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Those skeptical of ecological regression in voting behavior studies continue to suggest that problems in applying the technique severely limit its utility. But the cautionary offered in the Winter 1985 number of this journal by William H. Flanigan and Nancy H. Zingale ("Alchemist's Gold: Inferring Individual Relationships from Aggregate Data," Social Science History 9: 71-91) goes so far as to suggest that these problems are insurmountable—or virtually insurmountable. As a user, I was prepared to be devastated, but in fact find myself cheered (if a little puzzled).Interested readers will recall that the centerpiece of the authors' argument is a test involving this question: How did the voters of 1968 behave four years later in the presidential election of 1972? The test consists of comparing voters' actual behavior, as determined by survey data, with ecological regression estimates of that same behavior. The tabulated results are alleged to be decisive in proving the authors' point, but instead appear to prove just the opposite of what is intended, as a fresh look at the material reveals.

A close examination of the constitutional referendum proposing Negro suffrage held in Iowa in 1868 yielded a quantitative measurement of popular act's toward Negro rights in the North in the Civil War period. Iowa was chosen because it was the only state in which whites approved such a proposal in a referendum election when the issue was clearly put before the voters. Manipulated by r techniques, the quantitative data used included county & township voting statistics, demographic & econ materials, & the results of a previous election study. The most signif factors appeared to be 3: (1) pol'al party preference (there was a high association between Republican preferences & the pro-Negro suffrage vote); (2) type of population unit (small towns were consistently more pro-Negro suffrage & Republican than either cities or farming areas, & farming areas tended to be more anti-Negro as they were less prosperous & contained black residents); (3) ethnic composition (foreign-born whites were consistently more hostile to Negro suffrage than native-born whites, possibly because of a greater degree of econ insecurity-a factor exploited by anti-Negro campaign rhetoric). AA.