Raymond E Wolfinger
Biographic Data
| ID | 629639 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Raymond E Wolfinger |
| GIVEN NAMES | Raymond E |
| FAMILY NAME | Wolfinger |
| SIGNATURE | WOLFINGER R E |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of California, Berkeley |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 41 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 3022 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 41 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1958 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2017 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Political Order and Political Decay
Political Order in Changing Societies
This now-classic examination of the development of viable political institutions in emerging nations is a major and enduring contribution to modern political analysis. In a new Foreword, Francis Fukuyama assesses Huntington’s achievement, examining the context of the book’s original publication as well as its lasting importance. This pioneering volume, examining as it does the relation between development and stability, is an interesting and exci…
Family Structure and Voter Turnout
We use data from the Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey to explore the effects of family structure on turnout in the 2000 presidential election. Our results indicate that family structure, defined as marital status and the presence of children, has substantial consequences for turnout. Married adults are more likely to vote than are those who have never been married; in turn, previously married people are the ligh…
Austin Ranney
Austin Ranney, the eminent political scientist and leading American authority on political parties and elections died, peacefully, at his home in Berkeley on July 24, 2006. He was 85 years old and for a number of years had been battling the debilitating effects of congestive heart failure and diabetes. Ranney's doctoral dissertation, The Doctrine of Responsible Party Government (1954), and his Jefferson Lectures at Berkeley, Curing the Mischiefs …
How Postregistration Laws Affect the Turnout of Citizens Registered to Vote
A well-established scholarly tradition links lower voting costs with higher turnout. Whereas previous research emphasized the costs imposed by requiring voter registration, our research assesses postregistration costs and state policies that can make it easier for registered citizens to vote. These policies include mailing each registrant a sample ballot and information about the location of his or her polling place, providing a longer voting day…
The First Seven Years of the Political Life Cycle
One of the most noteworthy characteristics of American elections is the low turnout of young people. Hypotheses purporting to explain this phenomenon focus on life-cycle transitions that define adulthood, like marriage or leaving school. For a variety of reasons that we explain, previous research has failed to test these propositions. We identify six such adult roles and estimate their effects on turnout of young citizens. We find that most of th…
The Political Implications of Higher Turnout
Rich Americans, far more likely to vote than their poorer fellow citizens, also differ in how they vote and what policies they favour. These undisputed facts lead to the widespread belief 'that if everybody in this country voted, the Democrats would be in for the next 100 years.' The gist of this conclusion, which seems to follow ineluctably from our opening sentence, is accepted by almost everyone except a few empirical political scientists. The…
Registering and Voting with Motor Voter
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 (P.L. 103-31) was designed to reduce the cost of voting by incorporating registration into a transaction with a public agency that citizens initiate for another purpose. The act took effect on January 1, 1995; between then and the 1996 election, 18,333,479 people registered in offices they had visited on other business (Federal Election Commission 1998, Table 2).Most of these were new registratio…
Jury Aversion and Voter Registration
Election officials often say that many Americans do not register to vote for fear of being called to jury duty. The only published study on the topic claims that aversion to jury service depresses turnout by more than seven percentage points. We use questions from the 1991 National Election Studies Pilot Study to ascertain beliefs about the sources of jury lists, and we relate those impressions to registration status. We find that barely half the…
Estimating the Effects of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993
Tips for Writing Papers
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A Report on the Congressional Fellowship Program, 1990–91 and 1991–92
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Voter turnout
Eating in San Francisco: A Brief Glimpse of the City's Restaurants
This has become the Cantonese restaurant in The City. Great view and delicious food. Creative dim sum at lunch. For the quality, it is a very good value. This stretches our definition of "downtown" by five minutes or so
Predictors of Electoral Turnout: An International Comparison
Voter turnout in the United States is much lower than in almost all other democratic countries. This has been interpreted as a symptom of popular alienation from the political system, suspicion of politicians, and pessimism about the consequences of political activity. When these perspectives are measured directly, however, it is clear that Americans score very low on almost every item. Indeed, there is no relationship between political con- tent…
