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Minority groups differ from one another, among other things, in the extent to which they are integrated into or apart from the societies to which they belong. The extent of this integration or apartness is reflected in the various ways in which the minorities differ from the rest of the population, such as in the effect of economic class upon voting. No minority group is ever completely integrated into its society, for complete integration is tantamount to the extinction of group identity. No minority group is ever completely apart, for the term "minority" implies the existence of a majority with which the minority forms a common society. The dimension of integration-apartness is related to but not identical with the dimension of assimilation. Assimilation refers to the replacement or modification of group characteristics as a consequence of out-group contacts. Integration refers to the extent a minority actually forms a part of the body politic of its society. Thus, German "non-Aryan" Christians were fully assimilated but, in the Third Reich, certainly not integrated into the German society. In general, the term "integration" is applicable at various levels of analysis. We talk of the integration of individuals into groupings, the integration of these groupings into further units, and the integration of these into larger units in turn. In the case of our study, individuals are more or less integrated into their respective minority groups, and these in turn are more or less integrated into their respective societies. We are concerned in this paper with developing a measure for the degree of integration of minority groups into their societies. The basic proposition of this paper is: The more apart a minority group is from its society, the more will it differ from that society as a whole in the effect of economic class upon voting. An analysis of the voting of two minorities in Central Europe illustrates the above proposition. This is followed by comments on minority group voting in the United States and Canada. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We can all agree that the presidential election result was a shocker. According to news reports, even the Trump campaign team was stunned to come up a winner. So now seems like a good time to go over various theories floating around in political science and political reporting and see where they stand, now that this turbulent political year has drawn to a close. In the present article, we go through several things that we as political observers and political scientists have learned from the election, and then discuss implications for the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the role of the nuclear freeze campaign in the November 1982 U.S. Congressional elections. It is opined that there will be two focal points for the November election. The first is the many statewide referenda on the nuclear freeze issue. The second focal point will be the campaigns of the Senate and House. The article holds that a strong pro-nuclear freeze outcome to the 1982 elections will significantly influence the next session of Congress and the latter half of President Ronald Reagan's administration.

I present a dynamic Bayesian forecasting model that enables early and accurate prediction of U.S. presidential election outcomes at the state level. The method systematically combines information from historical forecasting models in real time with results from the large number of state-level opinion surveys that are released publicly during the campaign. The result is a set of forecasts that are initially as good as the historical model, and then gradually increase in accuracy as Election Day nears. I employ a hierarchical specification to overcome the limitation that not every state is polled on every day, allowing the model to borrow strength both across states and, through the use of random-walk priors, across time. The model also filters away day-to-day variation in the polls due to sampling error and national campaign effects, which enables daily tracking of voter preferences toward the presidential candidates at the state and national levels. Simulation techniques are used to estimate the candidates’ probability of winning each state and, consequently, a majority of votes in the Electoral College. I apply the model to preelection polls from the 2008 presidential campaign and demonstrate that the victory of Barack Obama was never realistically in doubt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research indicates that U.S. Supreme Court justices who are likely to control opinion assignments may withhold votes in an initial round of conference voting in circumstances that suggest that this behavior has strategic origins. Specifically, scholars have suggested that justices may pass in conference voting to gain control over the opinion assignment. This study extends this literature by developing a theory of the relationship between strategic passing in a conference vote and opinion assignment, which is assessed through a quantitative analysis of opinion assignments made by Chief Justice Burger. Specifically, we argue that justices selected to write opinions by those who have passed to strategically join a majority will be more ideologically peripheral compared to the majority coalition as a whole than justices who are assigned to write opinions following conference votes cast in order of seniority. Consistent with this theory, we find that Chief Justice Burger, indeed, made opinion assignments that diverged more strongly from the ideological composition of the Court's majority when he passed in conference compared with opinion assignments he made when he voted in order of seniority. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1980 most social scientists have found little evidence in support of popular and recurring commentaries that identify religion (and evangelical Protestants, in particular) as a major source of conservative political trends in the United States. But in the past several years a new line of research has reported results suggesting that earlier studies underestimated evidence that partisan change among specific religious groups has contributed to an emerging Republican electoral advantage. We assess this latter body of research, presenting the most comprehensive analysis to date of the effects of religious group memberships on political outcomes in national elections from 1972 through 2000. We address the limitations of past studies by incorporating advances in the measurement of religious denomination, adjudicating competing statistical models of the changing interrelationship of religion and voter alignments and extending previous investigations by simultaneously considering the impact of religion on (1) voting behavior, (2) partisanship, and (3) the representation of religious groups within the Democratic and Republican parties' electoral coalitions. Our results refine and extend past studies of religion and political change, providing evidence of limited changes in group-specific voting coupled with much larger changes in religion-based partisanship and party coalitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Argues that the MOVE organization represented an expression of a revolutionary form of African-centered humanism that had its antecedents in Black Power style politics in the U.S.. Brief history of MOVE; Response to increasing levels of local repression; Career background of Black Panther Party member Mumia Abu-Jamal; Conclusion.

