After a Half Century of Election Studies: Whence, Where, and Whither?

A history of election studies should at least touch on the history of communication research, because they were born contemporaneously in the 1940s and their subject matters overlap considerably (e.g., their central shared topic is how the mass media affect voting behavior). Changes in election studies during the half century since their 1940s launch have been modest to a fault, but there have been some changes in direction that are worth mentioning because they are probably selective improvements and may indicate future directions. Full-scale empirical election studies were begun at Columbia University in New York in the 1940s by a team and in a setting that grew into the Bureau of Applied Social Research, consisting of Paul Lazarsfeld and his talented collaborators. While the Columbia University Bureau of Applied Social Research published almost as many books as articles, the later Michigan Institute for Social Research published five times as many articles as books (J. M. Converse, 1987).