Preferred Citation: Keith, Bruce E., David B. Magleby, Candice J. Nelson, Elizabeth A. Orr, Mark C. Westlye, and Raymond E. Wolfinger The Myth of the Independent Voter. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1992 1992. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1m3nb12x/


 
7— Issues and Dealignment

7—
Issues and Dealignment

Many of the political issues that attracted public attention in the late 1960s and early 1970s were wholly new or had not previously been of more than peripheral interest: Vietnam, urban unrest, busing, women's equality, drug use, and conservation of natural resources. The new issues quickly came to be discussed in the same old ideological terms. Opposition to the war, support for the women's movement, a relaxed view of drug use and abortion, and a protective attitude toward the environment were all considered liberal views. This made things easy for editorial writers but did nothing to solve the problems of politicians who were trying to develop positions on the new issues that would be consistent with existing responsibilities, coalitions, and ideological inclinations. The war was a special difficulty in this respect while Lyndon Johnson was in the White House because the Democratic party could not easily become the vehicle of the peace movement as long as its president was the architect of the war. This source of dissonance faded as Richard Nixon assumed Johnson's role as a war president.[1]

[1] Republicans were more hostile to the war when Johnson was president, but by the time Nixon had been in office for eight months,Democrats had become the greater opponents. "Johnson's war" became "Nixon's war." See John E. Mueller, War, Presidents, and Public Opinion (New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1973), 117.


137

Other considerations constrained an easy merging of the new issues and existing partisan alignments. Simply put, people who were liberal on the new issues often were conservative on the economic concerns that had dominated political controversy. Economic liberalism is most appealing to people who work with their hands and least popular among executives and professionals. But interest in the new issues and liberal attitudes on them were both greatest among educated people, who were likely to have white-collar jobs. This strain was most evident in the Democratic party. Millions of its traditional followers, particularly blue-collar workers and rural Southerners, had neither interest in nor sympathy for gun control, abortion, women's liberation, campus demonstrations, black militancy, hippiedom, or similar issues and symbols. At the same time, these activities and the issues they represented were powerfully appealing to millions of young people. If the Democratic presidential nomination seemed a victory for the old politics, as in 1968, then the Democrats seemingly risked losing the support of the new-politics adherents. And when the nomination brought the new-politics faction into control, as in 1972, the loyalty of traditional Democrats was jeopardized. Although similar conflicts were never as conspicuous in Republican ranks, the leadership of Richard Nixon did not suggest receptivity to the new politics.

This period of new issues coincided with the trend toward more Independents, a coincidence that led many political scientists to argue that the old party coalitions were being eroded by the concerns of a new generation of voters. Their argument was vividly summed up by Morris P. Fiorina:

The 1960s witnessed the rise of issues that impinged on the everyday lives of American citizens. These issues, moreover, cut across existing party alignments. A Demo-


138

cratic president sent the sons of the working class to die in a far-away war. The urban strongholds of the Democratic party degenerated into a battleground where race fought race and criminals plundered society. Meanwhile, the adolescent children of the upper middle class gleefully seized the opportunity to overthrow moral and behavioral standards which their parents evaded but generally accepted. Facing such conditions a party identification based on the Great Depression seemed increasingly removed from the politics of the 1960s. Some disillusioned party identifiers moved into the ranks of the independents. And large numbers of the maturing baby boom, finding little that was relevant to their concerns in the existing party system, did likewise.[2]

The numerous political scientists who made these arguments seldom went into detail about how the new issues led to dealignment.[3] These topics will occupy us in this chapter. Our search for issues that might plausibly be considered causes of dealignment has been largely fruitless.

Vietnam and Other Issues

There is no scarcity of confident assertions that the war in Southeast Asia started Americans on the road to dealign-

[2] Morris P. Fiorina, Congress: Keystone of the Washington Establishment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977), 24.

[3] Even in the 1950s people who were liberal on some issues were often conservative on others, and attitudes on issues generally did not coincide very well with party identification. On the first point, see V.O. Key, Jr., Public Opinion and American Democracy (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1960), 153–81. On the second point, see Herbert McClosky, Paul J. Hoffman, and Rosemary O'Hara, "Issue Conflict and Consensus among Party Leaders and Followers," American Political Science Review 54 (June 1960): 406–27. As early as 1972, evidence was available that there was not much consistency in attitudes even on such prototypical "new politics" issues as drugs and political demonstrations. See Teresa E. Levitin and Warren E. Miller, "The New Politics and Partisan Realignment," paper delivered at the 1972 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association.


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ment.[4] The truth of this proposition was evidently considered so clear that there was no need to be more specific about the kinds of people who were thought to be most affected by the war, except to say that they were disproportionately young.[5] But what sorts of young people? Doves shocked at the waste of blood and treasure, hawks frustrated by Lyndon Johnson's slow escalation and restrictions on the military, people of either persuasion who thought Vietnam unimportant to American interests or judged our policy there a failure? Or all of the above?

An answer of sorts may be implicit in the only data cited by any of the scholars named in note 4: Gregory B. Markus's analysis of interviews in 1965 and again in 1973 with samples of high school seniors (in 1965) and their parents. On the basis of three questions about Vietnam and the military asked in 1973, Markus divided the parent and the offspring samples into three groups of equal size: "hawk," "middle," and "dove." Among the parents, the proportion of Independents (broadly defined) did not change from 1965 to 1973 in the hawk and middle groups, while among the doves it rose from 26 to 35 percent. Among the offspring, the proportion of Independents grew by six percentage points among the hawks, eight points in the middle group, and 17 points among the doves.[6] In view of the disparate partisan affinities and levels of civic virtue among the three kinds of Independents, all of whom were combined in Markus's analy-

[4] For example, see Walter Dean Burnham, "The End of American Party Politics," Transaction 7 (December 1969): 12; Philip E. Converse, The Dynamics of Party Support (Beverly Hills, Calif.: Sage, 1976), 106; M. Kent Jennings and Gregory B. Markus, "Partisan Orientations over the Long Haul: Results from the Three-Wave Political Socialization Panel Study," American Political Science Review 78 (December 1984): 1015; Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter , enlarged ed. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979), 350.

[5] In fact, young people were more, not less, supportive of the war. See Mueller, War, Presidents , 139.

