irregular voters were no more likely to switch their allegiances than were those who participated on a regular basis. When they did turn out, irregular voters were usually stable in their behavior. Finally, available evidence suggests that the irregular participation patterns of this group were not a direct function of shortterm factors such as specific issues or candidates. More directly, their irregular behavior reflected a more general detachment of that group from the political realm. For a detailed discussion of these points, see Bohmer, "Voting Behavior," 116-168, 205-220.

169

DAVID A. BOHMER

TABLE 4.9 INDIVIDUAL VOTING BEHAVIOR IN SEQUENTIAL ELECTION COMPARISONS FOR FULL-TERM RESIDENTS IN FREDERICK COUNTY

Voting category

N in group

% of total

% Republican

Both, stable Both, unstable 1796 only 1800 only

1796 Pres. and 1800 H. D. 588 27.8 129 (100) 6.1 (4.7) 177 8.4 1,224 57.8

46.6 67.4 (72.0) 61.6 48.3 (51.6)

Both, stable Both, unstable H. D. only Pres. only

1800 H . D . and 1800 Pres. 1,478 65.5 145 (71) 6.4 (3.1) 288 12.8 345 15.3

49.0 40.7 (40.8) 54.2 (59.8) 41.7

Both, stable Both, unstable 1800 only 1801 only

1800 Pres. and 1801 Cong. 1,238 56.8 38 1.7 717 32.9 188 8.6

52.5 76.3 39.1 59.6

Both, stable Both, unstable Cong, only Senate only

1801 Cong. and 1801 Senate 1,230 60.2 37 (29) 1.8 (1.4) 197 9.6 579 28.3

54.6 59.5 (55.1) 53.3 49.2 (49.7)

Both, stable Both, unstable Senate only H. D. only

1801 Senate and 1801 H. D. 704 35.5 32 (25) 1.6 (1.3) 1,110 56.0 137 6.9

98.2 93.8 (92.0) 25.1 (25.3) 97.8

Both, stable Both, unstable 1801 only 1802 only

1801 H. D. and 1802 H. D. 797 31.3 52 (35) 2.0 (1.4) 24 0.9 1,670 65.7

98.2 5.8 (8.6) 95.8 29.9 (30.2)

Both, stable Both, unstable 1801 only 1802 only

1801 Senate and 1802 H. D. 1,721 66.9 72 (42) 2.8 (1.6) 53 2.1 726 28.2

53.3 69.6 (61.9) 56.6 (57.7) 46.7 (47.4)

170

MARYLAND ELECTORATE: THE CONCEPT OF A PARTY SYSTEM TABLE 4.10

INDIVIDUAL VOTING BEHAVIOK IN SEQUENTIAL

ELECTION COMPARISONS FOR FULL-TERM RESIDENTS IN KENT COUNTY

Voting category

% of total

% Republican

Both, stable Both, unstable 1798 only 1800 only

1798 Cong, and 311 91 (29) 58 101

1800 H. D. 55.4 16.2 (5.2) 10.3 18.0

49.8 80.2 (93.1) 31.0 52.5 (63.9)

Both, stable Both, unstable H. D. only Pres. only

1800 H. D. and 321 62 (6) 120 43

1800 Pres. 58.8 11.4 (1.1) 22.0 7.9

56.5 58.1 (50.0) 37.5 (46.9) 55.8

Both, stable Both, unstable Pres. only Cong, only

1800 Pres. and 1801 Cong. 162 32.9 4 0.9 260 57.9 23 5.1

98.2 75.0 66.5 100.0

Both, stable Both, unstable Cong, only Senate only

1801 Cong, and 1801 Senate 168 32.9 6 (5) 1.2 (1.0) 15 2.9 322 63.0

98.2 16.7 (20.0) 100.0 32.3 (33.0)

Both, stable Both, unstable Senate only H. D. only

1801 Senate and 1801 H. D. 380 68.2 62 (6) 11.1 (1.1) 54 9.7 61 11.0

56.1 30.6 (50.0) 40.7 (42.3) 36.1 (45.8)

Both, stable Both, unstable 1801 only 1802 only

1801 H. D. and 1802 H. D. 379 63.3 110 (11) 18.4 (1.8) 14 2.3 96 16.0

54.6 47.3 (63.6) 50.0 (53.8) 34.4 (44.0)

Both, stable Both, unstable 1800 only 1801 only

1800 Pres. and 1801 Senate 358 65.6 18 (12) 3.3 (2.2) 50 9.2 120 22.0

59.5 50.0 (50.0) 50.0 43.3 (44.8)

N in group

171

DAVID A. BOHMER

In conclusion, the majority of individuals in areas where a two party system was established appeared to be quite consistent in their electoral behavior. Most men who resided in Kent and Frederick during the entire period participated in at least one of the eight elections. While some voted infrequently, the majority of the voters in both counties turned out to vote regularly. Regardless of how many times an individual voted, he was likely to support the same party consistently. Between two thirds and four fifths of all voters never changed their party allegiance during the entire series of elections, and even fewer switched their vote from one election to the next. When substantial changes in aggregate voting patterns occurred, they were mainly a product of irregular participation patterns, not of voter instability. In general, the electorates of the two counties were highly mobilized and consistent in their support of the two political parties. Although this analysis of individual-level behavior has been limited to two Maryland counties, we suggest that the findings may apply more generally. In the first place, we have seen that the voting patterns in the two counties resembled those in some six to nine other Maryland counties. They may have resembled those in political subdivisions of other states as well.28 Second, while our findings apply only to the period from 1796 to 1802, aggregate analysis suggests that electoral behavior in Maryland was relatively stable from 1796 to 1816. No marked electoral fluctuations occurred in the state during that time. Consequently, it is plausible to believe that the behavior of individual voters here was typical of electoral behavior during the entire period in which the Federalists and Republicans continued to compete. In other words, our findings concerning the individual voter may be relevant beyond their specific applications in space and time. The first American party system was peculiar in many of its characteristics. Parties did not develop in most of the southern states and they 28

There are indications that units in other states exhibited turnout levels greater than 50 percent, continuous contesting of elections and even distribution of the two party vote in the period between 1796 and 1824. As seen elsewhere in this volume approximately the same percentage of New York counties had a distribution of the two party vote that fell between 40 percent and 60 percent as did units in Maryland. This was especially true of the elections between 1809 and 1816. Munroe, Federalist Delaware, 206, 210-212, mentions the high levels of turnout and continuous competition between the two parties in Delaware's three counties. A cursory examination of the voting patterns of towns in New Hampshire and Massachusetts between 1812 and 1815 reveals that many towns experienced regular contesting of elections, high levels of turnout (over 50 percent) and a relatively even distribution of the two party vote. There is, then, some evidence that Frederick and Kent counties resembled, in electoral characteristics, units in other states during this time period.

172

MARYLAND ELECTORATE: THE CONCEPT OF A PARTY SYSTEM

competed rather irregularly in some others. Even in states where party organizations did develop, there were some areas where elections were not seriously contested or active party apparatus did not exist. Then again, in some competitive regions one of the two parties at times failed to contest an election. All of these peculiarities set the first party system apart from subsequent party organizations in the United States (although we should not forget that effective two party competition has not been present everywhere in the nation since the Civil War). When the Federalists and Republicans seriously contested, however, as they did in many parts of Maryland, the first party system resembled later systems in many respects. Both parties performed the basic functions of nominating candidates, sponsoring newspapers and conducting rallies. During the entire period that the two parties contested elections, they apparently were highly successful in mobilizing voters and in attracting broad, stable foUowings. In aggregate terms, turnout levels generally exceeded 50 percent, and the partisan alignments of the various counties remained stable through time. These characteristics were duplicated on the level of the individual voter. Almost all individuals who lived in Frederick and Kent counties over the entire period voted at some time. Furthermore, the majority of the electorate participated in elections on a regular basis. Most voters were stable in their support of one party. If they supported a party in one election, they usually voted for the same party in all other elections that they participated in. In areas such as Maryland and Frederick and Kent counties, the first party system was characterized by extensive party apparatus and activity, high levels of voter participation and broad, stable support from the electorate.

173

5 Party, Competition, and Mass Participation: The Case of the Democratizing Party System, 1824-1852 WILLIAM N. CHAMBERS AND PHILIP C. DAVIS "No sooner do you set foot on American soil than you find yourself in a sort of a tumult. . . . A thousand voices are heard at once. . . . One group of citizens assembles for the sole object of announcing that they disapprove of the government's course, while others unite to proclaim that the men in office are the fathers of their country . . . "It is hard to explain the place filled by political concerns in the life of an American. To take a hand in the government of society and to talk about it is his most important business and, so to say, the only pleasure he knows . . ." —Alexis de Tocqueville, 18311 I INTRODUCTION

was equipped with remarkable insight and an uncanny talent for articulate observation. However, the political events which preceded his visit and the growing inclusiveness of American political involvement and experience which continued after his return to France would have undoubtedly captured the attention of a less perceptive observer. Three years before de Tocqueville's famous visit, America experienced its first truly national presidential election. Andrew Jackson captured the presidency in the country's first million vote canvass. A landmark in American electoral history, 1828 initiated a major, new trend on the political horizon—a sharp and sustained increase in voting participation in national elections, as opposed to state and local contests where turnout had been intermittently high for some time. Voting turnout rose from an estimated 9 percent of the adult ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

1 Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, J. P. Mayer, ed., New York, 1969,1, 242-243.

174

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION

white males in the uncontested presidential election of 1820 and 26.9 percent in 1824, to a robust 57.6 percent in 1828. Voter participation remained substantial throughout the 1830's, as the presidential contests of 1832 and 1836 registered turnouts of 55.4 and 57.8 percent, respectively. Not until 1840, however, did a national presidential election register a voting turnout of 80.2 percent and attract the extensive popular involvement previously evidenced in state and local contests.2 The nationalization of American popular politics and the development of an enduring, participating mass electorate brought nearly 2.5 million men to the polls in 1840. Throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, turnout in presidential elections ranged from a low 69.6 percent in 1852 to peaks of 81.2 and 83.9 percent in 1860 and 1876 (see Table 5.1). This increase in mass political participation required the presence of systemic avenues of access to the political system. In the American experience, the extension of the franchise provided opportunities for political expression and served as a fundamental precondition of popular political participation. By 1826, twenty-one of the twenty-four states had established adult white male suffrage, or tax-paying requirements that were either compulsory or so small that they were tantamount to adult white male suffrage.3 In addition, half the states chose presidential electors by legislative rather than popular vote as late as 1812 and 1816, but only two did so in 1828; and after 1828, only South Carolina persisted in the legislative selection of presidential electors. It was not until 1828 and after, however, that national, presidential elections stimulated high levels of voter participation—and presumably, high interest and involvement in national party politics. I INCREASING TURNOUT: TOWARD A HYPOTHESIS

THE lowering of suffrage barriers and the popular election of presidential electors merely provided opportunities for voter participation in the national political process. It did not guarantee the generation of 2

For a detailed analysis on this point, see Richard P. McCormick, "New Perspectives' on Jacksonian Politics," American Historical Review, 65 (January 1960), 288-301. The vista we have in view was first explored by McCormick, and we are deeply in his debt, as are all students of the second or "Democratizing" Party system; our effort is to refine and extend the survey. 3 See Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage from Property to Democracy, 17601860, Princeton, N.J., 1960, 76-280, passim.

175

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS TABLE 5.1 TURNOUT AND COMPETITION IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1824-1844: PERCENT OF ADULT WHITE MALE VOTE INDEX OF COMPETITION State (2nd Tarty System Founded) New Hampshire (1828)" Massachusetts (1829)" Connecticut (1830)° Rhode Island (1830)' Vermont (1836) Maine (1829) New York (1834) Pennsylvania (1840)11 New Jersey (1828)° Maryland (1828)" Delaware (1828)° Virginia (1833)' North Carolina (1834/1836) 8 South Carolina (—) Georgia

(1836/1840)°

Ohio (1828)° Indiana (1840) Illinois (1835) Missouri (1835/1839) Michigan (1838/1840) Kentucky (1828) Tennessee (1835) Louisiana (1838/1840) 8

176

T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C T C

1824

1828

1832

1836

1840

1844

18.0 12.8 29.0 35.5 14.9 35.2 12.0 17.1 L L 19.1 37.0 L L 18.8 35.3 35.6 91.2 53.7 99.7 L L 11.6 64.6 41.8 86.7 L L L L 34.8 98.5 37.1 87.1 24.3 92.4 19.8 84.7 NA NA 25.4 54.3 28.3 4.1 L L

74.3 P 92.9 25.7 33.6 27.2 48.6 17.1 45.9 54.5 51.2 42.7 80.3 80.2 98.1 56.5 66.7 71.0P 96.0 70.3 P 98.0 Lp L 27.7 62.3 56.9 53.8 L L 31.8 6.4 P 75.9 96.8 68.7 86.8 52.4 65.6 54.0 58.2 NA NA 70.7P 88.8 55.0 9.6 36.2 94.2

70.1 85.4 39.4P 46.2 46.0P 69.8 26.3 P 73.2 50.0 49.0 66.2P 90.6 84.2 95.8 52.3 84.6 68.8 99.6 55.7 99.9 67.1 99.0 31.1 50.8 31.3 31.0 L L 29.0 0.0 73.9 97.3 71.9 65.8 46.0 55.5 41.0 70.0 NA NA 74.0 91.0 31.3 9.5 22.3 76.9

38.2 49.9 43.4 89.6 52.3 98.6 23.8 95.5 52.5P 80.2 37.7 79.9 70.5" 90.8 53.1 97.6 69.2 99.0 67.6 92.3 69.5 93.5 35.2P 86.3 53.0P 93.5 L L 61.8 94.6 75.5 95.8 69.2 88.1 43.5P 90.Θ 36.1 80.0 35.0 70.3 61.1 95.0 57.3 P 83.9 19.2 96.2

86.3 89.5 66.7 83.9 75.7 88.9 33.2 77.1 73.8 71.6 83.7 99.5 91.9 97.0 77.5P 99.9 80.4 96.4 84.5 92.3 82.8 90.0 54.7 98.4 82.4 84.3 L L 88.8P 88.4 84.5 91.5 P 84.4 88.4 86.0 97.8 75.1 p 87.1 84.9P 95.9 74.3 71.6 89.7 88.9 39.4P 80.6

68.9 81.1 65.8 88.9 80.0 95.4 45.1 80.0 70.8 82.1 71.3 86.7 92.1 98.9 77.3 98.1 87.2 98.9 81.4 95.2 85.8 97.7 54.2 93.8 78.8 95.2 L L 92.6 97.6 83.6 98.1 84.7 98.4 76.0 88.0 77.8 86.1 79.8 93.9 80.7 91.8 89.8 99.9 47.1 97.4

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION TABLE

5.1, cont.

1824

1828

1832

41.3 69.5 49.1 48.4 NA NA 26.9 89.7

56.6 37.9 54.6 20.3 NA NA

28.0 0.0 33.3 0.0 NA NA 55.4 91.0

Slate (2nd Party System Founded) Mississippi (1834) 1 Alabama (1836) Arkansas (1840?) United States:

T C T C T C T C

57.6 88.0

1836 64.4P 98.5 P 64.9 86.4 28.9 68.1 57.8 98.1

1840

1844

88.2 93.1 89.7 91.2 67.6P 86.5 80.2 94.0

86.1 86.6 80.3 81.7 63.5 73.1 78.9 98.6

KEY TO SYMBOLS: NA = State not yet admitted to the Union. * = Suffrage restrictions: Rhode Island (property requirements to 1842; replaced by restrictive tax); Virginia (property requirements); Louisiana (restrictive tax); and North Carolina (dual suffrage until 1851). " = Nominal or compulsory tax requirements on suffrage: New Hampshire; Connecticut (until 1845); New Jersey (until 1844); Delaware; Pennsylvania; Georgia; Ohio (until 1851); Massachusetts; and Mississippi (until 1831). L = Presidential electors selected by the State Legislature. d = Presidential electors elected by district: Maryland (until 1836). p = First Presidential election after the advent of the Second Party System in each state. T = Turnout or percent of adult white males voting. C = Competition index. SOURCES: Svend Petersen, ed., A Statistical History of the American Presidential Elections (New York, 1963), 18-31; Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots, 1836-1896 (Baltimore, 1955), passim.; Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966), 33-326; Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage from PropeHy to Democracy, 1760-1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 76-280; Fourth United States Census, 1820;,Fifth United States Census, 1830; Sixth United States Census, 1840; and Seventh United States Census, 1850. Suffrage requirements were compiled from Chilton Williamson, American Suffrage from Property to Democracy, 1760-1860 (Princeton, N.J., 1960), 76-280, passim.; Cf. also Robert E. Lane, Political Life: Why People Get Involved in Politics (New York, 1959), passim.

high voter participation among the newly enfranchised groups. Because the franchise was typically defined by property requirements before suffrage extension, the right to vote was limited to the upper strata of socio-economic groups. When extension was initiated, lower social and economic segments of the population benefited. As Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie have demonstrated, using twentieth-century American political data, individuals in the lower ranges of the socio-economic structure of society are much less likely to vote than those in higher positions. High voter participation in the lower social and economic portions of the electorate requires much stronger stimuli than the pres177

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS

ence of the legal opportunity for political expression.4 Perhaps this was true from 1820 to 1840 as well. Furthermore, political participation in America took several modes. Voting turnout, statistically defined as the percentage of the eligible electorate voting in any one election, is a relatively passive type of political participation. More sophisticated levels of participatory activity include attending political speeches and rallies, working in electoral campaigns, serving as political managers, and running for public office.5 Of course, the more sophisticated the mode of participation, the smaller the number of participants. We cannot obtain the wealth of data for the nineteenth century that Verba and Nie and other political scientists have assembled for the twentieth century. But, in spite of data limitations, we know that in the middle of the nineteenth century, legions of men talked politics, argued politics, listened to two- and three-hour speeches, churned out political pamphlets and public letters, and worked in the political parties of the second American party system. Major politicians were folk-heroes and household words: "Old Hickory" Jackson, "Old Tippecanoe" Harrison, "Old Bullion" Benton, and a host of others. Although we cannot establish a quantitative measure of the tumultuous fervor of these types of political participation, we also know that the 1830's and 1840's marked the full emergence of modern, professional party politicians. Men like Martin Van Buren, Amos Kendall, and Francis Preston Blair on the Democratic side, or, later, Thurlow Weed, Thaddeus Stevens, and Millard Fillmore among the Whigs, played crucial managerial roles in the mobilization of the American electorate in all modes of political participation. Voter turnout, a form of political participation which is particularly amenable to quantitative measurement, is conceptually more complex than the statistical definition would suggest. On the micropolitical level, the decision to vote entails a sense of political interest, involvement, or excitement. Furthermore, the voting process embraces two micropolitical decisions: a decision to vote; and a decision to vote for or against government policies, party platforms, or political candidates. These decisions may imply ideological orientation, partisan identification, or political predisposition. Of course, quantitative data for the 4

Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America: Political Democracy and Social Equality, New York, 1972, 125-137. 5 For a sophisticated discussion of the components of political participation, see Lester Milbrath, "Conceptual Problems of Political Participation," in Calvin J. Larson and Philo C. Washburn, ed., Power, Participation, and Ideology: Readings in the Sociotogy of American Political Life, New York, 1969, 163-186; see also Verba and Nie, Participation in America, 56-81.

178

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION

micropolitical elements of turnout in nineteenth-century America are not available. The decision to vote also contains macropolitical elements, which may be measured by the percentage of eligible voters who participate in election balloting. 6 In presidential elections, high turnout rates require the legal opportunity to vote and a level of political socialization and national political integration. While turnout levels in the second quarter of the nineteenth century increased significantly, sustaining an overall tendency, the increment from election to election was not steady throughout the nation. Why did turnout levels fluctuate from state to state or election to election? How can we explain these variations? Why was the overall tendency among the states clearly upward? What was the nature of the strong, positive association in the states of turnout trends with statistical competition in the time series? We will rely on two explanatory variables in attempting to answer these basic questions, drawing on the wellknown expectation that increasing competition leads to increasing turnout and the inverse in two ways: First, close elections stimulate higher levels of voting, and second, high levels of political party activity accelerates turnout. 7 II T H E SETTING STATISTICALLY, we have defined competition as the difference between the percentages of the vote received by winning and losing presidential candidates, subtracted from 100.8 This procedure yields a quantitative 6

Turnout percentages were calculated from data obtained from Svend Petersen, ed., A Statistical History of Presidential Elections, New York, 1963, 18-31; and published United States census schedules for 1820, 1830, 1840, 1850, and 1860. An estimate of the adult white males between census years was determined by calculating the annual rate of growth in the adult white male population for each state. 7 Analysts who have tested electoral competition with varying levels of voter turnout include Walter Dean Burnham, "The Changing Shape of the American Political Universe," American Political Science Review, 59 (March 1965), 7-28; C. Richard Hofstetter, "Inter-Party Competition and Electoral Turnout; The Case of Indiana," American Journal of Political Science, 17 (May 1973), 351-366; and Laurily Kerr Epstein, Components of Presidential Voting in Selected American Cities, 1872-1968, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, Washington University, 1970, 177-239. 8 For example, in an election in which one candidate received 51.0 percent of the vote and his opponent 49.0 percent, the competition index would be very high (98.0). For multiple candidate elections, the percentage difference between firstand second-place candidates was used. More sophisticated procedures for measuring electoral competition are suggested by John A. Ferejohn and Morris P. Fioriana, "The Paradox of Not Voting: A Decision Theoretical Analysis," American

179

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS

index of competition ranging from 0 to 100, a scale which allows the calculation of correlation coefficients for turnout percentages with competition levels in each state. In addition, we postulate that the index measures more than the portion of the voting electorate which separated electoral winners from losers. An extremely close election, for example, could provide the stimuli for high levels of turnout, assuming that the eligible electorate attached importance to the outcome, perceived the uncertainty of the election result, and were motivated by their concerns and perceptions to exercise the political influence residing in the franchise. The low competitive/high competitive continuum provides a formulation which may serve as the best nineteenth-century estimate of Angus Campbell's "low stimulus"/ "high stimulus" conceptualization of election types. 9 On the national level, electoral competition was continually high during the second American party system, while the trend of turnout was almost consistently increasing. The national popular vote totals, however, are not indicative of the actual closeness of presidential elections. The idiosyncrasies of the electoral college system make it possible to capture the presidency without a national plurality of votes, as in 1824, 1876, and 1888. The effective electoral arenas for American presidential politics are the states, in which a candidate captures all electoral votes for any state he wins, regardless of his margin of victory. Obviously, there is great variation over states and over time in the closeness of presidential voting during this period as shown in Table 5.1 and Figure 5.1 (a) to (f). This variation in competition with the variation in party organization is essential to our analysis of the two related hypotheses. There is, however, something of a conceptual problem with competition and its operationalization. The closeness of the vote nationally as well as the closeness of the vote in each state might influence turnout. The more important the impact of "national competitiveness," as opposed to "state competitiveness," the more restricted our analysis because we have lost the variation within an election on the competitive variable in such cases. Political Science Review, 68 (June 1974), 525-536; and David Elkins, "The Measurement of Party Competition," American Political Science Review 68 (June 1974), 682-700. We have opted for a simpler form of aggregate competition measurement, which, we believe, shares with the Elkins and Ferejohn and Fioriana procedures a sensitivity to maximized electoral "uncertainty." 9 Elkins and Ferejohn and Fioriana, ibid., base their analyses on factors which measure the relative intensity of "uncertainty" in an election contest; see also Argus Campbell, Philip E. Converse, Warren E. Miller, and Donald E. Stokes, Elections and the Political Order, New York, 1960, 19-22, 41-43.

