Social Structure and Voting in the United States

415 Pages·2016·9.853 MB·English

by  Robert B. Smith (auth.)

Robert B. Smith
Social Structure
and Voting in the
United States
Social Structure and Voting in the United States
Robert B. Smith
Social Structure and Voting
in the United States
123
RobertB. Smith
Social Structural Research Inc.
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For my parents
Preface
This book studies how the voting choices of individuals are shaped by the inter-
actions between two considerations: their sentiments, which may be practical or
moralorboth;andthetangibleproblemsoftheirstateofresidence.Practicalvoters
make reasonable, deliberative decisions: they consider which candidates can best
solvethesocialandeconomicproblemsoftheirstateandnation.Moralvotersmake
theirdecisionsaccordingtotheirownstronglyheldculturalvalues,beliefs,aswell
as their moral commitments: they make morally rational, intuitive, and emotional
decisions. In making their choices voters express a mixture of practical and moral
considerations, with the weighting of each factor varying with individual and
circumstance.
This book seeks to answer a general question: Are voting decisions more
decisivelydeterminedbymoralconsiderationsindicatedbymoralconservatismand
moralliberalismorbythepractical considerationsreflectingeconomicself-interest
and the tangible problems of their state and nation? In this connection, it further
asks howdopractical votersmake uptheirmindtovotefor acandidate;how doa
state’s tangible social and economic problems inform practical decision making;
andhowdoastate’scharacteristicscombinewithitsvoters’politicalideologiesand
moral sentiments to limit practical voting? To answer these questions, this book
linkssurveydataonthe2008presidentialelectiontoinformationaboutthetangible
problems of each state.
Accordingly, Part I of this book, focusing on practical voting, asks: How do
social attributes, political ideology, and social contexts influence the practical
voting decisions of individuals? Part II, asks: What are the tangible social and
economicproblemsoffourstatesanddotheseproblemsinfluencepracticalvoting?
And Part III, on moral voting, asks: How does moral conservatism—sentiments
about abortion, same-sex marriage, and guns—affect the voters’ political variables
andcontributetodisconnectionsbetweenthedevelopmentalneedsofthestatesand
the political responses of the voters?
vii
viii Preface
The numerous studies of voting have provided me with a theoretical and sub-
stantive understanding of which variables are important, how they may differ in
priority(e.g.,timeorder),howthevariablesformasystemofrelationships,andthe
variables’effects.InthisstudyIformtheoreticalconceptsatthemiddle-rangelevel
of abstraction; I then combine deductive and inductive approaches to test
hypotheses anduncover new findings.Most often thefindings I uncover posenew
research questions, which I then address: the new research questions may in turn
lead to additional research questions and findings. For example, I find that party
affiliation and political ideology do not vary much across the four types of states;
but indicators of moral conservatism do vary, with the South and Heartland more
conservativethantheothertypesofstates.ThisfindingledmetoexploreinPartIII
the determinants and consequences of moral conservatism. To depict the results I
usegraphicalmodelsthatsynthesizemanyofthespecificfindingsandopenupnew
avenues of inquiry.
Above all, this book shows that moral considerations often trump the practical;
political ideologies shape party affiliation more than does party affiliation shape
political ideologies; the income inequality characterizing a state affects its risks to
human development, but inequality had no discernible effect on the voters in the
2008 election; the historical classification of states as red, purple, or blue has very
little direct influence on why people choose a particular candidate; a typology that
groups states as South, Heartland, postindustrial, or balanced predicts the political
color of the states and organizes a vast range of macrolevel indicators of tangible
problemsbuthaslittleeffectonthevoters’politicalsentiments;moralconservatism
leadstofavorablesentimentsabouttheeconomyanddisregardforcrucialeconomic
problems—inequality, wage stagnation, insecure pensions, and risks of unem-
ployment.Moralconservatismversusmoralliberalism—culturalsentiments—isan
important cleavage that more than most other variables shape political ideology,
party affiliation, and the voting choice, and limit practical voting. This research
suggests how high-quality education can ease these limits.
I should like to thank Morris Halle for his suggestion that I write a book on
voting. I also thank the staff at Springer, specifically Esther Otten, who commis-
sioned this book and commented on several chapters; Hendrikje Tuerlings, who
guided this project through the publication process and made helpful editorial
suggestions; and their colleagues Myriam Poort, Miranda Dijksman, and Cynthia
Kroonenforsupportingthisproject.ForproducingthisbookIthankFermineShaly
and Rajesh Sambandam and their colleagues at Scientific Publishing Services,
Chennai India. For their comments on various chapter drafts, I thank William
D’Antonio, Harry Dahms, Lilian Handlin, Ruth Leeds Love, Laird McCulloch,
JudithNiehues,SidneyVerba,andCameliaVoinea.FortheirinsightfulcommentsI
thank the anonymous readers. I especially thank Joanna Handlin Smith for her
lovingcompanionshipthatmadethisbookpossibleandforhereditorialcomments;
Preface ix
and Burton Greenberg, Stephanie Moore, Jagmeet Singh, and Randall Zusman for
