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This article brings new evidence to bear on two old questions and two new ones. (1) We analyse cross-sectional voting patterns in the five federal elections between 1977 and 1987. We find that the effects of class and party remain remarkably stable over this decade, which suggests that the much touted decline of class from World War II into the 1970s may have bottomed out by the 1980s. (2) We show that individual voting patterns are also remarkably stable, if anything more stable than in the 1960s; there is no sign of the increase in electoral volatility found in other English speaking countries. (3) We analyse changes over the last parliament, between the 1984 and 1987 elections. We find that changes in voters' views in this period are influenced mainly by changes in their opinion of the key political leaders, not by their class, ideology, or opinions on the issues of the day. Finally, (4) we investigate what would have happened if the opposition's leaders had been as popular as Labor's. Our estimates imply that the opposition would probably then have won the election. These analyses are based on new data from the National Social Science Survey's 1987 Panel Survey, a representative national sample of 1311 cases in all states and territories. (Internat. Pol. Science Assoc.)

ABSTRACTThe inheritance and continuity of party identification is usually traced to the predominant influence of parental political socialization. This paper applies multivariate analysis to Australian and British data to examine (1) the relative importance of parents' partisanship and social milieu on the respondent's own partisanship and (2) the influence of parentsapos; partisanship on the preferences of the respondent in later life. The analysis shows that, in both countries, the social milieu of the family has little or no effect on the preferences of the children and it is the partisanship of the parents that is the dominant factor. In addition, we show that the influence of parents' partisanship is limited to early adulthood and to the first partisanship of the child; it has little or no direct influence on the respondent's subsequent electoral behaviour.

It has long been thought that voting behavior is shaped not only by voters' own SC & family backgrounds, but by the social contexts in which they live. Almost all previous empirical studies of social context have found it highly significant, most notably in the substantial literature on contextual influences in GB. Reanalyzing the classic British case (Butler, David, & Stokes, Donald, Political Change in Britain, London: Macmillan, 1974), applying multivariate techniques to 1966 individual-level data (N = 1,131 Rs) matched to the 1966 census, & also to 1979 individual-level data (N = 1,197 Rs) matched to the 1981 census, it is shown that once a suitable range of individual factors has been taken into account, social context has no significant effect on the vote in GB. 5 Tables, 2 Figures, 1 Appendix, 60 References. Modified HA

The inheritance and continuity of party identification is usually traced to the predominant influence of parental political socialization. This paper applies multivariate analysis to Australian and British data to examine (1) the relative importance of parents' partisanship and social milieu on the respondent's own partisanship and (2) the influence of parents' partisanship on the preferences of the respondent in later life. The analysis shows that, in both countries, the social milieu of the family has little or no effect on the preferences of the children and it is the partisanship of the parents that is the dominant factor. In addition, we show that the influence of parents' partisanship is limited to early adulthood and to the first partisanship of the child: it has little or no direct influence on the respondent's subsequent electoral behaviour. (Internat. Polit. Science Assoc.)

Almost a decade and a half after the start of the civil disturbances in Ulster, there remains scholarly disagreement over how extensive economic disparities between Protestants and Catholics were when the disturbances began in the late 1960s. This paper applies multivariate regression techniques to 1968 survey data to examine these disparities. The picture that emerges is a complex one. The apparently lower levels of occupational status among Catholics appear not to be due to discrimination but largely reflect differences in education and family background. But a substantial disparity in income remains, and cannot be accounted for so easily. More detailed analysis shows that Catholics born into elite families were greatly disadvantaged, while those born into average families were only slightly disadvantaged, if at all.

Using multiple regression techniques, quantitative estimates are made of the impact of information about candidates appearing on the ballot paper itself in recent British & Australian elections. The results suggest that whether a candidate's name comes first, middle, or last on the ballot paper has no effect on the vote in GB. But it does matter in Australia, partly because voters are more likely to choose candidates whose names come first, but mostly because the major parties believe voters will do so & select candidates accordingly. In addition, women candidates are at an electoral disadvantage in GB & at an even greater disadvantage in Australia, mostly because major parties are reluctant to nominate them. In GB, candidates with an honorary title garner an appreciable deferential vote although those with an academic title do not. These effects range in size from a moderate 2.5% of the vote to a substantial 12.5%. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 1 Appendix, 26 References. AA.

Comparisons are central to sociology and prominent among them are comparisons between the way two variables are related in different contexts (e.g. the present compared to the past, blacks compared to whites, industrial societies compared to agrarian ones). It is crucial, therefore, that analytic techniques used to test for such differences accurately reflect the true situation. A variety of statistical approaches have been used, most notably, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression with dummy variables and interaction terms. Recently, however, Goodman's log-linear procedure has been advocated as a `better' way of dealing with certain types of comparisons and particular models have been widely used. However, there is some question as to their applicability in answering theoretical questions typically posed in comparative sociological research. In this paper, we address this issue. Using a Monte Carlo simulation, we set up a typical but hypothetical set of data that would be appropriate for testing comparative theories of socioeconomic achievement or intergenerational mobility. This allows us to examine the ramifications of choosing particular analytic techniques on the conclusions drawn about theoretical propositions. Following conventions established in the literature, we apply two analytic techniques to the same set of data under a variety of conditions. Specifically, we compare the use of widely applied OLS regression and log-linear models where we set (1) the slope differences and (2) the mean differences in the variables between the contexts to vary. The simulation suggests that the regression procedure is able to pick up differences which would be of theoretical interest to the sociologist while the log-linear procedure, given the particular situation modelled here, does not. This is more likely to occur in those cases where the contexts compared have very different distributions. This does not reflect any problems in the log-linear technique itself. Ordered models are more likely to detect these differences because they are parsimonious with respect to degrees of freedom. However, this is not the only factor, methodological or theoretical, that needs to be considered in the choice of techniques. In particular, the findings alert us to difficulties inherent in testing sociological theories where (1) operationalizations of important concepts can result in very different measures and (2) conventional applications of these techniques fail to provide a valid test of proposed theoretical questions. Focussing on factors which may account for the differences observed, we address issues in the existing debate over the use of log-linear and regression models. We discuss the theoretical questions in stratification research for which log-linear techniques can be a useful tool and those for which it is misleading. Finally, we outline the theoretical and methodological tradeoffs in using each technique and suggest another not commonly employed in sociological research.

The increasing importance of women in politics is a common feature of almost all advanced industrial societies. Women have become increasingly active in most aspects of political life during the 1970s: as voters, as lobbyists and, perhaps most significantly of all, as candidates for election to public office. The traditional prejudice against women in public life, which assumes women to be less suited to politics by temperament and training, suggests that they could be expected to receive fewer votes than men in an election. But it is unclear to what extent this prejudice has been mitigated by the broad changes which have taken place in women's roles in recent years. Can we still expect women candidates to fare less well than their male counterparts?Such eviddce as there is in Australia suggests that the parties are less likely to nominate women but that, once nominated, women candidates fare neither better nor worse than men. Sawer concludes that 'the differential electoral fortunes of male and female candidates has always reflected the failure to pre-select women for safe and winnable seats, not any failure to win votes.' In a similar vein Mackerras argues that 'the average performance of women is neither better nor worse than that of men. Women will be elected when parties select them for winnable seats.' Research in the United States and Britain also suggests that a candidate's sex does not matter: Darcy and Schramm found that sex did not matter in the United States, controlling for incumbency and party, and in an analysis of three British general elections, Hills concluded that 'the gender of a candidate makes only a very small difference to the voters.'