Jordan Morehead1

Jordan D. Morehead

Dr. Angela Mitchell

UWRT 1104

9/20/2017

Annotated Bibliography

Sago, Renata, Ben Markus and Jude Joffe-Block. Sick Of Political Parties, Unaffiliated Voters Are
Changing Politics. 28 February 2016. 19th September 2017.

The first source I will analyze is one by NPR that goes into detail of the minds of

independent voters and why they are staying independent. The two political parties are very

much alike in some aspects and different in others, but independent voters recognize that they all

say the same things, but nothing is really happening. The unfortunate thing is that to vote in

presidential primaries and caucuses many states require for you to be affiliated with a political

party, leaving independent voters without a voice. But we are still seeing a growing number of

unaffiliated voters, specifically among the millennial crowd. Younger people tend to be less

likely to affiliate with parties than older people, said Jocelyn Kiley, a researcher with the Pew

Research Center. But "this is as pronounced as it's ever been. (Sago, Markus and Joffe-Block)

This forcing of having to affiliate with a party to vote in the caucuses has been a problem and we

see a growing number of young unaffiliates identifying as democrat, especially after the Bernie

Sanders campaign whose was directed towards the younger crowd. Now this article is written

with examples of states with a growing population of millennials meaning that some of the states

that have an older population are not considered. This can have a misleading affect of making it

seem as if every state has a growing number of independent voters, which may or may not be

true. Another problem of this article is that the people interviewed were all independent voters
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and no party affiliated voters. Overall though this source will be an excellent addition to my

paper due to it showing how some voters are being forced to affiliate with a party. This is a

problem and this source goes over it very clearly. It also brings another view point to my paper

that I had not previously considered which is how even though the people who are affiliated with

parties are very passionate about them, there is a growing number of independents due to this.

Fisman, Ray. You Never Forget Your First. 1 December 2010. 19 September 2017.

The next source I will talk about is one by Slate, titled You Never Forget Your First.

This article goes in-depth on the social identity that comes when you affiliate with a party,

speaking onto the fact that after you affiliate yourself with a party, rarely do people change. Ray

Fisman believes this is in large part due to the fact that republicans sympathize with other

republicans, and vice-versa with democrats. Another part being to the fact that when you

register with a party you start getting that parties propaganda mailed to your address. Ray also

talks on how obamamania created this democratic association among young voters, pointing

out that more voters in the 2008 election were republicans than democrats, but the independents

were the ones who made the difference. The article also speaks on how 9/11 created a spark of

party identification, specifically with republicans. In the new study, economists Ethan Kaplan

and Sharun Mukand compared the political allegiances of Californians who turned 18 just before

and just after the 9/11 attacks, which caused a national shift to the right (Fisman). The study

also produced numbers suggesting that people with September birthdays were more likely to

identify as republicans. They further talk about how your economic status affects how one votes,

finding that people with zip codes in predominately richer neighborhoods leaned more right.

Patterns also play a key role in party affiliation, finding that Voters who turned 18 during the
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Kennedy era are more likely to vote for Democrats than those just a few years their senior, who

came of age in the (Republican) Eisenhower years (Fisman). Lastly to further prove that voters

who identify with a party stick with it, they analyze how even when voters move and are

required to re-affiliate in that state still stick with state, disproving the idea that voters may

change party affiliation without changing that status on their forms. This article is does a very

good job of explaining the social identity that comes when you affiliate yourself to a party. The

main problem I find with this article is its re-occurrence of the difference between September

and August voters and how they have differences in party affiliation. At times it seems the

author is grasping at straws, pointing out there is a two percent marginal difference between the

two months. This doesnt seem concrete enough and almost feels like filler in the article. This

article will be very helpful in my paper in how it goes into detail into the social identity that one

has when they affiliate with a party, which I feel is a big problem. The article also provides good

evidence for me to use in the way of how it shows how once you vote for a party a person tends

to stick to it.