[6] Gregory B. Markus, "The Political Environment and the Dynamics of Public Attitudes," American Journal of Political Science 23 (May 1979): 346.


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sis, this is a pretty flimsy case for pinning the blame for dealignment on the war in Southeast Asia. It is, however, the closest thing to a detailed empirical analysis that we know of.

For the most part, the Michigan surveys from 1966 through 1972 show weak to nonexistent relationships between any variety of independence and believing it was either right or wrong to go into Vietnam in the first place, to favor either a greater military effort or complete withdrawal, or saying that the war was an important influence on one's 1968 presidential vote. These findings may reflect the two parties' ambiguous policy stands during much of the war. In 1968, when public concern about Vietnam was near its peak, neither major party candidate offered clear proposals about what to do. Many voters saw little difference between them: "Members of the public were entirely justified in seeing Nixon and Humphrey standing close together near the center of the Vietnam policy scale, far from extremes of immediate withdrawal or escalation for complete military victory.[7] What is more, voters who did think the candidates had different positions were often engaged in wishful thinking:

Those who saw a big difference between Humphrey and Nixon—a difference in either direction—were generally perceiving each candidate as standing wherever they wanted him to stand. They projected their own opinions onto their favored candidate. Among Republicans, who mostly favored Nixon, extreme hawks thought that Nixon was an extreme hawk; extreme doves thought he was an extreme dove; and those in the middle thought that Nixon stood in the middle! . . . Similarly, among Democrats . . .[8]

One might think that the picture had cleared four years later when George McGovern secured the Democratic presidential nomination on the strength of his uncompromising opposition

[7] Benjamin I. Page and Richard A. Brody, "Policy Voting and the Electoral Process: The Vietnam War Issue," American Political Science Review 66 (September 1972): 985.

[8] Ibid., 987.


141

to the war, but the public in 1972 did not completely agree. Less than two-thirds of those who supported withdrawal from Vietnam thought that McGovern agreed with them.

Although motivated misperception may have affected the Vietnam War's impact on both voting and party identification, it would be wrong to conclude that the issue was inconsequential in the 1968 election.[9] By the same token, both hawks and doves might have been moved to forsake outright partisan affiliation because neither major party's candidate provided a voice for their beliefs. Our analysis of the possibly dealigning effect of the war will, therefore, not attempt to relate policy preferences to party identification, but will concentrate instead on citizens' assessments of governmental performance and the positions they attributed to candidates and parties.

Assuming that the dealigning effect of an issue would be greater among people who considered the issue important, we begin our analysis by examining the magnitude and distribution of concern about Vietnam from 1966 through 1972. We chose to start with 1966 for two reasons: Converse found that the first shock to partisanship occurred in 1965;[10] and to our surprise, more respondents said Vietnam was the most important problem "the government in Washington should try to take care of" in 1966 than in any of the following election years.[11]

[9] Hawks and doves alike who were dissatisfied with Lyndon Johnson's conduct of the war were more likely to vote against Humphrey than were those who approved Johnson's performance. See Richard W. Boyd, "Popular Control of Public Policy: A Normal Vote Analysis of the 1968 Election," American Political Science Review 66 (June 1972): 429–49.

[10] Converse, The Dynamics of Party Support , 69–72. We found that the proportion of Independent Democrats remained stable from 1964 to 1966, that of Republican leaners rose from 6 to 7 percent of the white population in this two-year period, and that of Pure Independents rose from 8 percent in 1964 to 12 percent in 1966.

[11] Our analysis of responses to the question about the most important problem includes only those for whom Vietnam (or the other concerns mentioned later) was the first issue mentioned or the issue the respondent concluded was most important.


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Table 7.1
Vietnam and Urban Unrest as the Country's Most Important Problem, by Age, 1966–1972

 

Age

All White Respondents

 

18–28

29–44

45–64

65 +

1966

         

Vietnam

57%

48%

45%

41%

47%

Urban unrest

4

5

6

8

5

1968

         

Vietnam

44

43

41

47

43

Urban unrest

16

18

19

14

17

1970

         

Vietnam

37

34

26

20

29

Urban unrest

14

17

22

25

19

1972

         

Vietnam

31

26

20

20

27

Urban unrest

3

5

8

6

5

Note : The number in each cell is the percentage of all respondents in the indicated category who mentioned Vietnam or urban unrest as the country's most important problem. In the first three years, the question was "What do you personally feel are the most important problems which the government in Washington should try to take care of?" In 1972, the wording was "What do you think are the most important problems facing this country?"

Table 7.1 shows that the level of concern about Vietnam declined from its 1966 peak of 47 percent to 43 percent in the troubled 1968 election, then dwindled to 29 and 27 percent two and four years later. A similar decline is found for each of the four age groups, except for a discordant note in 1968 for those over 64. Reading from left to right across the table for any year, one sees that worry about Vietnam was greatest among the young and declined with age (once again with the exception of the oldsters in 1968).

This is a promising start, but no more than that. The next


143

step is to see if respondents for whom Vietnam was important, particularly young respondents, were more likely to be one or another variety of Independent. There was no such relationship in the entire sample, but we did see one for respondents under 29. Twenty-one percent of those under 29 who considered Vietnam the most important problem were Pure Independents, compared to just 7 percent of the remainder of their age group. Of the youngsters who cared about Vietnam and thought neither party would do what they wanted on that issue, 24 percent were Pure Independents. Young respondents who thought the United States should have stayed out of Vietnam were half again as likely (19 as opposed to 12 percent) to be Pure Independents. There were no consequential differences in other age groups. We found no meaningful patterns involving leaners of either persuasion. The only exception is this finding: Respondents under 45 who advocated a "stronger stand" in Vietnam were somewhat more likely to be Independent Republicans. This tendency was a bit stronger among those who said they were paying "a good deal of attention . . . to what is going on in Vietnam."

This promising start exhausts the items available in 1966. But the trail peters out thereafter. Neither repetitions of the analyses we have just described nor the others possible with the plethora of Vietnam questions available in 1968 and later years provides much reason to think that, whatever its other effects on American electoral politics, this issue had much to do with loosening identification with either major party.

In 1968, 1970, and 1972, those people who thought that Vietnam was the most important issue facing the country were no more likely than the rest of the sample to be Pure Independents or leaners in either direction. Confining the analysis to younger people did not change the picture.

