Political Involvement and Partisan Change in Presidential Elections

Using evidence from the S.R.C. surveys about voting behavior in the presidential elections 1952-1972, this article reexamines the question whether there are in fact groups in the electorate, defined in terms of their level of political involvement, which play a particularly important role in facilitating electoral change. The findings presented here indicate that the pattern of opinion shifts among apathetic and concerned voters is not uniform across elections but varies significantly according to the special features of the individual campaign. The tendency for apathetic voters to contribute disproportionately to electoral change must be seen not as a generally valid model but as one of a number of possible patterns, each associated with particular .combinations of campaign stimuli. Moreover, contrary to the argument that flexibility in the electoral system depends upon the voters with low levels of political involvement, the evidence analyzed here indicates that when the apathetics do contribute especially to electoral change, they serve in effect as agents of systemic stability.