Issues, Voter Choice, and Critical Elections

Abstract

The study of critical elections in American politics has been marked by a steady growth of knowledge and a remarkable consensus among practitioners in the field. Although minor quibbles have appeared from time to time, the work within each generation has set the agenda for the work of the next. The pioneering efforts of Key (1955, 1959), Schattschneider (1960), and MacRae and Meldrum (1960) produced clear descriptions of the phenomenon of critical elections, as well as operational definitions of the concepts. This group of studies paved the way for the systematic analysis and classification of elections in the work of Campbell et al. (1960), Sellers (1965), Pomper (1967), and Burnham (1968). The election patterns discovered in these studies, however, required explanation. The next wave of interest in critical elections, ushered in by the theoretical works of Burnham (1970) and Sundquist (1973), identified the essential variables governing electoral dynamics, but still did not explain precisely how these variables worked. That explanation is the next obvious step in the theory of critical elections, and it is the subject of this discussion.