Democracy Under Pressure

Democracy Under Pressure

Chapter 11

Voting Behavior and Elections


• As the hoopla of the campaign subsides and the voters go to the polls, no one really knows the verdict of the voters on the campaign until the votes are counted. In democracies, the people vote to select those who will govern.

• About half of the world's countries hold regular, free elections in which people choose among rival candidates.


• In Chapter 1, the authors examined the reciprocal nature of power.– Government makes authoritative decisions about who gets

what.– Government makes authoritative, binding decisions, yet

derives its power from the consent of the people.• People influence government by taking part in politics.

• They also wield influence by the opinions that they hold and voice, the organizations they join, and the direct action that they take.


• The fundamental way that people influence government is through the ballot box.

– In 1992, for example, voters removed one party from the White House and installed the other.

– Voters in the federal system elect about 500,000 people to represent them, including a president, members of the House and Senate, and state and local officials.

– American voters choose among candidates, parties, and sometimes, alternate policies.


• There is often a gap between democracy in theory and democracy in practice. These distortions include:

– At the presidential level, not all candidates are well-financed.– Television commercials try to create "images" rather than inform

the electorate.– Voter often unenthusiastically select the "lesser of two evils,"

supporting independent and third parties at times.


Who Votes

The Voter

• In each election since 1928, at least half of Americans of voting age have voted for president.– In non-presidential election years, less than half bother to

vote for Congress.– In midterm Congressional elections since 1962, an average

of only 38 percent voted for the House.– In nine presidential elections from 1960 to 1992, 55.1

percent of the voters cast ballots.– The turnout for president grew substantially in 1992 to more

than 55 percent. Still, much larger percentages voted for president in the 1890s than today.

The Voter

• Middle-aged people vote more than the young or very old.– In 200, over half between the ages of 18 and 24 did not

register to vote.– Voter participation increases with age, peaks in the mid-

forties and fifties, and declines after sixty.

• In the decades after women's suffrage, men voted more than women. By 2000, the percent of women voting was 3 percent higher than men. This is because there are now more women than men.

The Voter

• College graduates vote more than those with high school or grade school educations.– In 2000, 75 percent of college-educated Americans voted,

as opposed to 52.5 percent of high-school graduates, and 39.3 percent of grade-school graduates.

– Education caused the greatest variation in voter turnout of all the factors considered.

– Income, education, social class, and occupation are closely related; the higher these are, the more likely it is that the person will vote.

The Voter

– Jews vote more than Catholics, who turn out more often than Protestants.

– Churchgoers vote more than nonchurchgoers. Many religious groups tend to get involved in politics.

– African Americans are less likely to turn out than whites, due in part to legal games, intimidation, and violence that kept them out prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

The Voter

• Voter attitudes.– The more partisan the person, the more likely he or she will

vote.– The more interest the person shows in the campaign, the

more likely he or she is to vote.– Concern over the impact of the election and one's sense of

political effectiveness influences a person's likelihood of voting.

– A sense of civic duty correlates with voter turnout.

The Nonvoter

• Some 35 to 45 percent do not vote. The nonvoter is less educated, rural, nonwhite, very young or very old, and has less emotional investment in politics.

• In 2000, only 51 percent, or 105.4 million, voted in the election.

• Reasons people gave a New York Times/CBS News pollster for not voting: not registered, didn't like the candidates, too busy, chose not to vote, didn't care, sickness or sick child, felt their vote didn't matter.

The Nonvoter

• Such low voter turnout doesn't speak well of the popular democracy model.

• Some political scientists say the system was designed for rural America and doesn't fit today's hectic lifestyle.

• One pattern that emerges from the data shows that those who are more advantaged in the social system are more likely to vote than the disadvantaged.


How the Voter Decides

How the Voter Decides

• Why do people vote the way they do?– It is important to candidates to have an interest in this.– The kind of society we live in depends in part on whether

voters are satisfied or dissatisfied with the adminstration.– It is extremely difficult to judge people's motives from their

behavior.– Two basic methods can be used to study how voters decide:

• The sociological method focuses on the personal background of the voter and how these factors relate to how he or she votes.

• The psychological method attempts to determine what is in the mind of the voters: their perceptions of parties, candidates, and issues.

The Sociological Factors

• A classic 1940 study of 600 Erie County, Ohio, residents found that wealthier people tended to vote for the GOP while the poorer people voted for Democrats.


