The Two Majorities: The Issue Context of Modern American Politics (Interpreting American Politics) - Softcover

Shafer, Byron E.; Claggett, William J.M.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0801850193 ISBN 13: 9780801850196

Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995

Synopsis

Why do Democratic political candidates avoid the one issue on which the general public is most in agreement with them? Why do Republicans consistently raise the one issue their advisors urge them to avoid? Why do voters so often exhibit patterns of policy preference vastly different from what analysts and strategists predict? And why do these same voters consistently cast ballots that ensure the continuation of "divided government?"

In The Two Majorities Byron Shafer and William Claggett offer groundbreaking political analysis that resolves many of the seeming contradictions in the contemporary American political scene. Drawing on an unusually large sample of all Americans, taken by the Gallup organization, Shafer and Claggett argue that the recent turbulence in American politics is in some ways superficial. Below the surface, they contend, the political preferences of the American people remain remarkably stable.

Shafer and Claggett find that American public opinion is organized around two clusters of issues―both of which are favored by a majority if voters: social welfare, social insurance, and civil rights, which constitute an economic/welfare factor (associated with Democrats), and cultural values, civil liberties, and foreign relations, a cultural/national factor (associated with Republicans). Provocatively, the authors argue that each party's best strategy for success is not to try to take popular positions on the whole range of issues, but to focus attention on the party's most successful cluster of issues.

About this title

About the Authors

Byron E. Shafer is Andrew W. Mellon Professor of American Government at Oxford University. He is the author of Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics and Bifurcated Politics: Evolution and Reform in the National Party Convention.

William J. M. Claggett is associate professor of political science at Florida State University.

From the Back Cover

In 'The Two Majorities' Byron Shafer and William Claggett offer groundbreaking political analysis that resolves many of the seeming contradictions in the contemporary American political scene. Drawing on an unusually large sample of all Americans, taken by the Gallup organization, Shafer and Claggett argue that the recent turbulence in American politics is in some ways superficial. Below the surface, they contend, the political preferences of the American people remain remarkably stable.

Edition details

• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1995
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0801850193
• ISBN 13: 9780801850196
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 256