Information and Voting in California Senate Elections
Senators seeking reelection are much more vulnerable than representatives, and senators from the largest states are the most vulnerable of all. Patterns of information and voting behavior in the 1980 and 1986 Senate elections in California provide some possible explanations. The relatively low salience of Alan Cranston, the incumbent in both elections, raised the importance of the campaigns and of other short-term factors. Only an attractive, wel…
Residential Mobility and Voter Turnout
We examine the characteristics of a largely ignored low-turnout group-people who have recently moved. We find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain their lower turnout. Instead, the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls. Since nearly one-third of the nation moves every two years, moving has a large impact on national turnout ra…
The Partisan Affinities of Independent ‘Leaners
For almost a decade we have taken issue with the prevailing view of independent voters. We showed that Independents, as they were usually defined, had nothing in common, and in fact were more diverse than either Democrats or Republicans. Virtually no generalizations about Independents were correct, except by accident, because they comprise three very different kinds of people. Most Independents acknowledge that they are closer to one or the other…
Candidates and Parties in Congressional Elections
The 1978 CPS national election study, which includes many new questions about congressional candidates, is analyzed to discern what voters know about congressional candidates and why House incumbents are so successful at getting reelected by wide margins. Scholars have underestimated the level of public awareness of congressional candidates, primarily because of faulty measures. Voters are often able to recognize and evaluate individual candidate…
For Love or Money
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Elusive Data
The Effect of Registration Laws on Voter Turnout
After the drastic relaxation of voter registration requirements in the 1960s, do present state laws keep people away from the polls? More specifically, which provisions have how much effect on what kinds of people? We have answered these questions with data from the Current Population Survey conducted by the Census Bureau in November 1972.State registration laws reduced turnout in the 1972 presidential election by about nine percentage points. Th…
Urban Politics, Urban Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory
The Politics of Progress
The Politics of Progress
Political Order in Changing Societies
This now-classic examination of the development of viable political institutions in emerging nations is a major and enduring contribution to modern political analysis. In a new Foreword, Francis Fukuyama assesses Huntington’s achievement, examining the context of the book’s original publication as well as its lasting importance. This pioneering volume, examining as it does the relation between development and stability, is an interesting and exci…
Candidates and Parties in Congressional Elections
The 1978 CPS national election study, which includes many new questions about congressional candidates, is analyzed to discern what voters know about congressional candidates and why House incumbents are so successful at getting reelected by wide margins. Scholars have underestimated the level of public awareness of congressional candidates, primarily because of faulty measures. Voters are often able to recognize and evaluate individual candidate…
Residential Mobility and Voter Turnout
We examine the characteristics of a largely ignored low-turnout group-people who have recently moved. We find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain their lower turnout. Instead, the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls. Since nearly one-third of the nation moves every two years, moving has a large impact on national turnout ra…
The Effect of Registration Laws on Voter Turnout
After the drastic relaxation of voter registration requirements in the 1960s, do present state laws keep people away from the polls? More specifically, which provisions have how much effect on what kinds of people? We have answered these questions with data from the Current Population Survey conducted by the Census Bureau in November 1972.State registration laws reduced turnout in the 1972 presidential election by about nine percentage points. Th…
The Development and Persistence of Ethnic Voting
Mass immigration ended fifty years ago, but national origins continue to be a salient dimension in many people's perceptions of themselves and of others. Where this salience is widespread, ethnicity plays a major role in politics. Ethnicity is often an important independent variable in voting behavior. "Ethnic voting," as I shall call it, has two manifestations. (1) Members of an ethnic group show an affinity for one party or the other which cann…
The First Seven Years of the Political Life Cycle
One of the most noteworthy characteristics of American elections is the low turnout of young people. Hypotheses purporting to explain this phenomenon focus on life-cycle transitions that define adulthood, like marriage or leaving school. For a variety of reasons that we explain, previous research has failed to test these propositions. We identify six such adult roles and estimate their effects on turnout of young citizens. We find that most of th…