We also identified those who seemed particularly disturbed about Vietnam in 1968 with the question asking respondents if there was "anything in particular that you don't like about the Democratic party." We were surprised to learn that just eighty-five whites brought up Vietnam. These people, to whom the


144

issue was very salient, had the same proportion of Republican leaners and a smaller share of Pure Independents than the entire sample. Nineteen percent were Independent Democrats, but any thought that this may be a useful clue should be cooled by noting that this is a mere sixteen respondents. People so concerned about Vietnam were not concentrated in any age group. A trivial number of respondents mentioned Vietnam in 1972 when answering this question or its counterpart about the Republican party.[12]

The war in Vietnam was a failure first by a Democratic president then by a Republican one. Both before and after the White House changed hands, the opposition party was at least partially inhibited from offering a thoroughgoing alternative policy. This is the background to the assumption that many Americans abandoned or never developed party identification because neither party's position satisfied them. Many committed doves could have been moved to forsake their party identification because of both parties' failures to recognize their feelings in 1968, and by McGovern's fuzzy image in 1972. By the same token, fervent hawks who had hoped to find a major party spokesman might have been deeply affronted by the outright opposition to escalation in Vietnam by Humphrey, Nixon, and McGovern.

Therefore we looked for concentrations of Independents among those who professed to find no difference between the parties in satisfactory performance on Vietnam when they considered it the most important problem.[13] Our search was rewarded in 1968, when 17 percent of those who saw no difference between the parties were Pure Independents. There was

[12] Just eleven respondents said that Vietnam was a reason to dislike the Republican party.

[13] When asked in 1970 "Which party do you think is more likely to do what you want?" concerning Vietnam, 61 percent of whites said there would be no difference between them. There was not much variation by age in this response. Respondents who saw the parties alike on this question were much more likely to be Pure Independents, especially among the young. There were no such relationships for leaners.


145

no greater relation among the young, however, and no tendency for such people to be leaners. We could not duplicate even this pallid finding in 1970 or 1972. We had no greater success when we limited our analysis to respondents who said they were "extremely concerned" about the problem they considered most important.

Another approach was to examine the gap between respondents' attitudes about Vietnam policy and those they attributed to the two parties to see if those furthest from a party were more likely to be some type of Independent. Unfortunately, the 1968 Michigan survey did not ask respondents to estimate the parties' stands, but it did ask about the presidential candidates' positions. We will use replies to this question as a surrogate for estimates of the parties' positions in 1968 and then use the more direct measure in 1970 and 1972. Here are the key sections of the question:

Some people think we should do everything necessary to win a complete military victory, no matter what results. Some people think we should withdraw completely from Vietnam right now, no matter what results. And, of course, other people have opinions somewhere between. . . . Suppose the people who support an immediate withdrawal are at one end of this scale . . . at point number 1. And suppose the people who support a complete victory are at the other end of the scale at point number 7.

We divided the 1968 sample into four groups: those who put themselves and Humphrey at the same place on the seven-point scale, and those who were one point, two points, and three or more points away. We did the same for Nixon. In 1970 and 1972 we repeated this procedure for the parties rather than the presidential candidates. In all six analyses, as expected, there was a tendency for those close to Humphrey or the Democratic party to include more Democrats. By the same token, respondents closer to Nixon or the Republican party were more likely to be Republicans. In 1968 and 1970


146

we found some tendency for the proportion of Pure Independents to increase as the disparity grew between respondents and each of the four reference points (Humphrey, Nixon, Democratic party, Republican party). Sometimes these relationships were greater among the two younger age groups; for example, in 1968, among those 29–44, 18 percent of those furthest from Nixon were Pure Independents, compared to 9 percent of those who saw themselves in agreement with Nixon. There were no consistent tendencies for leaners on either side, in any age group. And in 1972 even the modest relationships observed in earlier years were absent. Finally, we looked at those respondents who were far away from both Humphrey and Nixon or from both parties. Here again, we found little connection between Vietnam and dealignment.[14]

Having spent so much space describing our search for a link between Vietnam and dealignment, we can quickly tell the story about urban unrest, another new, dramatic, protracted and unsettling issue of the period.[15] From 1968 through 1972, we found no significant relationships between any breed of Independent and concern about urban unrest, preferences for ways to deal with the problem, or perceived differences between one's position and that attributed to Humphrey or Nixon in 1968 or to either party in 1970 or 1972. The same was true of busing in 1972. The nearest approach to a pattern was a modest tendency for Pure Independents to be more common

[14] Thinking that the war at home might have some connection with dealignment, we looked at the party identifications of respondents according to their feeling thermometer ratings of "Vietnam War protesters." The protesters, not very popular with anyone, were most warmly regarded by the youngest age group, 21 percent of whom had a favorable opinion of them, roughly half again as many as the older respondents. Admirers of protesters were more likely to be Democrats and had no tendency to be any variety of Independent.

[15] Dissatisfaction with the Johnson administration's handling of urban unrest, while not as damaging as unhappiness about Vietnam, nevertheless contributed significantly to Humphrey's defeat in 1968. See Philip E. Converse et al., "Continuity and Change in American Politics: Parties and Issues in the 1968 Election," American Political Science Review 63 (December 1969): 1083–1105.


147

among those in disagreement with the Democratic party and in agreement with the Republican party. By 1976, even this hint of a relationship had disappeared.

Then there is Watergate, often linked with Vietnam and urban unrest as one of the seminal traumas of the era, and nominated by some scholars as a contributor to dealignment. For example, Philip Converse wrote, "I am not uncomfortable in presuming that the sequence of events known as Watergate had a prime role in the post-1972 phase of the second shock."[16] Traumatic as Watergate may have been, it differed from the other two issues in several important respects. For one thing, it did not go on for long; scarcely two years intervened between the arrest of the would-be telephone tappers and President Nixon's departure from the White House. That resignation brought an end to the crisis as a major news item, although trials and book publications continued for years. And of course Watergate was not a failure of both parties to deal with a problem.

Perhaps because the issue was not very salient during the 1972 campaign and was resolved in the summer of 1974, the NES provides few traces of popular concern with it. Just 20 respondents interviewed after the 1974 election said that Watergate was "the single most important problem the country faces." Another 60 people thought that insufficient personal ethics in government was the leading national problem. Leaners were somewhat scarcer among these 80 respondents than in the rest of the sample. Pure Independents were more common in this group, but nevertheless represent only 20 people. We conclude that Watergate was irrelevant to dealignment.