sharing their wisdom with me.
I thank Ana Iparraguirre of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research and the
Democracy Corps for providing me with the survey data and allowing me to use
them.IthankthefollowingSAStechnicalsupportpersonnelfor theirassistancein
my preparing these data for analysis, using the survey regression and other survey
procedures, specifying the structural equation models as estimated by Proc Calis,
and preparing the data for map-making, respectively, Kurt Jones, Rob Agnelli, Jill
Tao,andKathrynMcLawhorn.IalsothankJunhakLeeoftheUniversityofTexas,
Arlington, for preparing the map of the typology of states and Jeffrey Blossom
oftheCenterforGeographicAnalysisofHarvardUniversityforpreparingthemaps
of moral conservatism and its components.
The materials in this book bear on contemporary problems and, with one small
exception,havenotbeenpreviouslypublished.Presentationsonthemedia,politics,
and policy, at the Shorenstein Center, Harvard Kennedy School, kept my knowl-
edge of current developments up to date. The interdisciplinary seminars on
inequalityandsocialpolicy,atHarvardKennedy School, reinforced myinterestin
this important topic. My presentations at meetings of the Eastern Sociological
Society, the Society for the Advancement of Socioeconomics, and the Boston
ChapteroftheAmericanStatisticalAssociationhelpedmetoclarifytheexposition,
asdidnumerousdiscussionswithfriends.Theviewsexpressedinthisbookaremy
own and not necessarily those of other people or organizations.
Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA Robert B. Smith
Contents
1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 A Theoretical Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.3 Part I, Practical Voting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Part II, Tangible Problems. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.5 Part III, Moral Voting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Part I Practical Voting
2 Voters for Obama . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2.1.1 New Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1.2 Approach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
2.1.3 The Survey Data . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
2.2 Discontent. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
2.3 Analysis of Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
2.4 Variables of the Voting Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.5 Stability of the Party Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
2.6 Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
3 Variables of Practical Voting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
3.1.1 New Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.1.2 Literature Review. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
3.2 Blocks of Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
3.2.1 Block a, the Voting Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.2.2 Block b, Party Affiliation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
3.2.3 Block c, Political Ideology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
xi
xii Contents
3.2.4 Block d, Context and Control. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
3.2.5 Block d, Social Attributes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.3 Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4 Models of Practical Voting. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.1.1 Literature Review. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.1.2 Strategy. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.2 Ideology Influences Party Affiliation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
4.3 Testing the Mechanism. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
4.3.1 Model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.3.2 Model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4.3.3 Model 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.3.4 Model 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.3.5 Model 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
4.3.6 Model 6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
4.4 Recursive Asymmetric Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
4.4.1 Model 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.4.2 Model 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.4.3 Model 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
4.5 Graphical Asymmetric Models. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4.5.1 Chain Graph . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
4.5.2 Regression Graphs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
4.6 Reciprocal Effects of Ideology and Party Affiliation . . . . . . . . 110
4.7 Direct, Indirect, and Total Effects of Political Variables. . . . . . 111
4.7.1 Direct Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
4.7.2 Indirect Effects. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.7.3 Total Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.8 RPB and Human Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
4.9 Discussion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Notes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Part II Tangible Problems
5 Postindustrial Indicators, Human Development,
and Red–Purple–Blue States. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.1 Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
5.1.1 New Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
5.1.2 The Data. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128