Designing Democratic Government: Making Institutions Work

1. Mobilizing Institutions and Class Bias in U.S. Electoral Politics, 1964 to 2004

Chapter 1 MOBILIZING INSTITUTIONS AND CLASS BIAS IN U.S. ELECTORAL POLITICS, 1964 TO 2004  Jan E. Leighley and Jonathan Nagler MOST SYSTEMATIC EVIDENCE regarding elite mobilization of voter turnout focuses specifically on mobilization by political parties and fails to account for the diverse set of political elites who typically seek to mobilize voter turnout. In addition, a few studies have documented changes in the nature of these mobilization patterns over time. We expand on the traditional “party-centered” approach and assess the extent to which income determines whom party and nonparty organizations mobilize, and whether income has become more important as a predictor of being mobilized over the past forty years. Data are drawn from the American National Election Study Cumulative Data File for 1964 through 2004. Our results indicate that although contacting by parties is significantly more class-biased than is contacting of nonparty organizations , partisan mobilization has not become more class-biased over the past several decades. We conclude that the potential for broadening electoral mobilization to include lower-income citizens likely rests on the vigor of nonparty organizational efforts. INTRODUCTION Of increasing concern to many observers of American politics is the central role that money plays in determining who runs for office, who wins elections, and whose views are represented in the electoral process. Indeed, one of the most distinguishing features of the American electorate is its class bias—the overrepresentation of the wealthy in the electorate compared to their presence in the population. We consider one possible answer to why the American electorate is biased in favor of the wealthy by investigating patterns of party and nonparty mobilization (that is, mobilization by party and nonparty entities) in presidential elections from 1964 to 2004. As Sidney Verba, Kay Schlozman, and Henry Brady (1995, 15) note, individuals fail to participate in politics “because they can’t; because they don’t want to; or because nobody asked.” We leave to the authors of other chapters in this volume to discuss how electoral rules or citizen motivation influence the nature of democratic politics in the United States (see especially Bowler and Donovan, chapter 2), and focus here on who is asking whom to participate. Over the past century numerous scholars have repeatedly documented the importance of contacting citizens to vote as a means of increasing turnout and perhaps winning elections. Harold Gosnell’s (1927) classic experimental work on flyer and poster distribution was an early precursor to more recent studies that have emphasized competition between parties, candidate spending , and being contacted by a political party as predictors of voter turnout. Although the particular findings might differ depending on election, type of data, and model specification, the general conclusion is that elite mobilization (that is, mobilization by elites) matters (Rosenstone and Hansen 2003). Most of this systematic evidence regarding elite mobilization, however, focuses specifically on party mobilization and fails to account for the diverse set of political elites who typically seek to mobilize voter turnout. Despite Steven J. Rosenstone and Mark Hansen’s strong claim that a substantial proportion of the decline in voter turnout over the past several decades reflects strategic choices of political elites regarding when they target potential voters and whom they target, we have almost no empirical evidence as to how changes in elite mobilization over time have affected who votes. That few have investigated the institutional sources of inequalities in voter turnout levels across social groups is especially notable, given the remarkable class bias of the American electorate (see, for example, Leighley and Nagler 1992; Shields and Goidel 1997; but see also Leighley and Nagler 2004; Radcliff 2001; and Radcliff and Davis 2000). In this chapter we expand on the “party-centered” approach of studying elite mobilization to assess the class bias in both party and nonparty mobilization and to assess how the class bias of elite mobilization has changed since 1964. Ultimately we are interested in one critical question: Has income become a more important determinant of being mobilized to vote over the past several decades? Our focus on mobilizing institutions in American politics illustrates the abiding importance of class in American politics, as evidenced in the class-based mobilization strategies of the major political parties. Yet it also suggests that nonparty institutions in the United States do not follow such strategies, and thus offer the potential for a more inclusive democratic politics. 20 DESIGNING DEMOCRATIC GOVERNMENT PARTY AND NONPARTY MOBILIZATION Most...