The Political Implications of Higher Turnout
Rich Americans, far more likely to vote than their poorer fellow citizens, also differ in how they vote and what policies they favour. These undisputed facts lead to the widespread belief 'that if everybody in this country voted, the Democrats would be in for the next 100 years.' The gist of this conclusion, which seems to follow ineluctably from our opening sentence, is accepted by almost everyone except a few empirical political scientists. The…
The Partisan Affinities of Independent ‘Leaners
For almost a decade we have taken issue with the prevailing view of independent voters. We showed that Independents, as they were usually defined, had nothing in common, and in fact were more diverse than either Democrats or Republicans. Virtually no generalizations about Independents were correct, except by accident, because they comprise three very different kinds of people. Most Independents acknowledge that they are closer to one or the other…
Nondecisions and the Study of Local Politics
The widely cited concept of nondecisions is particularly prominent in criticisms of "pluralist" research on local politics. But no scholars, including those who introduced the notion of nondecisions, have done empirical research explicitly on this topic. The lack of research on nondecisions reflects the concept's weaknesses as a guide to field research: (1) It involves a number of unrealistic assumptions about political life. (2) It requires data…
Estimating the Effects of the National Voter Registration Act of 1993
How Postregistration Laws Affect the Turnout of Citizens Registered to Vote
A well-established scholarly tradition links lower voting costs with higher turnout. Whereas previous research emphasized the costs imposed by requiring voter registration, our research assesses postregistration costs and state policies that can make it easier for registered citizens to vote. These policies include mailing each registrant a sample ballot and information about the location of his or her polling place, providing a longer voting day…
Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts
Political Ethos and the Structure of City Government
For years specialists in local politics have deplored the anecdotal quality of literature in the field and have called for theoretically-based comparative research. One of the most stimulating and ambitious attempts in this direction is Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson's theory of "public-regardingness" and "private-regardingness," which states that much of what Americans think about the political world can be subsumed under one or the othe…
Family Structure and Voter Turnout
We use data from the Voting and Registration Supplement of the Current Population Survey to explore the effects of family structure on turnout in the 2000 presidential election. Our results indicate that family structure, defined as marital status and the presence of children, has substantial consequences for turnout. Married adults are more likely to vote than are those who have never been married; in turn, previously married people are the ligh…
"Reputation and Reality in the Study of "Community Power
The currently popular research design of ranking a community's leaders according to their reputations for is found to be seriously deficient as a technique for the study of a local political system. The frequent assumption that is equally distributed for all issues results in inaccurate descriptions and in respondents tacitly basing general power rankings on a specific salient issue. It is difficult to avoid confusion between status and without u…
The Repeal of Fair Housing in California: An Analysis of Referendum Voting
In the summer of 1963 the California legislature passed the Rumford Act, prohibiting racial discrimination by realtors and the owners of apartment houses and homes built with public assistance. California real estate and property management interests, which had fought the Act's passage, then placed on the November 1964 ballot an initiative provision (Proposition 14) that would amend the state constitution to repeal the Rumford Act and prevent the…
Safe Seats, Seniority, and Power in Congress
The president's difficulties in inducing Congress to pass his legislative program are usually ascribed to the different constituencies of the two institutions. This difference would make for disharmony under any circumstances, but it is said to be particularly important because the seniority system bestows the most power on congressmen whose constituencies are most unlike the president's. His policy commitments are responses to the needs of a het…
The Influence of Precinct Work on Voting Behavior
The difficulty of measuring the influence of precinct work has led many social scientists to be skeptical of its effectiveness. Recent studies have confirmed the politicians' faith in this form of electioneering. This paper reports research on an election where the voters were particularly susceptible to precinct work, in a city (New Haven, Connecticut) where political machines are very strong. The author compares New Haven with other communities…
The Suburbs and Shifting Party Loyalties
