Customer Reviews

The Responsible Electorate: Rationality in Presidential Voting 1936-1960

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A wonderful little book. This was V. O. Key's final volume; he died before it was published. Perhaps it is most famously summarized by his quotation (Page 7): "The perverse and unorthodox argument of this little book is that voters are not fools." In short, something like a populist work on voting behavior.

Throughout the book, he uses a variety of data--adopting very simple statistical techniques--to develop this point. For instance, he shows that voters who support one party in an election and who then become dissatisfied with that party after the election tend to switch their votes at the next election to the other party. Thus, voters are not Pavlovian dogs, ritually supporting the same party over and over.

All in all, a classic little book. It is still worth rereading a half century after its publication.

Published posthumously, this is Key's response to The American Voter and the debate at the time over the competence of the American public. The first chapter includes his famous quip that "voters are not fools" and is the most useful portion of the text for the contemporary reader. The remainder of the book is empirical evidence (mainly from surveys) and some unfinished thoughts on the subject. A quick and worthwhile read.