• People can be members of many groups simultaneously and sometimes those groups conflict in voting behavior. This causes them to be "cross-pressured."– Catholics vote for Democrats, but what about wealthy

Catholics?– Cross-pressured voters are more likely to decide late and

change their minds on how they will vote.

• Table 11.3 gives voter preferences by groups in presidential elections.


• Social class, income, and occupation.– Upper and middle classes go for the GOP; lower classes go

for Democrats.– Unions vote Democrat, while professionals and business

people support the Republicans.– In 1996, Bob Dole had big lead over Bill Clinton in

households with an income of $75,000 or more.


• Education.– Clinton got 47 percent of the college-educated vote in 1996,

while Dole got 45 percent. This is an exception, since college graduates typically vote GOP.

– In 1996 Clinton got 49.2 percent of the "grade school only" vote.


• Religion and ethnic background.– In 1992, 59.5 percent of Jews, 41.8 percent of Catholics,

and 36 percent of Protestants called themselves Democrats.– In 1960 the Michigan Survey Research Center study

concluded that JFK won a "bonus" from Catholics of 4.3 percent and lost 6.5 percent of the Protestant democrats. He lost a net 2.2 percent of the popular vote because he was Catholic, but a heavy Catholic vote helped him win the electors from the northern industrial states.

– Black Americans voted about 94 percent Democrat in the 1964 election. In 2000, Gore got 87 percent of their vote.


• Primary groups.– These groups tend to have the same socioeconomic

characteristics as the voter.– Primary groups typically reinforce the voters' views.


• Geography.– Democrats are strongest in the big cities of the North and

East, while rural areas of the North are more likely to support the GOP.

– Until the 1960s, Democrats took the South. This is no longer the case.

• In 1972 Nixon polled 71 percent of popular vote in the South for the first such GOP win since Reconstruction.

• Carter won the South in 1976. Reagan got 51 percent of the popular vote in the South in 1980 and won every southern state in 1984, as did Bush in 1988.


• In the three-way 1992 race, 41.5 percent of the South went with Clinton and Gore (two southerners), 42.7 percent with Bush, and 15.8 percent with Perot.

• In 1994 the GOP made big gains in the South, getting more votes than the Democrats in House races.

• In 2000, both major parties nominated a candidate from a southern state to head their presidential ticket. Republican George W. Bush carried all 11 southern states in 2000.

– Suburbia tends to go with the GOP, but Democratic votes have grown as lower- and middle-class whites and many blacks have left the cities.


• Sex.– Until 1980, a person's sex did not seem to have much

influence on how they voted in presidential elections.– After 1980, a decided difference began to appear:

• Men voted for Reagan over Carter by a margin of 15 percentage points or more, while women were more evenly split on the candidates.

• By 1984, GOP strategists feared a gender gap would hamper Reagan's reelection, but that year both sexes voted heavily for Reagan (although there was a 9 percent gap between the sexes).


• In 1996 another gender gap was evident, with Clinton having a narrow lead among men but sizable lead with women. See Table 11.3.

• In 2000, both candidates made it a point to appear on the Oprah Winfrey show, to appeal to women voters.


• Age.– 1. In most elections since 1960, younger voters were more

likely to vote Democratic, while older voters went for the GOP.

– 2. The pattern changed in 1984. Reagan was popular with younger voters, running as strongly with the young as with the old.

• a. In 1992 Clinton led Bush 47 percent to 31 percent in capturing the vote of those under age 25.

• 3. In 1996, the Dole campaign was concerned about his age, as the oldest major-party candidate at the age of 73. He only received 34 percent of the vote from those under the age of 30.

The Psychological Factors

• University of Michigan scholars examined how individuals perceive and evaluate politics.

• They theorized that social characteristics of society change gradually, while voter shifts can be more sudden. They concluded that other factors must be involved.

• They identified three powerful factors: party identification, candidates, and issues.


• Party identification.– From the late 1930s to 1984, Democratic identifiers

outnumbered Republicans by 2 to 1.– By 1988, Democratic identifiers outnumbered GOP

identifiers-43 percent to 29 percent.– By 1999, 34 percent considered themselves to be

Democrats, 28 percent said they were Republicans, and 38 percent called themselves independent.


– Though party identification has been an important factor, there are signs it is becoming less important.

