Political Parties and Class Mobilization in Contemporary United States Elections

Research on historical and contemporary American party systems suggests how political party and party system attributes are relevant to class-specific mobilization. The more liberal and competitive the Democratic party in a state, the greater the mobilization of lower-class voters. Liberal and competitive Democratic parties will enhance turnout of the lower classes more than that of other classes. The latter relationships will be stronger in off year elections than in presidential elections. Pooled time-series and cross-sectional analyses of turnout are conducted by social class, state, and year for 1978 through 1990. The first two hypotheses about party attributes and class-specific mobilization are strongly supported, but only in presidential election years.