Hayes, Danny. "Has Television Personalized Voting Behavior?" Political Behavior (2009): 231-260. JSTOR,
31: 231. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11109-008-9070-0

My next source is a scholarly journal and the chapter I will be focusing on is on whether

television has personalized voting behavior. The chapter talks about how since the 1950s there

has been an increase in the importance of the personality of a presidential behavior. Now there is

still the importance of party affiliation its, the author believes that television has had a greater

impact on voters. Television has given voters a gateway to see the presidential candidate debate,

to see their ads, to see how they talk; all of which is of great importance when deciding the

personality of the candidate. This is further re-instated by this quote from the chapter Candidates

now use television commercials and, increasingly, appearances on entertainment programs

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(Baum 2005), to shuttle themselves into voters living rooms (Hayes 234). A study also found

that personal characteristics have an effect on voting, such as a candidate being described as: a

man of humility, a good speaker, jokes too much, doesnt mean what he says. Though

the author finds that overall personal characteristics are not a main reason to vote for or against a

candidate. He refers to the personal characteristics as the voter concerns and the voter

concerns do vary from year to year. John F. Kennedy being a good example of this when he

had a 39% of the effect on a persons vote, but this data has not been repeated showing that whilst

at the time it may have been important it is not near as important now. Though this may be

because the people affected by this are people who keep up with political news, so they see more

of the personal characteristics, and in those voters we do see a correlation. This journal is very

well written and does a very good job at pointing out any flaws or contradictions in his theory.

Though one big problem does come up several times, which is the fact that even though it sounds

nice and all it does have flaws, meaning that a lot of the data contradicts his points, showing that

party affiliation trumps most of it. I would also say that this recent election also directly

contradicts his theory, Donald Trump was not perceived in a good light by the media and he said

and did many things that did not reflect well on his personal character. That is why I think this is

a fantastic source for my paper because it shows and proves that personality of the candidate

does not matter as much as it used to, the party who the candidate runs for ultimately matters

more. I do like how it brings counter points as well and gives me a lot of statistics of why and

how the media has influenced politicians and voters behavior.

Maniam, Shiva. people-press. 13 September 2016. 20 September 2017.

The last source I will be going over is one the people-press that analyzes a pew survey of

political party affiliations. This pew survey was specifically directed towards the differences
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between democrats, whether this being race, gender, socio-economic status, and sexual

orientation. The pew survey found that more people of ethnicity other than white identify as

democrat, this remained prevalent in gender as well, finding that women were more likely to

identify as democrat rather than republican. There has also been a largely significant shift in the

affiliation of republican among men over the past four years, from four percent to ten percent

from 2012 to 2016. It was also found that democrats hold a wide advantage amongst college

students, supporting recent findings that less-educated voters are more likely to identify as

republican. The Republican Party began to lose ground among college graduates in the second

half of George W. Bushs first term, and by 2008, the Democratic Party held a 10-point edge in

leaned party affiliation among college graduates (51% to 41%) (Maniam). There has also been

a significant decrease in non-Hispanic whites in the Democratic party over the past twenty-four

years from seventy-six percent to fifty-seven percent. Though there has also been a growing age

gap between the two parties with it becoming more prevalent that the democratic party is the

party of millennials, whilst the republican party holds a large advantage in the older population.

Among independent voters when voting we see a correlation to a left-leaning voting record, with

independents largely voting democrat. This source is very credible coming from the Pew

Research Center, which is a very well respected organization. One downside that definitely

needs to be addressed is the small sample size of only 8,000 participants, when compared to the

360 million Americans it would have been better to have a larger sample size. The article does a

very good job of remaining un-biased and impartial, and backing up every statement with

statistics from the survey. Overall I am very impressed with this article and it will be very

intrical in my paper because of the amount of statistics. I like to use statistics a lot when backing

up my claims and this paper is filled with it. The article also addresses the fact that we see a
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large correlation amongst a voters first party affiliation and how it sticks with them for the rest

of their life.