Social Structure and Voting in the United States

Robert B. Smith (Ph.D. Columbia University, 1971) taught political sociology, research methods, and theory development at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research there focused on war, public opinion, and dissent; generalizations of path analysis; and theoretical modeling. Subsequently, he has worked extensively in applied research. His publications include articles on political and social processes, and on multilevel models bearing on human development. He is the primary editor of the three volumes of the A Handbook of Social Science Methods, which link qualitative and quantitative methods. He is the author of Cumulative Social Inquiry: Transforming Novelty into Innovation (2008) and Multilevel Modeling of Social Problems: A Causal Perspective (2011). Smith was a Fulbright lecturer in structural sociology at Ghent University, Belgium, and he has served as president of the Boston Chapter of the American Statistical Association. His email address is rsmithphd@comcast.net

• Introduction.- Voters for Obama.- Variables of Practical Voting.- Models of Practical Voting.- Post-Industrial Indicators, Human Development, and Red-Purple-Blue States.- Gauging Income Inequality.- Validity of a Typology of States.- Consequences of Four Types of States.- Gauging Moral Conservatism.- Determinants of Social Conservatism.- Determinants of a State's Political Color.- Moral Conservatism and Voting.- Moral Conservatism, Distractors, and Authoritarianism.- Evidence-Based Insights.