180

FIGURE 5.1 Turnout Percentages and Indices of Competition for Presidential Elections, 1824-1844: Regional Means of State Levels

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS

The second or "Democratizing" party system is an ideal laboratory to test the competitive impact on variations in voter participation. That system marked the full emergence of modern party structures in the context of a mass electorate. The political parties of the 1830's and 1840's were composed of coalitions of various state organizations which joined together to conduct national presidential election campaigns. After 1840 and generally through 1896, vigorous party rivalry was virtually a constant on the American political scene. In the early years of the second party system, however, party organization and mobilization was in the process of development. Thus, party rivalry and mobilization as measured by the timing of national political party organization in each state were variables in the second quarter of the nineteenth century—variables that we can trace in relation to their impact on political participation.10 Some of the salient dimensions of this new, nationalized state politics may best be ascertained by an examination of presidential contests in each state from 1824 through 1852. These years include the inception and maturity of the second American party system; and they encompass eight national presidential elections. On a state-by-state basis, a total of 188 elections are involved that were determined by popular vote—fourteen contests, eight of them in South Carolina, were decided by state legislatures. States that were admitted to the Union after the presidential election of 1844 were excluded from our accounting, because they offer no opportunity for assessing party development earlier in the era. These states include Florida and Texas, admitted in 1845, Iowa (1846), Wisconsin (1848), and California, brought in under the Compromise of 1850. Arkansas and Michigan, both of which achieved statehood before the 1840 presidential contest, were included in the analysis. The trend of voter participation in the 188 elections that were determined by popular vote is clearly upward, particularly in 1840 and 1844. However, variations in the turnout percentages are apparent in state after state. The simplest demonstration of turnout fluctuations during the formative years of the second party system is shown in Figure 5.1 (a) to (f), where the level of turnout and the competitiveness of elections from 1824 to 1844 are jointly plotted by geographic region. In general, the closer elections late in the period are associated with higher levels of turnout. The linear correlation for turnout with 10 State-by-state dates for the inception of the Jacksonian party system were drawn from Richard P. McCormick, The Second American Party System: Party Formation in the Jacksonian Era, Chapel Hill, N.C., 1966, 33-326.

184

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION

competition for observations from 1828 to 1852 is +.5752, which is a more precise assessment of the strong, positive relationship in the movement of the two variables. Since the measurement of political party organization is much less refined than turnout and competition variables, no comparable figure can be generated for that variable. However, we can divide the states at each election into two categories of party organization, centralized and dispersed, and examine the relaship between turnout and competition for each category. Ill PARTY MANAGEMENT, TURNOUT, AND COMPETITION

national political parties were able to formulate loose coalitions to engage in presidential campaigns, party management varied from state to state. In some states, such as New York and New Jersey, national party labels held early importance in state elections. In these states, state party leadership was well integrated with national party management, and local political managers were likely to appeal to similar groups, utilizing similar organizations and campaign strategies in conducting party campaigns for president, congressmen, governor, and state representatives. In these "centralized" state party organizations, state party labels coincided with national party designations. However, other states, such as Pennsylvania and Alabama, were characterized by "dispersed" party management and leadership and maintained a "dual" party system throughout the 1830's. Party leaders in these states conducted intrastate contests with little reference to national partisan identities and party labels. Jacksonian Democrats in New Jersey were Democrats in all elections; Pennsylvania Democrats, however, often voted for Democratic presidential candidates, but may have counted themselves as Anti-Masons in state or local elections. Indeed, throughout the 1830's, Pennsylvania was decisively pro-Democratic in presidential elections, while the Democratic party in state elections remained loose-knit and factional. Only in the 1840's, did Pennsylvania political leaders succeed in integrating state and local political preferences with national party identifications.11 In the early elections of the second party system the states with centralized parties have higher turnout rates on the average than other states, but by 1840, this difference disappears. However, within both categories of states the general relationship of turnout with competition ALTHOUGH

11

McCormick, Second American Party System, esp. 104-124, 134-147, and 349-

356.

185

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS survives even though there is no permanent tendency for states with centralized or dispersed party organizations to differ in turnout. On the other hand, the competition variable shows a similar pattern. Earlier in the period, highly centralized states have higher electoral competition than other states, but by 1836, this relationship disappears and even is reversed to a slight degree. TABLE 5.2 PEARSON PRODUCT-MOMENT CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS, TURNOUT WITH COMPETITION, PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1828-1852

State

r

r2

(N)

+.5543 +.9466 +.7288 +.8167 +.5727 +.3810 +.8534

.30724 .89605 .53114 .66699 .32798 .14516 .72829

( 42) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7)

+.4204 +.8269 +.5720 +.0506 -.5867 -.2319

.17673 .68376 .32718 .00256 .34421 .05377

( 34) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 6)

+.6853 +.7219 +.7626

.46963 .52113 .58155

+.9212

.84860

( 21) ( 7) ( 7) ( 0) ( 7)

+.6491 -.4307 +.4006 +.6170 +.3521 +.9991

.42133 .18550 .16048 .38068 .12397 .99820

( 33) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 5)

Kentucky Tennessee Louisiana Mississippi Alabama Arkansas

+.4486 -.3388 +.8524 +.3486 +.8751 +.7689 +.4426

.20124 .11478 .72658 .12152 .76580 .59120 .19589

( 40) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 7) ( 5)

ALL STATES

+.5752

.33085

(170)

N E W ENGLAND

New Hampshire Massachusetts Connecticut Rhode Island Vermont Maine MID-ATLANTIC

New York Pennsylvania New Jersey Maryland Delaware OLD SOUTH

Virginia North Carolina South Carolina Georgia NORTHWEST

Ohio Indiana Illinois Missouri Michigan SOUTHWEST

SOURCES: Computations based on data compiled from the sources cited in Table 5.1 above (computation presented in all subsequent tables were drawn from data compiled from these sources). 186

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION

These shifts and trends may be usefully elucidated by the calculation of correlation coefficients between competition and turnout for each state.12 Nearly all state coefficients for turnout with competition show high positive relationships. Deviations from this pattern include New Jersey (+.0506), Delaware ( - . 2 3 1 9 ) , Maryland (—.5867), Ohio (-.4307), Kentucky (-.3388), Vermont (+.3810), Louisiana (+.3486), and Missouri (+.3521). The party systems in these eight states emerged at different times. Four had centralized party organizations (Ohio, New Jersey, Vermont, and Delaware), and four were characterized by dispersed political management. This second factor may explain some of the deviations of these states from the norm of generally high correlation coefficients in the state data: Delaware, New Jersey, and Vermont were all relatively homogeneous states, socially and politically, according to McCormick.13 The centralization of their party organizations may have derived from such homogeneity. The other five states, with the exception of Ohio, were border or southern states and relied on dispersed political management. Of the states that relied on dispersed party systems, only three produced correlations in excess of +.8000: Georgia (+.9212), Mississippi (+.8751), and Tennessee (+.8524). These three states constitute about one fifth of the states that exhibited dispersed political organizations. Of the states that developed centralized systems, five (New Hampshire, Maine, Connecticut, New York, and Michigan) registered correlations in excess of + .8000: These states represented half of all states with centralized party organization and management.

IV PARTY INCEPTION, TURNOUT, AND COMPETITION

THE nature of state political organization was not the only aspect of party which had an impact on the generation of increasing turnout. Correlation coefficients were calculated for elections which occurred before the inception of the second party system in each state for comparison with elections that were held during the organizational life of 12 Ecological correlation contains obvious analytic problems, and, as J. Morgan Kousser suggested in a recent article, multiple regression operations are more powerful. Regression analysis has limited application to the problem at hand because some variables, such as issue intensity, mobilization efforts, and suffrage restriction, are not amenable to quantitative measurement. History, like politics, is the art of the possible. See Kousser, "The 'New Political History': A Methodological Critique," Reviews in American History, 4 (March 1976), 1-14. 13 McCormick, Second American Party System, 69-76, 124-134 and 147-154.

187

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS

the second American party system in each state. The years of the establishment of state parties, as identified by McCormick, were used in making this determination, and the resulting categories were designated "pre-party" and "party-organized" elections.14 Turnout percentages between 1824 and 1840 in pre-party elections surpassed 65.0 percent in only Indiana and New York. Fourteen of the twenty-six states reached or exceeded 65.0 percent in the first presidential election after the inception of the party system. This level of voter turnout was achieved in the remaining nine states after the first party-organized election of the second party system. The acceleration of competition indices showed a weaker tendency to respond to the establishment of party. Eleven states showed an index of competition over 80.0 before the party system was established; nevertheless, thirteen states, including all southern and southwestern states except Louisiana, reached that competitive level in the first or second partyorganized presidential election. Although competition was less sensitive to the inception of party organization than turnout, both measurements increase sharply with the establishment of enduring state party organizations. Competition typically began an upward trend before organizational establishment; voter turnout in most states did not begin to exceed levels achieved in earlier state or local contests until parties were organized. The correlation of turnout with competition rose in party-organized elections to +.4546, as compared with a coefficient of 4--3783 in a pre-party presidential contest. This change in the relationship between turnout and competition in party-organized, as opposed to pre-party, elections is displayed in Table 5.3 (a) and ( b ) . Over 30.0 percent of the pre-party elections were characterized by low competition and low turnout; only two preparty observations exhibited high levels of turnout and competition. The absence of party is also reflected in the low means for both indices: 39.3 percent for turnout and 57.4 percent for competition. In contrast, 36.1 percent of party-organized elections from 1828 through 1852 reached the upper regions of the two variables, and only 1.5 percent of the observations following the formation of the second party system could be designated low turnout, low competition. The impact of organizational inception is also apparent in the means of turnout and competition which reached 67.6 percent and 89.9 percent, respectively. The distributions of the two variables also tighten considerably with the establishment of party organizations. The standard deviations of 14

188

Ibid., passim.

Significance = 0.002 N = 55

Turnout Competition r = +.3783 2 r = .14311

3

(32.7)

(18.2)

9

(0.0)

(49.1)

27

(32.7)

18

(16.4)

0

Low 00.059.9

55

(58.2)

32

(36.4)

20

(5.4)

3

Row Total

Significance = 0.001 N = 133

Turnout Competition r =+.4546 r2 = .20666

(59.4)

79

(6.0)

8

(17.3)

23

(36.1)

48

(1.5)

2

(1.5)

2

(0.0)

0

(0.0)

0

133

(15.8)

21

(33.1)

44

(51.1)

68

Row Total

(100.0)

Standard deviation: 15.62 9.32

(39.1)

52

(8.3)

11

(15.8)

21

(15.0)

20

Competition Index High Medium Low 99.060.000.099.9 89.9 59.9

Mean: 67.57 89.91

00.049.9

50.069.9

70.099.9

Column Total

Low:

Medium:

Statistics:

I

•g a

Jf a §

V

High:

Key Count (B.aw%)

b) Party organized presidential elections, 1828-1852

TURNOUT BY COMPETITION

(100.0)

Standard deviation: 17.64 30.75

18

(16.4)

(9.1)

10

9

(14.5)

8

5

(5.5)

Mean: 39.30 57.41

00.049.9

69.9

(1.8)

(3.6)

50.0-

1

2

70.099.9

Column Total

Low.

Medium:

Statistics:

I S £

g

I

3

Φ

High:

Medium 60.089.9

High 90.099.9

Key Count (Raw%)

Competition Index

a) Pre-party presidential elections, 1824-1836

TABLE 5.3

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS the two turnout distributions fell from 17.6 to 15.6, and the same statistic for the competition distributions moved from 30.8 in pre-party elections to 9.3 in party-organized cases. V TURNOUT AND ELECTORAL COMPETITION

THE state-by-state correlation coefficients suggest a strong, positive relationship between electoral competition and voter turnout. Comparable coefficients for each election from 1828 to 1852 verify this inference. From 1828 to 1832, the correlation between turnout and competition rose from +.7029 to +.7785. In 1836, when nineteen states had state party systems, the coefficient between competition and turnout fell to +.4539. The correlation did not rise significantly until 1848 when the coefficient was +.5788. In 1852, the correlation fell again to +.4256. When the relationship is controlled for levels of competition in previous elections, the correlations show a similar trend, and the election of 1848 again indicates an unusually strong, positive relationship between turnout and electoral competition (see Table 5.4 [a] and[b]). In both instances, the relationship between competition and turnout rises in 1848. This reversal of the trend may be the result of the FreeSoil candidacy of Martin Van Buren and its effect on the two variables, particularly in New England, where Van Buren's predominant strength was located, and the southern states, where free-soilism was perceived as a political and social threat to slave society. The importance of issues surrounding slavery touched off an ideologically oriented voting pattern. In other party-organized elections, voting choices were defined TABLE 5.4 A PEARSON PRODUCT-MOMENT CORRELATION COEFFICIENTS: TURNOUT WITH COMPETITION BY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR,

1828-1852

190

Election Year

r

1828 1832 1836 1840 1844 1848 1852

+.7029 +.7785 +.4539 +.4424 +.4726 +.5788 +.4256

t*

.49407 .60606 .20602 .19572 .22505 .33501 .18114

(N) (22) (23) (25) (25) (25) (25) (25)

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION TABLE 5.4 B PARTIAL CORRELATION COMPETITION

COEFFICIENTS:

TURNOUT WITH

BY PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEAR, CONTROLLING

FOR PREVIOUS COMPETITION LEVELS, 1828-1852 Election Year

Partial correlation coefficient

1828 1832 1836 1840 1844 1848 1852

+.6131 +.5433 +.3500 +.4548 +.4309 +.5208 +.2129

Controlling for competition levels in . . . 1824 1824, 1824, 1828, 1832, 1836, 1840,

1828 1828, 1832, 1836, 1840, 1844,

1832 1836 1840 1844 1848

SOURCES: For the data sources from which these computations were made, see the sources cited in Table 5.1.

by the pattern of partisan identification. The focus on electoral issues beyond electoral solution and national party control, however, may have amplified the relationship between competition and turnout. In short, the special and complex stakes perceived by voters in both regions worked to produce a "high-stimulus" election, in which unusual importance was attached to the outcome of the election. As McCormick points out, the inability of the second American party system to assimilate politically the issues of slavery and slavery extension was indicative of the essential artificiality of that party system.15 The development of issues beyond the influence or the manipulative grasp of party may have promoted high voter participation in 1848, 1856, and 1860; the failure of party organizations to assume control of these divisive issues eventually destroyed the viability of the second party system and contributed to the events which led to the American Civil War. VI INCREASING TURNOUT:

TOWARD A CONCLUSION

THE relationship between the formation of party organizations in the 1830's and 1840's and increasing voter participation is strengthened by a close examination of the internal characteristics of our turnout variable. Correlation coefficients with the turnout variable for each election year produced a highly regular matrix. Coefficients for elec" Ibid., 353.

191

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS

tions from 1836 to 1852 in the turnout variable correlation matrix are high, with the highest relationships occurring in the three presidential elections from 1840 to 1848. The linear associations within the turnout percentages are strongest during the height of the second party system. Correlations of turnout levels in 1828 and 1832 with turnout later in the period are substantially lower than other coefficients in the matrix. This result is not surprising because most elections in our time-series before 1836 were pre-party elections. The correlations of turnout in 1852 with earlier turnout percentages are also lower than the other matrix coefficients, but the campaign of 1852 was characterized by the declining effectiveness and unity of parties, particularly among the Whigs. The strong positive relationships within the turnout variable between 1836 and 1848, elections which constitute the primeof-life years of the second American party system, indicate the strength of party organizations, both as mobilizing agents and institutional rivals, in promoting high participation levels.16 (See Table 5.5 [a] a n d [ b ] ) . Party, through effective and organized mobilization efforts, maximized turnout levels during the 1830's and 1840's, but a correlation matrix of competition indices fails to show the uniformity of the turnout variable matrix. Although competition is fairly high in party-organized elections, there is little internal regularity present in the corTABLE 5.5 A PEARSON PRODUCT-MOMENT CORRELATION MATRIX: TURNOUT WITH TURNOUT, PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS, 1828-1852

« S I H

1832 1836 1840 1844 1848 1852

1828

1832

+.6665 +.5392 +.4693 +.4531 +.3546 +.3404

+.5522 +.3696 +.3910 +.2252 +.3824

Turnout 1836 1840

+.6800 +.8320 +.7626 +.5878

+.9029 +.8171 +.5435

1844

1848

+.8711 +.5990

+.6776

16 Political scientists who have reached similar conclusions include Hofstetter, "Inter-Party Competition and Electoral Turnout," 351-66; William J. Crotty, "Party Effort and its Impact on the Vote," American Political Science Review, 65 (September 1971), 439-450; Phillips Cutright, "Measuring the Impact of Local Party Activity on the General Election Vote," Public Opinion Quarterly, 27 (Fall 1963), 372-386; Daniel Katz and Samuel J. Eldersveld, "The Impact of Local Party Activity upon the Electorate," Public Opinion Quarterly, 25 (Spring 1961), 1-24; and Phillips Cutright and Peter H. Rossi, "Grass Roots Politicians and the Vote," American Sociological Review, 23 (April 1958), 171-179.

192

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION TABLE 5.5 B PEARSON PRODUCT-MOMENT CORRELATION COMPETITION

MATRIX:

WITH COMPETITION, PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS,

1828-1852

1828 CS

.g

r

U

1832 1836 1840 1844 1848 1852

+.7698 +.1236 +.0863 +.2386 -.1306 +.2670

Competition 1832 1836 +.1753 +.0579 +.2853 -.2324 +.4514

-.0121 +.5436 +.4002 +.5439

1840

1844

1848

+.3064 +.4868 +.0105

+.4255 +.6043

+.1136

SOURCES: For the data-sources from which these computations were made, see the sources cited in Table 5.1.

relation matrix of the competition variable between 1828 and 1852. The fluctuations of these correlation levels in the competition matrix may suggest that state competition levels were more subject to change over time than turnout levels. The nature of the American political system may explain the contrast between the intracorrelation found in each variable. Since the object of each political party was victory, it was imperative for them to get as many of their supporters to the polls as possible; the margin of victory was important to the party system in the sense that consistently close elections held potential for the party out of power to achieve victory in a subsequent election. The central role of party as an independent variable which elevated both turnout and competition is dramatically shown in an examination of the first party-organized election in each state (see Table 5.1). In only two states, New York and Illinois, did the first party-organized election evidence a drop in turnout from the last pre-party presidential contest. In New Jersey, New Hampshire, Missouri, Ohio, Alabama, Mississippi, and Kentucky rates surged in the first party-organized presidential election in excess of thirty percentage points. Between 1824 and 1844, voter turnout in the states increased an average of 9.4 percent in each election, but the average increase in the first partyorganized election was 24.4 percent. Similar statistics in the competition variable also show a sensitivity to the formation of parties: competition rose 6.6 points in an average election between 1824 and 1844; in the first party-organized presidential canvass competition rose an average of 26.6 points. We can, at this point, speculate about the interrelationships among 193

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS

these variables and the American political environment in which they operated. We cannot, of course, develop sophisticated techniques to demonstrate the strength of these interrelationships because aspects of party and political issues defy quantification. Changes in the sociopolitical ethos, which positively reinforced the legitimacy of the "common man" and the political-constitutional system, which opened access to the political system and placed the arena of presidential contests in the states, pose similar problems. However, data limitations should not prohibit useful speculation based on the data we have been able to assemble. The impact of the organizational inception of the second party system in the 1820's and 1830's leads us to the conclusion that political party organization was the independent variable in our analysis. Using the technological advances in communications and transportation and developing elaborate and intense internal structures in the states, parties worked to mobilize the mass electorate, reaching the individual voter, instilling in him a sense of partisan identity, and bringing him to the polls. The effectiveness of mobilization efforts fostered politicization among voters and provided a feedback to party organizations in the form of new members. While attempting to mobilize the electorate, party organizations articulated political issues, presenting them to the voters. The revival atmosphere of presidential campaigns in the second party system and the rhetorical intensity of newspapers, pamphlets, and speeches increased the electoral stimuli, which operated in various elections and motivated men to vote, gave voters a stake in both public policy and the election result. As long as the articulation of political issues was conducted with the implicit acceptance of majority rule by the losing party and a tolerance of minority feelings by the winning party, the conflict over issues provided functional opportunities for the expression of minority views and indirectly promoted national political integration. When the issues became ideological and moved beyond the manipulative capabilities of the political party organizations in the 1850's, the divisiveness of issues in the political system became dysfunctional and contributed to disunion. Although party organizations did not intend to conduct consistently close elections, the competitive characteristics of the party system created intense institutional rivalry between political organizations. The closeness of presidential contests during the period contained the potential for rotation in office. The opportunities for winning the presidency in any given election was a constant impetus for energetic com194

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION

petition in the electorate, and victories, however short-lived, provided periodic "pay-offs" for the competing parties in the form of post offices, custom houses, and other posts filled with presidential patronage. The political organizations that grew and flourished in the second quarter of the nineteenth century operated in a larger political environment. Four major elements of this political terrain which contributed to the institutional vigor of political parties included a political-constitutional system which consisted of laws conducive to mass politics, a mass electorate from which both the governed and governing were drawn, a socio-political ethos which supported the democratic features of the political system, and a competitive party system which institutionalized political conflict in a democratic society. These characteristics interacted to define and legitimize the rise of mass, popular politics and together formulated the systemic and ideological rationale for democratization. In a similar fashion, these encompassing forces fulfilled integrative functions which provided a basis for the formation of a competitive party system with a minimum of dysfunctional and disruptive conflict. For the life of the second party system both Democrats and Whigs operated within the ideological and constitutional confines of Jacksonian political egalitarianism. Both accepted the constitutional system as it had then evolved. Their conflict was primarily characterized by differences over policy questions which were infused with a rhetoric filled with symbols from a common ideological heritage. 17 Henry Clay's "American System" and Andrew Jackson's "Bank War" were both drawn from the mainstream of the American commitment to progress and social equality. Both parties sought ascendency through the effectiveness of party machinery in a mass electorate. Statistical competition was the systemic result of the nature of this new, popular politics in which parties sought advantage over one another in the electorate. The Jacksonian revolution, with its egalitarian preachments, ardent nationalism, and energetic political parties, provided an additional catalyst for the emergence of a national political community. As socializing agents, parties served to inform the voting citizenry and mold public opinion through the recruitment of new members and the rewarding of party loyalists. As national integrators, the newly organized parties linked national government centers, including Congress, the Supreme Court, and the presidency, to a mass electorate and provided effective avenues for political participation in modes 17 See Marvin Meyers, The Jacksonian Persuasion: Politics and Belief, Stanford, Ca., 1960, 3-56.

195

W. N. CHAMBERS & P. C. DAVIS

more sophisticated and advanced than voting. The lifeline of presidential patronage exploited by Jackson and his successors further emphasized the importance of winning the presidency for the party, and it furnished the resources for organizing the electorate and disciplining party members. AU of these factors fostered a sense of national political community bonding the electorate in each state to the loose coalition of state organizations that constituted national political parties—an organizational structure that paralleled the federal republic itself.18 Once voters were politically socialized to a pattern of political involvement, at least at the polls, they were likely to continue their concern for and excitement over political issues, parties, and campaigns.19 Whether the immediate impetus for the trend of increasing voter participation was electoral closeness or party mobilization, the perpetuation of high turnout levels did not require the continued forcefulness of the original catalyst at its initial level of potency. Increased voter participation occurred in the societal context of a mass electorate, a faith in the competence, virtue, and legitimacy of the individual voter, and the emergence of intense, enduring national party organizations. As a factor in the socialization and mobilization of the eligible electorate, national parties were central to the initial stimulation and continued maintenance of a mass, voting electorate. Thus, our data indicate a strong relationship between party organization and increases both in turnout and competition. The general upward trend of voter participation exhibited an initial surge with the inception of rival partisan organizations in most states. Although high competition indices are apparent before party organization, most states did not have consistently intense competition until after the establishment of the second party system. The competitive variable, with the exception of the three-candidate presidential contest of 1848, is a 18 The central role of the party system in the emergence of national political communities is developed in Seymour Martin Lipset, The First New Nation: The United States in Historical and Comparative Perspective, New York, 1963, esp. 286-317. Of course, this change involved factors which were clearly extrapolitical, involving such elements as the transportation revolution which is ably examined in George Rogers Taylor, The Transportation Revolution, 1815-1860, New York, 1951, passim. 19 See Gabriel A. Almond and Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture: Political Attitudes and Democracy in Five Nations, Princeton, 1963, 79-95, 257; Herbert H. Hyman, Political Socialization: A Study in the Psychology of Political Behavior, Glencoe, 111., 1959, 16-20, 46-47, 51-53, and 69-74; and Myron Weiner and Joseph LaPalombara, "The Impact of Parties on Political Development," in Weiner and LaPalombara, eds., Political Parties and Political Development, Princeton, N.J., 1966, 405-406, 424-434.