Party Differences

We proceed to examine the possibility that the increase in Independents reflected growing doubts that the major parties

[16] Converse, The Dynamics of Party Support , 105.


148
 

Table 7.2
Beliefs about Party Differences and Party Identification, 1972 and 1988

 

Are There Important Differences between Democrats and Republicans?

 

1972

1988

 

Yes

No

Don't know

Yes

No

Don't know

Strong Democrats

12%

10%

8%

17%

11%

13%

Weak Democrats

26

26

40

16

21

16

Indep. Democrats

12

10

8

12

10

10

Pure Independents

8

15

15

5

20

20

Indep. Republicans

11

15

5

14

15

15

Weak Republicans

14

17

15

15

16

16

Strong Republicans

17

7

10

21

8

11

 

100%

100%

101%

100%

101%

101%

(N) =

(441)

(451)

(93)

(924)

(528)

(82)

differed meaningfully, irrespective of any specific issue. The Michigan surveys usually ask if "there are any important differences in what the Republicans and Democrats stand for." There have been times when most Americans thought that there were, but by 1972, only 45 percent took this position; 46 percent disagreed, and 9 percent professed not to know. Pure Independents were found mostly in the "no" and "don't know" categories, as we would expect, and there was a clustering of Strong Republicans in the "yes" column. So far, so good. But nothing else is consistent with the proposition, as table 7.2 shows. People who thought there were important differences between the parties and people who thought not were distributed fairly evenly in the other five categories of party identifier. The results were similar for the years since 1972. By 1988, a healthy majority, 60 percent, thought that the parties differed meaningfully, and just 5 percent said they did not know.


149

The pattern of relationships, however, was pretty much the same as in 1972.

Perhaps we were casting our net too widely, including too many respondents who were wholly unconcerned about issues and opposing political philosophies. All Americans were not swept up in the tumult of the late 1960s. We might find something if we confined our analysis to respondents who cared enough about political ideas to acknowledge their own identity as liberals or conservatives. Because the United States has only two major parties, each inevitably is a broad coalition of interests and ideas. This may be particularly distasteful to people who favor principle over compromise. Such idealism is often thought to have reached a peak in the era we are examining, when all established institutions were questioned. We will examine the more general topic of alienation and dealignment in the next chapter. Here we focus on two possible specific manifestations: liberals' doubts that the Democratic party was liberal and a parallel refusal of conservatives to acknowledge that the Republican party shared their ideological proclivity.[17] The anguish of the liberals is a standard story about the period.

We begin with the standard NES question:

We hear a lot of talk these days about liberals and conservatives. I'm going to show you a seven-point scale on which the political views that people might hold are arranged from extremely liberal to extremely conservative. Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven't you thought much about this?

Twenty-eight percent of white respondents in 1972 said that they did not know where to place themselves or had not thought much about where they stood ideologically.[18] Another 27 percent put themselves at the "moderate, middle of the

[17] There is no relation in the entire sample between strength of identification and responses to a question about whether one party is more conservative than the other.

[18] The question about ideological self-identification was not asked until 1972.


150

road" midpoint of the scale. Pure Independents are most common in these two groups of nonideologues.

Although the remaining 45 percent of the respondents are interesting to us precisely for their ideological awareness, it is important to understand that people who call themselves conservatives may not take conservative positions on a particular issue, just as self-identified liberals may have views that cannot be called liberal. For example, 31 percent of those who called themselves liberals in 1972 preferred private to governmental solutions to the health-care problem, and 34 percent of self-identified conservatives favored federally funded health insurance plans. People who call themselves conservatives increasingly outnumber those who claim to be liberals, a trend that conflicts with stable or increasing liberal majorities on many specific policy questions.

The basic question about ideological self-identification was followed with requests that the respondent place various people and groups on the same seven-point scale. This series of items enables us to identify people who considered themselves liberals and then classify them according to their views of the Democratic party. In 1972, 34 percent of liberals did not consider the Democratic party liberal, compared to 31 percent in 1976 and 38 percent in 1988.

We can use these questions to test the proposition that liberals who deny the Democratic party's claim to liberalism will be more inclined to be Independents. Table 7.3 has the answers. It shows that in 1972, 26 percent of liberals who denied that the Democratic party shared their viewpoint were Independent Democrats, but so were 24 percent of the liberals who thought that the party passed muster ideologically. The comparison is almost identical for Weak Democrats. As the proposition predicts, Pure Independents were more common among liberals who rejected the party's credentials. The same pattern for Weak and Independent Democrats was found for 1976. The appeal of pure independence was even greater for liberals who rejected the Democratic party; 19 percent were


151
 

Table 7.3
Party Identification and Liberals' Views of the Democratic Party, 1972, 1976, and 1988

 

Is the Democratic Party Liberal?a

 

1972

1976

1988

 

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

Strong Democrats

21%

16%

19%

8%

29%

25%

Weak Democrats

24

25

35

33

27

19

Indep. Democrats

24

26

22

21

20

28

Pure Independents

7

13

7

19

8

4

Indep. Republicans

9

11

7

11

6

5

Weak Republicans

10

7

8

6

7

16

Strong Republicans

5

3

3

3

4

4

 

100%

101%

101%

101%

101%

101%

(N) =

(210)

(106)

(215)

(94)

(161)

(97)

a Description of the party's ideological position is by "placement" on the seven-point scale used to measure the respondent's ideological self-identification.

Pure Independents, compared to 7 percent of the liberals who said the Democratic party was liberal.

In short, the data from the 1970s are discouraging with respect to leaners but strongly support the proposition for Pure Independents. The problem is that few liberals of any sort are Pure Independents. As might be expected from what we have seen about the political involvement of Pure Independents, they are less inclined than other varieties of identifier to accept any sort of ideological label. In 1972, for example, fully 63 percent of Pure Independents said that they had not given much thought to their own ideological identity, or just did not know how to respond to the question. Only 15 percent of Pure Independents called themselves liberals. (We will discuss conservatives shortly.) The corresponding data for other


152

years are similar. What we have, then, is a promising clue about fewer than one-sixth of Pure Independents.

