Public Evaluations of the American Parties, 1952-1984

In The Changing American Voter, Nie, Verba, and Petrocik argued that since the early 1950s the American public had grown increasingly alienated from the political parties. However, this view has been challenged by Martin Wattenberg, who contends that the parties are suffering not from negativity, but from apathy. We devise independent measures of negativity and apathy in order to reexamine the Nie et al. and Wattenberg diagnoses of the American's party system's ills, with an eye toward rethinking their prognoses of the prospects for party renewal.