196

PARTY, COMPETITION, AND MASS PARTICIPATION

stronger index of institutional rivalry between major parties than it is a measure of high electoral stimulation. Institutional rivalry in a competitive party system, of course, is likely to promote high levels of mobilization efforts by political organizations. Effective party mobilization activity, in the context of intense political competition and a mass electorate which perceived itself a part of a national, democratic polity, probably was the active force producing high levels of turnout in presidential elections. The potency of national political parties and the process of political socialization inherent in the nationalization of popular politics promoted extensive voter participation throughout the second American party system.

197

6 The Effect of the Southern System of Election Laws on Voting Participation: A Reply to V. O. Key, Jr. JERROLD G. RUSK AND JOHN J. STUCKER ALTHOUGH the South has customarily been characterized as a unique political culture in American history, many aspects of its culture have borne close resemblance to the rest of the country—not the least of which has been the South's heavy reliance on election laws to limit voter participation at the polls. What is unique about this aspect of the South's culture is that such legislation continued to be enacted long after the rest of the nation had given up pursuing such negative goals. The persistence of restrictive suffrage legislation in the later phases of the South's history recalls a most crucial era—the Reconstruction aftermath to the Civil War and the inevitable southern reaction to it which set the stage for the eventual development of the Solid South. What role the restrictive legislation of the time played in this transition to a Solid South is a subject of debate among scholars. Some maintain that such publicized pieces of legislation as the poll tax and literacy test had little effect in wresting control from the northern white or the southern black. Certainly, for the former, this seems to be accurate since the legislation was passed after the carpetbaggers had been forced out of the South. However, a moot point remains for the latter—was the southern black eliminated from the system before such legislation or as a natural consequence of it? V. O. Key, Jr., maintains that the first interpretation is probably the correct one—that the southerners' use of force, threat of force, and other methods of persuasion established a norm structure in the 1880's which antedated the poll tax and literacy test by at least a decade and was sufficient by itself to deter Negro participation at the polls.1 The passing of poll tax and

The authors are grateful for the comments of James W. Clarke and the skilled computer assistance of Quentin E. Davis. 1 See V. O. Key, Jr., Southern Politics in State and Nation, New York, 1949, chs. 25-28, especially ch. 25.

198

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING literacy test legislation in the 1890's (and later) was viewed by Key as merely legalizing what had already been accomplished before and hence as having little additional disfranchising effect. But another element enters the picture—the white southerner, especially the poor white southerner. What effect did such laws have on his voting participation around the turn of the century? Key believes that they had very little—attributing the bulk of his explanation to the establishment of a one party region, the decline in party competition leading to a corresponding decline in electoral participation among southern whites. 2 Another point of view stems from Jerrold G. Rusk's theory of the effects of legal-institutional factors on political behavior. 3 The basic notion here is that legal factors governing the suffrage and electoral process will have effects on voter participation regardless of what other factors are operating on voting behavior. In addition, the theory implies that the effects registered by legal factors will be sizable relative to previous behavioral patterns. Translated into concrete terms for this southern system of restrictive laws, the theory would infer that poll taxes and literacy tests would have effects in depressing voter participation among both the black and white populations in the South, and that these effects would be quite noticeable in the data. The general theory of V. O. Key, Jr., that these laws had little effect would be challenged and empirical tests would be used as a basis for confronting the alternative explanations posed. At the same time, while questioning Key's assumption that such laws had little disfranchising effect, we need not necessarily abandon the other assumptions of the Key theory. A decline in southern electoral participation could indeed have occurred in the 1880's for the reasons Key mentions. This is an important point in its own right, but not as central to the research focus of this chapter. Specifically, in this chapter, we will perform certain data analyses to see what effects the southern system of laws had on voter participation at the polls. If some effects are observed, we will know that these laws contributed to the secular decline in voting participation which marked southern political behavior in the formative stages of the Solid South. While we do not have data by race for these states, we will make the assumption that our observations of declining voting participation 2

Ibid. See Jerrold G. Rusk, "The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split Ticket Voting: 1876-1908," American Political Science Review, 64 (December 1970), 1220-1238. For an earlier statement with regard to the southern system's effect on the Negro vote, see C. Vann Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow, New York, 2d rev. ed., 1966. 3

199

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER affect both the black and white populations (although not necessarily at the same rate). This assumption seems tenable unless all the blacks were removed from the voting system prior to 1890, a proposition that seems unlikely given historical accounts of this period. 4 Some of the analysis results that will be presented in this chapter were reported earlier by the authors in a 1974 essay in the American Political Science Review.5 This was the first published statement by the authors of the effects of the southern system of laws on voting participation. In that same year, J. Morgan Kousser, a historian, published an independent analysis of the effects of these laws in his book, The Shaping of Southern Politics,6 A reading of this book shows that Kousser's work has several things in common with our 1974 essay and the present chapter. First, Kousser believes that election laws, in general, have significant effects on voting behavior, a conviction which has motivated our own research efforts over the past seven years. Second, Kousser believes that the election laws of the South, in particular, had important effects on voting behavior from 1890 to 1910, a conviction which has motivated our own discussion of the southern case in the 1974 essay and in this chapter. Third, Kousser believes that these convictions should be subjected to empirical testing, although his methods of testing, in several instances, differ from ours. Fourth, Kousser believes, like us, that the empirical results obtained from such tests should be used to confront Key's theory in order to resolve the question of which forces shaped the one party South. Despite, at times, using different data and test procedures from those of the authors, Kousser's basic empirical findings and substantive conclusions show a close resemblance to our own. We both show empirical results which lead to substantially the same conclusions about the effects of southern election laws on voting participation. We also both view Key's theory in the same way as a result of our data findings. In general, our two studies reveal quite similar interpretations of southern political history in this period. Rarely in the social sciences has such empirical validation occurred between two independent studies researching the same substantive problem. 4 See, for example, Kirk H. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States, Chicago, 1918, ch. 8. It is interesting to note that even V. O. Key, Jr., alludes to competition for the Negro vote as late as the 1890's and early 1900's. See Key, Southern Politics, ch. 25. 5 Jerrold G. Rusk, "The American Electoral Universe: Speculation and Evidence," American Political Science Review, 68 (September 1974), 1028-1049 (especially see 1042-1043). 8 J . Morgan Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, New Haven, Conn., 1974.

200

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING While the two studies show remarkable similarities, important differences also exist. Most of these differences reside in the ways Kousser and the authors handle their data analysis. Kousser usually is content to test the effects of poll tax and literacy test laws in just a few states in a few election years (most usually the election years just before and just after the suffrage change—what we call "immediate before-after tests"). The information provided by so few tests is limited in what it can tell us about the effects of these laws. Kousser also tests, in selected election years, the combined effects on voting of several different kinds of suffrage changes, including not only poll tax and literacy test laws but also registration laws, secret ballot laws, and the like. From this kind of analysis, it is very difficult to ascertain the individual effects of each suffrage change, to determine which suffrage changes have greater or lesser effects or even any effects at all. Probably one reason Kousser does not spend much time trying to do a systematic, detailed, and rigorous analysis of the separate effects of each law for each state in each election is that a large part of his book is concerned with another historical question: the question of "legislative intent" in the passage of these laws. Kousser is fundamentally concerned with trying to answer the question of why legislators passed these laws in the first place and who they were attempting to eliminate from the electorate as a result. Kousser uses data sources other than voting statistics to answer this question, such as newspapers, legislative journals, and constitutional convention reports. He literally exhausts these sources in attempting to unravel this puzzle, studying the legislative history of the various suffrage movements in each of the southern states. He gives this subject much more coverage in his book than we can in this essay, although, in the end, we come up with some of the same conclusions about "legislative intent" as Kousser. Our study, by contrast, emphasizes those areas which Kousser covers less well. It is a detailed, systematic, and exhaustive data analysis of the effects of the southern system of laws on voting behavior. The study covers both presidential and congressional races for every election year in this time period, investigates the separate effects of each legal change, and, most importantly, employs four separate analytic tests to determine the influence these laws had on the voting rates of each of the southern states. One of these analysis techniques controls for the problem of "unique election year stimuli" contaminating our data results, while another controls for trends in electoral participation caused by factors other than election laws. Kousser, however, does not use techniques such as these to eliminate the influence of other factors 201

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER on his data findings.7 All in all, the concern in our study is weighted more in the direction of ascertaining the empirical effects of election laws on voting behavior than with the question of legislative intent, and, for this reason, we feel our study is a more convincing documentation of the effects these laws had on voting participation. In one respect, however, the Kousser analysis of legal effects on voting is clearly superior to our own. Kousser uses the "ecological regression" technique to estimate both white and black voting rates in those elections and states in which he is interested. We have no racial data in our analysis, nor any estimates for such data. In our study, we have to assume that if sizable drops in voting participation occur, both whites and blacks are affected. Kousser gives us actual estimates of the racial dropoff in voting participation instead of simply assuming that it occurs. While these are meaningful differences between the two studies, we must still remember that the two studies resemble each other in important ways. Many of the empirical and substantive statements we make in the 1974 essay and in this paper have some counterpart in Kousser's work. We shall now turn to the first stage of our empirical discussion—how voting participation is measured in the South and what the curves of voting participation look like in this historical period.

I VOTING PARTICIPATION

participation in the South has been measured by the customary index of turnout: the ratio of actual voters to eligible voters in an election, as expressed by the formula:

VOTING

Turnout =

number of voters —— number of eligibles

This index can be applied to a wide variety of political races, but, in this chapter, we shall use only two—the presidential and congressional races. We shall emphasize the use of the presidential turnout index somewhat more in our chapter than the congressional turnout index, although both will be beneficial in ascertaining trends in southern 7 Kousser does quickly look at the turnout rates in a state for the two elections preceding its adoption of a southern system law, with the idea in mind of ascertaining any pre-southern system voting patterns. This cursory view, however, is only of limited use, since, to ascertain if trends exist, more time-points than two are needed. See Kousser, The Shaping of Southern Politics, 242-243.

202

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING voting participation. 8 With regard to collecting data for these indices, the numerator of each index—the number of voters (for that race in a given election)—is an easily obtained quantity; however, the denominator—the number of eligible voters—could possibly present problems for the researcher. Census reports often do not give the number of eligible voters directly or even sufficient information to work out relatively accurate estimates of this quantity. For example, the census habit of combining citizens and aliens into a single category prior to 1870 hampers efforts to exclude aliens. Fortunately, most of the analysis in this chapter occurs after 1870, when the Census Bureau listed the two figures separately for the individual states, making estimates of the eligible electorate on the citizenship dimension a fairly straightforward operation in the South.9 Other factors which could help to determine the eligible voter quantity in this period—such as residence requirements, property tax stipulations, etc.—could not be used in estimating the denominator of our turnout indices since no census data were available pinpointing the number of people effectively disfranchised by such methods. The number of adult women was, however, a known quantity for the states and could be used to adjust the turnout denominator since women were not allowed to vote in the South prior to 1920. It is actually fortunate for this analysis that no southern state allowed women's suffrage before enactment of the Nineteenth Amendment, enabling us to observe the effects of the southern system in relative isolation of the effects of another important system change which was to come two to three decades later. With the removal of women and aliens from our eligible voter computations, we are left with what appears to be relatively accurate estimates of the eligible electorate for our two turnout indices. 8 While turnout is most usually considered to be the main way to measure "voting participation," other measures of this concept do exist. For example, Przeworski and Sprague define two other such measures: mobilization (ratio of voters to adults) and eligibility (ratio of eligibles to adults). See Adam Przeworski and John Sprague, "Concepts in Search of Explicit Formulation: A Study in Measurement," Midwest Journal of Political Science, 15 (May 1971), 183-218. In our analysis, we have used Przeworski and Sprague's mobilization measure in addition to the more basic turnout measure. We have not, however, included the empirical results of the mobilization analysis in this chapter for reasons of space, but all such results conform to the data patterns found when using the turnout measure and hence also substantiate the conclusions presented in this chapter which were derived from these data patterns. 9 Even if the Census Bureau had not listed aliens separately after 1870, this factor probably would not have seriously affected estimates of the eligible electorate since relatively few aliens migrated to the South in this period.

203

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER The values of the presidential and congressional turnout indices are shown in Figure 6.1 for the crucial 1876-1916 time period. Both indices reveal a common longitudinal pattern: the decline of voting participa­ tion in the South. An almost consistently monotonic-decreasing pattern is shown for both curves, giving some initial credence to Key's notion of a secular decline beginning in the 1880's. At the same time, the decline in these indices is not linear; that is, the amount of change is not constant across this forty year time span. The greatest changes in these curves do not occur in the 1880's as Key might assume, but rather in the next two decades. For example, the largest differences between adjacent election years in the presidential turnout curve occur in the 1888-1892 (7.6 percent), 1896-1900 (10.3 percent), and 19001904 (11.4 percent) time periods. The other curve virtually repeats this

70% •

65% -

\\\ \\ % \\\ ^N*'

\ 1

60% -

\\ v.-

55% -

Λ 50% "

\\ \\

45% "

\\

40% "

35% -

Presidential turnout

/ν

Congressional turnout

»

pI 1876 1880 1884 1888 1892 1896 1900 1904 1908 1912 1916 * Congressional turnout values are only shown for presidential election years in order to provide comparability of values along a time continuum, holding constant the type of election involved. The values in this figure are averages, based on weighting each state equally.

FIGURE 6.1 Voter Participation in the South as Measured by Two Indices in Presidential Election Years, 1876-1916"

204

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING pattern, most of its largest differences also coming in these election years. The only other major break in these curves comes in the 18761880 period—this finding more closely conforming to Key's ideas of when the significant secular decline in participation occurred. Much smaller, often miniscule, breaks in the two curves are shown for the 1880-1888 and 1904-1916 time periods (the latter showing larger difference values than the former, but not consistently in one direction). 10 The picture conveyed by these trendlines is that two fundamental change periods in voter participation occurred in the South. The first was the relatively brief, but undoubtedly important, change in participation between the presidential elections of 1876 and 1880. The most apparent explanation for this was the removal of the northern troops from the South in 1877 and the inevitable political consequences which followed this action. Eliminating the northern white and the southern black from the political machinery of the South was obviously the first priority of the native white southerner after 1877. The abrupt decline in turnout rates suggests the effectiveness of his actions in this regard and also bolsters nicely Key's theory for this time period. The fact that only miniscule changes in voter participation occurred in the next two presidential elections (1884, 1888) lends possible, if very indirect, support to Key's belief that the southern black was largely removed from the political scene before the poll tax and literacy test legislation was passed in the 1890's. The other possible explanation would be that, while the northern white was effectively removed from the South by 1880, the southern black was not, or only partially so. The decline in participation between 1876 and 1880 would then be interpreted mainly as the exodus of the northern white from the South. The second period of fundamental change in the South was from 1892 to 1904. This period seemed to have two phases: (1) the initial break in participation between 1888 and 1892, demarcating a new lower level of participation, followed by what appears to have been a leveling-off election, 1896; and (2) a further major break in participation between 1896 and 1900, marking yet another lower level of participation which subsequently would drop to an even lower level by the election of 1904. The difficult analytic question is whether to 10 These data results in Figure 6.1 are based on averages of state turnout values, in which each state is weighted equally in determining the average values. The other method of obtaining averages would be to weight states unequally according to the number of voters and eligibles each had, adding up these totals for all states, and then taking an average by dividing one total (number of eligibles) into the other total (number of voters) to get the southern turnout rate.

205

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER treat the two phases of this time period as substantively similar or as separate, distinct entities. The elections of 1892,1900, and 1904 all seem to resemble one another in marking lower levels of turnout, but the interim election of 1896 appears as a flat surface in this declining trendline. If common factors influenced the decline in participation in the 1892-1904 era, should they not also have affected the 1896 election in the same way? From what we know about the election of 1896, the answer seems to be "no." The 1896 election, far from being superficially observed as a leveling-off election from the trend of 1892, seems instead to have been a high-stimulus election working against the trend of lower turnout. Without this rather unique election, 1896 would presumably have conformed to the trend toward lower participation. Once 1896 was past, the dominant trend of lower voter participation continued as before. The common factors believed to have caused this second period of change in the South are the poll tax and literacy test requirements for voting. Obviously intertwined with such factors would be Key's theory of the decline of party competition and the subsequent apathy of the southern voter, although much of what resides in this notion, according to Key, was supposed to have happened in the 1880's. With regard to legal factors, one quickly notes that the bulk of the southern states adopting the poll tax and literacy test did so from 1890 to 1908. In addition, these states did not adopt such laws in a distinct subset of this time period, but scattered their adoption of these laws across the entire time frame. As such, new impacts on the vote participation curves could occur at different times in this period as a result of the variation in dates when the southern system was adopted. The relatively distinct impacts on the vote curves in 1892, 1900, and 1904 could conceivably be the result of three states first using either the poll tax or literacy test in 1892, two states first imposing these requirements in 1900, and four states first using them in 1904.11 A more complex theory would postulate that the simultaneous appearance of the southern system and the development of the one party South led to the declines in voter participation. If these events occurred virtually simultaneously, what would be the possibility that they also 11 The dates cited are for the presidential elections in which the poll tax or literacy test was first used since Figure 6.1, our point of reference, contains data only from presidential election years. Of course, some states might actually have passed their poll tax or literacy test laws to be first used in the off-year elections immediately preceding the presidential elections to which we make reference, but this is of no concern to us here.

206

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING interacted with one another? The passing of poll tax and literacy test qualifications would remove the less educated, less involved voters from the electorate. If these presumably were the poor blacks and poor whites, two sources of support for the Populist-Republican cause, then the possibility of a South controlled by the Democrats would be enhanced. Key is willing to give some credence to the notion that the southern system affected the poor whites, but relatively little to the parallel argument for the poor blacks. While believing that Key does not give enough emphasis to the effect of the southern system on the poor whites, an equally important argument is that, in all probability, the poll tax and literacy test laws were also a major deterrent to the black population. If all the blacks had been effectively eliminated from elections prior to 1890, why the introduction of laws like the poll tax and literacy test which ostensibly appear as primarily aimed at the black population? Key's argument that such laws were implemented merely to legalize what had occurred before seems tenuous. If the southerners had achieved the condition of Negro subservience prior to 1890, which Key believes to be the case, why should they jeopardize this by enacting laws whose constitutionality could be questioned and tested in the courts? It is much more difficult to base a court decision on discrimination when it is fostered by informal norms and sanctions (as Key maintains it was in the 1880's) than when it is the result of ostensibly restrictive legislation. The actual situation at the time would seem to have been radically different from the picture Key portrays: the threat of black participation at the polls being sufficiently great to motivate southerners to pass laws to deter it, despite the constitutional risks involved.12 To say that these laws were mere "frosting on the cake" belies the logic of the situation at the time. Suffice it to say that more than one theory attempts to explain the vote curves in Figure 6.1. The truth may well lie somewhere in-between, with a judicious mixing of available theories being the closest match to political reality. What has been established thus far in this chapter is only that southern voting participation declined from 1876 to 1916, with the most sizable declines occurring in the elections of 1880, 1892, 1900, and 1904. What remains is to bring the legal variables with which we are concerned—the poll tax and literacy test—into the 12

Key, at points in his book Southern Politics, speaks of the dire threat black participation was to the southern whites, especially in areas in which the blacks were a sizable portion of the population. However, his explanation for disfranchising them rests in the time period prior to the 1890's. See Key, Southern Politics, 540.

207

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER analysis to see what effects, if any, they have on these vote curves how they might relate to some of the other theories mentioned in chapter. Before doing this, however, we will first take a look at laws themselves—their patterns of adoption, specific contents, historical contexts.

and this the and

II THE SOUTHERN SYSTEM

THE southern system of laws was generally enacted in the 1890-1908 period. Some scholars include in it not only the poll tax and literacy test legislation so far discussed, but also the grandfather clause. The reasoning behind this is that any southern legislation passed during this period governing the suffrage should be included, thus making the grandfather clause applicable. What is often assumed, however, is that all these laws had a common purpose—that of disfranchisement—but actually only the poll tax and literacy test were of this variety. The grandfather clause was instead an expansive rather than a restrictive piece of legislation, attempting to ref ranchise certain white elements of the southern population who were threatened to be disfranchised by, or had already been disfranchised by, the literacy test legislation. A strict definition of the southern system based on the notion of restrictive franchise would probably be more suitable, limiting the southern system to only the poll tax and literacy test items. Generally, in this chapter, such a definition will be used, although at times the grandfather clause will be mentioned. The adoption of the southern system followed the pattern shown in Table 6.1. This table lists the first federal election year in which a state's poll tax, literacy test, or grandfather clause was applicable. Mississippi, Florida, and Tennessee were the first states to adopt one of these pieces of legislation—each adopting the poll tax for the 1890 election. In all, eleven of the fifteen southern states had a poll tax at some time in their history. These figures include Georgia, which enacted a head tax a century before the southern system came into existence. The four states never having a poll tax were all Border States— Kentucky, Maryland, Oklahoma, and West Virginia—with more tangential feelings about the Negro question than their neighbors in the Solid South. The literacy test was not used as widely as the poll tax, but was popular nonetheless. Eight of the fifteen states adopted the literacy test, seven being states of the SoKd South and one a Border State

208

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING TABLE 6.1 FEDERAL ELECTION YEAR IN WHICH POLL TAX, LITERACY TEST, AND GRANDFATHER CLAUSE WERE FIRST USED BY SOUTHERN STATES

States Solid South Alabama Arkansas Florida Georgia Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Texas Virginia Border States Kentucky Maryland Oklahoma Tennessee West Virginia

Grandfather

PoZi tax

Literacy test

1902 1894 1890 1802 1898 1890 1900 1896 1904 1904

1902

1902

— —

— —

1890

—

1908 1898 1892 1902 1896

1908 1898 1902

—

— —

1902

1902

1912

1912

— —

— —

(Oklahoma). Notably missing among the Solid South were three who had adopted poll taxes: Arkansas, Florida, and Texas. Still, the probability was above chance (actually .64) that if a state adopted the poll tax it would also adopt the literacy test. The literacy test laws started with Mississippi in 1892, also one of the first states to enact a poll tax. Of the eight states having literacy tests, six also passed grandfather clauses to allow native southern whites to vote even if they could not meet the literacy requirements. A common pattern revealed in Table 6.1 is the virtually simultaneous passage of both the poll tax and literacy test. Only Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia adopted these two pieces of legislation at different times (that is, at different dates of applicability in federal elections). 13 The remainder of the states initiated a double barrier to the vote in the same election. This double adoption pattern poses an important question that later will require empirical testing—whether two laws produce a greater effect on voter participation rates than one law alone. It is conceivable that only one piece of restrictive legisla13 Georgia is intentionally excluded from this list since it adopted its poll tax before the period of the southern system.

209

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER tion is needed to dampen voting rates to a certain minimum level beyond which further legislation has no noticeable effect. Regardless of whether one or both pieces of restrictive legislation were needed to dampen voter participation, it seems that few southern states "felt safe" without passing both laws. Feeling safe meant to southern states eliminating the Negro from the polls, so it is no accident that seven of the ten states in the Solid South had both pieces of legislation. The state generally given credit for setting the legal precedent for the southern system was Mississippi. In 1890, Mississippi, in its constitutional convention, required that every citizen between the ages of twenty-one and sixty must pay a $2.00 poll tax and be able to show the receipt of payment before he could vote. Not content with an economic restriction alone, Mississippi followed two years later with a literacy test, stipulating that anyone who wished to vote must be able to read the constitution, or understand it when read to him, or be able to give a reasonable interpretation of passages that might be read to him. Thus, in two years' time, Mississippi had set up a model of restrictive legislation for other states to follow. Each state would have its own particular variant oi these two laws, but the basic model would remain the same. Two other states required the payment of a poll tax in the 1890 election: Florida and Tennessee. Actually, Florida passed its poll tax one year earlier than Mississippi (1889), but is not generally considered by scholars to have set the motivating precedent for the poll tax that its fellow state, Mississippi, presumably did. Florida's law, like Mississippi's, was cumulative for two years preceding the election, but was based on a rate of $1.00, rather than $2.00, a year. Unlike a few states to follow, neither Florida nor Mississippi granted any meaningful exemptions from this requirement; the poll tax was imposed upon all potential voters.14 Tennessee, after an unsuccessful attempt to enact a poll tax in 1870, succeeded in placing a poll tax on the books in 1890. This particular version was less stringent than the Florida and Mississippi laws, having no cumulative provision and based on the minimal rate of $1.00. Arkansas, South Carolina, and Louisiana also adopted poll tax laws in the 1890's. Arkansas was the first to submit the idea to the people for their approval. In the 1892 election, the plebiscite on the poll tax received majority approval by the people of the state and went into effect in the election of 1894. Until 1905, the law was unchallenged, but, in that year, a United States circuit court held that the ratifying vote was not sufficient, interpreting the Arkansas Constitution as requiring a 14

126.

