Annotated Bibliography

Annotated Bibliography for research material, looking in to voting behavior in regard to those in the US, correlating race, income and geographic location.

Source:

Fraga, B. (2016). Candidates or Districts? Reevaluating the Role of Race in Voter Turnout. American Journal of Political Science,60(1), 97-122. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24583053

Summary:

Bernard Fraga closely examines data made available from governmental sources such as the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, Census Bureau and the Federal Elections Commission, in order to demonstrate the correlation between the race of political candidates and the race of their voting constituency. Fraga demonstrates with extensive tables, charts and empirical analysis how race effects voter turn out among white, black, Asian and Hispanic voting blocks. Furthermore, the analysis extends the data to demonstrate how minorities tend to have a higher voter turnout when there is a higher percentage of that specific minority group present as a percent of the population. Co-ethnic vs non co-ethnic candidate support is demonstrated with the filter of minority percentage of the population in a specific district; it is demonstrated that the higher percentage of the minority in a given area the more likely they are to vote with no correlation as to whether the candidate shares co-ethnic status. This study is very intensive and full of statistical data, which shows the detail and effort that Fraga put into the study. The explanations of why the voter turn out is speculated at but not necessarily relevant to the study as it is an analysis of the data itself, not that causal or the effects of the information presented. The study is limited to the scope of determining the effect of race and population; the study does not go into the actual political ideology that the candidates themselves stand for, right, left or otherwise. It does give insight how social perception regarding how population numbers can drive participation in voting behavior.

Source:

Kaufmann, E., Goujon, A., & Skirbekk, V. (2012). American political affiliation, 2003-43: A cohort component projection.Population Studies, 66(1), 53-67. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41721286

Summary:

Erik Kaufmann, Anne Goujon and Vegard Skirbekk have used software driven analysis programs such as, Population-Development-Environment, (PDE) to determine the projection of voting behavior based on political allegiance into to the year 2042. The data used for input, into the multistate projection software, is of high fidelity; data from the US Census Bureau, and GSS are used extensively to help determine the effects of political affiliation and its correlation between family allegiance of those who are Democrat or Republican; fertility rates, political affiliation of mother and father in families, immigration rates, gender and time. There are some limitations to the data sets. Independent voters are categorized in binary format using the independent voters “lean” to categorize the individual surveyed. Furthermore, although the data does take into account political some of the political realignment of the mid 20^th century, it does not take into account very recent political turmoil and platform positions. This sort of analysis is static in a way that depicts the Democratic Party and Republican party as a two systems which constantly represent the unchanging political views of either party, with out taking into account more recent political changes; the classic “depiction” of either party is most likely due to the study publishing date of 2012: the study is already 6 years old.

Source:

Hersh, E., & Nall, C. (2016). The Primacy of Race in the Geography of Income-Based Voting: New Evidence from Public Voting Records. American Journal of Political Science, 60(2), 289-303. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/24877622

Summary:

Eitdan Hersh and Clayton Nall delve into the questions regarding race and its relation to income based voting by geographic location. Hersh a social and policies studies associate professor at Yale collaborates with Nall, an associate professor of political science at Stanford University, analyze data gathered from various sources including the Harvard Election Data Archive, the Cooperative Congressional Election Study and data sets including 73 million state-party- voter registration records, in order to illustrate connections and disconnections between income, race, geography and voting record. In general the paper demonstrates that income-based voting in regard to race in specific geographic which are predominately not black, have little to do with income, however in areas that are predominately black, income has a strong connection to how the geographic region voted. This information is very useful as it depicts data sets plotted out in chart and line graph form. The information gives insight on how minority population groups such as black Americans vote in relation to their geographic region and based on income. The results are very clear; certain regions with large populations of black Americans have a strong tendency to vote in Republican, which is directly proportional to the reported income. This research is very useful to help track the voting behavior of white and black Americans, and the respective parties that they vote for; the data does not, however, account for independent voters or take into account gender. Furthermore the data give on a state by state level covers only 29 states, which do cover more than half the states in the Union but not all.