Party Preference and Attitudes on Political Issues: 1948–1951

The widespread interest in understanding the political behavior of the American electorate has been served by a number of different methodological approaches. One of the most widely known and used is the analysis of aggregate voting statistics along the lines indicated by the work of Louis Bean. Major problems susceptible to study through aggregate behavioral measures include those related to the consequences of urbanization, population migration, drastic economic crisis or long-term change, or important international developments. Trends in voting behavior and regional differences in voting fall within this type of analysis, with census tract information and political sub-division voting statistics providing much of the relevant data for investigation.A different approach to the study of political behavior is provided by the analysis of data on individuals, information pertaining to the behavior of identifiable persons. This approach allows flexibility in the ultimate units of analysis. The use of data on individuals not only provides such gross information as the percentages of people forming large groups (Democrats and Republicans, well-informed and poorly-informed) in the population, but it also provides information about various characteristics of these groups within the population.