– In Election 1972 the University of Michigan survey found that issues were at least as important as party identification.

– Ticket splitting has become more common, especially since the Second World War.


• The candidates.– Although people identify with a party, they don't always vote

for it.– Short-term factors such as changes in candidates and/or

issues can lead to short-term switches in a given election.– Eisenhower, a military hero, led short-term switches to the

GOP.


– The impression a given candidate makes on the voters can have an impact on their preferences.

• Nixon's "Tricky Dick" image did not help him at all.

• Ford was seen as well-meaning but dull, while Carter was seen as being decent but ineffective.

• George Bush, in 1988, had a rich Ivy League image that made him appear ill at ease among the common folk. His son, George W. Bush was seen as more at ease with rank and file voters but was ridiculed for his tangled syntax and mispronounced words.


• The issues.– To be motivated by an issue, a voter must know it exists and

have an opinion on it.– A voter must have feelings on the issue and see one

candidate as espousing his or her views.– The issue must be salient to the voter and break through the

voter's consciousness.


– When one group of voters is directly affected by an issue-such as black voters perceiving Barry Goldwater as an opponent of civil rights-they can turn out for the other candidate.

– Issues such as the Vietnam War, race, and controversial social issues can be paramount in some elections.

– In 1992, 61 percent of those polled who said that the "economy/jobs" was important voted for Clinton. For those who said "Medicare/social security" was important, 67 percent voted for Clinton.

Retrospective Voting

• The relative importance of candidates, issues, and party identification appears to vary from election year to election year.

• Morris Fiorina studied retrospective voting, in which voters tend to make up their minds by looking back at what has happened under current leaders.– They know what life has been like under current leaders.– They need not know the policies in detail to feel their impact.– If jobs have been lost, or food, water, or air has been

polluted, something is wrong.

Rational Choice

• Some political scientists emphasize the concept of rational choice, in which individuals engage in political behavior to serve their own best interests.

• Morris Fiorina argues that " . . . that behavior is purposive. Rather individuals have goals they try to achieve . . ."


Voting Patterns

Voting Patterns

• Individual voters cast ballots in what amounts to a group decision.

• Sometimes the meaning of the election is clear and at other times it is not. A trained eye can see trends and interrelationships.

Control

• For the national parties, the prize is control of the presidency.

• Political results are geographically dramatic:– Both FDR (1936) and Ronald Reagan (1984) had electors

virtually covering the map.– GOP strength can be seen covering the Midwest and the

Plains states.

Control

– Though Clinton won in 1996, Dole carried the center of the country from Texas to the Canadian border, the Southeast and the Rocky Mountain section of the West.

– In 2000, there was a strong sectional pattern in the vote. Democrats carried most of the Northeast and the West Coast. Republicans carried the Southern and Mid-western states.

Coalitions

• Electoral victories are formed by alliances of segments of the electorate and of interest groups, and unorganized masses of voters.

• The FDR coalition included the South, the urban North, minority groups, and labor unions.

• Nixon's coalition in 1968 included parts of the South, the Midwest, the West, whites, Protestants, white-collar workers, and business people.

• Trend analysis in American politics means looking at the makeup of both the winning and losing coalitions.

Congress

• Patterns of voting for president and Congress are often linked.– From 1932 to 1992, GOP presidents were elected to seven

terms. At the same time, Republicans held Congress for a total of four years.

– In 1992 Ross Perot got 19 million votes. In the same election, the two major parties won all but one seat in both houses of Congress.

Congress

• The 1994 election year was a dramatic one, with the GOP gaining seats in all major regions of the nation and making big gains in the South, Midwest, and the West. For the first time since Reconstruction, there were more Southern Republicans elected to the House of Representatives than Democrats.

• Between 1996-2004, Republicans won more Southern seats that Democrats in congressional election years.

Coattails

• In a presidential election year, the vote for president may affect the vote for Congress, and even state and local races.

• Some members of Congress can withstand the tides of presidential voting, while at times a president can carry into office a majority of his party in the House.

• The fortunes of presidential and senatorial candidates are also linked. Eisenhower, Nixon, and Bush were elected along with a Congress controlled by the opposition party.

Coattails

• In 1980 and 1984, the Republicans controlled the Senate and presidency, but not the House.

• In the 2002 midterm elections, Republicans gained five seats, and the GOP regained a majority in the Senate.