In July 1957 two manuscripts were received quite independently by the Quarterly, both of which were directed toward studying the influences of die move to die suburbs on the political allegiance and voting behavior of die new suburbanites. The first of die pair is die article which follows, written by Messrs. Greenstein and Wolfinger, who are instructors in die Department of Political Science at Yale. Their study is based upon data generously mad…
Registering and Voting with Motor Voter
The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 (P.L. 103-31) was designed to reduce the cost of voting by incorporating registration into a transaction with a public agency that citizens initiate for another purpose. The act took effect on January 1, 1995; between then and the 1996 election, 18,333,479 people registered in offices they had visited on other business (Federal Election Commission 1998, Table 2).Most of these were new registratio…
Predictors of Electoral Turnout: An International Comparison
Voter turnout in the United States is much lower than in almost all other democratic countries. This has been interpreted as a symptom of popular alienation from the political system, suspicion of politicians, and pessimism about the consequences of political activity. When these perspectives are measured directly, however, it is clear that Americans score very low on almost every item. Indeed, there is no relationship between political con- tent…
Information and Voting in California Senate Elections
Senators seeking reelection are much more vulnerable than representatives, and senators from the largest states are the most vulnerable of all. Patterns of information and voting behavior in the 1980 and 1986 Senate elections in California provide some possible explanations. The relatively low salience of Alan Cranston, the incumbent in both elections, raised the importance of the campaigns and of other short-term factors. Only an attractive, wel…
A Plea for a Decent Burial
Jury Aversion and Voter Registration
Election officials often say that many Americans do not register to vote for fear of being called to jury duty. The only published study on the topic claims that aversion to jury service depresses turnout by more than seven percentage points. We use questions from the 1991 National Election Studies Pilot Study to ascertain beliefs about the sources of jury lists, and we relate those impressions to registration status. We find that barely half the…
Comparing Political Regions: The Case of California
One of the more fertile sources of data for systematic comparative political studies is in the regional differences that abound within political systems. When such differences are large and politically significant, explaining them becomes intriguing and important, especially if their causes cannot be found in the more familiar classes of socioeconomic variables.Our purpose here is to present a preliminary analysis of a widely discussed intrasyste…
The Suburbs and Shifting Party Loyalties
In July 1957 two manuscripts were received quite independently by the Quarterly, both of which were directed toward studying the influences of die move to die suburbs on the political allegiance and voting behavior of die new suburbanites. The first of die pair is die article which follows, written by Messrs. Greenstein and Wolfinger, who are instructors in die Department of Political Science at Yale. Their study is based upon data generously mad…
"Reputation and Reality in the Study of "Community Power
The currently popular research design of ranking a community's leaders according to their reputations for is found to be seriously deficient as a technique for the study of a local political system. The frequent assumption that is equally distributed for all issues results in inaccurate descriptions and in respondents tacitly basing general power rankings on a specific salient issue. It is difficult to avoid confusion between status and without u…
A Plea for a Decent Burial
Washington Office Activities
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. As you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button
The Influence of Precinct Work on Voting Behavior
The difficulty of measuring the influence of precinct work has led many social scientists to be skeptical of its effectiveness. Recent studies have confirmed the politicians' faith in this form of electioneering. This paper reports research on an election where the voters were particularly susceptible to precinct work, in a city (New Haven, Connecticut) where political machines are very strong. The author compares New Haven with other communities…
Crusaders for the right
The Negro Revolution
THE NEGRO REVOLUTION Get access Raymond Wolfinger Raymond Wolfinger Chairman Stanford UniversityStanford, California Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Public Opinion Quarterly, Volume 28, Issue 4, WINTER 1964, Pages 645–648, https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/28.4.645 Published: 01 January 1964
The Development and Persistence of Ethnic Voting
Mass immigration ended fifty years ago, but national origins continue to be a salient dimension in many people's perceptions of themselves and of others. Where this salience is widespread, ethnicity plays a major role in politics. Ethnicity is often an important independent variable in voting behavior. "Ethnic voting," as I shall call it, has two manifestations. (1) Members of an ethnic group show an affinity for one party or the other which cann…
Safe Seats, Seniority, and Power in Congress
