ABSTRACT
The main construct of the book is that elections are an interplay between long-term and short-term forces. The long-term forces are involvement, party identification, and ideology and they seldom change from election to election. The short-term forces are candidates and issues and are what cause change. (They will be discussed in Chapter 2.)
Involvement is an important variable since it determines whether someone will vote or not. Factors that produce high involvement are interest in the election, strong party identification, strong ideology, sense of citizen duty, and roots in the community.
Figure 1.1 shows the proportions of Democrats, Republicans, and Independents from 1960 to 2016. Republican identity has remained mostly steady at 28 percent. Democrats started in 1960 with nearly 50 percent of the electorate identifying with them and ended up with only 38 percent while Independents increased by a concomitant amount. The reasons for these changes are discussed.