210

Dudley O. McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley, Chicago, 1949, 124,

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING

majority not merely of those who voted on this particular question but a vote equal to a majority of the highest vote cast for any candidate voted for at that election. Arkansas reacted by holding another plebiscite in the 1908 election which received the required majority. However, because of these particular legal technicalities, Arkansas was without the poll tax for the elections of 1906 and 1908. Its particular poll tax in both periods, 1894-1905 and post-1908, was a mild one based like Tennessee's on a $1.00 noncumulative rate. South Carolina also enacted a similarly mild version of the poll tax in 1895, to become effective in the federal election year of 1896. Two things, however, differentiated the South Carolina poll tax from those of most other states. First, the tax was not levied upon women after they received the franchise. Second, the requirement did not apply to anyone voting in the Democratic party primary, a condition of obvious political importance once the Solid South was established. Louisiana was the last state to adopt a poll tax in the 1890's, requiring in 1898 and later elections the payment of a $1.00 cumulative tax for the two years preceding each election. It was the most stringent poll tax passed since 1890. The turn of the century saw a revival of the 1890 spirit of stringent poll tax laws. North Carolina and Texas raised the poll tax fee beyond $1.00 to $1.29 and $1.50, respectively, while Virginia charged a threeyear cumulative rate based on $1.50 a year and Alabama, a limitless cumulative period based on the same amount.15 Among these four states the poll tax varied considerably in importance. In North Carolina, the law was only one of a list of qualifications the voter had to meet, but in Texas, the poll tax was, in actuality, the only major legal barrier to voting in that state. In Alabama, the poll tax was even more important since few voters could qualify under its limitless cumulative provision. Only Georgia's poll tax could lay claim to being as strict. The last state, Georgia, had had a poll tax almost from the time of its entry into the Union. While it is not unique in having had earlier head taxes in its history before the southern system was enacted in the 1890's, it is alone in being the only state to retain an earlier poll tax into this period. The nature of its poll tax, however, did not remain unchanged. From 1802 to 1877, Georgia's poll tax was optional rather than mandatory and was of the $1.00 noncumulative variety; since 1877, it took the form of one of the most onerous tax burdens in southern history—a compulsory tax which was both cumulative and unlimited in its time 15 Strictly speaking, Alabama did have a limited cumulative poll tax, setting the limit at $36.00. Practically speaking, this figure was so high as to warrant calling the state a "limitless cumulative poll tax state."

211

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER liability. To realize the potential effect of the Georgia law, McGovney has calculated that a person fifty-nine years of age who had never paid any poll tax would have to pay $47.47 in principal and interest before he could vote.16 Obviously, the cumulative effect was an important one and several states other than Georgia also had cumulative provisions, whether limited or unlimited, in their poll tax laws: Alabama, Florida (until 1896), Louisiana, Mississippi, and Virginia. The cumulative provision was, however, not the only important feature of poll tax laws. Such laws also varied on matters like the age limit of liability, the dates when the poll tax could be paid, and the evidence required of poll tax payment at election time. Table 6.2 shows the variation among states with regard to several of these descriptive aspects of the poll tax. For example, states varied considerably on the age limit of liability—while many states required poll tax payment from people up to sixty years of age, some required the age limit to be only forty-five (Alabama), fifty (North Carolina), or fifty-five (Florida). These latter states should be less affected in their voter participation rates than the earlier ones, all other things being equal, since they exempted more people from their poll tax laws. Another variation among states is the date by which the voter had to pay his poll tax. This can have a telling effect on how poll tax laws relate to voter participation; as V. O. Key, Jr., notes, "In most states the payment date was deliberately fixed far in advance of the voting to reduce the number of voters."17 Some states were more lenient in this regard than others; for example, Florida and Tennessee allowed payment up to thirty days before the election, whereas Arkansas and Louisiana specified payment in the year before the election. Yet another source of variation is whether states required the voter or the state to produce proof of payment of the poll tax at election time. Unfortunately, as crucial as this information seems to be, it is difficult to find mention of state practices in this regard in many of the state statute books. We might assume that all entries marked "unknown" in Table 6.2 required the state to provide the burden of proof, but this may not be totally accurate. It does seem fair to say, however, that, when a state required the voter to take the initiative to prove payment, the state usually went to great lengths to state this in the poll tax statute. When proof of payment was required of the voter, it usually was in the form of the poll tax receipt —the voter taking the receipt with him to the polls. When required by the state, the tax collector would prepare lists of voters who had paid 16 17

212

McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley, 121. Key, Southern Politics, 586.

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING TABLE 6.2 DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF POLL TAX LAWS IN

SOUTHERN STATES, 1890-1918

Age Annual liability' rate

States Solid South Alabama Arkansas*

Over 21, $1.50 Under 45 Over 21 $1.00

Florida0

Over 21,

$1.00

Georgia

Over 21, Under 60 Over 21, Under 60 Over 21, Under 60 Over 21, Under 50 Over 21, Under 60 Over 21, Under 60 Over 21

$1.00

Over 21

$1.00

Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina3 Texas Virginia Border States Tennessee

$1.00 $2.00 $1.29 $1.00 $1.50 $1.50

Cumulative provision

Maximum state Proof of cumula- tax paytion ment

Payment dates

Oct. 1-Feb. 1 before election Jan. 1-July 1 None Voter of year before election Two years pre- $2.00 Unknown At least 30 days before election ceding election By April 1 before Entire period None Unknown election of liability By Dec. 31 before Two years pre- $2.00 Voter election ceding election By Feb. 1 before Two years pre- $4.00 Voter ceding election election None Unknown By March 1 before None election None Voter At least six months None before election By Feb. 1 before None Voter None election At least six months Three years pre- $4.50 State before election ceding election Entire period of liability None

$36.00

State

None

None

Either

At least 30 days before election

* The "age liability" category refers only to males since women's suffrage was not enacted in the South until 1920. h Arkansas's poll tax was inoperative in the 1906 and 1908 elections. 0 Florida changed to a noncumulative law in 1896. It defined the age liability as males over 21 and under 55. 4 The law listed for South Carolina was the one used in the 1898-1918 period. In 1896, South Carolina had a slightly different law, defining the age liability as males over 21 and under 55. the tax for the election registrar. Whether requiring the voter to show proof of payment hampers turnout is a controversial question. Key believes that it had little such effect.18 Others, such as Porter, argue to the contrary—that Negroes were in particular unaccustomed to preserving records and hence would often forget or lose their poll tax receipts. 19 If proof of payment by the voter did have some effect on 18 19

Ibid., 587. Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States, 209.

213

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER voter participation, then states such as Arkansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas should show these effects in the data. The other part of the southern system, the literacy test, began with Mississippi in 1892. There were certain earlier precedents for educational qualifications for voting which came from select northern states, but it took a southern state such as Mississippi to expand on these laws with its own "understanding and interpretation" clause. The earlier northern laws of literacy—being able to read and write in English— were not sufficient for the southern problem. Following Mississippi's lead, seven other states adopted literacy tests for voting. Of these seven, four adopted some variant of Mississippi's understanding and interpretation clause, although two of these four states kept such a clause operative for only a single election. Few people understand the exact nature of the Mississippi understanding and interpretation clause. Many assume that all citizens, in order to qualify to vote, had to meet the particular requirements of this clause. While this may have been the situation in reality, the law states that it was an alternative way to qualify for the vote if one could not read the section of the state (or federal) constitution presented to him. A person who could not read a given section of the constitution might still qualify as an elector if he could "understand" and give a "reasonable interpretation" of that section when it was read to him. Of course, the understanding and interpretation clause allowed considerable discretion on the part of the election officials as to who qualified under it. What might be a reasonable interpretation to one election official might not be to another. Especially in the case of the Negro, this discretion could easily be used as a method of discrimination, leading McGovney to explicitly state that southern states adopted literacy tests "primarily to curtail the Negro vote."20 The understanding and interpretation clause could work in the opposite direction as well—keeping people in the electorate who did not qualify as being literate. According to southern politicians at the time, it was primarily implemented to keep the illiterate white in the electorate; its secondary purpose was to disfranchise the black. Whether, in fact, it was actually used to keep the illiterate white in the electorate is difficult to ascertain. To conclude this, one would have to assume a conscious effort on the part of election officials to pass the poor and illiterate white on the interpretation test. On the other hand, there is some indication that such favoritism was not that prevalent. Although 20

214

McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley, 60.

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING not placing great emphasis on this point, Key speculates that the upper class Bourbon stock of the South might have wished to disfranchise the poor white community since it was a potential source of support for the Populist and Republican parties. 21 Even if no Bourbon conspiracy existed, the fact that many southern states passed other alternatives to the literacy test at this time—such as property tests and grandfather clauses—might indicate that the "Mississippi clause" was not working in the spirit in which it was supposedly enacted. Such legislative actions emphasize the southern dilemma in this period—trying to find workable laws which would disfranchise the black but not the white. While other alternatives existed, it seems, on balance, that the "understanding clause" was of less help in keeping the illiterate white in the electorate than is popularly believed. The particular type of literacy test and alternatives that each state adopted is shown in Table 6.3. For example, South Carolina, the first state to follow Mississippi's lead, passed in 1895 the complete Mississippi package: a reading test with an understanding alternative. In 1898, it abandoned the understanding alternative in favor of a property alternative, possibly because the former was disfranchising whites as well as blacks. It also added a writing qualification to its basic reading requirement. 22 One should not discount the intentions of South Carolina in attempting to dissuade Negro participation at the polls simply because it abolished the understanding clause. As Porter relates, the "writing test (in South Carolina) could be made particularly severe for the Negro for he must make out without a mistake all his papers of application to be registered."23 The reading test could be made equally difficult, a few mistakes on a particularly complex passage in the constitution being adequate justification for voter disqualification. Louisiana ended the 1890's by passing a reading-writing literacy test with a grandfather clause alternative, but then quickly discarded the latter item two years later. However, despite its rapid reversal, Louisiana was the first state to devise a grandfather clause, a particularly crafty device to allow illiterate whites to vote according to the following method: "No male person who was on January 1st, 1867, or at any date prior thereto, entitled to vote under the Constitution or statutes of any State of the United States, wherein he then resided, and no son or grandson of any such person not less than twenty-one years of age at 21

Key, Southern Politics, ch. 25. To understand hoXv to read Table 6.3, see footnote "a" of this table. 23 Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States, 211. 22

215

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER TABLE 6.3 DESCRIPTIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF LITERACY TEST LAWS AND THEIR ALTERNATIVES IN SOUTHERN STATES,

States Solid South Alabama 1902 1904-1918 Georgiab 1908-1914 1916-1918 Louisiana 1898 1900-1918 Mississippi North Carolina 1902-1908 1910-1918 South Carolina 1896 1898-1918 Virginia 1902 1904-1918 Border States Oklahoma 1912-1914 1916-1918 a

Reading

Writing

X X

X X

X X

X X

X X X

X X

X X

X X

X X

X

Understanding alternative

X X

1890-1918"

Grandfather clause alternative

Property alternative

X

X X

X

X X

X X X X X X

X

X

X

X X

X X

X

"X's" in the table denote the type of literacy test law and alternatives used in any given state. For example, the state of North Carolina (1902-1908) required the voter to be able to read and write any section of the state constitution, but if the voter was unable to do this, he could attempt to qualify under the grandfather clause alternative. A more complex example would be Georgia (1908-1914) in which if a voter could not initially qualify under the read and write provisions, he had available three alternatives by which to qualify: the understanding clause (only for the physically disabled: see below), the grandfather clause, and the property test. b Georgia is unique among the states having understanding alternatives in that only people unable to read and write because of physical disability are allowed to use the understanding alternative. However, Georgia softens this clause with another which states that anyone understanding the duties and obligations of citizenship under a republican form of government and being of good character can also qualify for the vote even if they are not physically disabled.

216

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING the date of the adoption of this Constitution . . . shall be denied the right to register and vote in this State by reason of his failure to possess the educational or property qualifications. . . ."24 While a clever device, such clauses, like Louisiana's, were temporary in nature. They allowed registration for only a short period of time—in the case of Louisiana, only up to September 1, 1898. The purposes of such clauses were to allow almost any native white resident the right to register to vote in a specified time period without taking the literacy test (and, in some states, without qualifying under the property tests). For the laws to have any measurable impact in inflating voting rates, masses of native white southerners, previously disqualified to vote, would have to take the initiative to register in the short time period allotted (see Table 6.3 for a rough estimate of the time period allotted by each state). According to Porter, this seemed unlikely to occur: "In order to acquire suffrage under its terms the white man must usually confess penury and illiteracy, and not many choose to do that. The grandfather clause also is intended to operate for a short time in any case."25 The status of the grandfather clause eventually was resolved in 1915 when Oklahoma's version of it was declared unconstitutional by the United States Supreme Court. By that time, however, hardly any southern states were still using it. The remaining states to adopt the literacy test after the turn of the century all provided one or more alternatives, such as the grandfather clause, to the basic reading and writing requirements. Two states allowed property alternatives (Alabama, Georgia); four states, grandfather clauses (Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, and Oklahoma); and two states, understanding clauses (Georgia and Virginia). Some of these alternatives were operative for only one or two elections at most, but all seem to reflect a basic trend of southern states, learning from the earlier experiences of Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana, in their attempt to allow the poor and illiterate white to vote (or at least making a legal pretense of doing so) while excluding the Negro. The classic example of these maneuvers was Georgia in 1908. Georgia passed one of the most complex laws in southern history, allowing three separate alternatives to the literacy test: the grandfather clause, understanding clause, and property test.26 Actually, there was a fourth as well: "All persons who are of good character and understand the 24

This passage is from the Louisiana Constitution of 1898 and is quoted in Key, Southern Politics, 538. 25 Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States, 220. 26 The understanding clause in Georgia was quite different from the other southern states. For an explanation of it, see the footnotes to Table 6.3.

217

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER duties and obligations of citizenship under a republican form of government could be registered if the local registrar so desired." Whether this maze of alternatives inflated turnout will be investigated below. After this detailed description of the literacy test, its numerous alternatives, and the earlier discussed poll tax, it would seem an easy task to classify states according to the stringency of their suffrage laws. Any such classification, however, would be unable to include one vital ingredient: the method of enforcement of these laws. How laws are enforced—especially the consistency and strength of this enforcement— are vital to predicting their effects on voting patterns. Colorful descriptions of this period often relate that a simple reading-writing literacy test, because of the way in which it was enforced, might have as much effect on voting patterns as a limitless cumulative poll tax. Some provisions, such as the understanding clause, could work in many varied ways depending on how they were enforced. If enforced strictly for both races, turnout would sharply decline on a general front. If enforced only for the blacks, illiterate whites would be able to remain in the electorate or to come back in if previously disfranchised, resulting in a lesser dampening of the vote turnout curve. While such crosscurrents could possibly happen, we shall generally assume that the understanding clause had far greater weight in disfranchising people than in keeping them in the electorate. The motivation of voters, once disfranchised, to come back into the electorate would have to be considerable, especially among the class of people who normally lack such an interest in politics (that is, the poor and illiterate). Despite our lack of knowledge of how many of these laws were enforced, an attempt will be made to classify southern states on the stringency of their suffrage laws. The basis of this classification will be the written contents of the laws themselves with the one exception that we shall assume the understanding clause was more usually employed as a disfranchising rather than a refranchising device. Table 6.4 shows our four-category scheme. In the first category of "nonstringent" states are found Kentucky, Maryland, and West Virginia, states which had neither a poll tax nor a literacy test in this period. The second category of "low stringent" states includes all states who had either a poll tax or a literacy test but not both.27 The placement of states in the next two categories is somewhat arbitrary, admittedly splitting somewhat "fine 27 The authors actually assumed that the combination "literacy test without a poll tax" was not quite as severe in its effects on voting behavior as the combination "poll tax without a literacy test." However, since there was only one state with the former combination, we included it in the same category as the "poll tax only" states.

218

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING TABLE 6.4 CLASSIFICATION OF SOUTHERN STATES ACCORDING TO THE STRINGENCY OF THEIR SOUTHERN SYSTEM LAWS, 1890-1918

Nonstringent states

(D Kentucky Maryland West Virginia

Low stringent states (2) Arkansas Florida Oklahoma Tennessee Texas

Moderately stringent states (3) North Carolina South Carolina

Highly stringent states (4) Alabama Georgia Louisiana Mississippi Virginia

hairs" between the two since all these states had both poll taxes and literacy tests. In category three, we have placed North and South Carolina, states with adequately restrictive literacy tests but rather mild poll tax tests by comparison with the states in category four. The states in category four all had cumulative poll tax provisions, unlike the Carolinas, and, at least, adequately restrictive literacy tests. Alabama and Georgia are distinguished by the most severe poll tax laws in the South, although two reservations must be noted in the case of Georgia: (1) its poll tax was enacted long before the other states, possibly implying that its major effects on voting behavior would have occurred years before the southern system was introduced, and (2) its literacy test law was unique in allowing so many substitutes to the basic reading-writing provisions. Alabama is a better example of states in this category, having a very stringent cumulative poll tax and only the basic reading-writing provisions in its literacy test (that is, no grandfather clause or property substitutes). Mississippi is another good example, having a cumulative tax which must be paid a year before election time (evidenced by a poll tax receipt) and a basic reading literacy test with an understanding alternative to disfranchise blacks. This classification, of course, only notes the formal powers of these suffrage requirements as they appear in the statutes. Any actual prediction to their effects on voting behavior would assume that formal or written powers are translated one for one in their effects on behavior. We have no necessary reason to believe that this is the case—that states with just one law will show less effects on behavior than states with two laws or that a unique combination of a given type of poll tax law and literacy test law for one state will produce more powerful effects on behavior than another unique combination of the two for another state. 219

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER Exactly what the relation of formal powers and various unique combinations of laws is on behavior is a research problem which needs empirical testing. Before we proceed to such analysis, one last historical question needs to be raised: what was the intent of legislators in passing these laws? Was it, as Porter, McGovney, and Woodward believe, to stop the political participation of the Negro, or, as Key suggests, partially a Bourbon effort to disfranchise the lower class whites? Unraveling the answer to this question could lead us to better predictions as to the effects of these laws, since we presumably will have more informed judgments about which groups of people these laws were aimed at. Unfortunately, the historical record can only give indications of legislative intent in this period, not conclusive evidence as to the motivations involved. Porter, in his research, found the primary intent of southern legislation to be disfranchisement of the Negro. He states: "Twenty-five years after the war, during which time the Negro had the support of state and federal law, the South deliberately and with clearly expressed intention set about the business of constitutionally depriving the Negro of his vote."28 It seems no chance occurrence that the state which initiated the southern system—Mississippi—was a state with a Negro population greater than 50 percent; that the first two states to follow Mississippi —South Carolina and Louisiana—also had similar racial distributions; and that the southern system, in general, was more often adopted in the Solid South than in the Border States. If the primary intent of legislators was, as Key tentatively hypothesizes, to disfranchise lower class whites because of their possible sympathy with Republican and Populist causes, one would have expected a more enthusiastic acceptance of the southern system in the more closely competitive Border States than in the Black Belt states with their relative noncompetitiveness. The major effect of the laws on the poor white community would seem to be more an accidental byproduct of the laws or a secondary intent of the legislators rather than their primary intent. McGovney, in his research, found that the proponents of the southern system in at least four states openly asserted that the primary purpose of its adoption was to curtail the Negro vote.29 The four states were Tennessee, Virginia, Arkansas, and Texas. At the same time, McGovney believes that, regardless of the legislators' intent, the laws were more effective in diminishing the white vote, since the Negroes were barred 28 29

220

Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States, 208. McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley, 110.

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING from the Democratic party primary, the real arena of electoral decision making. This raises the question of when the party primary system began in the South, a point we will discuss below. For the moment, it would be instructive to look at McGovney's account of two constitutional/electoral sessions which passed the southern system. The examples lend some feeling and color to an understanding of this era. With regard to Virginia, McGovney quotes a delegate at its 1901-1902 constitutional convention as saying: "There stands out the uncontroverted fact that the article of suffrage which the convention will this day adopt does not necessarily deprive a single white man of the ballot, but will inevitably cut from the existing electorate four-fifths of the Negro voters" (applause). 30 At another point, speaking of the understanding clause, the chairman of the suffrage committee report said: "I expect the examination with which the black man will be confronted to be inspired by the same spirit that inspires every man upon this floor and in the convention. I do not expect an impartial administration of this clause."81 With regard to the Arkansas election of 1892 in which the people of the state voted on the poll tax issue, McGovney reports that the election was fought on the issue and slogan of "white supremacy." No other issue stood out as clear.32 Colorful examples such as these seem to get at the crux of the problem, and yet words are not necessarily the same as motivations. Also, the frank accounts of the Virginia convention are not always repeated elsewhere in other conventions because of fear that statements on the record could be used against the state in possible court cases. Yet, it seems that the words used or the pattern of behavior seen with regard to the adoption of the southern system leaves little room for doubt. Even Key notes examples in Southern Politics in which the possibility of Negro political action in the 1890's left fear in the hearts of diehard southerners. The famous Tillman dynasty in South Carolina was one example of this, Tillman fearing black opposition to him and his Democratic party candidates. The political battles in Georgia in the 1890's and early 1900's were another case in point.33 The supposedly disfranchised Negroes of the 1880's were still seemingly seen as a threat to certain white politicians in the 1890's, either because they were not, in effect, out of the system as yet, or because they were out of the system at that point but always remained a threat to reenter it. Populists and s» Ibid., 134. 31 This statement is quoted in Porter, A History of Suffrage in the United States, 218. 32 McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley, 139. ss Key, Southern Politics, 548-550.

221

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER Republicans often were quite active in appealing for the Negro vote at times when it supposedly was nonexistent in the South.34 Key's alternative notion that it may have been the intent of some southerners to remove fellow whites from the polls could also be true. Obviously, evidence of this is very difficult to find in the record, for if it occurred, it would be done covertly in the name of "white supremacy" and "Negro disfranchisement." While not disregarding this notion, the more important matter is what actual effect the laws had in disfranchising the southern white. Key believes that they had some effect, but discounts them as major causal factors. Certainly, however, the southern states themselves were aware of this problem, since increasingly over time they began to adopt alternative legislation to keep the southern white in the electorate while still disfranchising the black. Legislators feared Negro participation at the polls and passed legislation expressly to discourage it. Another consequence of this legislation, perhaps largely unforeseen in the beginning, was to remove many of the poor whites from the electoral ranks as well. This is an important effect in itself, but the more crucial question at this stage is why southern legislators went to such trouble to remove Negroes from the polls if they already had (1) a noncompetitive Solid South and (2) a party primary system which, without need of legal means, could eliminate the Negro from participation. Such are the arguments loosely presented by writers on the subject. With regard to point ( 1 ) , much of the Solid South was really not so "solid" as imagined, as a casual glance at the electoral statistics for this period will show. This was especially true in the first decade of the southern system, the campaigns of 1892 and 1896, in particular, producing several close elections. Even after the turn of the century, some states had reasonably close elections, close enough to insure that voter participation in the general election could still have some meaning to the individual. Resolving point (2) rests on an exact determination of the date when the party primary replaced the convention system in the South. Obviously, this varied with the state of concern, but the trouble is that no historical research has clearly specified these dates. Key has stated: "It seems probable . . . that the white primary originated in the South about as early as the direct primary method of nomination. The reduction of the Republican Party to impotence in the counterattack against the Populist revolt carried with it the virtual necessity for adoption of the direct primary." 35 And, in another chapter, Key adds: "The repression of competition between Democrats and Republican-Populist fusions in the Southern states in the 1890's accelerated the demise of a* Ibid., ch. 25.

