KEYS TO THE CAMPAIGN

...For some, it is the logical conclusion of an ideological commitment...

...Therefore, in any maintaining election, with casual voters staying away from the polls or dividing randomly between the parties, there will be a national Democratic majority...

...It is a paradox that these floating voters, who hold the balance of power, are more often than not the citizens who are least interested in and least knowledgeable about politics...

...The question becomes, then, whether the Presidential race in 1960 will produce a third consecutive deviating election, or will devolve to a more normal maintaining type...

...Safer predictions can be made about the 1960 Catholic vote than about the possible an ti-Catholic vote...

...Outside the South the Democratic majority is weaker, but it remains a four to three advantage...

...Yet there seems to be more pattern and continuity to election trends than this picture would suggest...

...It is apparent that the public punishes more unerringly for disaster than it rewards for an era without disaster...

...Our only idea of the relative popularity of the candidates comes from the many straw polls gathered in past months...

...Such a profile of the electorate suggests three important types of Presidential elections...

...After the election it is probable that one or the other may be shown to have had a somewhat greater impact with the public on personality grounds alone...

...These roles fall to few men in a century, and lie well beyond the reach of Madison Avenue technicians...

...It is probably necessary to have played a central heroic role in a major national crisis to win this degree of esteem...

...Many of them can express great enthusiasm over a candidate without any knowledge of his position on current issues...

...Yet in 1948 voter turnout was low...

...economic hardship experienced personally...

...The first is the possibility of a transfer of personal popularity from Eisenhower to Nixon...

...But it is doubtful that either can achieve the sort of competitive advantage in this area to attract large portions of the floating vote or to seduce many voters of the opposing party...

...This does not in itself guarantee that Kennedy will lose much or most of the Protestant portion of the floating vote...

...Perhaps the panic of 1893 led to a lesser realignment in 1896, preparing the period of Republican domination which largely endured until the depression...

...Voters like the floaters who notice what is happening in politics only briefly in the heat of a campaign find most policy debates unintelligible...

...The weakly identified partisans are more inclined to defect from time to time than the strongly identified...

...Whatever Kennedy's public expectations, it is clear that he will gather a higher proportion of Catholic votes than any Democratic Presidential candidate since Roosevelt...

...The deep popular affection for Eisenhower is not created by careful public relations alone...

...It is certain that some Protestant Democrats will undergo a conflict between their political and their religious allegiance...

...Political decisions in this layer of the electorate are left to turn upon the most gross facts of political life, such as war, depression, and corruption in government, or upon homespun items about the candidates which require no political sophistication to evaluate...

...There is reason to believe that the voter may answer a hypothetical question about his vote intention with a much freer spirit months before the actual balloting than he feels in his final choice in November...

...It seems hardly surprising that Eisenhower won a second time...

...For many of the peripheral voters, however, little will be known about either candidate save that Kennedy is a Catholic...

...But even if there were, the negative flavor of most of these tides would be of little consolation to the Republicans in 1960, for they are at one and the same time the minority party and yet the party in the White House...

...Converse is directing the Center's fourth major study of a Presidential election to be made this fall...

...At the time of the 1908 election Theodore Roosevelt made a strong effort to pass on some of his great personal popularity to his protege, William Howard Taft...

...Ironically, most circumstances dramatic enough to touch off electoral riptides and deviating elections in the past have been negative events which motivate the casual voter to punish the party in power...

...Secondly, these circumstances must be sufficiently obvious to catch the eye of the floating voter who pays virtually no attention to what is going on in politics—developments as clear-cut as entry into war, the aims of which are too remote to be apparent...

...Naturally, some voters identify themselves with the fortunes of a party more strongly than others...

...Thus the party with the more numerous adherents enjoys an important head start as the voter makes up his mind about each new election...

...But if a sufficient number resolve their doubts in favor of religious loyalty, his initial advantage could be fatally compromised...

...It is therefore easy to lose perspective on the fainter competitive impact which more "normal" political leaders can hope to muster during a campaign...

...At rare intervals, events which induce party defection are of such magnitude that the core voters as well as the floating voters are affected, and a genuine shift in the underlying division of party loyalty occurs...

...The Catholic minority has become increasingly assimilated into American society in the past thirty years, so that any judgments about the religious factor based on 1928 would require some weakening if projected to 1960...

...Such an election may be called a realigning election...

...If a true realigning election depends upon a major national disaster, as appears to be the case, we can rule out this possibility almost categorically...

