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The Municipal Voter: Voting and Nonvoting in City Elections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Howard D. Hamilton*
Affiliation:
Kent State University

Abstract

The few case studies of participation in local elections display distinct patterns, but the measurements lack comparability with each other or with national election voting studies. By application of the methodology, variables, and categories of the presidential election studies to a Toledo city election, the composition of the electorate is compared with that in presidential elections and some sharp contrasts which appear to have significant implications are observed. Some data calculated from Merriam and Gosnell's classic Non-Voting reveal some developments since 1923. From two prominent characteristics of municipal elections, nonpartisan form and low turnout, a few hypotheses about participation in city elections are deduced and examined. The data support the general proposition that most of the psychological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables display comparable amplitudes in city and presidential elections, but their significance is much greater in city elections, because the low voting level makes their impact proportionately greater.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1971

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References

1 Merriam, Charles E. and Gosnell, Harold F., Nonvoting, Causes and Methods of Control (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1924)Google Scholar.

2 Pollock, James K., Voting Behavior: A Case Study (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1939)Google Scholar; Litchfield, Edward H., Voting Behavior in a Metropolitan Area (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1941)Google Scholar; McCleskey, Clifton and Nimmo, Dan, “Differences Between Potential, Registered, and Actual Voters,” Social Science Quarterly, 49 (June, 1968), 103114Google Scholar.

3 Martin, Roscoe, “The Municipal Electorate: A Case Study,” Southwestern Social Science Quarterly, 14 (December, 1933), 193237Google Scholar, reprinted in Social Science Quarterly, 50 (March, 1970), 890936Google Scholar.

4 Alford, Robert P. and Lee, Eugene C., “Voting Turnout in American Cities,” American Political Science Review, 62 (September, 1968), 796813CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

5 Lazarsfeld, Paul, Berelson, Bernard, and Gaudet, Hazel, The People's Choice (New York: Duell, Sloan, and Pearce, 1944)Google Scholar.

6 Campbell, Angus, Converse, Philip E., Miller, Warren E., and Stokes, Donald E., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960), ch. 5Google Scholar; Berelson, Bernard R., Lazarsfeld, Paul F., and McPhee, William N., Voting (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1954), p. 26Google Scholar.

7 Lazarsfeld et al., op. cit., p. 48; Campbell, Angus and Kahn, Robert L., The People Elect a President (Ann Arbor: Institute of Social Research, 1952), p. 38Google Scholar; Campbell, Angus, Gurin, Gerald, and Miller, Warren E., The Voter Decides (Evanston, Ill.: Row, Peterson, 1954), ch. 5Google Scholar.

8 Campbell et al., The Voter Decides.

9 Campbell et al., The Voter Decides; Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1968, p. 372Google Scholar.

10 Lazarsfeld et al., op. cit., ch. 5; Campbell et al., The Voter Decides, ch. 5.

11 Korchin, Sheldon J., “Psychological Variables in the Behavior of Voters,” (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Harvard University, 1946)Google Scholar, cited in Berelsoh et al., op. cit., pp. 331, 333.

12 Lazarsfeld, et al., The People's Choice, p. 47Google Scholar.

13 Campbell et al., The Voter Decides, ch. 5. This is an artifact of low voting in the South.

14 Campbell, et al., The Voter Decides, p. 109Google Scholar.

15 Berelson, et al., Voting, p. 31Google Scholar.

16 Two hundred eight clusters of three housing units were drawn systematically. A randomizing device was used to spot the cluster within each block and another to select the interviewee. Interviews were completed in all but one cluster, two in most, with a completion rate of 77 per cent, exclusive of vacancies and razed areas. A current and remarkably accurate population estimate provided by the Toledo Planning Commission shows that the voting rate in the primary was 35.7 per cent of the adult population. The rate in the sample was 35.6 per cent.

17 The turnout rates for presidential elections in Tables 2, 3, 4, and 6 are adjusted to correct for the notorious “overreporting” of voting rates in postelection surveys. Survey data of different presidential elections were used to achieve the best matching of categories for each variable. The adjustments were as follows:

18 The association of education and turnout in congressional and presidential elections also has been found to be epiphenomenal. Bennett, Stephen E. and Klecka, William R., “Social Status and Political Participation: A Multivariate Analysis of Predictive Power,” Midwest Journal of Political Science, 14 (August, 1970), 355382CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 This theme is elaborated and documented in Hamilton, Howard D., “Costs of Reform,” National Civic Review, 58 (November, 1969), 469475CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Calculated from a table in Banfield, Edward C. and Wilson, James Q., City Politics (New York: Random House, 1963), p. 225Google Scholar, classifying Chicago as partisan.

21 Lee, Eugene C., “City Elections: A Statistical Profile,” 1963 Municipal Yearbook (Chicago: International City Managers' Association, 1963), pp. 7484Google Scholar.

22 The data support Tingsten's “law of dispersion,” i.e., that socioeconomic differences in turnout decline as the overall level of participation increases. Tingsten, Herbert, Political Behavior (Totowa, N.J.: Bedminster Press, 1963), p. 230Google Scholar.

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