Table 7.3 also shows a trace of support for the basic proposition in 1988, half a generation after the tumult and disillusion that presumably bred the trend toward dealignment. In 1988 the proportion of liberals who questioned the Democratic party's liberalism was a bit higher, 38 percent, and the proportion of Democratic leaners in this group, 28 percent, was significantly higher than the 20 percent in the majority of liberals who granted that the Democratic party was liberal. On the other hand, now the distribution of Pure Independents becomes inconvenient. They were twice as common among liberals who accepted the Democratic party was liberal. Nevertheless, we have found another scrap of support for the proposition.

Conservatives usually have only bit parts in dramas about ideological conflict in the late 1960s when all the action was attributed to the left. Nevertheless, we thought it worthwhile to see if conservatives dissatisfied with the doctrinal adequacy of the Republican party might have contributed to dealignment. Table 7.4 shows the party identifications of conservatives, divided into those who did and those who did not consider the Republican party conservative. It shows absolutely no inclination toward being a Republican leaner among conservatives who doubted that the Republican party shared their ideological proclivity. In 1972 and 1988, these conservative doubters were more likely to be Pure Independents. As with the liberals, however, the significance of this relationship is limited by the modest number of conservatives of any sort who were Pure Independents: 22 percent in 1972 and 18 percent in 1988.

Table 7.4 also provides an interesting footnote: Conservatives who deny this label to the Republican party seem drawn to the Democratic party. This was true of 43 percent of the doubters in 1972, 46 percent in 1976, and just short of half in 1988. There was no such tendency among liberals.


153
 

Table 7.4
Party Identification and Conservatives' Views of the Republican Party, 1972, 1976, and 1988

 

Is the Republican Party Conservative?a

 

1972

1976

1988

 

Yes

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

Strong Democrats

5%

7%

3%

13%

4%

15%

Weak Democrats

17

28

10

22

7

23

Indep. Democrats

6

8

5

11

4

11

Pure Independents

8

12

7

8

4

8

Indep. Republicans

17

15

20

16

20

17

Weak Republicans

25

15

25

19

23

13

Strong Republicans

22

15

31

12

39

13

 

101%

100%

101%

101%

101%

100%

(N) =

(344)

(159)

(376)

(192)

(431)

(119)

a Description of the party's ideological position is by "placement" on the seven-point scale used to measure the respondent's ideological self-identification.

Evaluations of Political Groups

The political scene in the 1960s was enlivened by a variety of new participants, from civil-rights workers to campus demonstrators. Often these activists, rather than the causes they advocated, were the main focus of public attention. We begin by seeing how the seven types of party identifiers rated some of these new groups on the feeling thermometer.

Six of the groups whose popularity was measured in the Michigan surveys embodied aspects of the new politics: people who use marijuana, the women's liberation movement, black militants, radical students, civil rights leaders, and people who riot in cities (the terms are those used in the question-


154
 

Table 7.5
Composite Feeling Thermometer Ratings of Six Liberal Reference Groups, by Age, 1972

 

Age

All Respondents in Category

 

18–28

29–44

45–64

65 +

Strong Democrats

33

32

23

23

27

Weak Democrats

34

24

21

20

25

Indep. Democrats

43

29

28

25

35

Pure Independents

32

25

21

19

27

Indep. Republicans

31

25

19

23

26

Weak Republicans

32

25

20

17

23

Strong Republicans

25

22

17

16

19

Note : The six groups are marijuana users, women's liberationists, black militants, radical students, civil rights leaders, and urban rioters. Higher scores are more favorable.

naire). No one liked any of these people very much, but they were least unpopular among the Democratic leaners. Year after year, each of the groups got its warmest ratings from Independent Democrats, with outright Democratic partisans lagging behind. To be sure, young people were more sympathetic to these new forces, and Democratic leaners were disproportionately young. But differences among categories of identifiers generally remained when age was controlled. In other respects, however, these findings are disappointing. Neither Republican leaners nor Pure Independents looked more favorably on these groups than most other respondents. And even the younger Independent Democrats, although the least hostile, never approached neutrality, much less a kindly feeling. The ratings for 1972 are summarized in table 7.5. Scores for other years are similar.

Along with the debut of these new political actors came increased public attention to groups that had long been part of the political landscape and symbolized conservative values generally thought to be in conflict with the new politics. The


155
 

Table 7.6
Composite Feeling Thermometer Ratings of Three Conservative Groups, by Age, 1972

 

Age

All Respondents in Category

 

18–28

29–44

45–64

65 +

Strong Democrats

59

63

71

73

68

Weak Democrats

60

66

70

73

67

Indep. Democrats

51

59

62

67

57

Pure Independents

59

68

70

64

65

Indep. Republicans

61

66

72

76

67

Weak Republicans

62

66

71

74

68

Strong Republicans

68

70

74

77

73

Note : The three groups are the police, the military, and big business. Higher scores are more favorable.

1972 ratings of three of these groups—the police, the military, and big business—are summarized in table 7.6. These groups were vastly more popular than the newer ones. Even the most liberal respondents, young Democratic leaners, felt more kindly toward these more conservative symbols than toward exemplars of the new politics. The conservative groups' ratings are almost a mirror image of what we saw in table 7.5. In 1972, Independent Democrats were somewhat cooler, Strong Republicans slightly warmer, and everyone else was in pretty much the same place. Pure Independents, rather than rejecting these old-fashioned groups, evaluated them much as the avowed partisans did. By 1988, feelings had cooled slightly almost across the board, the difference between Independent Democrats and others had narrowed, and only the Strong Republicans had views that diverged, however modestly, from the other six categories of partisanship.