...A sense of loyalty to a party is not, of course, proof against an occasional vote for the opposing party...

...The study of political behavior is too young to make clear the ingredients of a successful candidate image...

...What are these habitual forces...

...Indeed, it is the unusual counterpoint between Eisenhower popularity and a Democratic majority which has given the past decade its most unique characteristic: a Republican capturing the White House by sweeping margins, but saddled more often than not with a Democratic Congress...

...Casual voters, more likely to be impressed by dramatic events of the moment than by the evolving issue positions of the parties, are drawn into the active electorate in unusual numbers and vote in large proportions for the party temporarily favored...

...Our continuing study at the University of Michigan has measured the basic division of party loyalty in the nation almost yearly since 1952, and during each of these eight years the Democratic advantage has remained almost identical with the majority shown before Eisenhower's first victory...

...There is evidence that most of the electorate is already aware of Kennedy's faith, a fact surprising to analysts accustomed to the great gaps in information displayed by the public on political affairs...

...The minority of voters who feel relatively little attachment to either of the parties, and who thereby tend to shift with ease from party to party over the course of several elections, form an important "floating vote...

...He is a co-author of the recently published book, "The American Voter," an ambitious analysis of data on the political attitudes and motivations of American voters gathered regularly from nationwide samples since 1948...

...For people with greater storehouses of political information, Kennedy's faith will be but one consideration among several...

...Evidence shows that, whatever the variation, this preference is much more stable for the average voter over the years than are, for example, his opinions on "major" issues of policy...

...Once again, an instructive parallel is present in the results of the 1928 election involving Al Smith, but, as before, studies of voter attitudes are not available for that contest...

...The attempt at transfer is being made, and the only clear parallel which might help us foresee its success occurred well before the birth of close-range voting studies...

...In 1948 Harry Truman conducted a campaign which was in many ways more vociferous than those staged by either Eisenhower or Stevenson...

...It is likely that many Presidential elections, and nearly all off-year Congressional elections, are of this party-bound, maintaining type...

...The result is an election of modest turnout in which the popular vote directly reflects the fundamental division of party loyalists current in the nation...

...Nonetheless, it is clear that the voter is disposed to PHILIP E. CONVERSE is a study director of the Political Behavior Program at the Survey Research Center at the University of Michigan...

...But with two new candidates taking the stage in 1960, uncertainties multiply...

...We may call this type a maintaining election, since it simply prolongs a status quo between the parties...

...When no unusual circumstances surround an election, the casual, floating voter is less motivated to go to the polls, and those who do vote are not driven in uneven, proportions toward one of the two parties...

...Then there is a third type of election which reveals the long-term trends in party strength...

...Both Kennedy and Nixon are sufficiently attractive to have won their nominations, and both are well schooled in the care and grooming of a personal image...

...With the exception of the Truman-Dewey campaign, our Presidential races for twenty-five years have been dominated by the unusual popular hero...

...The wide swings of opinion registered in the early polls are ironed out as the election approaches, so that the popular outcome bears a closer relation to the preceding election than would be expected from the early polls...

...Two unusual aspects of the candidates rank as imponderables, however, and could hold the key to the outcome...

...Some well-rooted preference for a party is admitted by a large majority of Americans, so large that, if we set aside persistent non-voters, the proportion reaches nine out of ten...

...The 1932 realignment provides the backdrop for the 1960 election...

...One of the most significant political phenomena of the 1950's is that President Eisenhower's tremendous personal popularity has failed to restore the balance of party loyalties in a way favorable to the Republican Party...

...If we were to trust polls whole-heartedly, we would conclude that the simple timing of the election is a decisive factor...

...The party which finds itself in the minority is placed on the defensive and must depend upon unusual circumstances to achieve a victory...

...stick with his habitual party unless he feels there are striking reasons he should do otherwise...

...The Civil War and the great depression of the 1930's undoubtedly led to massive realignments of party loyalties...

...The second imponderable concerns Kennedy's Catholicism...

...Some of the Democratic margin is "wasted" by a staggering domination of four Democrats to each Republican in the South...

...Others root for their party in the same spirit as they root for a favorite team in a spectator sport...

...There is a general tendency among all but the most experienced practical politicians to overestimate what the public knows about politics...

...The result is an election of high turnout and a victory for the minority party...

...We have observed the behavior of Catholic voters toward Catholic candidates for Congress sufficiently to have some idea as to the November vote division among Catholics themselves...