222

35

Ibid., 619-620.

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING the convention as a nominating method. The direct primary, through statute or party rule, replaced the convention for most nominations . . ."3e At another point, Key lists the present statutes for run-offs in the primaries which might give some indication of initial primary adoption dates: Alabama, 1931; Arkansas, 1939; Florida, 1929; Georgia, 1917; Louisiana, 1922; Mississippi, 1902; North Carolina, 1915; South Carolina, 1915; Texas, 1918.37 In any event, it seems that the party primary did not come before 1900 in the South and most probably some time later (such as the 1910's when the primary system became popular in the North), indicating that southerners did not have a closed system in the 1890's and early 1900's by which they could guarantee the election regardless of Negro participation. The South wanted and seemingly needed to curtail voter participation in this period. Whether they were successful will be answered by the data analysis to follow. Ill ANALYTIC RESULTS

are several different ways by which one can determine the effect of the southern system on voter participation. We shall pursue four different strategies in order to look for consistency in results among the several strategies used. Each way or method can be viewed as a possible separate verification of the central theses of this study. Strategies will include "immediate" before-after tests, "extended" before-after tests, Campbell's notion of a "time frame" comparison (that is, comparison of pairs of adjacent election years), and "within-year" analysis tests. We will also investigate not only the gross differences between poll tax and non-poll tax states (or literacy test and non-Kteracy test states), but also whether certain types of poll taxes and literacy tests had different effects from others. The question of a possible cumulative effect in states with both poll tax and literacy tests also will be investigated. THERE

IMMEDIATE BEFORE-AFTER TESTS

One of the first hypotheses that should be tested with any legalinstitutional theory is the notion of fairly immediate effects occurring after a law has been introduced. Translated in terms of our particular research problem, a decline in voter turnout should have occurred shortly after the introduction of the poll tax and literacy test. Often scholars believe that such effects must be large in nature and come in se Ibid., 417.

w Ibid., 417.

223

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER the first election after the law has been enacted. Actually, however, the size and timing of the effects depend on the particular kind of institutional factor being introduced and the type of political environment preceding it. For some laws, the effect will be immediate because there is such an abrupt change in the environment which people cannot avoid, but for others, the close resemblance of the law to earlier laws would produce a slow change in behavior on the part of people, allowing some lapse in time before sizable effects are noticed.38 In the case of the poll tax and literacy test, it would appear that these constituted abrupt changes, sharp breaks from the preceding environment, which should produce immediate and sizable effects in disfranchising scores of people. The later stages of behavior, in this case, would probably work in the opposite direction—eventually some people might attempt to overcome these obstacles to the vote, unless the South's ultimate movement to a noncompetitive era would discourage this. Tables 6.5 to 6.10 show the immediate effects of the poll tax and literacy test laws on our indices of voter participation. All tables have the same general format, listing for each state the turnout value in the TABLE 6.5 PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT VALUES OF STATES IN LAST ELECTION BEFORE AND FIRST AND SECOND ELECTION YEARS OF POLL TAX USE 3

Last election before poll tax (t~l)

First election after poll tax (t+1)

Alabama Arkansas Florida Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Texas Virginia

38.8 55.6 78.2 35.5 44.1 85.7 28.9 60.3 59.6

24.2 51.9 35.5 21.7 18.4 70.2 26.2 29.2 27.6

14.6 3.7 42.7 13.8 25.7 15.5 2.7 31.1 32.0

21.6 41.2 40.0 15.5 22.0 46.0 18.0 32.8 27.4

17.2 14.4 38.2 20.0 22.1 39.7 10.9 27.5 32.2

Border States Tennessee

79.2

64.0

15.2

71.4

7.8

States

Difference Second election Difference value after poll tax value (t - 1/t + 1) (t + 2) (t - 1/t + 2)

Solid South

a

Georgia will not be listed in this and subsequent poll tax tables because it adopted its poll tax before the southern system was introduced. 38 For a fuller explanation of this point with regard to another legal-institutional variable (the ballot), see Rusk, "The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split Ticket Voting: 1876-1908." Also see Jerrold G. Rusk, "Communications to the Editor," American Political Science Review, 65 (December 1971), 1152-1157.

224

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING TABLE 6.6 PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT VALUES OF STATES IN LAST ELECTION BEFORE AND FIRST AND SECOND ELECTION YEARS OF LITERACY TEST USE

Last election before literacy test

Second election after literacy Difference test value (t + 2) (t-l/t + 2)

(t-D

First election after literacy test (t + 1)

Difference value (t - 1/t + 1)

Solid South Alabama Georgia Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Virginia

38.8 24.0 35.5 44.1 70.2 28.9 59.6

24.2 22.4 21.7 18.4 46.0 26.2 27.6

14.6 1.6 13.8 25.7 24.2 2.7 32.0

21.6 19.2 15.5 22.0 51.9 18.0 27.4

17.2 3.2 20.0 22.1 18.3 10.9 32.2

Border States Oklahoma

68.8

55.6

13.2

58.8

10.0

States

TABLE 6.7 CONGRESSIONAL TURNOUT VALUES OF STATES IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEARS FOR LAST ELECTION BEFORE AND FDSST AND SECOND ELECTIONS OF POLL TAX USE

Difference Second election Difference value after poll tax value (t - 1/t + 1) (t + 2) (t - 1/t + 2)

Last election before poll tax (t-D

First election after poll tax (t + 1)

Solid South Alabama Arkansas Florida Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Texas Virginia

34.4 51.7 78.2 34.2 43.9 84.8 26.1 58.5 60.5

22.9 52.5 35.6 21.5 18.1 70.1 17.8 31.3 28.0

11.5 -0.8 42.6 12.7 25.8 14.7 8.3 27.2 32.5

20.7 40.9 36.4 15.1 20.8 46.2 18.8 32.1 28.0

13.7 10.8 41.8 19.1 23.1 38.6 7.3 26.4 32.5

Border States Tennessee

78.1

61.7

16.4

70.2

7.9

States

225

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER TABLE 6.8 CONGRESSIONAL TURNOUT VALUES OF STATES IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION YEARS FOR LAST ELECTION BEFORE AND FIRST AND SECOND ELECTIONS OF LITERACY TEST USE

Second election after literacy Difference test value (t + 2) (t-l/t + 2)

Last election before literacy test (t-1)

First election after literacy test

(t + D

Difference value (t - 1/t + 1)

Solid South Alabama Georgia Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Virginia

34.4 18.0 34.2 43.9 70.1 28.2 60.5

22.9 16.2 21.5 18.1 46.2 26.1 28.0

11.5 1.8 12.7 25.8 23.9 2.1 32.5

20.7 18.4 15.1 20.8 52.0 17.8 28.0

13.7 -0.4 19.1 23.1 18.1 10.4 32.5

Border States Oklahoma

63.2

55.2

8.0

58.1

5.1

States

TABLE 6.9 CONGRESSIONAL TURNOUT VALUES OF STATES IN CONGRESSIONAL ELECTION YEARS FOR LAST ELECTION BEFORE AND FIRST AND SECOND ELECTIONS OF POLL TAX USE

Last election before poll tax (t-D

First election after poll tax (t + 1)

Alabama Arkansas Florida Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Texas Virginia

21.9 44.2 72.1 42.3 18.3 82.6 25.1 45.6 26.9

21.0 18.9 47.7 11.2 23.3 45.3 11.7 20.6 17.7

0.9 25.3 24.4 31.1 —5.0 37.3 13.4 25.0 9.2

14.0 9.2 24.2 8.0 13.0 43.2 11.0 22.0 19.6

7.9 35.0 47.9 34.3 5.3 39.4 14.1 23.6 7.3

Border States Tennessee

62.9

48.8

14.1

52.7

10.2

States

Difference Second election Difference after poll tax value value (t - 1/t + 1) (t + 2) (t - 1/t + 2)

Solid South

226

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING TABLE 6.10

CONGRESSIONAL TURNOUT VALUES OF STATES IN CONGRESSIONAL

ELECTION YEARS FOR LAST ELECTION BEFORE AND FIRST AND SECOND ELECTIONS OF LITERACY TEST USE

Last election before literacy test States

Border States Oklahoma

Second election after literacy Difference test value (t + 2) (t-l/t +

(t + D

Difference value (t - 1/t + 1)

21.9 5.9 42.3 23.3 82.6 25.1 39.6

21.0 9.1 11.2 13.0 45.3 11.7 26.9

0.9 -3.2 31.1 10.3 37.3 13.4 12.7

14.0 12.5 8.0 8.2 43.2 11.0 17.7

7.9 -6.6 34.3 15.1 39.4 14.1 21.9

53.8

52.4

1.4

36.5

17.3

(t-1)

Solid South Alabama Georgia Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Virginia

First election after literacy test

last election before (t — 1) and the first two elections after (t + 1, t + 2) the law was introduced. Also listed are the appropriate "difference values" for each state (the t — 1/t + 1 and t — 1/t + 2 differences ). These difference values comment on whether a legal effect occurred in the first or second election after a state adopted a southern system law. Difference values for the congressional race are computed separately for presidential and off-year elections and presented in separate tables. Since these two types of elections have different characteristics and stimuli, they should not be mixed together when analyzing the effects laws have on voter participation in the congressional race. Tables 6.5 and 6.6 focus on the effect of the southern system on presidential vote participation. In Table 6.5, all poll tax states, except Arkansas and South Carolina, show immediate and large changes in voting turnout in their first presidential election after the poll tax law was passed. Even for Arkansas and South Carolina, sizable differences begin to appear in their second presidential election under the poll tax. What is noteworthy about the small differences in the first election year of poll tax use for these two states is that they occurred in the extraordinary election of 1896. No other southern state first used the poll tax in this presidential election, prompting the belief that this high-stimulus election may have been the reason these two states experienced lesser effects from the poll tax than other states in their first presidential election year of poll tax usage. As for the rest of the

227

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER states, some of their difference values are quite high—42.7, 32.0, 31.1, 25.7—and others are sufficiently noteworthy—15.5, 15.2, 14.6, 13.8— to indicate a major change in voting patterns. What is more, all states show the predicted direction in participation values, even Arkansas and South Carolina. Literacy test states tend to reveal the same pattern of voting behavior as poll tax states. Table 6.6 reveals large difference values for most states in their first presidential election of literacy test use. The exceptions to this pattern are Georgia and South Carolina. The behavior of South Carolina may be explainable in the same terms as before, since it also first used its literacy test law in the 1896 election.39 As for Georgia, most probably the fact that this state had a poll tax law since 1802, and a stringent one since 1877, means that the major depression in voting turnout occurred long before the southern system was enacted, solidifying voting habits and thereby limiting the much later literacy test to only a slight effect on this time-established pattern. This inference is further validated by Georgia's voting behavior in the second election year of literacy test use: the lack of a major spurt in the difference value (from 1.6 to only 3.2) speaks for a much earlier crystallization of voting habits. 40 Tables 6.7 to 6.10 resemble the trends shown in Tables 6.5 and 6.6. When congressional participation is investigated instead of presidential participation, one again observes that states had lower turnout during the period when they used the poll tax or literacy test than before. Most of the difference values are quite large as one would expect. Tables 6.7 and 6.8 show such patterns for the congressional participation variable in presidential election years, while Tables 6.9 and 6.10 reveal these patterns for this variable in congressional election years. AU in all, 92 percent of the difference values (in the first election year) are in the predicted direction. One hundred percent of the difference values follow the predicted path for Tables 6.5 and 6.6, and a grand total of 94 percent do so for all six tables combined. Rarely in the social sciences do we find this degree of consistency in our data. The consistency in our data is all the more remarkable since it most often is the result of immediate and large effects rather than the reverse. These effects are also observed across the entire 1890-1918 time 39

South Carolina was the only southern state to first use its literacy particular election. 40 The same point can be made by comparing the difference value Georgia and South Carolina. Georgia's pattern remains low (1.6 to South Carolina's rises (2.7 to 10.9), indicating the momentary nature and the more permanent character of the second.

228

test in this patterns of 3.2) while of the first

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING

span, instead of being localized in any one particular segment of this era, since states adopted their southern systems at widely varying dates from one another. The congruence between the observation of these effects and the general declines in voter participation shown earlier in Figure 6.1 is readily apparent, leading to the inference that legal factors are the causal explanation for much of the trend in voting patterns at this time. This seems a more reasonable explanation than one stating that the two (legal factors and declining vote participation) merely occurred together by chance or were the result of some third factor which caused both of them. Also, the few exceptions which we noted to these patterns could easily be explained by the past institutional history of a state or by the unique election of 1896. EXTENDED BEFORE-AFTER TESTS

Immediate before-after tests are obviously one of the most crucial analyses to use in documenting the existence of legal-institutional effects. The predictions of such tests are concrete and precise. Effects must occur shortly after the law is introduced and, in this case, they must be sizable in nature. Regardless of when a state passed its poll tax or literacy test law—and the states in this study varied considerably on when they adopted these laws—the effect of the laws must be evident in the voting data. This prediction should be met for every single case, and, if not, suitable alternative explanations must be given to account for any deviation. In this study, all states showed effects in the predicted direction when the legal change occurred, and 80 percent of the poll tax states and 75 percent of the literacy test states registered sizable effects at this time. While immediate before-after tests are one of the most precise ways of testing the hypothesis of legal effects, they are limited in the information they can give us. They are not able to give us any perspective for a state on the effect of the law over a long time span, being limited to the first and second election after the law was passed, nor can they give us estimates of the average effect of these laws. For answers to questions such as these, the analyst must instead use extended beforeafter tests, observing the effect of the law on voting behavior over a series of elections. Mean statistics computed on these series would give estimates of average effects. Such an aggregation across elections within the different legal periods (that is, poll tax/non-poll tax periods) has the advantage of sharpening the accounting of effects attributable to the legal variable while dampening out (through mutual 229

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER cancelling) the effects of any unique election year stimuli. Unique short-term forces are more likely to have some influence on the result in immediate before-after analyses than they are on extended time analyses. Tables 6.11 and 6.12 present the findings for the extended beforeafter analysis. Each table was constructed by taking the five presidential elections before and the five presidential elections after the legal change and computing mean values of the turnout variable for these election periods. Difference values were then computed from these before-after values, resulting in estimates of the average effect of the law in question on the voting patterns of each state. If taking five election years after the law was passed resulted in any overlapping with the women's suffrage period for a state, fewer elections would be selected for this period (and correspondingly for the "before" period) to avoid any contaminating effects that women's suffrage would produce on the turnout values. As Tables 6.11 and 6.12 show, all poll tax and literacy test states had lower turnout values after they passed the southern system of laws. TABLE 6.11

PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT MEANS FOR NON-POLL TAX AND POLL TAX PERIODS OF STATES"

Non-poll tax period

Poll tax period

Difference value

Solid South Alabama Arkansas Florida Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Texas Virginia

53.9 60.3 83.0 46.2 58.4 83.8 38.0 74.2 72.2

23.1 42.3 31.1 19.6 17.9 53.2 19.6 31.7 26.8

30.8 18.0 51.9 26.6 40.5 30.6 18.4 42.5 45.4

Border States Tennessee

73.4

57.6

15.8

Grand Means

64.4

32.3

32.1

States

a

Table entries are means of presidential turnout for the five elections before and the five elections after the poll tax was introduced in a state. A lesser number than five elections was used to compute the "poll tax period" mean only in the case in which one or more of the elections involved were in the women's suffrage period of a state. If this occurred, a corresponding lesser number of elections was also used to compute the mean for the "non-poll tax period."

230

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING TABLE 6.12

PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT MEANS FOR NON-LITERACY TEST AND LITERACY TEST PERIODS OF STATES'1

Non-literacy test period

Literacy test period

Difference value

Alabama Georgia Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Virginia

53.9 28.0 46.2 58.4 80.1 38.0 72.2

23.1 21.9 19.6 17.9 49.0 19.6 26.8

30.8 6.1 26.6 40.5 31.1 18.4 45.4

Border States Oklahoma

68.8

55.6

13.2

Grand Means

55.7

29.2

26.5

States Solid South

" Table entries are means of presidential turnout for the five elections before and the five elections after the literacy test was introduced in a state. A lesser number than five elections was used to compute the "literacy test period" mean only in the case in which one or more of the elections involved were in the women's suffrage period of a state. If this occurred, a corresponding lesser number of elections was also used to compute the mean for the "non-literacy test period."

The states whose laws seemingly had the greatest effect on participation were Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Perusal of Table 6.4 indicates that four of these seven states were placed in our most stringent category, while one other (North Carolina) was put in our next most stringent category. However, two states which show large average effects here were in our low stringent category (Florida and Texas) because they had only one component of the southern system. Apparently this was sufficient for the task at hand. Two states placed in categories 3 and 4 of Table 6.4—South Carolina and Georgia—do not reveal as large an effect upon voting as these other states, but other circumstances probably intervened to confound these results. The average effects of poll tax and literacy test laws would seem to be 32.1 percent and 26.5 percent, respectively. However, since many states had both laws and their period of overlap in election coverage was substantial, these values can, at this point, be best viewed as the approximate average effect of the southern system in general. If a secular decline in participation was occurring at the same time partially for other reasons than the southern system, then the average effect of 231

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER these laws would be some meaningful portion of 32.1 percent and 26.5 percent. Thus far, no other analysis has been performed relating other possible variables to this decline in voter participation, although general comments to the effect that the South was increasingly becoming noncompetitive are used as an alternative explanation for this voting phenomenon. To the extent that such an explanation has merit, one would have to ascertain its relative impact on such patterns and to determine if, indeed, this explanation was not compatible with that of the southern system. The trends evidenced in Tables 6.11 and 6.12 appear again for comparable analyses using the congressional turnout index. Although these tables are not shown here, they reveal that the poll tax and literacy test laws seriously dampened voter participation in congressional races as well, in both presidential and off-year elections. Most of the difference values are large, and many even exceed their corresponding values for the presidential race. As an illustration of this, the figures for the average effect of the southern system on turnout in off-year elections lie between 22.2 percent and 28.8 percent. The corresponding figures for the presidential race are 26.5 percent and 32.1 percent, indicating that the southern system was probably largely responsible for reducing the electorate by some 22 percent to 32 percent in both presidential and off-year elections. The problems associated with extended before-after analysis seem straightforward. While such an analysis is valuable in tempering and even cancelling out the influence of short-term stimuli, it is susceptible to being contaminated by a long-term secular trend in the data which could be caused by factors other than those examined in the analysis. While we know that such a secular trend exists (see Figure 6.1), we have maintained that the southern system, rather than other factors, is mainly responsible for it. If this is true, the data should behave in a certain way with regard to this secular trend, a way which can be uncovered by Campbell's "time frame" technique. CAMPBELL'S TIME FRAME ANALYSIS

Basically, Campbell's notion of time frame analysis is comparing the size of difference values for adjacent pairs of elections in a state. If single elections in each pairing seem too susceptible to short-term influences, an extension of the technique is readily available by including two or more elections in each element of the comparison. For example, if two elections were used as the basic element of comparison, the

232

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING analysis would yield the mean difference scores for all possible combinations of contiguous sets of two elections.41 For our purposes, we shall simply use the single election as our basic element of comparison, taking difference values on the presidential turnout measure between all pairs of adjacent elections included in the time frame for a given state. (Generally, the number of elections included in the time frame for any state will be ten, the five elections before and the five elections after the legal change. If the latter infringes on the women's suffrage period for a state, necessary modifications to the time frame will be made.) The objective in using the time frame is to discover which difference values are the largest. Certainly, for the legal-institutional theory to have merit, one of the largest difference values should occur in the crucial t — 1/t + 1 paired comparison. There may be one or two others as well in the time frame, denoting other secular trends in the data or the particularly explosive impact of short-term forces in a given election. What one would not expect to see is a large number of sizable difference values, indicating a general secular trend in the data in which any legal change occurring at some point in the trend would not display a difference value out of the ordinary from those generated by the trend itself. The ideal pattern for difference values in a time frame analysis—if one wished to validate the legal-institutional theory —would be small difference values prior to and after the legal change, the only large value being the crucial t — 1/t -j- 1 comparison which sets the single trend in the data: the sharp break from one plateau of voter participation to another.42 Tables 6.13 and 6.14 lay out the difference values for. the time frame analysis of presidential vote participation. Each table includes nine difference values per state (unless modified because of women's suffrage or other factors listed in the footnotes to the tables). In Table 6.13 containing the poll tax states, the analysis shows five "pure" patterns (Florida, Louisiana, Texas, Tennessee, and Virginia), three "very good" patterns (Alabama, Mississippi, and North Carolina), and two "poor" patterns (Arkansas and South Carolina). A "pure" pattern is one in which the largest difference value occurs at the time the poll tax was implemented. In the oases of Florida and Virginia, no other differ41 See Donald T. Campbell, "Reforms as Experiments," American Psychologist, 24 (May 1969), 409-429; see also Donald T. Campbell and Julian C. Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research, Chicago, 1966. 42 Conceivably, (here might be larger difference values after the t — 1/t + 1 comparison than before if some southerners were attempting to overcome the legal obstacles to the vote.