• However, the common pattern is that the incumbant president's party to lose ground.

• The kinds of campaigns run by House candidates shape the midterm verdict. In 1982, GOP candidates moved away from Ronald Reagan, whose approval rating dropped in the recession.

Coattails

• Recent years seem to show that the coattail impact is diminishing. The coattail effect can be overstated, and reverse coattails are not uncommon with an unpopular candidate atop the ticket.

• Governors can ride coattails, too, as V. O. Key, Jr., has concluded, but three-fourths of the gubernatorial races cannot be directly affected by the presidential campaign. A large number of states have scheduled gubernatorial elections in off-years to insulate them from presidential politics.


Presidential Election 2004: A Case Study

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The Electoral System


• The act of voting takes place within a legal and structural framework.– Voters have legal requirements that affect them before they

can vote.– Candidates have to clear state requirements to be on the

ballot.– The form of ballot affects how voters can vote. It can make it

easier or harder to vote a straight ticket.– How their votes count is controlled by custom, state law, and

the Constitution; all have an effect on the workings of the electoral college.


– In the controversial 2000 election, voters went to the polls to choose a new president. The next morning, America learned that the contest was not over.

– The major controversy centered on the "chad", a tiny piece of paper that falls out when a ballot was punched by the voter. Chads that were still attached to the ballot were not counted by voting machines. Manual recounts were ordered. Bush led by only 300 votes.


– On December 8th, two state judges ruled against Gore on the issue of absentee ballots handled by Republican party workers. Florida's Supreme Court ruled for Gore on recount votes and restored disputed votes to Gore.

– The next day, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay stopping the recount. In the case of Bush v. Gore, the Court reversed the Florida high court, holding that because there were no uniform standards for inspecting ballots was in violation of equal protection and due process of law. This ruling settled the election-George W. Bush became the next U.S. president.

Suffrage

• The Constitution calls for popular election of House and Senate.

• The Constitution calls for voters to choose electors, who in turn, will select the president in December.

• Voting rights are basic and protected under the Fourteenth Amendment, which forbids states to abridge them.

Suffrage

• By law, states do regulate residence and other voting requirements, registration, primaries, form of ballot, and political parties registered in the states.

• States no longer may require that voters own property. Voters may no longer be discriminated against on account of sex (Nineteenth Amendment).

• The Fifteenth Amendment protects voting rights for African American citizens. Literacy tests, poll taxes, all-white primaries, and other ruses are no longer permitted.

Suffrage

• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 sought to provide federal protection for minority voters. It brought a dramatic increase in blacks voting on the south.

• Residence requirements.– In 1970, Congress extended the Voting Rights Act to allow

voters in every state to vote in presidential elections after living in the state for 30 days.

– The Voting Rights Act says states must permit absentee registration and voting.

Suffrage

• Literacy and character tests.– These are used mainly to keep African Americans from

voting.• The Voting Rights Act of 1965 suspends their use in six

southern states. Later amendments expanded this to all states.

• The 1965 act also suspended the "good moral character" provisions.

– Other common and still legal restrictions:• Mentally incompetent persons are not permitted to vote.

• Incarcerated convicted felons cannot vote.

Suffrage

• Age as a factor.– Twenty-sixth Amendment gives 18-year-olds the right to

vote.– Turnout was not as great as predicted in this group and still

is low.– In 1992, 10 percent of the total vote for president came from

people aged 18 to 24.

Suffrage

• Citizenship.– Only U.S. citizens can vote, although some states used to let

aliens vote.– In 1988, more than ten million residents could not vote

because they were not American citizens.

The Nominating Process: Primaries and Conventions

• Voting is limited to the candidates the parties select or state-certified independents.

• State laws govern the nominating process and the selection of party leaders since parties are not mentioned in the Constitution. By 1915, two-thirds of the states had primary election laws.


• Most states now use direct primaries to nominate for the House and Senate.– Some states have closed primaries-only registered party

members or those declaring their affiliation can vote in a party's primary.

– Other states have open primaries-voters can select a slate to vote for.


• In Alaska, Louisiana, California, and Washington, the blanket primary is used.– A system in which voters are able to vote for candidates

from more than one party. A voter could vote for a Democrat for the U.S. Senate and a Republican for Governor.

