Q: Каким образом партии завлекают электорат на избирательные участки?

Q: На прошлых президентских выборах Буш и Гор набрали прак­тически равное количество голосов. Какую роль играет этот факт в выборе тактики и стратегии нынешних кандидатов на президентский пост?

A: The 2000 presidential election was resolved with the 5-4 decision of the Supreme Court to terminate the recount in the state of Florida. What’s im­portant here is that the outcome in 2000 reaffirmed the overriding reality that we are a 50-50 nation, divided almost equally between Democrats and Repub­licans at every level of elected office, and at the level of individual voters.

As a consequence, I think both parties’ strategies anticipate a close elec­tion in 2004. Both parties realize how important it is to turn out their core sup­porters. So there will be a huge effort to mobilize individual voters. I think you’re going to see a fascinating shift in resources from television advertising, al­though there will still be plenty of that, to voter-identification and “get-out-the- vote” efforts.

Both parties and their allied interest groups will make enormous invest­ments in getting their supporters to the polls. Democrats may use unhappiness among their core supporters over the Florida outcome in 2000 as a motivating force in getting their people to the polls.

Q: Каким образом партии завлекают электорат на избирательные участки?

A: In other countries with either mandatory voting or very high voting par­ticipation, these considerations don’t arise in the same way. But in the United States, where a turnout of 50 percent of the age-eligible electorate is considered the norm in presidential elections, it matters a lot what is done to try to moti­vate citizens to turn up at the polls.

Now, if you ask what factors account for Americans voting or not voting, the predominant one tends to be information. Do potential voters actually know there’s an election? Do they know who the candidates are? Do they know what differences exist between the candidates and the parties? Secondly, do they have an attachment to one of the parties? Are they linked in some way to the con­tending forces in the elections?

Third, has anyone asked them to vote? Have they had personal contact with others who have informed them of where the polling places are and when they should turn up to vote and the like? It’s this last factor that is the focus of get-out-the-vote efforts.

What these efforts require is building organization at the local level, using computerized files to identify likely supporters, making contact with them by telephone, by direct mail, and, best of all, by personal contact, preferably from a trusted source — someone they work with, someone in their community — and then on election day making follow-up calls to make sure they’ve gone to the polls, in some cases offering to transport them to the polls. It’s really quite an extraordinary effort.

Q: He секрет, что легче всего мобилизовать ядро электората пар­тии. На какие слои населения опирается каждая из партий?

A: Demographic analysis by the Center for Political Studies at the Univer­sity of Michigan suggests differences between the bases of each of the political parties. It turns out the strongest Democratic supporters are African-Americans.

They vote typically nine-to-one Democratic. Hispanics also tend to sup­port Democrats, though the margin is two-to-one or less. Union households vote disproportionately Democratic. Lower-income working-class people tend to vote more Democratic, although some of them tend to be social conservatives, and a substantial chunk of them are attracted occasionally to Republican candi­dates. Social and cultural concerns are largely responsible for working-class and middle-class white males supporting the Republican Party.

Divorced people and families headed by a single parent tend to be more Democratic, while traditional married couples tend to be more Republican. Re­ligious affiliation and religious practice and attendance are powerful predictors of who’s in the Republican base.

The more frequently one attends religious services; the more likely one is to be a Republican, and to vote Republican. Secularists tend to be Democratic.

Higher-income people are Republican in their orientation. This is especially true of those in commerce: from small business entrepreneurs to corporate ex­ecutives. And yet, newly minted professionals — highly educated and with graduate degrees — increasingly vote Democratic.

Q: Я слышал, существует также деление по географическому принципу?

A: We call it “red and blue states” — based on the way the country di­vided on a television map of the United States after the last presidential elec­tion. The blue states on the map voted Democrat; these cluster on the East and West coasts, and in the northern tier of states. The red, or Republican, states tend to be located in the South, in the rural farm and Rocky Mountain states, and in some of the Midwest states.

You can also look at party affiliation within the states. Democrats tend to have their bases within the cities and the inner suburbs. Republicans are stronger in the outer suburbs and in the rural areas. Of course, all these classifications are based on general tendencies. Among all demographic groups, there is diver­sity in political orientation.