A national mail survey of adolescents between the ages of 12 and 17 ( n = 876) was conducted immediately before the U.S. presidential election (October 2012) to investigate socialization agents that may correlate with political and civic engagement. The relative importance of potential correlates of engagement including demographics, parents, peers, schools, religion, traditional media, social networks, and digital communication were evaluated. Regression analysis revealed that civically engaged youth identify with a religion, participate in civic education activities at school and extracurricular activities, take action (e.g., boycotting or buycotting), develop attitudes about citizenship, and engage in online/social media political activities. Politically engaged youth come from higher income households, discuss news and politics, take action, and are very prone to engage in online/social media political activities. While a wider range of activities appear to be related to civic engagement, those who are politically engaged appear to have a strong interest in online media usage. Implications are discussed.
Objective
This article utilizes national polling data to identify factors driving Tea Party membership.
Methods
First, in order to clearly define the Tea Party movement, the researchers will report Tea Party demographics drawn from the Blair‐Rockefeller Poll, which includes a national sample of 3,406 respondents. Second, the researchers will create a logit model to predict Tea Party membership.
Results
In addition to party identification and ideology, Tea Party membership (10.6 percent of the sample) is impacted both by fiscally conservative policy preferences and by presidential approval. To a lesser degree, age and a belief in biblical literalism are also significant indicators in the model.
Conclusions
The Tea Party is a distinct entity from the Republican Party and is triggered, not only by current economic attitudes, but, specifically, by opposition to President Obama.
Health care has been a contentious issue in American politics for decades, and scholars are beginning to understand the reasons behind public support for, and opposition to, healthcare reform. Using national survey data, we measure the impact of various racial attitudes, including Racial Resentment and Ethnocentrism, on white support for healthcare reform. We measure participants' attitudes across a range of important dimensions of healthcare reform and examine a randomized experiment with a control group that frames legislation as ''recent'' healthcare reform and a treatment condition that frames legislation as ''President Obama's'' healthcare reform. The findings demonstrate that racial attitudes and Ethnocentrism continue to play a role in both support and opposition to healthcare reform.
The 2008 presidential election presented voters with the nation's first African American presidential candidate. Symbolic racism theory suggests that Obama's presence on the national ticket will activate a range of racial attitudes across the electorate. The authors examine two statewide surveys from Arkansas and Georgia in order to explore the importance of symbolic racism across different campaign contexts. The findings suggest that voting behavior was significantly influenced by symbolic racism. Consequently, the authors extend the symbolic racism literature by demonstrating the effects of these attitudes at the national level and across different campaign environments.
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