– In 2000, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against California's blanket primary system, declaring that it violated the right for political parties to allow only party members to choose party candidates.

– Political parties had argued that it weakened party identification and loyalty.


• Major parties still have national conventions to nominate members for the president and vice president.– Many states select delegates to the national convention via

primaries.– Some use caucuses, state conventions, and party

committees.

Voter Registration

• Registration in the states is aimed at avoiding Tammany Hall-type fraud like "voting early and often" and "tombstone fraud."

• States require some form of registration prior to voting in order to get lists of qualified voters.

• With permanent registration, a voter only registers once. Most states have this today.

• With periodic registration, a voter must register every year or so. This is rare.

Voter Registration

• Debate exists over whether voting should be made easier.– Voter has to take the initiative and may not make the effort.

• Congress passed the "Motor voter" bill in 1993. People could register in motor vehicle offices, public assistance benefits offices, and military recruitment offices.– California Governor Pete Wilson challenged the law, arguing

that it would cost California $18 million to administer the law. He also argued that it violated the Tenth Amendment.

– In January 1996 the Supreme Court refused to hear California's challenge to the motor voter law.

Ballots

• The secret Australian ballot was adopted by every state by 1950. It has two main forms:– Party-column (Indiana) ballots group candidates of each

party in columns, making straight-ticket voting easier.– Candidates on an office-column (Massachusetts) ballot are

grouped according to the office they are running for.– States have permitted voting by mail and have tried

additional strategies to increase voter turnout.– In 1996 Oregon was the first state to use "mail-in" voting for

U.S. Senate in a special election to fill a seat vacated by Senator Bob Packwood. Democrat Ron Wyden became the first senator elected by mail ballots.

– In 2000, Oregon went to an all-mail ballot.

Counting the votes

• State and local officials tabulate the votes, which are reported nationwide by the Voter News Service.

Counting the votes

• Networks developed a system for projecting the vote even before all the votes are counted.– In 1996 the three major broadcast networks promised not to

call the presidential winner until polls had closed in enough states to guarantee the 270 electoral votes.

– In 1976, the election was deemed "too close to call" until 3:30 A.M.

– In 1980, Carter conceded on the basis of projections at 8:50 P.M., before the polls closed on the West Coast, raising Pacific states' ire.

– To discourage criticism, the networks agreed not to project a winner in a state until a majority of its polls had closed.

Fraud

• In 1960 Nixon charged that JFK's narrow win was due to fraud in Cook County (Chicago), Illinois and in Texas.

• JFK carried Illinois by a mere 8,858 votes.• Proposals to allow voting via the Internet was not

adopted in 2004. Widespread fear surfaced over computer hacking and the viability of voting machines built by Diebold Election Systems.

The Electoral College

• The constitution does not provide for direct popular election of the president-states are to select electors to do that. Voters vote for slates of pledged electors.

• The slate with the most popular votes on election night goes to the state capitol in December to cast ballots for president and vice president.

• Votes are counted before a joint session of Congress. It takes 270 of the 538 electors to win outright.


• If no one gets a majority, the House chooses from among the top three candidates, with each state delegation having one vote. Electors vote separately for vice president, who also needs a majority. If no one receives a majority, the vice president is selected by the Senate.

• Due to custom, electors vote as the voters seem to have wanted-winner takes all.

• The electoral college system was a compromise at the Philadelphia Convention.


• Common complaints about it:– Its winner-take-all feature. If a candidate wins a state by one

vote, he or she wins all the state's electors.– The winner-take-all system favors the large-population

states. Ironically, at the same time, the smallest states are over-represented.

– Electors are not constitutionally bound. There have been only about a dozen electors who have not followed the voters' instruction in their states.


• In 1968 and again in 1992, fear abounded that George Wallace and Ross Perot would make the major party candidates unelectable in the electoral college.

Proposals for Direct Election of the President

• There is widespread reluctance to change the Constitution and Congress was not eager to change a fundamental aspect of the political system.

• There were other criticisms of the direct approach:– It could encourage the growth of splinter parties, since large

majorities would not necessarily be needed.– It would have weakened the ability to govern, since the two-

party system helps resolve social conflict and manage the transition of power.

Proposals for Direct Election of the President

– Direct election would increase the vote-counting fraud temptation.

– Direct election would take away advantages minority groups now have in large electoral vote states, as the election would no longer be state-by-state.

