ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the relationship between the various social relations of agricultural production and the politics and ideology of agricultural producers. In 1974, they had the highest turnout of any group." In addition, Lewis-Beck found very high levels of political participation among the youngest farmers, a finding "decidedly at variance" with the rest of the US population. Along with a commodity analysis, three sets of variables were used to examine the internal differentiation of Wisconsin farmers' political participation and political ideology: social class, socioeconomic status, and demographic. Mean differences were compared by commodity on several independent variables between three groups: Democratic Party and Republican Party identifiers, Democrats and independents, and Republicans and independents. Besides the debt-free category, where there is a 21% difference in party identification in favor of the Democratic Party, the Democratic loss does not appear as a Republican gain.