Finally, we examined feelings about three groups that have traditionally been favored by liberals—labor unions, poor people, and people on welfare. These are symbols of bread-and-


156
 

Table 7.7
Feeling Thermometer Ratings of Traditional Liberal Symbols, 1976 and 1988

 

1976

1988

 

Labor unions

Poor
people

People on welfare

Labor unions

Poor
people

People on welfare

Strong Democrats

56

75

56

66

74

55

Weak Democrats

49

71

52

60

68

50

Indep. Democrats

47

70

51

57

68

49

Pure Independents

41

68

48

55

67

49

Indep. Republicans

42

68

46

48

65

46

Weak Republicans

43

69

47

48

65

46

Strong Republicans

37

69

47

44

67

44

Note : Higher scores are more favorable.

butter politics of the sort that was dismissed as obsolete by enthusiasts for the new issues of the 1960s. The results here alter the leaners' liberal image. As table 7.7 shows, Independent Democrats were cooler than Weak and Strong Democrats to unions, the poor, and welfare clients. On the Republican side, leaners had about the same views as outright partisans. Pure Independents were between Democrats and Republicans, closer to the latter. A secondary finding in table 7.7 is that opinion changed very little between 1976 and 1988 on the poor and people on welfare. Attitudes toward labor unions became generally more positive, especially for the three types of Democrats, Pure Independents, and Weak Republicans.

These findings sketch an emerging image of Independent Democrats: cooler toward traditional Democratic welfare constituencies and labor unions. Perhaps because of the decades that separate them from Depression-era worries, Democratic leaners, rather than being more liberal, are actually less favorably inclined toward these groups.


157

Attitudes on Public Policy

The Michigan researchers often measure opinions on issues by asking respondents to locate themselves on a seven-point scale extending between two extreme alternatives. This is an example of the format:

Some people feel that the government in Washington should see to it that every person has a job and a good standard of living. Suppose that these people are at one end of this scale [card is shown to respondent]—at point number 1. Others think the government should just let each person get ahead on his own. Suppose that these people are at the other end—at point number 7. And, of course, some other people have opinions somewhere in between.

Where would you place yourself on this scale, or haven't you thought much about this?

Table 7.8 displays the attitudes in 1972 of the seven types of identifier on a variety of life-style, civil-liberties, and racial issues. Several interesting generalizations are apparent. First, the range of opinion among Democrats, Independents, and Republicans is rather narrow, averaging just under one point on a seven-point scale. Second, although there is some tendency for Democrats to be to the left of the Republicans, there are many exceptions. Third, Democratic leaners are the most liberal on all but one issue. They are so much more liberal that on two issues—marijuana and protecting the rights of the accused—the gap between them and the next most liberal group is greater than the spread between the latter group and the rest of the sample. In view of the narrow range of variation generally, Independent Democrats are the only group who can be described as clearly and consistently different. To be sure, Strong Republicans always are at the most conservative position on any of the issues, but they are not the conspicuous outliers Independent Democrats are. Republican leaners, on the other hand, have a clearly different profile. On the first four issues in table 7.8, they are most liberal on regu-


158
 

Table 7.8
Attitudes on Life-style, Civil Liberties, and Racial Issues, 1972

 

Regulate Industrial Pollution

Women's Equality

Legalize Marijuana

Protect Rights of Accused

Aid Minority Groups

Busing

Urban Unrest a

Strong Democrats

2.2

3.7

5.5

4.4

4.4

6.1

3.3

Weak Democrats

2.2

3.5

5.6

4.3

4.5

6.4

3.1

Indep. Democrats

2.0

3.0

4.3

3.4

3.9

6.1

2.7

Pure Independents

2.1

3.7

5.3

4.2

4.6

6.4

3.2

Indep. Republicans

1.7

3.3

5.2

4.2

4.5

6.5

3.3

Weak Republicans

2.3

3.6

5.4

4.5

4.5

6.5

3.3

Strong Republicans

2.6

3.7

5.8

4.8

4.8

6.7

3.6

Note : Based on responses to questions asking respondents to locate their position on a scale from 1 to 7, with 1 representing the most liberal position.

a The liberal option is "Correct the problems of poverty and unemployment that give rise to the disturbances." The other option is "Use all available force to maintain law and order."


159
 

Table 7.9
Attitudes on Traditional Social Welfare Issues, 1976

 

Higher Taxes for the Rich

Government Guarantees Everyone a Job and a Good Standard of Livinga

Federal Health Insurance

Strong Democrats

3.8

3.9

3.5

Weak Democrats

4.1

4.3

3.9

Indep. Democrats

4.1

4.4

3.4

Pure Independents

4.3

4.9

4.0

Indep. Republicans

4.4

4.9

4.5

Weak Republicans

4.5

4.9

4.6

Strong Republicans

4.7

5.4

5.1

Note : Lower scores are more liberal.

a Asked in the preelection interview.

lating pollution and in second place on the other three. On racial issues, however, they are on the more conservative side of the distribution. So many respondents are so opposed to busing that variations on this issue scarcely seem noteworthy. Our findings for other years are similar to those shown in table 7.8.

None of the preceding generalizations about attitudes on social questions holds for relationships between party identification and attitudes on economic issues. This proposition is conveniently illustrated by table 7.9, which displays relationships between party identification and preferences for higher taxes on the rich, government guarantees of well-being, and federal health insurance. Interparty differences are considerably greater and in no instance is any category of Democrat to the right of any kind of Republican. Moreover, Pure Independents always are in the middle. Finally, on two of these basic socioeconomic issues, there is an almost perfect monotonic relationship with party identification: as one moves from


160

Strong Democrat to Strong Republican, liberalism declines. On progressive taxation and guaranteed jobs the Strong Democrats are clearly the most liberal, followed by Weak Democrats, with Democratic leaners in third place. Much of the same is true on the Republican side. The coolness toward the New Deal tradition that was suggested by Democratic leaners' group ratings appears also in their middle-of-the-road preferences about economic issues, on which they are more conservative than their fellow partisans, with one exception, health insurance. This is also the only welfare-state issue we examined that is new, not a continuation of the New Deal agenda. The patterns displayed in table 7.9 occur in other years and on other economic issues.

Perceptions of Party Positions

These findings seem to tell a consistent story. Although not helpful about Pure Independents or Republican leaners, there are consistent hints about Democratic leaners: Being young and educated, neither memory, sentiment, nor self-interest made them receptive to the party-of-the-underdog image of the Democrats' New Deal–Fair Deal–Great Society tradition. They were interested in the problems of the late 1960s and early 1970s, not the 1930s. This might suggest that many call themselves Independents out of disappointment at the failure of either party's leaders to recognize their concerns and propose credible solutions.[19]

[19] This picture of a sluggish Democratic leadership failing to respond to "new issues" hardly fits the situation in 1972 when George McGovern and the national convention delegates who nominated him were so preoccupied with new issues as to be out of touch with most Democrats. See Jeane Kirkpatrick, The New Presidential Elite (New York: Russell Sage Foundation and The Twentieth Century Fund, 1976), chap. 10. It is possible, of course, that the 1972-style incongruity contributed to the growth of a deviant breed of Democratic leaner who scorned radical chic and longed for the good old days of New Deal politics. The problem with this style of analysis is that one can always find examples of such incongruity, and thus any hypothesis about an unresponsive party would receive some support.