– Direct election might tempt the states to ease voter qualifications to pad voting rolls.

One Person, One Vote

• The Supreme Court ruled that each person's vote should be worth as much as another's.

• The state legislatures.– The United States, a nation of immigrants, was primarily

rural until 1920.– Rural legislators dominated state legislatures and jealously

maintained their advantage over the cities.– In Tennessee, the smallest district in the lower house had a

population of 3,400, and the largest had 79,000. Because the legislature refused to equalize those districts, the state was taken to court.


– In 1946 the Supreme Court refused to look at malapportionment (Colegrove v. Green), preferring to stay out of "this political thicket."

– In 1962, the Court ruled in favor of the voters who had challenged the established order in Tennessee in Baker v. Carr.

– In Reynolds v. Sims (1964), the Court made it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment required that seats in both houses of a state legislature be based on population. The Court also laid down the "one person, one vote" principal


• Congressional districts– In Wesberry v. Sanders (1964), the Court expand the Baker

and Reynolds principle to include the drawing of Congressional district boundaries according to the one person, one vote principle.

• Disparity in the sizes of Georgia congressional districts violated the Fourteenth Amendment.

• States were required to redraw their districts to conform.


– Under the Constitution and federal law, Congress determines the size of the House. It was set at 435 in 1912.

• Federal law requires reapportionment of districts as needed after each census.

• Based on population shifts and proportion of the national population, states will gain or lose seats.

• The average population of House districts has risen to 647,000 by 2003.

– Originally it was expected that cities would gain power, but the suburbs have made greater strides. In the 1970s, for the first time there were more suburban members of the House than urban members.


– After the 1990 census, state legislatures drew many congressional districts in which the majority of the population was black or Hispanic. These were to be approved by the Justice Department in compliance with the Voting Rights Act.

• In January 1993 there were 17 Hispanic members and 38 African Americans in the 103rd Congress. Carol Moseley-Braun of Illinois became the first African American women elected to the U.S. Senate.

• Two years later, the 104th Congress had 17 Hispanics and 40 African Americans.

• The 106th Congress had 39 African Americans and 25 Hispanics.


• As noted in Chapter 5, the Supreme Court said several of the new minority districts were not sufficiently "compact" and were shaped in a bizarre way, opening them to challenge. The Court did not completely do away with this racial districting to favor minorities.


Elections and Democratic Government

Types of Elections

• V.O. Key, Jr., suggests three broad types of presidential elections.– Landslides for the out party show a lack of confidence in

incumbents.– An approval of the incumbent administration is possibly a

reaffirmation of support.– Voters are engaged, most often, in retrospective voting,

looking back and making a judgment on the way things have gone.

– A realignment may return the party that controls the presidency to power, but with support of a new coalition of voters.

Types of Elections

• Angus Campbell and associates speak of three types of elections.– Maintaining elections reflect the standing party's

identification of the voters.– In a deviating election, voters temporarily move to the other

party.– In a realigning election, there's a basic shift in party

identification of the electorate.

The Meaning of Elections

• First, they decide which individuals will govern. Their political philosophy can also affect who gets nominated to the Supreme Court.

• They have consequences on the broad direction of policy, from the New Deal thinking in 1936 to a repudiation of conservatism in 1964.

The Meaning of Elections

• The people's "mandate" is invariably subject to some interpretation of its meaning.– People often elect candidates who don't end up doing what

they promised.– Issues may be warped and facts concealed from the public

during the campaign. For example: Nixon repeatedly denied responsibility for Watergate.

– In 1976 Ford's pardon of Nixon led to his subsequent loss.

• Thus, elections leave public officials with lots of latitude with which to govern.

Continuity and Change

• Most American elections have tended to be centrist since parties felt that that was where the votes were.

• Candidates have not tended to endorse radical social change, until the watershed of the New Deal.

• Since the New Deal, government has intervened in the economic and social order to an unprecedented degree.


• Even Reagan's conservative agenda did not fundamentally alter that post-New Deal role; but it did change the terms of the social policy debate.

• The 1994 election was a serious challenge to a number of long-standing domestic programs, including the welfare program.


• V. O. Key commented that the people can rise up and throw out the old order without prescribing what the new should be.

• Besides establishing a framework for change, elections also provide continuity and a sense of political community; they are links that bind the generations together.

Democracy Under Pressure

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