ABSTRACT
This chapter emphasizes answers to the relevant questions about why understanding electoral behavior matters. While each of the questions has a more narrow answer, the big picture has to deal with the quality and strength of American democracy. Public will, exhibited through voters' electoral behavior, needs to accurately reflect the diverse population, not a subset. America's military and economy is universally accepted as being globally superior in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. If citizenship, operationalized by individual electoral behavior, is important, it is so because American exceptionalism is best measured by its peoples. In 1971, President Richard Nixon spoke to a group of news media executives in Kansas City, Missouri, and he had a grave warning for America based on citizenship and the history of Rome. Inequality in America's economic system creates a disjointed society where middle-class and low-income people believe that the government is not concerned with their well-being.
