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The conventional wisdom among journalists and politicians is that higher turnout would benefit Democrats, although extant scholarly research suggests otherwise. We adopt a new approach to assessing the partisan impact of higher turnout. We use state‐level exit polls and Census data to estimate the partisan preferences of nonvoters in Senate elections and then simulate the outcome of these elections under universal turnout. While nonvoters are generally more Democratic than voters, the dearth of close races means that very few election outcomes would have changed had everyone voted. Other scenarios—full turnout among registered voters, equal turnout rates for whites and African‐Americans, and equal turnout rates across income groups—generate similar results: although Democrats fare better in each scenario, few outcomes would have changed. However, the gap between voters and nonvoters' partisan preference varies considerably across states and across years, suggesting that this "partisan differential" warrants further examination.

The relative influence of self‐interest and values on policy preferences was assessed experimentally in a national survey that posed questions about three contemporary political issues—Social Security reform, the home mortgage interest tax deduction, and health care benefits for domestic partners. For each issue, respondents were randomly assigned to one of three priming conditions that influenced the frame of reference for their policy evaluations. The results show that people are more likely to recognize their own self‐interest, and to act upon it, when their stakes in the policy are clear or when they have been primed to think about the personal costs and benefits of the policy. This relationship is somewhat weakened but not eliminated when sociotropic considerations are primed. People with a smaller stake in an issue are less likely to behave on the basis of self‐interest and more likely to be influenced by their values and symbolic predispositions, especially when exposed to information that cues sociotropic concerns, group identifications, or value orientations.

Multiculturalism has emerged to challenge liberalism as an ideological solution in coping with ethnic diversity in the United States. This article develops a definition of political multiculturalism which refers to conceptions of identity, community and public policy. It then analyses the 1994 General Social Survey and a 1994 survey of Los Angeles County to assess the contours of mass support and opposition to multiculturalism, testing hypotheses concerning the role of social background, liberalism-conservatism and racial hostility. The main conclusions are that 'hard' versions of multiculturalism are rejected in all ethnic groups, that a liberal political self-identification boosts support for multiculturalism, and that racial hostility is a consistent source of antagonism to the new ethnic agenda of multiculturalism. There is strong similarity in the results in both the national and Los Angeles samples. (British Journal of Political Science / FUB)

The relative influence of self-interest & values on policy preferences was assessed experimentally in a national survey that posed questions about three contemporary political issues -- Social Security reform, the home mortgage interest tax deduction, & health care benefits for domestic partners. For each issue, respondents were randomly assigned to one of three priming conditions that influenced the frame of reference for their policy evaluations. The results show that people are more likely to recognize their own self-interest, & to act upon it, when their stakes in the policy are clear or when they have been primed to think about the personal costs & benefits of the policy. This relationship is somewhat weakened but not eliminated when sociotropic considerations are primed. People with a smaller stake in an issue are less likely to choose on the basis of self-interest & more likely to be influenced by their values & symbolic predispositions, especially when exposed to information that cues sociotropic concerns, group identifications, or value orientations. 14 Tables, 2 Appendixes, 20 References. Adapted from the source document.

This work provides an analysis of American public opinion on the key constitutional controversies of the 20th century, including desegregation, school prayer, abortion, the death penalty affirmative action, gay rights, assisted suicide, and national security, to name just a few

By a large margin, Californians passed the English Proficiency, Multilingual Education Initiativein November 2016, despite the fact that Proposition 58 gutted Proposition 227, which effectivelyended bilingual education in 1998. We conclude that it would be simplistic to call thismassive change in policy a result that the "times had changed," either demographically or evenin terms of underlying attitudes toward language. Instead, the victory of Prop 58 seems due inlarge part to political strategy rather than a radical shift in the electorate. The proportions of Latinoand Asian registered voters have certainly increased over the last decade and a half, as hasthe proportion of liberal Democrats. Nevertheless, there is a limit to what these demography-asdestinyaccounts can explain. Instead, using survey experiments in three California-wide surveys,we show that underlying attitudes about teaching the English language have been relatively stable,and that many voters supported Prop 58 without being aware that it reinstated bilingual education.When this was made clear, voters changed their positions, particularly among whites andconservatives. What was salient were the first two words on the ballot label, "English Proficiency"and this is an almost universally accepted goal.