Josh Zingher has posted his paper “An Analysis of the Changing Social Bases of American Political Parties: 1952-2008″ on SSRN. Josh is is a Doctoral Candidate in Political Science at Binghamton University. His research focuses on several aspects of American politics, including mass political behavior, minority and immigrant politics and Congressional elections. He can be reached at www.joshzingher.com . Here is the abstract for the paper:
In this article I assess how the social bases of the American political parties have evolved over time. To accomplish this task, I first determine which social group memberships significantly influence individual vote choice with a multivariate analysis of ANES data. I then measure how many votes each politically relevant social group contributed to the party coalitions in each presidential election from 1952-2008. I discuss how group contributions have changed over time and establish the demographic and behavioral causes of group contribution change. I find that the party coalitions have been restructured as a result of groups’ changing voting behavior and the changing ratio of groups in the electorate.