Significant changes in the electoral support of black mayors occurred in 1977. Bloc-voting against black incumbents by whites decreased dramatically in all cities, except Detroit, while bloc-support for the mayors continued in black precincts. Overall turnout was lowered significantly but black turnout rates continued to exceed white rates. The "Manhattan Coalition" of blacks and upper- and middle-income whites was revised in 1977 in Atlanta, Los Angeles, and New Orleans, but Detroit continued to experience a strong electoral cleavage based on intraracial cohesion and little crossover voting. The black mayoral victory in New Orleans was based on the same combination of factors as in the other cities in 1973. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The failure of black mayoral candidates in Detroit and Los Angeles in 1969 can be attributed to an increased voter turnout by the white electorate, combined with bloc-voting by blacks and whites. In 1973 racial bloc-voting increased in the Detroit and Atlanta mayoral elections and continued at a high rate in Los Angeles. Black candidates were successful in the three cities because of a significantly higher rate of black voter turnout. Significant changes in the voting surfaces of the three cities occurred between 1909 and 1973 related to residential change, the choice of candidates, voting age, and social status. The success of black political candidates can be predicted with some accuracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent research has suggested that religious participation is related to perceptions of political efficacy and to voting behavior but not to direct political action. The present analyses extend this line of research to participation in local politics using survey data (N = 1423) from Northwestern Wisconsin collected in 1974. The results of this work suggest that church attendance is related to voting in primary and local elections but not to talking to local officials. These results remain when controls for organizational involvement, socioeconomic status, sex, and selected social psychological measures are included in the analyses. Variation in the strength of the relationship between church attendance and voting depending on the age of the respondent is also reported. Implications of the findings for democratic politics at the local level of government are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article at recent trends in political behavior and political alignating in the United States in terms of the sociology of generations. A period- and cohort-based generational unit perspective works best for explaining recent increases in approval levels for political protest and political alienation. For predieting voting, a life-cycle or aging approach works better. Campaigning behavior exhibits less clear relationships with generational variables. The tendencies towards both a generational-based nonconventional politics rooted in cynicism and distrust along with the trend toward increasing levels of voting as people age suggest that current political and social conditions contain the potential for a wide variety of citizen-initiated political activities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A conceptual model of the effects of residential relocation of voters upon their voting behavior is elaborated; in this model relocation is related directly to instability of voting preferences, susceptibility to short-term influences and to the weakness of a neighborhood or contextual effect. The interaction effects of voluntary organization affiliation and political involvement are also discussed. A number of hypotheses are derived from the conceptual model and tested with a non parametric measure of association on the basis of survey data from Columbus, Ohio. It is found that the major hypotheses are sustained though the data on the interaction effects of involvement are more ambiguous. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]