233

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER TABLE 6.13 T I M E FRAME ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT DIFFERENCE VALUES FOR POLL TAX STATES11

States

t-S/ t-4

t-4/ t-3

t-3/ t-2

Solid South Alabama Arkansas* Florida Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina" Texas Virginia

— -13.9 1.0 -8.0 -3.5 — — —

-11.9 — 4.5 0.2 29.1 0.1 40.2 -0.9 7.8

-8.6

-0.1

Border States Tennessee

t-2/ t-1

t-1/ t + 1/ t + 2/ t+1 t+2 t+3

t + 3/ t+4

t + 4/ t+

16.7 -5.4 3.5 4.6 1.2 7.5 7.9 -11.2 4.4

13.0 9.8 4.6 9.6 4.4 -7.2 6.1 26.3 11.3

14.6 3.7 42.7 13.8 25.7 15.5 2.7 31.1 32.0

2.6 10.7 -4.5 6.2 -3.6 24.2 8.2 -3.6 0.2

-1.1 7.3 11.2 -4.2 5.0 -5.9 -0.5 2.4 1.7

-1.3 — 5.8 0.3 1.5 5.3 -2.1 -4.0 -1.0

— -2.1 -2.1 -0.9 -4.9 6.0 — —

1.2

-6.0

15.2

-7.4

14.8

8.9

-0.4

* Table entries are presidential turnout difference values between adjacent election years. For instance, the t — 1/t + 1 value of 14.6 for Alabama is computed by subtracting the t + 1 presidential turnout value for Alabama (24.2) from the t - 1 value (38.8), resulting in the 14.6 figure. The order of the subtraction is given in the table, the second element of any election pairing being always subtracted from the first. Thus, we know that a positive value like 14.6 is obtained because the t + 1 value was lower than the t — 1 value. The contrasting case is a value like the —1.1 figure for Alabama in the t + 2/t + 3 comparison, a result of the t + 3 value being larger than the t + 2 value. From this explanation, one should be able to deduce that, if a state succeeded in having a lower turnout value in each succeeding election, all the difference values for that state would be positive in sign. b Arkansas has only two difference values on either side of the legal change because it was forced by the federal government not to use its poll tax in the 1908 election, and we have decided not to pick up further difference values after it reenacted the poll tax in 1910. c South Carolina has missing data for the 1876 election, not allowing a t — 5/t — 4 comparison. ence value comes close to matching the magnitude of this legal change difference. For Louisiana, Texas, and Tennessee, one other difference value approaches the value of the crucial t — 1/t + 1 comparison, and, in each case, the 1896 election figures in as part of this paired comparison. It is obvious again that the intensity of short-term forces in this election caused reverberations in the data. The "very good" patterns are instances in which only one difference value exceeded the magnitude of the legal change difference. In two of these instances, this difference value was far removed in time from the legal change difference, suggesting earlier and different influences which were rather isolated in their effect. The "poor" patterns seemingly show no discernible pattern. Actually both states involved—Arkansas and South Carolina—

234

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING TABLE 6.14

T I M E FRAME ANALYSIS OF PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT DIFFERENCE VALUES FOR LITERACY TEST STATES

t-S/ States

t-4/ t-3

t-3/ t-2

— — —

-11.9 — 0.2 29.1 7.5 40.2 7.8

16.7 11.2 4.6 1.2 -7.2 7.9 4.4

—

—

—

t-4

Solid South Alabama Georgia Louisiana Mississippi North Carolina South Carolina Virginia Border States Oklahoma

— 1.0

-8.0

t-1/ t+1

t + 1/ t + 2/ t + 3/ t + 4/ t+2 t+3 t+4 t+5

13.0 0.4 9.6 4.4 15.5 6.1 11.3

14.6 1.6 13.8 25.7 24.2 2.7 32.0

2.6 3.2 6.2 -3.6 -5.9 8.2 0.2

-1.1 -4.8 -4.2 5.0 5.3 -0.5 1.7

-1.3 — 0.3 1.5 -4.9 -2.1 -1.0

— — -2.1 -0.9 — 6.0 —

—

13.2

-3.2

—

—

—

t-2/ t-1

were the only states to first use their poll tax laws in the 1896 presidential election. Since this election seemed to work at cross-purposes with the new law, no large effect is seen until one passes on to the next election (1900), at which time a sizable effect emerges for both states (the largest difference value for Arkansas and the second largest for South Carolina). Another observation from these tables is that signs of the decline in voting from 1876 to 1880 (see Figure 6.1 above) also show up; note the size of the difference values at the beginning of several of the states' time frames. Table 6.14 repeats the time frame analysis for the literacy test states. The results are similar to the foregoing: four states have "pure" patterns (Louisiana, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and Virginia), two states have "very good" patterns (Alabama and Mississippi), and two states have "poor" patterns (Georgia and South Carolina). In the states having "very good" patterns, the difference value of concern is only slightly larger than the legal change value and far removed from it in time. The two states with "poor" patterns have been discussed before— Georgia's early experience with the poll tax must be noted, as well as South Carolina's introduction of the poll tax in the 1896 election. It is of interest to point out that South Carolina's second largest difference value comes immediately after the election of 1896 (the much higher earlier value being associated with other factors) and that Georgia's largest value (11.2 percent) is associated with the 1896 election. Of the four "pure" cases, all had sizable difference values: 13.2, 13.8, 24.2, and 32.0. These are comparable to the earlier effects registered in the 235

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER "pure" patterns for the poll tax states: 15.2, 31.1, 32.0, and 42.7. Values of this magnitude indicate the widely sweeping effect of the southern system. Generally, the time frame analysis conforms remarkably well to our earlier findings using the immediate and extended before-after tests. Both the time frame and immediate before-after analyses confirm the rapid effects the southern system had after its introduction, and all three modes of analysis show the large size of these effects. In addition, the same states tend to be identified in all analyses as consistent in their patterns and large in their effects. Deviant cases also turn out to be the same states from analysis to analysis, usually being Arkansas, Georgia, and South Carolina. States not classified as "deviant" can be divided into those with substantial effects (Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, and Virginia) and those with more moderate effects (Oklahoma and Tennessee). Even such states as Arkansas and South Carolina register moderate effects once the 1896 election is passed. The time frame analysis also produces new insights into our understanding of the political processes underlying the 1876-1916 period. This period cannot simply be depicted as the ideal pattern described earlier—two plateaus of voter participation separated by a sharp break due to the southern system. It is apparent that different factors caused some perturbations in the vote patterns in the 1876-1880 period which did not continue in their effects. One is reminded of Key's argument concerning the restoration of the South from northern rule after the troop removal of 1877. One also notes the particular and significant role that the 1896 election played in this era as a possible disruptive factor on legal-institutional patterns. Last, one observes the most dramatic pattern—the immediate and large declines in voting participation occurring at the time the southern system was adopted, usually preceded by fairly low volatility in turnout patterns and usually followed by a settling in of the voting levels established by these legal changes. The southern system undoubtedly worked, in some sense, as an ideal pattern in the limited time period immediately surrounding these legal changes. By the way in which it worked and by the general format of the difference values in the time frame analysis, we can conclude (1) that the legal changes had an important effect on voting patterns and (2) that in no way were such effects an artifact of a general secular decline in voting participation in this period. In fact, we can go further with regard to point (2), stating that no consistent decline in voting participation was shown for the individual states. Rather the declines

236

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION· LAWS ON VOTING came in spurts which, except for the 1876-1880 period, were related to the dates of enactment and consolidation of the southern system. WITHIN-YEAB ANALYSIS TESTS

The last analysis technique to be used is in some ways the most important of the four. Since it does not treat the data longitudinally, it is not susceptible to any long-term secular trends in the data. Consequently, this technique can serve as a second verification of the findings of the extended time analysis, along with the earlier time frame results. The within-year technique is also not concerned with the effects of unique short-term forces on election results, since it assumes, by looking at each election year separately, that all states were more or less exposed to the same short-term stimuli. In essence, this technique freezes trends in the data by looking at each election year separately. It simply predicts that states with a poll tax (or literacy test) in a given election should have a lower average turnout rate than states without a poll tax (or literacy test) in that election. It does not matter if a long-term secular trend exists in the data or not; if the legal-institutional theory has merit, this prediction will match the data results. The reason for this is that, if a secular trend exists, it merely acts as a constant force across all states in a given election, whereas legalinstitutional forces act in a differential manner, dampening voter participation rates in states with poll taxes and literacy tests while allowing the other states without such laws to have higher voter participation rates. The within-year analysis for the presidential turnout variable is presented in Tables 6.15 and 6.16. The tables have but three categories, containing the mean participation values for the non-southern system and southern system states, respectively, and the corresponding difference values. In all presidential elections, the result is the same: poll tax and literacy test states have lower mean participation rates than the other states. Out of a total of fourteen comparisons, all reveal the predicted direction. If the parallel analysis on the congressional participation values is also included in these comparisons (not shown here), then the figure is even more astounding: out of a total of fortythree comparisons, all again show the predicted direction. The consistency of these comparisons is equalled only by their magnitude. In the tables shown, the turnout differences are quite high (often residing in the 30 to 40 percent range). One can use the turnout figures in Table 6.15 to contrast with the

237

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER TABLE 6.15 PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT MEANS OF NON-POLL TAX AND POLL TAX STATES WITHIN ELECTION YEARS FOR THE SOUTH"

Poll tax status

1892

1896

1900

Non-poll tax states Poll tax states Difference values Number of casesb

67.1 42.9 24.2 10,4

75.1 41.2 33.9 8,6

70.5 34.9 35.6 6,8

Election years 1904 1908 78.8 27.8 51.0 3,11

70.2 28.7 41.5 5,10

1912

1916

69.5 26.7 42.8 4,11

73.2 30.9 42.3 4,11

* Cell entries are the mean presidential turnout values in given years for particular groupings of states (those having and those not having a poll tax). * "Number of cases" refers to the number of states on which a given mean presidential turnout value is based. The first entry for any election year refers to the "non-poll tax states" and the second to the "poll tax states." Hence, 67.1 in 1892 is based on the turnout values of ten non-poll tax states, and 42.9, on the turnout values of four poll tax states. TABLE 6.16 PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT MEANS OF NON-LITERACY TEST AND LITERACY TEST STATES WITHIN ELECTION YEARS FOR THE SOUTH

Literacy test status

1892

1896

Election years 1904 1908 1900

Non-literacy test states Literacy test states Difference values Number of cases

63.4 18.4 45.0 13,1

66.6 24.1 42.5 12,2

58.7 18.9 39.8 11,3

1912

1916

49.4 24.6 24.8 8,6

50.4 27.3 23.1 7,8

55.5 30.5 25.0 7,8

57.2 25.7 31.5 8,7

earlier presidential turnout curve shown in Figure 6.1. Figure 6.2 displays the three curves: the overall presidential turnout curve for the South and the two corresponding curves for poll tax and non-poll tax states. The three curves point out two things: the widespread difference in vote patterns between the two types of states, already observed in Table 6.15, and the similar declining patterns of the "poll tax state" and "all state" curves. The latter suggests the dampening effect which poll tax states had on the general turnout curve, pulling it down over the years. As a contrast to this, the "non-poll tax" curve seems to have suffered no corresponding declines, but rather maintained a steady rate over time. Obviously, such states were not hampered by any legal effects which would discourage voting turnout. These curves probably also comment on another matter—Key's notion of the South becoming noncompetitive and hence effecting lower participation rates. If this is true, the non-poll tax states should also 238

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING 80% -, Non-poll tax states 70%

60% \

\ \

50% -

\

\

ν^ v

All Southern states

40% -

Poll tax states

30%

20% -

10% 1892

1896

— I — 1900

—ι— 1904

—,— 1908

1912

—I 1916

FIGURE 6.2 Presidential Turnout Curves for AU Southern States, Poll Tax States, and Non-poll Tax States, 1892-1916 have suffered voting declines, but they did not. The usual reply to this is that most of the "non-poll tax" states were Border States rather than states from the Deep South. However, although this certainly was the case after 1904, it was not the situation prior to this. Given this fact, the "non-poll tax" curve should have declined prior to 1904 if Key's notion is correct; yet it did not. The Deep South states which com­ posed part of the curve with the Border States were seemingly not de­ clining in their voting participation prior to their adoption of the southern system, V. O. Key's argument notwithstanding. 239

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER In summary, we have presented four separate modes of analysis which all convincingly demonstrate that the southern system had an important effect in shaping voting patterns in the South from 1890 to 1918. The evidence is overwhelming in the magnitude of the effects shown and the consistency of the results across all analysis techniques used. There can be little doubt that the southern system is a major, if not the most important, variable accounting for voting turnout trends in this crucial era of southern history. V. O. Key's assertion that the southern system merely registered a "fait accompli" is found to be seriously lacking when examined in detail. We will now turn our attention to the relative effects the poll tax and literacy test components of this system had on voting patterns—what individual effects they had and how they interacted in their effects when used together by given states. SPECIFICATION OF EFFECTS

The reason for specifying the individual effects of the two components of the southern system may be unclear, unless we recall that many states passed both forms of legislation and that these pieces of legislation considerably overlapped in their coverage of elections. When states do this, it makes it more difficult for the analyst to isolate the effects of either legal variable by itself. All the earlier tables mix these effects. One is, in essence, looking at the effect that the poll tax has in one table and the literacy test in another, fully aware that several states are included in both tables because they had both pieces of legislation. What is needed is a more precise accounting of the effects of each variable by itself and then a subsequent analysis of how these two variables interact in their effects. There are several ways to pinpoint the separate effects of the poll tax and literacy test. One way is to look at "pure" cases—instances of states which adopted one piece of the southern system but not the other. There are four examples of states which adopted the poll tax but not the literacy test (Arkansas, Florida, Texas, and Tennessee) and one example of the reverse pattern (Oklahoma). If one looks back at Tables 6.5 to 6.14, it is evident that all these states had sizable effects, immediate and extended, on voting patterns. Such findings seem to suggest two conclusions which will require more thorough testing later: (1) it took only one component of the southern system to cause serious declines in voting, and (2) while either was capable of "doing the job," the poll tax registered greater effects on voting patterns than the literacy test.

240

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING Tables 6.5 and 6.6 are especially instructive in telling this story. For the four "poll tax only" states, the average immediate effect in the first election year of use was a 23.2 percent reduction in turnout. Only Arkansas, among these four states, depresses the average, but regains its effect in the second election year of poll tax use (after the 1896 election is over). The one "literacy test only" state shows a 13.2 percent reduction in turnout in its first election year of use. The average extended effects on turnout are even more sizable—the poll tax states recording a 32.1 percent decrease in turnout and the literacy test state, again a 13.2 percent decrease. In all data displays, the effects are substantial and the poll tax states show the larger effects. Another way to specify the effects of each piece of legislation is to look at states which adopted both pieces of legislation but at different times. For the length of time in which they had adopted only one piece of the southern system, such states could be said to resemble the "pure" cases above. Of the six states which adopted both pieces of legislation (excluding Georgia), three did so at different times (Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia). However, in all three cases, the time difference between adopting the poll tax and the literacy test was only two years, allowing an independent scrutiny of the first law passed for only one election. In the case of Virginia, the literacy test was operative in 1902 and the poll tax, in 1904. To test the individual effects of the former, we looked at the congressional turnout difference value between the elections of 1898 and 1902. It was 12.7 percent, a substantial value, which became 21.9 percent in 1906 when the poll tax was first used in an off-year election.43 These figures seem to relate two things—the sizable effect of a single legal factor viewed in isolation and the possibility of a marked additional effect being registered when the second piece of the southern system is adopted. The other two states passed their legislation in just the opposite sequence—the poll tax coming two years before the literacy test. The comparable values for North Carolina are 14.7 percent and 38.6 percent. They seem to confirm the same trends as the Virginia analysis. The last state, Mississippi, has the following values: —5.0 percent and 5.3 percent These figures are surprising in at least two respects. First, they indicate no initial effect of the poll tax in the congressional race of the first off-year election in which it was used; and, second, they suggest only a mild effect in the expected direction once both laws were operative. The corresponding presidential values, when both laws were operative, are much more sub43 These difference values were computed from 1898-1902 and 1898-1906 comparisons, respectively. This type of analysis is the same as the analysis earlier reported in Tables 6.9 and 6.10.

241

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER stantial. (The test for just the first law alone could not be made using the presidential participation variable since both laws became operative in the same presidential election year, 1892.) Either the state of Mississippi did not actively implement the poll tax in the 1890 election, or, for some other reason, it registered no particular effect in the congressional race of that year. With the exception of Mississippi, the figures for these states again reveal the effects of either legal variable taken alone. They do not confirm, however, the strong trend in the "pure" case analysis of poll tax states producing larger effects than literacy test states. Thus far, we have documented the fact that either legal variable by itself had important effects on voting behavior. This, however, still leaves open the question of how the two laws interacted in their effects when both were used by the same state. Did a state with both laws register larger effects than a state with only one law? Our above analysis of Virginia and North Carolina is suggestive in this regard, showing what appeared to be a larger effect when both laws were implemented. However, the data base for this analysis was too limited, prompting us to aggregate data points across time for the different legal combinations of states in order to better answer this question. In so doing, we have also included the election values for states without the southern system as a base for these comparisons. Table 6.17 presents the results of these aggregating operations, each cell in the table representing the average presidential turnout between 1892 and 1916 for states with a particular combination of the two legal variables. This table is based on a total of 101 election values, these values being apportioned to the mean computations for each cell TABLE 6.17

RELATION OF POLL TAX AND LITERACY TEST

PROVISIONS TO PRESIDENTIAL TURNOUT,

1892-19163

Absence of literacy test

Presence of literacy test

Marginals

Absence of poll tax

72.1 (38)

57.2 (2)

71.3 (40)

Presence of poll tax

40.2 (28)

24.2 (33)

31.5 (61)

Marginals

58.4 (66)

26.1 (35)

47.3 (101)

* Cell entries are presidential turnout means computed over all election years, 1892-1916, for states having the legal combinations listed in the table.

242

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING according to the legal combination or combinations each state used during this time period. For instance, the state of Louisiana contributed two election values to the upper left-hand cell mean because it had neither a poll tax nor a literacy test in the elections of 1892 and 1896, and it contributed an additional five values to the lower right-hand cell mean since it had both a poll tax and a literacy test in all subsequent presidential elections in this period (1900, 1904, 1908, 1912, 1916). Other states, such as Kentucky, contributed all seven of their values to only one cell mean—in this case, the upper left-hand cell mean since Kentucky never adopted either piece of the southern system. The data in Table 6.17 answer the fundamental question posed. In addition, they also give us several other important pieces of information. First of all, the data show that "complete" southern system states discouraged presidential turnout more, on the average, than "partial" southern system states. States with both laws had an average turnout of 24.2 percent, whereas states with only one law had either an average turnout of 40.2 percent (poll tax states) or 57.2 percent (literacy test states). The differences in these figures are substantial. The addition of literacy tests to poll tax states decreases turnout by 16 percent (on the average) and the addition of poll taxes to literacy test states curtails turnout by 33 percent (on the average). States with both a poll tax and a literacy test put up an effective double barrier to the vote. One law simply could not depress turnout as well as two laws. To the extent that a southern state was really serious about cutting down voting turnout, the only course to follow was to adopt both the poll tax and the literacy test. The comparisons which produced the 16 percent and 33 percent figures also reveal the relative importance of the two laws. If the addition of poll taxes to literacy test states cuts turnout by twice as much as the reverse situation, the logical conclusion is that the poll tax was the more important of the two laws in its effects on voting behavior. Another way to view this is by comparing the 40.2 percent and 57.2 percent cell entries with each other. These figures show that states with only a poll tax have a 17 percent lower turnout rate than states with only a literacy test. Such findings correspond to earlier sketchings in the data which suggested the greater effects of the poll tax. However, none of this should be regarded as conclusive evidence since the 57.2 percent statistic is an average of only two election values (the 1912 and 1916 election values in Oklahoma). Without a larger number of cases on which to base an average, most statisticians would discount the soundness of the 57.2 percent figure. The other side of the argument

243

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER would be that this figure is based on a "population" (albeit a "small population") of election values for the southern states in this time period—the only values that existed. In this sense, the statistic becomes a meaningful figure. Another way to compare the relative effects of the two laws is by using the marginal values of the table. However, unlike the above method, this particular technique returns us to an earlier problem—the inability to separate out states in the analysis which had both a poll tax and a literacy test law. Even with that problem, comparison of the marginals still conveys the same trend as before—the dominance of the poll tax in its effects. The dominance recorded here, however, is a milder version of the earlier findings. States with poll taxes decreased turnout 39.8 percent from those without such laws, whereas states with literacy tests dampened turnout 32.3 percent from their non-test counterparts. The difference between the two types of states is a small 7.6 percent, but, nevertheless, in the correct direction. The mixture of many of the same states in both the "poll tax" and "literacy test" readings seemingly weakens the difference between the effects of the two laws. The overall table shows a smooth monotonically decreasing pattern. As one reads the table from top left to bottom right, the decrease in voting turnout progresses in a completely orderly and consistent fashion. States without the southern system register a rather high voting turnout rate of 72.1 percent which immediately is cut down to 57.2 percent by states having only a literacy test. States enacting only a poll tax decrease voting even more, recording a 31.9 percent decrease from the non-southern system states and a 17 percent decrease from the literacy test states. States with the complete southern system discourage turnout still further from the non-southern system states, decreasing it by a large 47.9 percent. In short, the scale of progression for the severity of southern legislation is as follows: literacy test, poll tax, both literacy test and poll tax. The first has mild effects; the second, more sizable effects; and the last, the largest effects of all. The comparison between the upper left and lower right corner cells shows the magnitude of the effects caused by the southern system. By passing the complete southern system, a state, on the average, could cut almost 48 percent of the people from its electorate. Despite the superiority of the complete southern system in effects registered, we know from our earlier analysis that a few states with only the poll tax could have large effects on voting in their own right. We must remember that the values in Table 6.17 represent the average effect of the states with a particular legal combination but that certain

244

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING

individual states making up this quantity have higher than the "average effect" (just as some must have lower than the "average effect"). Of the states with only a poll tax, Texas and Florida, in particular, had sizable effects on voting. As earlier noted, because of this, their classification in the "low stringent" category in Table 6.4 seemed unwarranted, although such placement is justified in terms of just a superficial counting of the laws themselves. In attempting to pinpoint the reasons for these large effects, recourse to Table 6.2 is necessary. In this table, Florida is shown to have a cumulative provision in the 1890-1894 period which may have assisted in setting the mood for nonparticipation patterns. Also, we know that Florida did not grant any meaningful exemptions to the poll tax payment. Outside of these things, nothing else is salient in the law which would seem to cause larger than average declines in participation. One can always speculate that enforcement of the law in Florida was more stringent than elsewhere, but evidence for such a point is difficult to obtain. As for Texas, Table 6.2 shows a mild form of the poll tax but one, nevertheless, which required proof of payment at the polls in the form of a poll tax receipt. Texas required such proof of payment not only as a way in which to discourage voting but also because it was one of the few southern states which had its poll tax system also serve as its voter registration system.44 Texas had no independent registration system; when one paid his poll tax, he was, in essence, registered as long as he brought proof of payment to the polls. This system could effectively disfranchise scores of people who either failed to pay their poll tax or, upon paying it, failed to produce proof of payment at the polls. Within the category of states having the complete southern system, there was also some variance in voting behavior. Of the seven states involved, two had noticeably smaller effects on voting than the others— Georgia and South Carolina. While such effects registered between 17 percent and 18 percent (see Tables 6.11 and 6.12), they were set apart from the larger effects of the others. The case in South Carolina had, in part, been anticipated since it was placed in the "moderate" rather than the "highly" stringent category of states in Table 6.4. Its poll tax was a milder version among these states, being noncumulative, and its first experience with the southern system in the 1896 election softened some of its effects. The case of Georgia seems to reflect its earlier experience with a severe form of the poll tax which hampered voting turnout several years before the southern system was enacted. On the other side of the ledger, North Carolina experienced larger effects on M

McGovney, The American Suffrage Medley, 140.

245

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER voting than expected. There seems to be little ready explanation for this, since this state had a mild form of the poll tax. However, its literacy test from 1910 to 1916 was a stringent reading-writing affair with no alternatives, its grandfather clause having been abolished after the 1908 election. AU other states had large effects as predicted, being placed in category 4 of Table 6.4, since they had more severe forms of the poll tax and/or literacy test. Of these four states, the average range of effects extended from approximately 27 percent to 50 percent. The states with the two largest effects, Mississippi and Virginia, seemed to have no more stringent a version of the southern system than the other two states (Alabama and Louisiana). From these various empirical results, one can conclude that the initial classification scheme of Table 6.4 fared rather well. If one were to revise it on the basis of these findings, only five states would change locations. Texas, Florida, and North Carolina would be placed in category 4; Georgia and South Carolina, in category 2. Category 3 would be dropped from the table, necessitating a renaming of the remaining three categories as "non," "moderate," and "highly" stringent. The relative success of the classification rests on the basic fact that two laws have more effect than one (except in the case of Texas and Florida). In the two states in which two laws did not seem to have a greater effeot (Georgia and South Carolina), plausible explanations regarding the history and stringency of these laws could be given to partially account for these data patterns. The last area in which we wish to specify the effects of the southern system is with regard to the differing degrees of party competition in the South. Key's argument that the laws were not the primary cause of southern voter apathy but merely registered a "fait accompli" after the South became increasingly noncompetitive has to be looked at in more detail. For this purpose, we have selected two relatively competitive states (North Carolina and Virginia) and two relatively noncompetitive states (Mississippi and Texas) .45 If the lack of competitiveness was the major cause of voting declines in the South, the southern systems of Mississippi and Texas should not have any appreciable effects on the voting patterns of these states. Also, if Key's more general notion that these laws had little effeot regardless of the political situation 45

The definition of "competitiveness" here is rather crude, being a surface inspection of the Democratic percent of major two-party vote statistics for the presidential race. However, it is also appropriate since the presidential race is the main focus of concern in this paper with regard to turnout patterns. For reference to such statistics, see Walter Dean Burnham, Presidential Ballots: 1836-1892, Baltimore, 1955, and Edgar Eugene Robinson, The Presidential Vote, Stanford, 1934.

246

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING is true, then even relatively competitive states such as North Carolina and Virginia should not show the effects of these legal variables. The data results, however, show sizable effects for all four states—noncompetitive and competitive alike. As Table 6.5 demonstrated, these four states had four of the five largest effects registered in this table and the three largest effects in Table 6.6. (Texas was excluded from the latter table since it never adopted a literacy test.) Although Mississippi and Texas were already noncompetitive in this period, the southern system still managed to discourage voting turnout by 25.7 percent and 31.1 percent, respectively, in the first presidential election in which it was used. A casual glance at election statistics will document the fact that these states were basically not competitive for many elections prior to 1892 and 1904, respectively, the years in which their southern systems were introduced. With regard to North Carolina and Virginia, although very competitive states, the stimulus to vote was dampened by the definite barrier of the southern system in the elections of 1900 and 1904. Testimony to the effectiveness of the southern system can be seen easily when one notes the declines of 15.5 percent and 32 percent which occurred after these laws were introduced in states which basically still had a competitive atmosphere to motivate voter turnout. In either situation, competitive or noncompetitive, the southern system was able to cut out of the electorate a large number of voters. IV SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

THE data in this chapter convincingly support the legal-institutional theory described by Rusk elsewhere. 46 The southern system of poll tax and literacy test laws was shown, by four different analytic methods, to have major effects in influencing and shaping the declining vote turnout curves of the South between 1890 and 1918. The effects of these laws were both immediate and extended over time, with large initial effects coming shortly after the laws were introduced, establishing a lower plateau of voter participation in the years to come. The laws were shown to have effects in both the presidential and congressional races, and it was discovered that, in general, states passing both laws experienced larger declines in voting participation than states passing only one of the laws in the southern system. Of the two laws, the poll tax 46

See Rusk, "The Effect of the Australian Ballot Reform on Split Ticket Voting: 1876-1908" and Rusk, "The American Electoral Universe: Speculation and Evidence."

