Social Structure and Voting in the United States

This book
analyzes practical and moral influences on voting decisions. Undermining the widespread
assumption that economic self-interest is the key determinant of voting choices,
it discovers that moral considerations rooted in religious traditions are often
the more decisive. This finding is confirmed through a close analysis of
tangible problems, such as child neglect and crime, problems which one would
expect to trouble practical voters. Further, this book suggests that political
ideologies influence party affiliation, rather than the other way around. It defines
four categories of states in terms of human development and income equality-South,
Heartland, postindustrial, and "balanced."
It then explains why political
color (red, purple, or blue) and societal problems vary across these
categories. Voters' moral ideologies, it
shows, combine with a state's measure of income equality and human development to
shape a state's readiness to pursue practical solutions to societal problems. Finally, it shows that moral ideologies
of the religious right and authoritarianism, two very different concepts, are in fact intertwined empirically. This book thus suggests that education-a key
driver of human development, anti-authoritarianism, and deliberative voting-should
begin in preschools that are both nurturant and instructive.