Literature Review
Research Methods
The degree of voter turnout in the United States can be correlated with many different associations, but it is important to pinpoint which ones affect us more critically than others, and find how these subdivisions interrelate with empirical studies and figures. A methodological approach must be taken when reviewing the scholarly sources, because it is just as important to find what they do not propose as well as what they do.
In the research article by Howard D. Hamilton, there is attempt to find the underlying factors that contribute to voting and nonvoting in city elections. He states that there are two known regularities that characterize city elections: they are predominantly nonpartisan and have a consistently low turnout. His research is a study of some implications of these two characteristics in municipal elections. The hypothesis proposed includes six main points. His first proposal is that most of the psychological, demographic, and socioeconomic variables associated with turnout in presidential elections will have a more pronounced association in city elections. Secondly, the differential between Democrat and Republican turnout will be greater in municipal than presidential elections because status variables will have greater relative impact in the absence of most of the counterforces of presidential elections. His third application is that the association of voting rate and strength of party identification will usually be lower in city elections, however, he states that there is likely to be some association even in nonpartisan elections, because strong party identifiers probably have greater interest in public affairs than weak identifiers. His fourth proposition predicts that there should be minimal difference between Catholic and Protestant turnout, but that the Protestant rate may be slightly higher due to the more prominent association with social status. The fifth is that trade union...