161

Many of the seven-point questions used by the NES to measure respondents' attitudes on issues also ask them to "place" each of the parties on that issue. We can use these placements to see to what extent respondents consider themselves in agreement with their party's position on most of the issues covered in tables 7.8 and 7.9. That Independent Democrats are more liberal than other Democrats on some issues and more conservative on others helps explain their avoidance of explicit identification with the party only if they think that the party is out of step. If they see themselves in agreement with their party—or no less so than outright partisans—it would not matter that they are more liberal or conservative since these issues could not be the cause of their independence.

Table 7.10 summarizes the gaps between our respondents' positions on various issues and the position on each issue they attribute to the Democratic party in 1972. Differences are measured along the familiar seven-point scale. A positive number indicates that the mean attitude of respondents in that category is more liberal than their impressions of where the Democratic party stands on the issue; that is, they see the party to their right. A minus sign in table 7.10 indicates that the position people in that category attribute to the Democratic party is to the left of their own position on that issue.

On the first three issues in table 7.10—regulating industrial pollution, fighting inflation, and government health insurance—Democratic leaners saw their party well to the right of where they stood. On the first two of these issues, however, the leaners' image of the party's position was the same as that of Strong and Weak Democrats. They considered the party slightly more conservative on women's equality and urban unrest. But on the other issues, including those where they were more liberal than other Democrats, Independent Democrats either felt that their party was just about where they were or that the party was more liberal than they. This is true of life-style issues, as well as racial issues like busing and unrest. These findings dampen the impulse to say that people became Independent Democrats because they were too liberal


162
 

Table 7.10
Differences between Individuals' Positions on the Issues and the Positions They Attribute to the Democratic Party, 1972

 

Pollution

Inflation Policy a

Health Insurance

Women's Equality

Rights of Accused

Legalize Marijuana

Urban Unrest

Minority Aid

Busing

Strong Democrats

+0.7

+1.0

–0.3

–0.6

–0.7

–0.9

–0.3

–0.9

–1.7

Weak Democrats

+0.6

+0.8

–0.5

–0.4

–0.8

–1.1

+0.1

–1.1

–2.3

Indep. Democrats

+0.9

+0.9

+0.6

+0.3

+0.1

0.0

+0.3

–0.7

–1.9

Pure Independents

+0.4

+1.0

–0.9

–0.6

–0.7

–1.1

0.0

–1.3

–2.4

Indep. Republicans

+1.1

+1.2

–1.1

–0.3

–1.1

–1.4

–0.3

–1.7

–3.3

Weak Republicans

+0.4

+1.4

–1.8

–0.8

–1.3

–1.6

–0.2

–1.4

–3.0

Strong Republicans

+0.2

+1.5

–2.2

–0.8

–1.4

–1.9

–0.6

–1.8

–3.4

Note : Issue positions measured on a seven-point scale. A positive number indicates that respondents in that category have attributed a position to the Democratic party that is more conservative than their own position on the issue; a negative number shows that the Democratic party's position is thought to be further to the left.

a Asked in the preelection interview.


163

to fit in the Democratic party's mainstream; on most issues in 1972, Democratic leaners did not see themselves as more liberal than the party. In fact, in all years, they placed themselves closer to where they saw the party than did either Weak or Strong Democrats.[20]

The story is much the same for Independent Republicans. Perceptions in 1972 of the Republican party's positions on various issues are summarized in table 7.11. Only on pollution and inflation policy did Republican leaners consider themselves significantly more liberal than the Republican party and on the latter issue their image of the party was shared by outright Republican identifiers. On five other issues in table 7.11, Independent Republicans were closer to where they saw their party than were other Republicans.[21]

Neither table 7.10 nor table 7.11 sheds much light on Pure Independents, whose impressions of the parties' stands on the issues were generally midway between those of the partisans.

We have narrowed our search for the causes of dealignment to those issues where there are substantial gaps between leaners' beliefs and those they attribute to the parties. Could these issues—pollution and health insurance—be the focus of leaners' dissatisfaction with the two parties? Have we found the causes of the parties' decline? Can we conclude that those issues on which leaners consider themselves at odds with their party are partly responsible for dealignment?

People whose party identification is affected by their beliefs about an issue should consider that issue important. At this point, the line of analysis we have been pursuing peters out: People who are particularly interested in any of the areas where leaners are at odds with their party have no distinctive

[20] In 1988 the differences were not very great between Independent Democrats and other Democrats in the extent to which they saw themselves as more liberal or more conservative than the Democratic party. The differences were largest on the issues of cooperation with the Soviet Union and women's rights.

[21] In 1988 Independent Republicans and Weak Republicans were strikingly similar in their positioning of themselves and their party, usually within one point on the seven-point scale.


164
 

Table 7.11
Differences between Individuals' Positions on the Issues and the Positions They Attribute to the Republican Party, 1972

 

Pollution

Inflation Policy a

Health Insurance

Women's Equality

Rights of Accused

Legalize Marijuana

Urban Unrest

Minority Aid

Busing

Strong Democrats

+0.9

+1.7

+1.3

–0.1

0.0

–0.5

+1.0

–0.2

–1.5

Weak Democrats

+0.9

+1.2

+0.6

0.0

–0.2

–0.3

+0.8

–0.2

–0.3

Indep. Democrats

+1.8

+1.5

+1.9

+1.0

+0.8

+1.0

+1.5

+0.4

–1.4

Pure Independents

+0.5

+1.1

+0.6

–0.3

–0.4

0.0

+0.5

–0.6

–1.6

Indep. Republicans

+1.1

+0.6

+0.1

–0.1

–0.3

–0.1

+0.3

–0.5

–1.3

Weak Republicans

–0.4

+0.7

–0.2

–0.4

–0.3

–0.3

+0.3

–0.5

–1.4

Strong Republicans

0.0

+0.4

–0.2

–0.5

–0.6

–0.3

–0.1

–0.8

–1.4

Note : Issue positions measured on a seven-point scale. A positive number indicates that respondents in that category have attributed a position to the Republican party that is more conservative than their own position on the issue; a negative number shows that the Republican party's position is thought to be further to the left.

a Asked in the preelection interview.


