Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign

Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, William N. McPhee

University of Chicago Press, Jun 15, 1986 - Political Science - 395 pages

Voting is an examination of the factors that make people vote the way they do. Based on the famous Elmira Study, carried out by a team of skilled social scientists during the 1948 presidential campaign, it shows how voting is affected by social class, religious background, family loyalties, on-the-job relationships, local pressure groups, mass communication media, and other factors. Still highly relevant, Voting is one of the most frequently cited books in the field of voting behavior.

Contents

• PART II SOCIAL PROCESSES: 35
• PART III POLITICAL PROCESSES: 151
• PART IV CONCLUSION: 275
• APPENDIXES: 325
• INDEX: 387

About the author

Paul F. Lazarsfeld was a Viennese-born American mathematician, psychologist, and sociologist who immigrated to the United States in 1933. In Vienna he had established an applied social research center, which became a model for others in the United States; the most famous product of the Vienna center is Marienthal (1933) a pioneering study of unemployment in an Austrian village. In the United States, Lazarsfeld became director of a Rockefeller Foundation-supported study of the impact of radio; through this study, communications research was established as a field of social science inquiry. In 1937 Lazarsfeld founded a research center, which became the Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University; he taught at Columbia from 1940 until 1969. Lazarsfeld's research areas included mass communications, voting, latent structure analysis, mathematical models, the history of quantitative research, and the analysis of survey data. His major goal was to find intellectual convergences between the social sciences and the humanities, between concept formation and index construction, and between quantitative and qualitative research. His enthusiasm and originality had an enormous impact on colleagues and students; an annual evening lecture and reception at Columbia provided an opportunity for them to share both vivid memories and current experiences.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Voting: A Study of Opinion Formation in a Presidential Campaign; Emersion: Emergent Village Resources for Communities of Faith Series; Midway reprints; Phoenix books; Political science: Univ. of Chicago Press
• Authors: Bernard R. Berelson, Paul F. Lazarsfeld, William N. McPhee
• Edition: illustrated, reprint
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1986
• ISBN: 0226043509, 9780226043500
• Length: 395 pages
• Subjects: Political Science / General; Political Science / Political Process / Campaigns & Elections