The Swing Voter In American Politics

The "swing voter" occupies a cherished place in American political lore. Candidates court swing voters, consultants target them, and pundits speculate constantly on which way they will lean. But nobody has adequately defined them as a group. What exactly is a swing voter? No one really seems to know. T he Swing Voter in American Politics fills this conceptual gap. The book brings political scientists and pollsters together to answer four basic questions: What is a swing voter? How can analysts use survey data to identify swing voters? How do swing voters differ—if at all—from the rest of the electorate? And what role do swing voters play in determining the outcomes of contemporary elections? Drawing on a wide range of sources, including American National Election Studies Data, Gallup polls, Pew Center surveys, and the National Annenberg Election Survey, the contributors track swing voters across six decades and in national and local elections. The result is an unprecedented picture of this key political group, just in time for the 2008 campaigns. Contributors include James E. Campbell (University of Buffalo), April Clark (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press), Adam Clymer (Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania), Michael Dimock (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press), Juliana Menasce Horowitz (Pew Research Center for the People & the Press), Jeffrey M. Jones (Gallup Organization), Daron R. Shaw (University of Texas–Austin), Jeffrey M. Stonecash (Syracuse University), Ken Winneg (Annenberg Public Policy Center, University of Pennsylvania).

As our country's politicians engage in bitter partisan battles, focused on protecting their own jobs but not on doing the nation's business, and political pundits shout louder and shriller to improve their ratings, it's no wonder that Americans have little faith in their government. But is America as divided as the politicians and talking heads would have us believe? Do half of Americans stand on the right and the other half on the left with a no-man's-land between them? Hardly. Forty percent of all American voters are Independents who occupy the ample political and ideological space in the center. These Americans are anything but divided, and they're being ignored. These Independents make up the largest voting bloc in the nation and have determined the outcome of every election since World War II. Every year their numbers grow, as does the unconscionable disconnect between them and the officials who are supposed to represent them. The Swing Vote: The Untapped Power of Independents tells the story of how our polarized political system is not only misrepresenting America but failing it. Linda Killian looks beyond the polls and the headlines and talks with the frustrated citizens who are raising the alarm about the acute bi-polarity, special interest-influence, and gridlock in Congress, asking why Obama's postpartisan presidency is anything but, and demanding realism, honest negotiation, and a sense of responsibility from their elected officials. Killian paints a vivid portrait of the swing voters around the country and presents a new model that reveals who they are and what they want from their government and elected officials. She also offers a way forward, including solutions for fixing our broken political system. This is not only a timely shot across the bows of both parties but an impassioned call to Independents to bring America back into balance.

This book offers the reader a first glimpse of the attitudes of the U.S. swing voter - those voters campaigns most need to pursue and who are uncommitted and believed likely to vote. It focuses on these voters from a phenomenological standpoint, identifying that which is common among them, their unexamined attitudes about politics, their approach to decision-making and their role in society. It is argued that the empirical approach to voting is indicative of a general shift in U.S. culture toward social disengagement. Topics that are covering include independent voters, the public sphere, presidential elections, voting, ethnography, phenomenology, as well as consciousness structures, introducing the work of Jean Gebser as it applies to the attitudes made evident by the subjects involved in this study.

Unconventional Wisdom offers a novel yet highly accessible synthesis of what we know about American voters and elections. It not only provides an integrated overview of the central themes in American politics--parties, polarization, turnout, partisan bias, campaign effects, swing voters, the gender gap, and the youth vote--but it also upends many of our fundamental preconceptions. Most importantly, it shows that the American electorate is much more stable than we have been led to believe, and that the voting patterns we see today have deep roots in our history. Throughout, the book provides comprehensive information on voting patterns; illuminates--and corrects--popular myths about voters and elections; and details the empirical foundations of conventional wisdoms that many understand poorly or not at all. It is essential reading for anyone interested in American politics.

Draws from political science, history, political theory, economics, and anthropology to answer the most important questions about political representation.

This book analyzes why combative politics stigmatizes Democrats and Republicans, thus Americans avoid political actions that could identify them as partisans.

Brimming with data and examples from the heated 2004 election, and laced with previews of 2008, the twelfth edition of this classic text offers a complete overview of the presidential election process from the earliest straw polls and fundraisers to final voter turnout and exit interviews. The comprehensive coverage includes campaign strategy, the sequence of electoral events, and the issues, all from the perspective of the various actors in the election process voters, interest groups, political parties, the media, and the candidates themselves.

“Nersesian’s extravagantly imagined dystopia relies—as did those in Philip Roth’s Plot Against America and Michael Chabon’s Yiddish Policemen’s Union—on an alternate, counterfactual history.”—The New York Times Book Review “Combining sci-fi space/time-warping, Unabomber-style political ranting and an overall air of goose-bump paranoia, this is one turbo-charged trip. . . . A sharp, strange read: Imagine William Burroughs and Philip K. Dick sharing a needle.”—Kirkus Reviews “Brilliant.”—Time Out New York Arthur Nersesian’s six previous novels (including The Fuck-Up, MTV/Pocket Books, which has sold over 100,000 copies) have focused on the tragicomedy of fin de siècle New York City. Here, in his boldest novel to date, Nersesian has broken through into a new landscape that at once fuses the real with the surreal, the psychological with the psychedelic. He lives in New York City.