ABSTRACT
Partisan attachments in America eroded slowly, but nonetheless with far reaching consequences for political consultants. More-over, defection rates among party sympathizers crossing lines in presidential elections, particularly among weak Democrats who had rates of upwards of 30 percent defections from 1968–1992, suggested to political consultants that party ties no longer anchored voting choices. Political pollsters have been both blessed and damned by technological innovation. Blessed by computerized telephone banks, random-digit dialing, rapid entry of questionnaire results for processing, software packages for instantaneous sophisticated analysis of data, desk-top publishing of reports to clients, and Web sites hawking pollsters’ credentials, skills, and successes. July 27, 1996, may prove to be as momentous a day in the transformation of political communication in the United States as the first day of May in 1844. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