165

preference for any level of partisanship. Indeed, we can be more categorical: Analysis of respondents' ideas about "the most important problem the country faces" reveals no tendency for people most concerned with any category of problem to be leaners, avowed partisans, or Pure Independents.

A second finding deals another blow to the issue-disparity argument. Tables 7.10 and 7.11 show that very often it was strong or weak partisans who were most out of step with their party. They, not leaners, often had more reason to be upset. On many issues, leaners were closer than outright partisans to where they saw their party standing.

We saw earlier that self-identified liberals' and conservatives' views of the ideological place of the two parties provided only very limited help in explaining dealignment. When we examine the ideological images of the two parties held by all respondents, we find, as was the case with issues, that leaners are at least as likely as outright partisans to see their party in step with them ideologically.

A Constituency for a Third Party?

In the view of some scholars and other observers, one clear implication of the growth of Independents was that as "the largest group in the society," they formed "a large pool of nonimmunized citizens . . . available for mobilization to new partisan commitments."[22] George Gallup considered the possibilities this way:

With independents moving toward a dominant role in American politics, candidates of both major parties will by vying for their votes as the 1976 presidential race begins to take shape . . . independents could provide a base for a third-party effort in the coming months . . . independents could form the basis of a "centrist" party

[22] Nie, Verba, and Petrocik, The Changing American Voter , 346, 94.


166

much like parties in other nations, taking a position midway between the right and left.[23]

Six years later, the New York Times drew on Gallup Poll data about the number of Independents to speculate along similar lines:

There is talk about an independent movement, a Center Party, a Third Force, made up of people unsatisfied with both sides of a Carter-Reagan race. . . . There is a rational base for such a grouping. In recent years, analysts have identified a large and growing corps of voters located between the major parties.[24]

Walter Dean Burnham, on the other hand, thought that survey data suggested a very different possibility, a constituency for a left-wing party:

The exceptionally rapid erosion of the behavioral hold of the old major parties on the American electorate which is now going on may be part of a prealignment process during which masses of voters become available for mobilization along other than traditional lines.[25]

Such speculations assume that there is only one type of Independent, not three. If all three kinds of Independents are combined, then they seem to be a middle-of-the-road constituency because Republican and Democratic leaners offset each other and in the aggregate resemble the genuinely neutral Pure Independents. But as tables 7.8 and 7.9 show, the range of opinion among the three kinds of Independents is fully as broad as in the whole population. There is no policy issue on

[23] George Gallup, "The Nation's Independents—Now a Possible Base for a New Party," The Gallup Poll release, November 17, 1974, 1. Ten years later, Everett Carll Ladd, Jr., characterized Independents' attitudes this way: "No Distinctive Ideological Outlook on Issues." See his "Declarations of Independents," Public Opinion , April–May 1984, 24.

[24] The New York Times , March 20, 1980, A26.

[25] Walter Dean Burnham, Critical Elections and the Mainsprings of American Politics (New York: W. W. Norton, 1970), 92.


167

which they are any more united than the entire American white population. This should put to rest the fanciful notion that Independents are a constituency for a third party that will appeal to people who consider the Democratic party too liberal and the Republican party too conservative.

Since Independents are so diverse, it is difficult to imagine them rallying behind a major third party offering any alternative set of policies. The followers of the two established parties do not display much consensus on the issues either. But affiliation with Democrats or Republicans is rooted in a rich history, full of meaningful associations and symbols. These histories are products of critical change, when one or the other party took a distinctive approach to a consuming problem. So far, no such issue has provided a focus for Independents; not economic policy, new moral conceptions, ecological concerns, nor race relations. If such an issue does arise, it is likely to affect the American political consciousness in a way completely different from that suggested by present conceptions.

Party identification is an important concept to the extent that it explains behavior—vote choice, attitudes, whatever—that is worthy of explanation. In the language of social science, it is valued as an independent variable. This is not to say, however, that it cannot be explained, that is, be treated as a dependent variable. Since the beginning of chapter 6 we have done this in searching for understanding of the undeniable increase in Independents that began in the late 1960s. The major theme of this book is that this increase generally has been misinterpreted because of a widespread failure to differentiate leaners from Pure Independents.

We have not been very successful in tying the increase in any variety of Independent to the great issues of the late 1960s and early 1970s. With one exception, we have failed to make a case for attributing dealignment to a belief that the parties do not offer meaningful alternatives. By the same token, we have found that ideologues dissatisfied with the doctrinal vagueness of the two parties were not responsible for dealignment.

The exception just alluded to concerns the concentration of


168

Pure Independents in the ranks of citizens who questioned that the major parties really differ from each other. In chapter 5, when we were describing Independents instead of trying to explain them, we found that Pure Independents were likelier to think that the parties did not differ in their ability to perform satisfactorily on the most important problem. Are some Americans Pure Independents because they take the European view that Republicans and Democrats are like two peas in a pod? Or should we expect that people who persevere in denying any affinity for either party will see the world that way, even when the parties are led by men as different as Richard Nixon and George McGovern or Ronald Reagan and Walter Mondale?

At some stage in the search for independent variables that differentiate Independents from outright partisans, common sense will intervene to suggest that irrespective of some observed relationship, it is not plausible to attribute dealignment to it. For example, if we found that feeling thermometer ratings of "people who live in suburbs" or "ministers who lead protest marches" neatly sorted out Independent Democrats from Weak and Strong Democrats, we would not believe that we had discovered the elusive key to dealignment. The point of these last three paragraphs is to announce that we have arrived at that stage. We acknowledge our failure to locate the issues that led to the growth of Independents.


169

7— Issues and Dealignment
 

Preferred Citation: Keith, Bruce E., David B. Magleby, Candice J. Nelson, Elizabeth A. Orr, Mark C. Westlye, and Raymond E. Wolfinger The Myth of the Independent Voter. Berkeley:  University of California Press,  c1992 1992. http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft1m3nb12x/