1. For details on this survey, see “Kaiser Tracking Poll: September 2013.” This report is available online at: http:/
2. See http://2010.census.gov/2010census/why/index.php.
3. John F. Kennedy, A Nation of Immigrants (New York: Harper and Row, 1964).
4. Steven M. Gillon, That’s Not What We Meant to Do: Reform and Its Unintended Consequences in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 178.
5. See Statistical Abstract of the United States, 2007 (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2007), 255.
6. Harold W. Stanley and Richard G. Niemi, Vital Statistics on American Politics, 2009–2010 (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2008), 53–54.
7. See Michael Hoefer et al., “Estimates of the Unauthorized Immigrant Population Residing in the United States: January 2011” (Washington, DC: Department of Homeland Security). This report is available online at https:/
8. Ronald T. Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989), chap. 11.
9. See http:/
10. Deborah J. Schildkraut, Americanism in the Twenty-First Century: Public Opinion in the Age of Immigration (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 20.
11. Ellis Cose, A Nation of Strangers: Prejudice, Politics, and the Populating of America (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1992), 219.
12. Robert D. Putnam, “E Pluribus Unum: Diversity and Community in the 21st Century: the 2006 Johan Skytte Prize Lecture,” Scandinavian Political Studies, Vol. 30, Issue 2 (2007): 150.
13. Richard Dawson et al., Political Socialization, 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1977), 33.
14. See M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, The Political Character of Adolescence: The Influence of Families and Schools (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981), chap. 2.
15. See M. Kent Jennings and Richard G. Niemi, Generations and Politics: A Panel Study of Young Adults and Their Parents (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
16. John R. Alford, Carolyn L. Funk, and John R. Hibbing, “Are Political Orientations Genetically Transmitted?” American Political Science Review (May 2005): 153–67.
17. See Martin P. Wattenberg, Is Voting for Young People? (New York: Longman, 2008), chaps. 1–3.
18. David Easton and Jack Dennis, Children in the Political System (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1969), 106–7.
19. For an interesting analysis of public opinion data on the skepticism about polls amongst the public, see “Jibrum Kim et al., “Trends in Surveys on Surveys.” Public Opinion Quarterly (Spring 2011): 165–191.
20. Jean M. Converse, Survey Research in the United States: Roots and Emergence, 1890–1960 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), 116. Converse’s work is the definitive study on the origins of public opinion sampling.
21. Herbert Asher, Polling and the Public: What Every Citizen Should Know (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 1988), 59.
22. Mark S. Mellman, “Pollsters Cellphonobia Setting In,” The Hill, May 23, 2007. See http:/
23. Knowledge Networks, “Knowledge Networks Methodology, 1. See http:/
24. Kate Zernicke, “George Gallup Jr., of Polling Family, Dies at 81.” New York Times, November 22, 2011.
25. Quoted in Norman M. Bradburn and Seymour Sudman, Polls and Surveys: Understanding What They Tell Us (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1988), 39–40.
26. Lawrence R. Jacobs and Robert Y. Shapiro, Politicians Don’t Pander (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), xiii.
27. Michael D. Shear, “Poll Results Drive Rhetoric of Obama’s Health-Care Message.” Washington Post, July 30, 2009.
28. W. Lance Bennett, Public Opinion and American Politics (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980), 44.
29. E. D. Hirsch Jr., Cultural Literacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1986).
30. Michael X. Delli Carpini and Scott Keeter, What Americans Know About Politics and Why It Matters (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), chap. 3. For an updated look at this topic, see “Public Knowledge of Current Affairs Little Changed by News and Information Revolutions: What Americans Know: 1989–2007” (report of the Pew Research Center for People & the Press, April 15, 2007). This report can be found online at http:/
31. W. Russell Neuman, The Paradox of Mass Politics: Knowledge and Opinion in the American Electorate (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986).
32. For a classic example of how voters rationally use group cues, see Arthur Lupia, “Shortcuts Versus Encyclopedias: Information and Voting Behavior in California Insurance Reform Elections,” American Political Science Review, Vol. 88, Issue 1 (March 1994): 63–76.
33. Mark J. Hetherington, Why Trust Matters (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2005), 4.
34. See, for example, Elaine C. Kamarck, “The Evolving American State: The Trust Challenge,” The Forum, Vol. 7, Issue 4 (2010): Article 9.
35. See Ronald Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 254–55. Inglehart also shows that the decline of class voting is a general trend throughout Western democracies.
36. See Lydia Saad, “U.S. 1% is More Republican, but Not More Conservative.” Gallup report, December 5, 2011. This report can be found online at http:/
37. See Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab, Jews and the New American Political Scene (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995), chap. 6.
38. Angus Campbell et al., The American Voter (New York: Wiley, 1960), chap. 10.
39. Norman H. Nie, Sidney Verba, and John R. Petrocik, The Changing American Voter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), chap. 7.
40. See, for example, John L. Sullivan, James E. Pierson, and George E. Marcus, “Ideological Constraint in the Mass Public: A Methodological Critique and Some New Findings,” American Journal of Political Science Vol.22 (May 1978): 233–49, and Eric R. A. N. Smith, The Unchanging American Voter (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989).
41. Michael S. Lewis-Beck et al., The American Voter Revisited (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008), 279.
42. Morris P. Fiorina, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 2006), 127.
43. Ibid., 8.
44. This definition is a close paraphrase of that in Sidney Verba and Norman H. Nie, Participation in America (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), 2.
45. See Verba and Nie, Participation in America, and Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voice and Equality: Civic Voluntarism in American Politics (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1995).
46. See Russell J. Dalton, The Good Citizen (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly Press, 2008), 60.
47. This letter can be found in Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954–1965 (New York: Viking, 1987), 187–89.
48. Verba and Nie, Participation in America, 125.
49. Because registration procedures in Louisiana are regulated by the provisions of the Voting Rights Act, registration forms ask people to state their race and the registrars must keep track of this information. Thus, Louisiana can accurately report how many people of each race are registered and voted, which they regularly do.
50. See Verba and Nie, Participation in America, chap. 10.
51. See Lydia Saad, “Majorities in U.S. View Government as Too Intrusive and Powerful.” Gallup report, October 13, 2010.
52. Tom W. Smith, “Trends in National Spending Priorities, 1973-2006.” General Social Survey Report, 2007.
53. Campbell et al., The American Voter, 541.
54. Morris P. Fiorina, Retrospective Voting in American National Elections (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), 5.