247

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER was shown to have the larger effects, although both laws had sizable effects in their own right when viewed separately. The laws had effects in widely varying situations—in both competitive and noncompetitive states, in both Solid South and Border States. Only a few states, mainly Georgia and South Carolina, showed very weak effects at the time of the laws' adoption and only mild effects thereafter. Most states experienced large declines in voter turnout (15 percent to 50 percent). This analysis leaves very little room for doubt that V. O. Key's theory of the laws being more "form" than "reality" is decidely lacking. The laws were shown to have registered independent effects on voting behavior—immediate and large effects as predicted by our legal-institutional theory. Also the laws were seen to have major effects in both competitive and noncompetitive states, something which could not have occurred if Key's theory of noncompetitiveness causing voting declines was the main operating force between 1890 and 1918. In fact, several different modes of analysis were used to see if the institutional effects being observed were not merely an artifact of some secular decline in participation caused by other factors, as Key suggests. In each case, the answer was definitely "no." Rather, the southern system seemed to be the prime motivating force for the secular decline in participation alluded to in this period. The actual scenario of voting for the southern states seems to have two periods. As Figure 6.1 shows and the time frame analysis tends to confirm, the first major decline in voter participation occurred between 1876 and 1880, probably a manifestation of southern whites attempting to rid the South of carpetbaggers after the Union troops were removed in 1877. Key maintains that this period was the start not only of the expulsion of the northerner from the South but also of the southern black from the polls. Yet the decline in turnout from 1876 to 1880 is only 7.6 percent, and is not sustained between 1880 and 1890, a crucial time span in Key's theory. What seems more likely is that the main effect between 1876 and 1880 was in eliminating the northern white from the South. Certainly, some blacks were also affected, but probably not to the extent that Key believes. The second period in the scenario falls between 1892 and 1904 when several further significant declines in participation occurred. It was during this period that the southern system operated as a major force on voting patterns, and it was in this period that the greatest declines in voting participation occurred. If any major secular decline in voting participation occurred in the South between 1876 and 1918, it was

248

EFFECT OF SOUTHERN ELECTION LAWS ON VOTING the 1892-1904 period which was the most critical period in shaping this pattern. The important question then is: who was disfranchised as a result of the southern system? While we do not have racial data for this analysis, it would seem that the southern black as well as the poor white fell victim to the "political game" of this time. There are several pieces of evidence for the contention that the southern black was a casualty of the southern system. One can note the discussions at constitutional conventions and state legislatures which provided the rationale for passing these laws, the particular pattern of state adoption of the laws—the Solid South being more in favor of such legislation than the Border States—and the actual contents of the laws themselves. One can also note the historians' accounts of the time that the Negro was actively solicited for his vote, suggesting that he was not as yet eliminated as a voting force from the polls. Other evidence seems equally convincing. When a state has a Negro population of more than 50 percent and its vote turnout drops from 20 percent to 50 percent as a result of the southern system, it can be inferred easily that a considerable number of blacks were included in the stream of newly disfranchised voters. The poor white was the other victim of the southern system. Whether intentionally or not, the poll tax and literacy test discouraged many of these lesser motivated people from voting. Some of these people possibly would not be disfranchised if they lived in a state with an understanding or grandfather clause alternative, or had a lenient registrar judge their reading and writing ability, but even if these hurdles were met, they still would have to pay a poll tax in most states. That many of these were sufficiently discouraged from voting is again mirrored in the large number of voters shown to be effectively disfranchised in our empirical results. Of course, the actual enforcement of these laws is a question on which little empirical evidence exists. It is plausible, as some historians state, that many of the poor whites were actually allowed to vote when they could not meet either the poll tax or literacy qualifications. We already have surface intent of many of the southern states to allow the poor white to escape the literacy test by posing easy alternatives to it. Also scholars of the period have maintained that the poll tax requirement was often not enforced for whites. If these accounts are at all accurate, many fewer southern whites may have been disfranchised than previously expected, leaving a larger part of the 20 to 50 percent drop-off rate to be accounted for by southern blacks. Regardless of whom the southern system disfranchised, the most im249

J. G. RUSK & J. J. STUCKER portant lesson is that it eliminated a large number of voters from the polls, setting a trend of lower participation which still characterizes the South today. The relation of the southern system to the Solid South phenomenon in shaping this voting pattern is a complex one. Some states were apparently one party states before the southern system was enacted—the southern system simply eliminating new scores of voters from the electorate, possibly many of those who favored the minority party. If this is true, then the southern system, in this case, could be said to have furthered the cause of one partyism in the South. On the other hand, many states were still basioally competitive when the southern system was enacted, and, therefore, we know that these laws eliminated people from the polls before one partyism became a reality. As the latter developed, it tended to reinforce the patterns of nonparticipation already set by the norm structure of the southern system. In either case, the southern system seemed to have greater effects in dampening voter participation than one partyism, regardless of when the latter occurred. For the competitive states in this period, we can say that the southern system initiated voting trends which later were to become a vital aspect of the Solid South phenomenon. For the noncompetitive states, it gave such voting patterns major reinforcement, often registering greater effects than the movement to one partyism did. In conclusion, the most plausible message from the data findings is that the South went through two eras—an era to rid itself of the northern white, followed by an era to rid itself of the southern black and, probably as an accidental by-product, the poor southern white. The southern system figured heavily in the second era—eliminating two of the main sources of support for the Populist-Republican cause— the southern black and the poor white. Hence, it fostered a large part of what came to be known as the noncompetitive and apathetic South.

250

PART THREE DETERMINANTS OF POPULAR VOTING BEHAVIOR

Introduction to Part Three ANALYSIS of the determinants of individual and group voting behavior —explaining why people vote as they do—has long been a particularly fruitful field of investigation. As the general introduction to this volume makes clear, during the 1950's and 1960's a model of mass voting evolved, rooted in survey research. Voting choice, according to this model, derived from commitments to political parties. Partisan perspectives were determined by pre-existing values and definitions of reality, and these values and perspectives originated in the personal life experience of each individual beginning with the absorption of family political values in childhood. Occasionally, short-term forces upset the pre-existing patterns. But most of the time individuals continue to behave in traditional and apparently unthinking ways. The original causes of this pattern were never clear since the model lacks a historical focus on the determinants of behavior beyond the psychological attachment to parties. Lee Benson's 1961 study articulated that historical component. Arguing that voting choice involved three separate but related elements—the pursuit of political goals, the fulfillment of specific roles, and reactions to other groups in the environment—he identified the fundamental and original organizing determinant of group voting behavior as ethnocultural conflict. "At least since the 1820's when manhood suffrage became widespread, ethnic and religious differences have tended to be relatively the most important source of political differences in the United States."1 He proceeded to demonstrate this for a limited area and time: New York in the mid-1840's. Since Benson's original work, other historians have undertaken additional research which generally confirms the utility of the explanation Benson proposed.2 In the nineteenth century, for example, mass voting behavior was not primarily influenced by direct or specific reactions 1 Lee Benson, The Concept of Jacksonian Democracy: New York as a Test Case, Princeton, 1961, 165. 2 This work is listed and discussed in the following articles: Robert Swierenga, "Ethnocultural Political Analysis: A New Approach to American Ethnic Studies," Journal of American Studies, 5 (April 1971), 59-79; Samuel T. McSeveney, "Ethnic Groups, Ethnic Conflicts, and Recent Quantitative Research in American Political History," International Migration Review, 7 (Spring 1973), 14-33; Richard L. McCormick, "Ethnocultural Perspectives on 19th Century Political Behavior: An Evaluation," Political Science Quarterly, 89 (June 1973), 351-377. A cross section of articles reflecting this work is reprinted in Joel H. Silbey and Samuel T. McSeveney, Voters, Parties, and Elections, Waltham, Mass., 1972.

253

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

to the great national issues (for example, the battle over the extension of slavery in the 1850's), but by a calculus of local concerns, personal and group values, and tensions between different social groups in the society. "Voters were often more concerned," Paul Kleppner has written, "with matters which impinged on their daily lives directly and which immediately challenged their personally structured value systems than they were with national problems whose direct salience was not clearly perceptible to them." 3 Further and concurrently, "voters expressed by their choice, a persistent concept of society, value preference and negative reaction to parts of the social order."4 Such influences originated in the political socialization of individuals within the communities in which they were born and grew up. They absorbed the community's values and prejudices. Original perspectives continued to be reinforced throughout the life of most individuals as the external world of nineteenth-century America provided continuous stimulation. Ultimately these group norms developed a political component. Similar values and beliefs hardened into specific and different group perspectives on a range of behavior patterns and issues that became politicized. Common experiences and shared commitments led to particular political positions in order to advance or defend the wellbeing of one's component group. Different creeds or national groups argued for or against specific legislation. Different theological positions produced different interpretations of morality and of the most appropriate behavior for Christian citizens. Different definitions developed as to what was proper Americanism and which nationality groups properly have the right to share in America's largesse. Cultural imperialism by certain religious groups developed into political programs which were resisted by others. As a result, contrasting political cultures existed in the United States, rooted in the life experiences of different nationality and religious groups. One culture determined to use the power of the state to impose proper moral behavior and to provide proper moral guidance for all Americans. The other resisted such cultural and governmental interventionism and argued for the freedom of all individuals to behave free of outside, especially government, interference. A host of issues: immigration restriction, temperance, problems of local control of police and schools, dramatized and made salient the differences between the contending political cultures. 3

Paul Kleppner, The Cross of Culture: A Social Analysis of Midwestern Politics, 1850-1900, New York, 1970, 18. 4 Samuel P. Hays, "A Systematic Social History," in George A. Billias and Gerald N. Grob, eds., American History, Retrospect and Prospect, New York, 1971, 341.

254

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

Psychological attachments to political parties provided the organizing filter through which these cultural antagonisms were worked. The partisan affiliations of individuals and groups were "political expressions of shared values derived from the voter's membership in and commitment to, ethnic and religious groups. Collectively such values provided the voter with a perspective through which he filtered existential stimuli and by means of which he translated an array of divisive events into personally relevant terms."5 In the Jacksonian era, Lee Benson wrote in the Concept of Jacksonian Democracy, political conflict, in New York State at least, was primarily between contending nationality groups: old British versus new British immigrants, Yankees against Yorkers, Germans and Irish against those of British origin. By the 1850's religious differences were becoming an increasingly influential determinant too. When a "smoldering anti-Catholic bias," fanned by a sudden immigrant-Catholic flood into the United States hurt the pluralist Democratic party, "brought additional voters into the Republican ranks and became a vital element of the party."6 On the other hand, Republican identification with the anti-immigrant, anti-Catholic, Know Nothing movement cost them votes among voters of German and Dutch nationality. In the 1860 election, the ethnic variable "clearly operated as one of the most important influences on party choice. Ethnocultural consciousness was an element which party politicians ignored only at their peril. Along with religious heritage, the ethnic factor was perhaps one of the two most important shapers of party loyalty."7 In the post-Civil War era religion continued to grow as an ever more critical element of political choice.8 Battles over a Sunday-closing law, a local option measure, laws aimed at denying public support to parochial schools or enforcing Bible reading in the public schools, or the election of Catholics to local school boards, perpetuated a partisan division of both ethnicity and differing religious perspectives. These confrontations were never confined to only Catholic against Protestant, but were further tempered by differences of religious experiences: the denominational differences between puritan and nonpuritan (or pietist and ritualist) Protestant denominations as well as differences between 5 Kleppner, Cross of Culture, 35. « Michael F. Holt, Forging a Majority: The Birth of the Republican Party in Pittsburgh, 1848-1860, New Haven, Conn., 1969, 7. 7 Ronald P. Formisano, "Ethnicity and Party in Michigan, 1854-1860," in Frederick Luebke, ed., Ethnic Voters and the Election of Lincoln, Lincoln, Neb., 1971, 194. 8 Richard J. Jensen, "The Religious and Occupational Roots of Party Identification: Illinois and Indiana in the 1870's," Civil War History, 16 (December 1970), 325.

255

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

evangelical and nonevangelical groups within the same denomination. A simple legislative action could spark off anger and be influential for years afterwards, as in Wisconsin in the 1890's when the Bennett Law requiring English to be the language of instruction in schools, sparked violent reactions within a fearful and angry German community against the G.O.P. which was held responsible for enactment of the measure. 9 Ethnocultural conflict continued to be an important aspect of affairs in the twentieth century, despite the increasing importance of economic differences in the depression period beginning in 1929 and its aftermath. The "New Deal Coalition" that emerged in the 1930's was primarily rooted in conflicts over economic policy and between different economic classes. Nevertheless, memories of past cultural confrontations and the salience of race and of ethnic self-consciousness still persisted and continued to influence voter behavior into the 1960's. John Shover summed up the more general situation in his study of Philadelphia area voting behavior in the 1920's and 1930's. "When the city's ethnic and religious groups confronted vital political choices in 1928 and after, they responded as blacks, Jews, Germans or Catholics, not as assimilated Americans grouped cross-culturally by occupation, class or neighborhood. Rather than diminishing in the 1930's, ethnoreligious political consciousness flourished."10 In sum, the variables influencing past popular voting behavior unearthed by a decade of research into historical data appear similar to those found in survey research into contemporary voting. The model, however, is not without its loose ends, unresearched corners, and unclear elements. Actual studies of different periods and places are not yet all-encompassing so that the general applicability of the model at every moment in the American past is undetermined. Similarly, religious and ethnic differences may have cut deeper in some places than in others. They may have been, for example, regional phenomena, confined primarily to the Northeast and Middle West. The few studies we have of the South before the Civil War and of one Rocky Mountain state in the Populist era in the 1890's indicate that other variables, primarily economic in character, were either more crucial determinants of how people cast their ballots or replaced ethnocultural political di9

Roger Wyman, "Wisconsin Ethnic Groups and the Election of 1890," Wisconson Magazine of History, 51 (Summer 1968), 269-293. 10 John L. Shover, "Ethnicity and Religion in Philadelphia Politics, 1924-1940," American Quarterly, 23 (Winter 1973), 515. The most recent attempt to codify this description and apply it to the whole course of American history is Robert Kelley, "Ideology and Political Culture from Jefferson to Nixon," The American Historical Review, 82 (June 1977), 531-562.

256

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE 11

visions during some critical episode. Whether these were unique and exceptions to a more general situation or a more fundamental bar to developing a universal theory of voting behavior based on ethnocultural conflict remains an open question. There are a number of skeptics and critics of the dominant model generally. James Wright, for example, has suggested that what others have seen as a basic conflict between ethno-cultural groups may in fact ignore the importance of other kinds of divisions. He believes, for one thing, that ethno-cultural analysts have not adequately controlled for the class dimension in their work. They may have, therefore, substituted a too simplified explanation of voting behavior for a much more complex situation involving economics, status and class as well as religious and national confrontations.12 Other problems with the model have also been raised. How the actual politicization of ethnocultural social groups occurs, or the role of party organizational activity in shaping the way people vote, has not always been spelled out in detail. There are methodological problems as well. Analysts do not always agree as to which particular methods best delineate the determinants of voting choice. The relationship between group tendencies to vote in a specific way and how any individual in that group actually casts his ballot (the ecological fallacy), has been the subject of some controversy. Finally, as survey research into popular voting has expanded out of its original time frame to encompass a dismaying number of deviating elections since 1964, other elements, particularly reactions to the personality and appearance of candidates seem to have become increasingly influential, along with a significant decay in popular attachment to political parties. Some important revisions in the prevailing voting model, therefore, have been attempted with consequent suggestion that the model described here is by no means the last word.13 11 Thomas P. Alexander et al., "The Basis of Alabama's Antebellum Two-Party System," The Alabama Review, 19 (October 1966), 342-376; James E. Wright, The Politics of Populism: Dissent in Colorado, New Haven, Conn., 1974. 12 James E. Wright, "The Ethnocultural Model of Voting: A Behavioral and Historical Critique," in Allan G. Bogue, ed., Emerging Theoretical Models in Social and Political History, Beverly Hills, Ca., 1973, 35-56. 13 See, for examples of these studies, Walter Dean Burnham, "American Politics in the 1970's: Beyond Party?," in William N. Chambers and Walter Dean Burnham, The American Party Systems: Stages of Political Development, New York, 2d ed., 1975; Gerald Pomper, Voter's Choice: Varieties of American Electoral Behavior, New York, 1975; Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., Transformations of the American Party System: Political Coalitions From The New Deal to the 1970's, New York, 1975; Herbert Asher, Presidential Elections and American Politics, Voters, Candidates and Campaigns Since 1952, Homewood, III, 1976; Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John Petrocik, The Changing American Voter, Cambridge, Mass., 1976; War-

257

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

In short, many opportunities remain to test, refine, and revise our present ideas about both present and past voting behavior. Faced with such stimulation, research into the determinants of mass voting has continued at a vigorous pace in recent years. Chapters 7, 8, and 9 are all examples of current work. Martin Shefter's focus is on the ethnic maelstrom of New York City electoral politics at the end of the nineteenth century, particularly on the institution through which voters were organized and integrated into electoral politics: the urban political machine. He notes the continuing interest by historians in the impact of the machine on electoral behavior. But, he also notes, little of the research about the machine has been empirical. The generalizations that have grown up to explain support for the machine have never been adequately tested. Shefter proposes, therefore, to consider one central aspect of those generalizations: how Tammany Hall moved from a position of relative weakness on the political scene to a hegemony over New York City politics based on the persistent and overwhelming support of a large and disciplined army of voters. The bonds of ethnocultural, parochial loyalties of the kind on which the machine fed, existed among New York voters but remained fragmented among a number of competing organizations. But in a few brief years Tammany came to dominate the city's politics as these loyalties became centered in it. Why did this happen as it did, when it did, and as quickly as it did? To discover this, Shefter first reexamined a number of theories about the association of ethnic groups with the machine that already exist in the literature. AU of them relate to the condition of the immigrant ethnics as they became acculturated into American politics, and all of them presuppose an already existing tendency which drew these people into the machine. But none of them explain why it happened so quickly, nor is it clear how the support develops into the tightly disciplined mass armies characteristic of machine voting. Shefter's methods are basically straightforward. A wealth of aggregate social and electoral data for New York City residential districts exists in archives and published censuses and forms the basis of his efforts. He calculated a number of correlation coefficients and regression equations over four local elections in the 1880's and 1890's. The resulting figures form the base for both a reexamination of existing theoren E. Miller and Teresa Levitin, Leadership &• Change: The New Politics and the American Electorate, Cambridge, Mass., 1976.

258

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE ries of machine support and hegemony and for a revised explanation of Tammany's particular dominance as well. By carefully spelling out the relationship between certain social characteristics (including a generational factor) and voting behavior, in the by now traditional pattern of the political behaviorist, Shefter is able to pinpoint nuances within the behavior that both discredit previous theories and provide the basis for a new explanation of his own. His most important finding is that despite social or ethnic propensity to vote in a certain way, Tammany's hegemony among the voters did not develop automatically. Habits and attitudes ready for immediate mobilization may have been carried across the ocean but did not begin operating mechanistically in the new political environment of urban New York. First, ethnic voters who had been around for some time were more likely to support the machine determinedly than more recent arrivals were because it took some time to be socialized into politics. But, most importantly, only when Tammany engaged in widespread community political organization work and institution building and established an effective and sympathetic network of organizational interconnections was it able to mobilize in effective and permanent fashion the mass of ethnic voters inclined to come to the aid of the machine. Shefter mixes theory, empiricism, and hard thinking to develop his case study, to provide answers to a number of specific questions about urban voting behavior, and to clear the decks of one puzzling problem relating to urban ethnic voting patterns. But the implications of Shefter's chapter go beyond any specific solving of a particular problem. His research is a contribution to the enterprise of refining and correcting broad generalizations in our explanatory models of popular voting behavior. Although he once more underscores the importance of ethnocultural perspectives in shaping voting behavior, he also suggests that the process was not an automatic one. Ethnocultural voters could be mobilized in a certain way but that does not mean that they would be. Shefter reinserts the political process back into the equation relating social processes and attitudes to voting behavior and reminds us that voting choice is a two-stage affair, the propensity of certain groups to vote one way, and the need to get them to do so through an avowedly political process of organization and network building. In other words, a simple social determinism is not enough in explaining how people vote. Other factors must be added to the equation as well. Robert Dykstra and David Reynolds also test a part of the existing model of popular voting behavior. Their subject is a unique political phenomenon of great durability: popular support of the reform move259

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

ment led by the LaFollette family in the state of Wisconsin for over fifty years. Taking as their point of departure Michael Rogin's articulation of an economic-class explanation for LaFollette's support, Dykstra and Reynolds argue that Rogin's findings are unacceptable as they stand. First, they are the product of that old bugbear of historical research into voting behavior, the ecological fallacy. Rogin uses counties as his units of measure of ethnic and economic character despite their tremendous heterogeneity. At the same time, they believe that Rogin's exposition, which "dynamically mixes precision and imprecision" leads him to make wide-ranging generalizations that have not been adequately tested. As a result, the authors argue "that the precise contours of Wisconsin voting behavior after 1904 remain in doubt." They intend, therefore, "to reopen the question" of Wisconsin's support for LaFollette, to delineate precisely the voting support various Republican and progressive factions received, to see if there were major ethnic and/or class correlates in the voting, and, finally, to discern if there were continuities of support for left of center political movements over half a century. Their research framework, while similar in outline to other such studies, contains a number of notable revisions. To minimize the dangers of the ecological fallacy, the authors' units of analysis are the smallest election units for which data are available: the townships, villages, and small towns of rural Wisconsin. These twelve hundred precincts are much more socially homogeneous than are the counties. At the same time, believing that correlation analysis is an inadequate measuring technique for this particular problem, Dykstra and Reynolds use the more sophisticated method of factor analysis, a technique that they believe will reveal the characteristics and continuities in the voting behavior of their precincts more precisely than has been done before. The results of their efforts are a detailed description and categorization of the voting behavior of Wisconsin rural precincts over half a century. Their findings not only refine and qualify Rogin's explanation but also, in sum, dissent from Rogin's basic explanation of the sources of progressive support. They find, most significantly, a lack of the trim symmetry that Rogin found in the behavior of wealthy German units (which allegedly supported conservative Republicans) or in the behavior of the less wealthy Scandinavian precincts (which Rogin claimed supported progressivism). The different ethnic groups themselves split between their support for conservative and progressive Republicanism. Further, there was almost no continuity in support for agrarian radical movements of the LaFollette type over half a century as Rogin suggests. There was, they conclude, among the electorate

260

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

"nothing like a permanent left in Wisconsin in the first four decades of the present century," which went from support of dissenting Republicans, to support for a third party, to support of the Democratic party at the end of the era. Rather, whatever continuities existed, were not related to economic class or predisposition to support a radical movement, but primarily to the force of party loyalty. Dykstra and Reynolds survey a great deal in their analysis. While making a major contribution to our understanding of popular voting for progressive and conservative Republican candidates in Wisconsin, their findings have significance beyond that of correcting and revising previous explanations, important as that function may be. In the first place, they have addressed themselves to a question that often has exercised analysts as to whether county units of observation are adequate to explain the correlates of voting behavior. They argue that the use of minor civil divisions provides a more precise basis for delineating voting patterns than do county observations. At the same time, the authors warn against any neat, overarching generalization or determinism concerning the relationship between specific correlates and all voting patterns over time, particularly when the focus of attention is voting groups usually aligned within a single party. At the same time, Dykstra and Reynolds remind us again of the critical importance of party identification in the voting behavior of the groups under observation, while also indicating that there was some aura of ethnocultural factors in Wisconsin's voting behavior. There are limits to their analysis since they have looked at only a limited part of the total voting universe. Still their analysis does bring into further question explanations of radicalism in American voting patterns that are tied to class analyses and add some more substance to our basic understanding of the way people vote. Although the authors are also interested in correlating voting behavior with other attributes of the electorate, the chapter by John Shover and John Kushma differs from the others in this section in one significant fashion. It does not present a set of substantive findings based on a body of aggregated voting and social data. Rather, the authors' interests are primarily methodological. But their particular concern seems, in this instance, of such great moment to all students of popular voting behavior, that the chapter is included here for its intrinsic importance in advancing the entire enterprise. The issue the authors address is one on which we have touched and which appears in other chapters, and is involved in virtually all work on electoral history. Shover's attempt to untangle the complexities of voting behavior in the city of Philadelphia during the Roosevelt re261

INTRODUCTION TO PART THREE

alignment has made him extremely sensitive to the problem of deriving information about individual voters from sets of aggregated data. We know from the many warnings about the danger of the ecological fallacy that the patterns revealed by aggregated units certainly do not automatically reveal the individual behavior that created the aggregate patterns. Yet analysts of electoral history are almost certain to have substantive interests which require information about individual behavior and are equally certain to be denied straightforward data on individual behavior most of the time. Historians are therefore thrown back on inference from group descriptive patterns to answer their particular questions. But analysts differ as to whether this kind of ecological inference is a fatal temptation or an extraordinary opportunity. Shover and Kushma believe that "under certain circumstances it may be possible to make such inferences," about individual behavior with a great deal of confidence. They argue that the use of a sophisticated linear regression equation for measuring statistical relationships may help solve the problem of determining individual voter choice from aggregated precinct level data. In order to test this assertion, they apply their regression equation to Shover's mass of Philadelphia electoral data in the Roosevelt era. Their analysis of "the largest quantity of historical data that has been utilized in any specific analysis of the ecological problem," suggests to them that the ecological fallacy problem has been much exaggerated. They argue that careful regression analysis does in fact supply a powerful tool for overcoming the limitations of aggregate data and the absence of systematic polling of individual voters. If Shover and Kushma are right, they have made an important methodological addition to the arsenal of students of the historical dimension of popular voting behavior. But whether they have really resolved the question to the satisfaction of all skeptics remains unclear. The editors do not entirely share their optimism and await further exposition from those involved in the continuing controversies surrounding the ecological fallacy. But without committing ourselves to the correctness of their basic position, we believe that Shover and Kushma's work is a useful addition to the literature supporting those who have not believed that ecological inference is as devastating to some of our concerns as others have alleged. In sum, then, this chapter, like the other essays in this section, provides useful insights into both the process of electoral behavior itself and the way researchers, systematically utilizing quantitative tools of some power, have grappled with the problems of analyzing popular voting behavior.