The president's difficulties in inducing Congress to pass his legislative program are usually ascribed to the different constituencies of the two institutions. This difference would make for disharmony under any circumstances, but it is said to be particularly important because the seniority system bestows the most power on congressmen whose constituencies are most unlike the president's. His policy commitments are responses to the needs of a het…
Political Ethos and the Structure of City Government
For years specialists in local politics have deplored the anecdotal quality of literature in the field and have called for theoretically-based comparative research. One of the most stimulating and ambitious attempts in this direction is Edward C. Banfield and James Q. Wilson's theory of "public-regardingness" and "private-regardingness," which states that much of what Americans think about the political world can be subsumed under one or the othe…
Communications
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
The Repeal of Fair Housing in California: An Analysis of Referendum Voting
In the summer of 1963 the California legislature passed the Rumford Act, prohibiting racial discrimination by realtors and the owners of apartment houses and homes built with public assistance. California real estate and property management interests, which had fought the Act's passage, then placed on the November 1964 ballot an initiative provision (Proposition 14) that would amend the state constitution to repeal the Rumford Act and prevent the…
Comparing Political Regions: The Case of California
One of the more fertile sources of data for systematic comparative political studies is in the regional differences that abound within political systems. When such differences are large and politically significant, explaining them becomes intriguing and important, especially if their causes cannot be found in the more familiar classes of socioeconomic variables.Our purpose here is to present a preliminary analysis of a widely discussed intrasyste…
"Rejoinder to Frey's "Comment
Professor Frey and I seem to be in agreement on several points: (1) The research procedures proposed by Bachrach and Baratz are unsatisfactory. (2) Worrying about criteria of issue selection is unnecessary; policy formation can usefully be studied issue by issue. Indeed, I would add that typologies of issues are one of the more promising developments in the study of politics. (3) The notion of nondecisions is not a club with which to belabor Who …
Nondecisions and the Study of Local Politics
The widely cited concept of nondecisions is particularly prominent in criticisms of "pluralist" research on local politics. But no scholars, including those who introduced the notion of nondecisions, have done empirical research explicitly on this topic. The lack of research on nondecisions reflects the concept's weaknesses as a guide to field research: (1) It involves a number of unrealistic assumptions about political life. (2) It requires data…
Why Political Machines Have Not Withered Away and Other Revisionist Thoughts
The Politics of Progress
The Politics of Progress
Urban Politics, Urban Policy, Case Studies, and Political Theory
For Love or Money
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Elusive Data
The Effect of Registration Laws on Voter Turnout
After the drastic relaxation of voter registration requirements in the 1960s, do present state laws keep people away from the polls? More specifically, which provisions have how much effect on what kinds of people? We have answered these questions with data from the Current Population Survey conducted by the Census Bureau in November 1972.State registration laws reduced turnout in the 1972 presidential election by about nine percentage points. Th…
Candidates and Parties in Congressional Elections
The 1978 CPS national election study, which includes many new questions about congressional candidates, is analyzed to discern what voters know about congressional candidates and why House incumbents are so successful at getting reelected by wide margins. Scholars have underestimated the level of public awareness of congressional candidates, primarily because of faulty measures. Voters are often able to recognize and evaluate individual candidate…
The Partisan Affinities of Independent ‘Leaners
For almost a decade we have taken issue with the prevailing view of independent voters. We showed that Independents, as they were usually defined, had nothing in common, and in fact were more diverse than either Democrats or Republicans. Virtually no generalizations about Independents were correct, except by accident, because they comprise three very different kinds of people. Most Independents acknowledge that they are closer to one or the other…
Residential Mobility and Voter Turnout
We examine the characteristics of a largely ignored low-turnout group-people who have recently moved. We find that neither demographic nor attitudinal attributes explain their lower turnout. Instead, the requirement that citizens must register anew after each change in residence constitutes the key stumbling block in the trip to the polls. Since nearly one-third of the nation moves every two years, moving has a large impact on national turnout ra…
Political science (36 works) · Politics (31 works) · Law (29 works) · Law (24 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Voting (17 works) · Economics (16 works) · Electoral Systems and Political Participation (16 works) · Computer Science (13 works) · Political economy (13 works)