...It is doubtful, however, that either Senator John Kennedy or Vice President Richard Nixon can achieve the tremendous advantage as a personality which Eisenhower held over Stevenson, and probably would have held over any other challenger...

...The many voters who are so strongly attached to one of the parties that they are unlikely to defect form the stable core of votes for each party...

...Other voters may support a party as a family tradition, an allegiance inherited much as church membership is inherited...

...One of the most influential seems to be a simple sense of loyalty to one of the two political parties...

...Eisenhower is, of course, a great popular hero, and many Democrats have been happy to vote for him...

...In the off years, when the active electorate was reduced to the party faithful, the Democrats won handily...

...Furthermore, in 1948 there was a head-on ideological clash, symbolized by the Taft-Hartley Act, a clash as bitter as any policy disputes between Eisenhower and Stevenson...

...Apparently the transfer attempt was not notably successful, although the evidence is entirely circumstantial...

...The possibility of an anti-Catholic tide will be present in November even if the major party spokesmen on both sides avoid further mention of the religious problem...

...Since the maintaining election is characterized by an absence of special circumstances exciting the public, and usually shows only an average, if not subnormal, turnout at the polls, it is in this sense a "quiet" election...

...Eisenhower's position in 1952 was enhanced by public concern involving the Democratic Party's behavior in power, but in 1956 he managed a decisive victory based more solely on his personal drawing power, prolonging the minority party control of the White House...

...Thus Republicans must hope for rewarding rather than punishing tides...

...This misperception becomes extreme when we discard the core of interested voters usually committed to a party, and look solely at the factors which motivate the floating voter in his political decisions...

...It seems that an aspirant who could win by a landslide in June might lose by a margin equally great if the election were held a few weeks later...

...convincing demonstrations of corruption, and the like...

...In the polling booth he will be more deeply affected by his own habitual patterns of decision...

...The great unknown remains the size of the loss he will suffer among unattached and Democratic Protestants as a result of his faith...

...On this question hinges the occupancy of the White House...

...It demands none of the political background assumed in some of the more scholarly debates over policy...

...Some voters may be sincerely concerned that the nation's affairs will not be handled properly unless their chosen party is in office...

...One possible source of such positive forces pulling toward the minority party is an exceptionally attractive minority candidate...

...First, there must be circumstances surrounding the election which give a rather unequivocal advantage to the minority party...

...However, two important conditions must be fulfilled in advance to produce a deviating election...

...A deviating election is one in which transient and unusual circumstances, such as the discovery of widespread corruption in government, tend to favor the minority party, the party currently out of office...

...Such party loyalty takes a variety of forms...

...It is certain that such shifts are provoked only rarely and by national crises of the first order...

...The number is small—at most, twenty or thirty per cent of the electorate —but quite enough to dictate the outcome of most elections if sufficient floaters move toward the same party at the same time...

...It has been argued that the unusual voting patterns of 1928 were as deeply influenced by the Prohibition issue as by the Catholic question, and the raw vote statistics leave it impossible to separate the two factors...

...The faith of a candidate provides a fact which is readily grasped and evaluated by even the most casual voter...

...But the potential for severe loss is there...

...Even with Eisenhower at the head of the ticket in 1952 and 1956, control of Congress was in doubt...

...Unfortunately, we cannot classify such an election in advance simply on the basis of campaign furore...

...Which type of election outcome can we foresee for 1960...

...The matter of Kennedy's religion is, furthermore, the kind of information which may well receive its most undivided attention among just those floating voters whom Nixon must attract to win...

...Taft won the election, but his margin fell five or six per cent short of the preceding Roosevelt victory, and does not appear unusual in an epoch of Republican majorities...

...The sound and the fury in October do not ensure public involvement in November...

...and there is a strange fluidity of opinion displayed in these polls...

...But in such an election the basic division of party loyalties is not disturbed and reappears clearly in ensuing elections when the unusual circumstances have disappeared from the scene...

...At the moment there seem to be few gross events of the type which generate unusual tides...

...It was, after all, a rematch between the 1952 opponents, and a rematch played out under the same ground rules...

...With his initial advantage in a Democratic majority, Kennedy can afford to lose some of these voters torn by conflict...

...It is a well-documented fact that voters of Democratic inclination currently outnumber Republicans by a ratio approaching three to two...

...But the Eisenhower years provide a classic example of the deviating election: the Democrats and the floating vote lured to Eisenhower have not taken on Republican loyalties...