262

7 The Electoral Foundations of the Political Machine: New York City, 1884-1897 MARTIN S H E F T E R historians, political scientists, and sociologists have written at some length and with considerable insight about the urban political machine, remarkably little research has been undertaken to discern the conditions associated with the emergence and development of this form of party organization. Hypotheses concerning the sources of machine government, to be sure, abound, but as James C. Scott has noted, "no actual empirical tests of hypotheses advanced for the rise and decline of machine politics have been attempted." 1 ALTHOUGH

I THE EMERGENCE OF THE TAMMANY MACHINE

New York City provides a particularly appropriate setting in which to assess the explanatory power of such hypotheses, both because of its inherent importance as the nation's largest city and because it is possible to date with some precision the point at which one can strictly say that the city's politics were dominated by a political machine. Although William Tweed was called a "boss" by his contemporaries, the very nature and magnitude of his depredations can be taken as a token of his weakness. Tweed faced problems extending the sway of Tammany over all segments of the Democratic party—Tammany's hegemony was challenged by competing factions such as Mozart Hall and the McKeon Democracy.2 And Tweed's control over those politicians The research reported in this essay was supported by grants from the Clark Fund and the Ford Foundation Seminar on Urban Resource Allocation at Harvard University. I also am especially grateful to Thomas Horst for his invaluable advice at all stages of my research; to James R. Kurth, Martha Derthick, and Walter Dean Burnham, who provided me with detailed and useful written comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript; and to the participants in the Seminar on the Comparative Politics of Atlantic Societies at Harvard's Center for European Studies with whom I discussed my findings. !James C. Scott, "Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change," American Political Science Review, 63 (December 1969), 1156 n. 65. 2 Gustavus Myers, The History of Tammany Hall, 1917, 208f., 229f.

263

MARTIN SHEFTER

nominally affiliated with Tammany was never secure. The leadership of Tammany could neither slate nor deslate candidates for offices elected by ward or district constituencies.3 Unable to command their obedience, Tweed had to purchase the support of other politicians on an ad hoc, individual-by-individual, project-by-project basis. For example, Tweed only was able to secure passage of the city charter of 1870 by distributing cash bribes to both Tammany and Republican legislators.4 A leader who could be assured of his subordinates' carrying out his commands would not have found it necessary, as did Tweed in 1867, personally to occupy seventeen different city offices!5 Many of the problems that plagued Tweed plagued the man who succeeded him as the leader of Tammany Hall, John Kelly. From the mid-1870's through the 1880's, the Democratic party in New York City was rent by factionalism. Two factions founded by the party's more respectable elements posed especially serious threats to Tammany's hegemony during this period, the Irving Hall Democracy and the New York County Democracy.6 These factions were as successful as Tammany in electing their candidates to the Board of Aldermen, the mayoralty, and to lesser city offices, and in gaining the recognition of the state party apparatus. Between 1880 and 1888, for example, 65 of the 114 Democrats who were elected to the Board of Aldermen and whose factional affiliation it is possible to discover were members of either the Irving Hall or the County Democracy,7 and Tammany's delegation was either totally excluded from, or forced to share its seats with, Irving Hall and County Democrats at each of the seven Democratic state conventions that convened during these years.8 To advance their careers, politicians frequently would switch their allegiance among the party's major factions, or would establish an independent Democracy of their own, in a pattern of factional politics strikingly similar to that prevailing in many developing nations today.9 In this 3

Seymour Mandelbaum, Boss Tweed's New York, New York, 1965, 58. * M. R. Werner, Tammany Hall, New York, 1928, 184. 5 Roscoe Brown and Ray Smith, Political and Governmental History of the State of New York, Syracuse, N.Y., 1922, III, 105-106. 6 Mark Hirsch, William C. Whitney, Modem Warwick, New York, 1948, 150, 160-164. 7 The factional affiliations of members of the Board of Aldermen during this period generally are reported in the New York Tribune Almanac, 1880-1888, or, along with election returns, in the New York Times. 8 Brown and Smith, Political History, chs. 20-28. 9 Compare the account of Henry Purroy's career in New York in the 1880's reported in the New York Times, October 19, 1892, 2, with the descriptions of the behavior of politicians in the Philippines and Pakistan in the 1950's, reported in Samuel Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies, New Haven, Conn., 1968, 412-413.

264

ELECTORAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE POLITICAL MACHINE

extremely fluid political situation even the city's labor unions were able to stage a serious foray into electoral politics: Henry George, the candidate of the United Labor party, came in a close second to Abram Hewitt, who was endorsed by both Tammany and the County Democ­ racy, in the mayoral election of 1886. Tammany's leadership during this period faced problems in con­ trolling the behavior of their nominal followers in office as well as in securing their election to office. Tammany aldermen and state legisla­ tors were not the disciplined troops they were to become in later years. Rather, entirely apart from the leadership of Tammany Hall, they would form pacts in which they agreed to sell their votes as a unit to the highest bidder. One such combine operating in the Board of Alder­ men in 1884, in the face of a direct prohibition by John Kelly, granted the franchise for a street railway on Broadway in return for a cash bribe of $500,000.10 Tammany's leaders themselves had to purchase votes at times in order to get the aldermen to do their bidding. Thus, for example, in 1884 Kelly's lieutenant and heir, Richard Croker, of­ fered bribes totaling $180,000 to secure aldermanic confirmation of his candidate for commissioner of public works. The effort of Croker to secure the commissionership of public works for his man, Hugh Grant, also illustrates the difficulties Tammany's leaders faced in controlling the behavior of executive officials. Although the incumbent mayor had been elected with Tammany's support, he refused to nominate Grant for the commissionership, and the aldermen who had been bribed by Croker were forced to return the money.11 Beginning in the late 1880's, New York's party system underwent a dramatic and fundamental series of changes. Tammany managed to crush its significant factional opponents: Irving Hall fell apart in 1887 and the County Democracy expired in 1892.12 Although thereafter Republicans, reformers, and dissident Democrats periodically would coalesce and present a substantial challenge to Tammany at the polls (winning the mayoralty in 1894, 1901, 1913, and 1933), Tammany in the decades following 1890 effectively dominated the Democratic party in the county of New York. The election of 1888 was the last one (at least until 1933) in which a competing Democratic faction was able on its own to enter a full slate of candidates to oppose Tammany's nomi­ nees in the municipal elections. During this same period Tammany's leaders not only succeeded in ι» Hirsch, Whitney, 210-218. Frederick Shaw, The History of the New York City Legislature, New York, 1954, 5. 12 Hirsch, Whitney, 361. 11

265

MARTIN SHEFTER

crushing their factional opponents but also managed to establish discipline over their subordinates. Alfred Conkling, an alderman whose term spanned these years, asserts that the aldermen first began following the orders of Richard Croker in 1888.13 By 1892 Croker's sway extended to the state legislature. Whereas in earlier years the "Old Lobby" bad been a prominent feature in Albany, during the legislative session of 1892 the word of Tammany's leadership was necessary and sufficient to pass legislation. All lines of communication and payment therefore passed through the party organization rather than directly from private interests to subordinate public officials." Finally, in marked contrast to Kelly's and Croker's inability in 1884 to count on the support of either the mayor or the aldermen in their efforts to secure the appointment and confirmation of their candidate for the commissionership of public works, after the election of Robert Van Wyck in 1897 the entire slate of mayoral appointments was drawn up at a conference of Tammany leaders held at a New Jersey resort hotel prior to inauguration day. No mayor after Van Wyck was quite so totally under Tammany's control,15 but the discipline which Croker's successor, Charles Murphy, exercised over Democratic officeholders was still sufficiently strong for him to secure the impeachment and conviction of an incumbent governor who refused to follow his wishes in distributing patronage. 16 This brief account of the transformation of New York politics during the last decades of the nineteenth century indicates that it was only during the latter portion of this period that the leadership of Tammany managed to extend the scope and increase the reliability of its control over the city's Democratic politicians. Yet throughout this entire period, the available evidence suggests, Democratic politicians were linked to their followings and to their confederates through a nexus of parochial loyalties and individual payoffs.17 In other words, though the "style" of Democratic party politics—the character of political bonds—remained 13

49.

Alfred Conkling, City Government in the United States, New York, 1894, 48-

14 New York City Reform Club, Seventh Annual Record of Assemblymen and Senators from the City of New York in the State Legislature, 1892, 21; Joseph Bucklin Bishop, "The Price of Peace," Century Magazine, 48 (September 1894), 671-674. 15 Theodore Lowi, At the Pleasure of the Mayor, New York, 1964, ch. 4. 16 Jacob A. Friedman, The Impeachment of Governor William Sulzer, New York, 1939. 17 See, for example, New York State Assembly Special Committee Appointed to Investigate the Local Government of the City and County of New York, Hearings, Albany, 1884, passim.

266

ELECTORAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE POLITICAL MACHINE

relatively constant in New York over the entire period, the "structure" of party politics changed considerably. If one recognizes that the dimensions of political style and political structure—the nature of political attachments and the degree to which control is reliably centralized—are analytically distinct, it is possible to locate the Democratic party of New York at various stages of its de­ velopment within a simple typology of urban party politics, such as that illustrated by Figure 7.1. The dominant political groupings in cities such as Atlanta or Dallas in the 1950's would fall in the upper left hand box of this schema.18 In such cities a cohesive slate-making organiza­ tion, whose members are bound together by a shared understanding of their collective interests, is able to control the placement of officials in Political bonds Universalistic

Particularistic

Centralized

Elitist

Machine

Fragmented

Pluralist

Factional

C O

υ ο ο

FiGtJBE 7.1 A Typology of Urban Party Politics 18

273.

Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson, City Politics, Cambridge, Mass., 1963,

267

MARTIN SHEFTER

elective office.19 Cities (such as Los Angeles or Oakland in the 1960's) in which political alliances cohere and electoral appeals are staged in terms that are closer to the universalistic than the particularistic pole of Parson's continuum, but in which no such dominant slate-making organization exists, would fall in the lower left hand category.20 Those cities (such as New York in the 1870's and early 1880's, or Boston and Buffalo in the 1960's) in which appeals to parochial sentiments and the exchange of specific inducements play a major role in binding political followings together, but in which political organization is weak or absent would fall in the lower right-hand box.21 Politicians in these cities engage in a style of political conduct one generally associates with machines, but the numerous, amorphous, and transitory political formations that one finds in such cities are not capable of exercising the reliable and repetitive control within their jurisdictions that is connoted by the term "political machine." 22 The term "political machine" should be reserved for those parties that fall in the upper right-hand box of this schema.23 They are distinguished from parties located closer to the other pole of the horizontal axis by what James Scott calls "the organizational cement" that binds them together.24 They are distinguished from those falling beneath 19 The term "elitist" used to label cities in this category in Figure 7.1 might be considered something of a misnomer. Logically, a party that appealed to the class consciousness of those at the lower end, as well as those at the upper end, of the social spectrum would fall in this category. It is unclear, however, whether any party so constituted has ever governed a major American city. 20 Banfield and Wilson, City Politics, 162; Jeffrey Pressman, "Preconditions of Mayoral Leadership," American Political Science Review, 66 (June 1972), 511524. 21 Robert Crain, The Politics of School Desegregation, Garden City, N.Y., 1969, chs. 4, 6. 22 James C. Scott, Comparative Political Corruption, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1972, 107. 23 Cf., ibid., Hf.; Banfield and Wilson, City Politics, 128; Fred Greenstein, "The Changing Pattern of Urban Party Politics," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 353 (May 1964), 3. Raymond Wolfinger suggests that the label "political machine" be applied to any party organization that "attracts and directs its members primarily by means of [particularistic] incentives," and argues that it is less useful to employ this term to refer to the centralization of power in a party. Wolfinger certainly is correct in observing that there is no necessary relation between the dimensions of incentives and centralization, but what he considers to be two alternative definitions of the concept "political machine" might better be considered two criteria for the usage of this concept: in any explication of the proper usage of the concept "political machine" both these attributes are necessary, neither one is sufficient; only the conjunction of the two is sufficient. See Raymond Wolfinger, The Politics of Progress, Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1974, 99f. 24 Scott, Comparative Political Corruption, 107.

268

ELECTORAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE POLITICAL MACHINE

them on the vertical axis by their internal cohesiveness. The stronger the bonds that link voters and politicians to the organization—the more stable, well structured, and disciplined is the party organization —the more capable it is of subjecting the city's government to central control. And only parties that are capable of centralizing power in this way are able to perform many of the functions—such as overcoming the constitutional dispersion of power and establishing a stable linkage between the city's business and political communities—that scholars such as Banfield and Merton attribute to the machine. 25 Usages of the term "political machine" which would not, in the New York case, call one's attention to the difference between the Tammany of 1900 and the Tammany of 1870 would fail to clarify a distinction that made a very substantial difference for the politics and the governance of New York. Any theory that purports to explain the emergence of political machines, if it is to account for the distinguishing characteristics of such party organizations, should be able to account for the location and movement of parties along both dimensions of Figure 7.1. In the case of New York City, this would mean that such a theory should be able to illuminate the conditions under which, and the process through which, Tammany Hall was able to establish a system of order, discipline and control out of the chaotic factionalism that had prevailed earlier in the city's politics. In this essay an effort is made to assess the explanatory power of several theories scholars have proposed to account for the emergence of political machines by evaluating their ability to shed light upon the structure of New York City politics during the 1880's and 1890's. In Section II, several prominent hypotheses pertaining to the electoral foundations of the political machine are tested against data on the distribution of Tammany's support from 1888 to 1897 when Tammany was a full fledged political machine. In Section III the ability of these hypotheses to account for the transformation of New York City politics during the critical years between 1884 and 1888 is considered and an alternative hypothesis, which is better able to account for the electoral data during both the 1884-1888 and 1888-1897 periods, is proposed. I argue in Section IV that this alternative is better able to account for the growth of discipline within Tammany as well as changes in the distribution of its voting strength during this era. Section V discusses some of the broader implications of this analysis. 25 Edward C. Banfield, Political Influence, New York, 1961, ch. 8; Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, New York, 1957, 77.

269

MARTIN SHEFTER

II T H E ELECTORAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE MATURE MACHINE

ONE point that stands out in the brief account presented above of the character of Democratic party politics in New York City during the last third of the nineteenth century is that a critical source of Tammany's weakness prior to the 1890's was its inability to monopolize the recruitment of candidates to public office. So long as Democratic politicians could win office by affiliating with a competing faction or by running an independent candidacy, they did not have a compelling incentive to accept Tammany's discipline. The establishment of such a system of discipline is contingent upon the machine's being able to control the electorate. As Banfield and Wilson note at the outset of their discussion of the structure of the machine, "The existence of the machine depends upon its ability to control votes."26 What characterizes those electorates which are amenable to such control? There is general agreement among scholars that political machines were supported disproportionately by the poor27 and by voters of immigrant stock.28 There is some disagreement within the literature, however, concerning why immigrants supported the machine, and consequently which immigrants were especially likely to vote for the machine. The answers to these questions differ according to whether one focuses upon (1) the premigration heritage of the immigrants, (2) the experience of migration itself, or (3) the postmigration experiences of the immigrants. The first alternative is the one pursued by scholars, such as Richard Hofstadter, Edward Banfield and James Q. Wilson, and Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, whose analyses of the sources of machine politics center around the concepts of "political culture" or "political ethos."29 Banfield and Wilson, for example, argue that the 26

Banfield and Wilson, City Politics, 116. Scott, "Corruption, Machine Politics, and Political Change," 1150. Elmer Cornwell, "Bosses, Machines, and Ethnic Groups," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 353 (May 1964), 22. 29 Richard Hofstadter, The Age of Reform, New York, 1960, 9; Banfield and Wilson, City Politics, 40ff.; Nathan Glazer and Daniel P. Moynihan, Beyond the Melting Pot, Cambridge, Mass., 1970, 223ff. In their most recent restatement of the ethos theory, Wilson and Banfield, however, present an argument concerning the sources of immigrant political behavior that is quite similar to the one which I, in this essay, identify with Richard Wade. See James Q. Wilson and Edward C. Banfield, "Political Ethos Revisited," American Political Science Review, 65 (December 1971), 1049. 27 28

270

ELECTORAL FOUNDATIONS OF THE POLITICAL MACHINE

members of groups whose cultures stress the view that politics is an appropriate arena for advancing individual or family-based interests are especially likely to regard the sort of inducements offered by political machines as sufficient grounds for determining their political affiliations. The second alternative is central to James Scott's and Elmer Cornwell's analyses of the social context within which political machines flourish. Although Scott argues that several preconditions must exist if a dominant machine is to emerge within a political system, his analysis focuses upon the changes in the loyalties which engage people caught up in the process of social modernization. During the early stages of modernization, ties of traditional deference tend to crumble, and narrow, family-centered, or parochial loyalties to predominate. It is among groups in this stage that machines find their firmest support. Scott argues that in the United States immigration was generally the occasion for the emergence of such loyalty patterns, and that machine inducements were found particularly compelling by "disoriented new arrivals" to the American city.30 Scholars who suggest that the machine be viewed as an expression of the conditions of life in the city's immigrant-choked tenement districts —as a defensive reaction against discrimination and an outgrowth of the social structure of these neighborhoods—f ocus on the third alternative. Those who center their analyses upon the postmigration experience of foreign stock groups include the historians Oscar Handlin and Richard Wade, and sociologists such as Wilham Whyte and Robert Merton. 31 Wade, for example, writes: "The process of growth had divided the city. The newcomers appropriated the inner city, in areas where people were afflicted with great congestion, irregular jobs, and pervasive and persistent poverty. . . . If the residents could be mobilized, their combined strength would be able to do what none could do alone. Soon the 'boss' and the 'machine' arose to organize this potential. Feeding on the vulnerability of the neighborhoods and the hostility of the outside world, the boss system became a distinctive feature of American politics. It succeeded because it was rooted in the 30 Scott, Comparative Political Corruption, 104-118; Cornwell, "Bosses, Machines, and Ethnic Groups." 31 Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted, New York, 1951, ch. 8; Richard Wade, "Urbanization," in C. Vann Woodward, ed., The Comparative Approach to American History, New York, 1968, 195f.; William F. Whyte, Street Corner Society, Chicago, 1943; Robert Merton, Social Theory and Social Structure, New York, 1957, 72-82.

271

MARTIN SHEFTER

realities of block life—the clubhouse, the saloon, the cheap theaters, and the street. . . . The boss system was simply the political expression of inner city life."32 Although these hypotheses are fashioned primarily to account for the attachment of voters to the machine, they also have dynamic implications. Scott, as I already have noted, attributes the emergence of machine politics to the social changes which occur during the early phases of modernization, while Banfield and Wilson argue that political machines come to prevail as voters whose political ethos is private-regarding become the dominant element within the city's electorate. Moreover, the scholars who propose these hypotheses employ them to account not only for the attachment of voters to the machine but also for the other salient aspects of machine parties. Scott, Banfield, and Wilson argue that the discipline characteristic of the mature political machine can be achieved if there is available to it a large pool of patronage resources that can be given to, or withheld from, those who, for varying reasons, are responsive to such inducements; while Hofstadter and Moynihan attribute the internal coherence of the machine to the central role that loyalty and personal obligation play in the immigrant (or Irish) political ethic. The data reported in Table 7.1 permit one to test the ability of these various hypotheses to account for the distribution of electoral support for the candidates of the mature Tammany. The coefficients reported in this table were generated by a series of multiple regression equations33 for the New York City34 mayoral elections of 1888, 1892, 1894 and 1897.35 The units of analysis in these equations are the fairly numerous (N = 114), small (Average Population = 13,292), and homogeneous "sanitary districts" into which the Census of 1890 divided 32

Wade, "Urbanization." The inappropriateness of William Robinson's strictures against the use of ecological data, when data of this order are used in estimating the coefficients of a well specified multivariate model, is trenchantly discussed in Eric Hanushek, John Jackson, and John Kain, "Model Specification, Use of Aggregate Data, and the Ecological Correlation Fallacy," Political Methodology, 1 (1974), 89-107. 34 Between the elections of 1894 and 1897 segments of Westchester and of Queens counties, and the entire counties of Kings and Richmond, were annexed to the City of New York. To preserve cross-time comparability, the equations for the election of 1897 pertain only to that portion of Greater New York that had been part of the City of New York prior to these annexations. 35 Limitations on my resources prevented me from analyzing every mayoral election in New York between 1884 and 1897. I chose to eliminate the election of 1890 because that election was in its basic structure similar to the election of 1894: in 1890 as in 1894 the Tammany slate was opposed by a coalition of dissident Democrats, Republicans and reformers. 33

272

—.07

.01

Tammany 1894

Tammany 1897

.28 (-17)

.71" (-17)

.58* (.13)

-h

1.38(-19)

1.17(19)

.63" (-15)

1.28(-20)

B2 Irish

The figures in this table are regression coefficients; - p < -OOl. b p < .01. c p < .05.

.30

Tammany 1892

1

.19 (.18)

Bo + B Irish

.06

=

Tammany 1888

Vote

those

.53a (-12)

.56(-11)

.51(.09)

.32* (.12)

-+- B4 Italian -+- BB

1888-1897

.62(.08)

.49(.08)

.42(.06)

.37(.08)

German +

in parentheses are standard errors.

.53(.09)

.51(.09)

.39(-07)

.65(.09)

2 -f- B3 Jewish

MAYORAL ELECTIONS,

.48(.13)

.40b (-13)

.21°