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Some researchers have claimed that there has been a substantial increase in political tolerance among the US public since the 1950s, while others assert that this increase is illusory -- though more tolerant of leftists, the public has simply found other targets on which to vent its intolerance. Data from Samuel A. Stouffer's 1954 survey on civil liberties (Communism, Conformity, & Civil Liberties, Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1955) are reanalyzed after recalculating some of its measures to simulate the least-liked group question used in a study conducted twenty years later that arrived at different conclusions (Sullivan, John L., Piereson, James, & Marcus, George E., "An Alternative Conceptualization of Political Tolerance: Illusory Increases, 1950's-1970's," American Political Science Review, 1982, 73, 781-794). In addition, extensive trend data from polls conducted between 1940 & 1985 are analyzed. It is concluded that this shift does primarily reflect greater tolerance of leftists, although tolerance has fluctuated greatly over this period, largely due to changes in perceptions regarding threats from putatively subversive groups, especially domestic communists. However, the public's grasp of & concern about civil liberties seems so minimal that it can be argued that it really has no tangibly measurable attitude on the subject one way or the other. In A Note on "Trends in Political Tolerance", John L. Sullivan & George E. Marcus explain why they used the content-controlled measurement strategy in their initial study, defend their conceptualizations of tolerance & threat, & show why it is difficult to adequately compare their results with those of other researchers. It is concluded that Mueller is persuasive in arguing that attitudes toward communists have changed over time, but less so regarding changes in the level & structure of overall political tolerance. 6 Tables, 56 References. K. Hyatt

This article proposes an alternative conceptualization of political tolerance, a new measurement strategy consistent with that conceptualization, and some new findings based upon this measurement strategy. Briefly put, we argue that tolerance presumes a political objection to a group or to an idea, and if such an objection does not arise, neither does the problem of tolerance. Working from this understanding, we argue that previous efforts to measure tolerance have failed because they have asked respondents about groups preselected by the investigators. Those groups selected as points of reference in measuring tolerance have generally been of a leftist persuasion. Our measurement strategy allowed respondents themselves to select a political group to which they were strongly opposed. They were then asked a series of questions testing the extent to which they were prepared to extend procedural claims to these self-selected targets. Using this approach, we found little change between the 1950s and the 1970s in levels of tolerance in the United States, a result that contradicts much recent research on the problem.

Recent research into the structure of public attitudes suggests that levels of "constraint" in the mass public increased substantially between 1956 & 1972, largely in response to the ideological nature of the 1964 presidential election. The validity of this interpretation is examined, & it is suggested that constraint in the mass public probably did not increase very much, but that reported changes were due instead to changes in the survey items used to measure constraint. Implications of this view are considered. 6 Tables. HA.

In an attempt to understand the extent to which racism and sexism influenced affect toward Barack Obama and Sarah Palin, we analyze data from a national survey conducted in October 2008. Situating our investigation in previous examinations of modern racism and modern sexism, we test competing hypotheses about the role of these attitudes in the 2008 presidential election. Our results suggest that racism had a significant impact on candidate evaluations while sexism did not. We find that respondents who hold racist attitudes expressed negative attitudes toward Obama and positive attitudes toward Palin. When interacted with party identification, racism continued to exert a strong effect, indicating findings that are robust across partisan affiliations. Sexism, on the other hand, did not significantly influence evaluations of either Palin or Obama.