Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths about American Voters takes direct aim at leading popular myths about the American voter and bowls them over. What are those myths? Voters are independent-minded. The electorate is polarized. Swing voters are sociological groups. Women are responsible for the gender gap. Young voters are different. Increased turnout benefits the Democrats. Campaigns are decisive. As entrenched as these myths are in American political lore, they are just that—myths. Put another way, these generalizations about the political behavior of voters in the United States do not stand up to rigorous scientific testing. What sort of testing? By and large, the systematic statistical examination of 50 years of election survey data, as embodied in the American National Election Studies (ANES), from 1952 to 2004. Occasionally, retrograde talk suggests that the ANES, funded by the National Science Foundation, does not give U.S. taxpayers their money's worth. It is studies such as Unconventional Wisdom that give the lie to that charge.

Each of the above-listed myths, and its corollaries, has a chapter devoted to it in this book. The writing style rings clear as a bell, with comprehensive and lucid data analysis. In offering up the findings, much is made of readable time series graphs. Tables are neither too many nor too few, and are properly formatted and well-labeled. The key arguments, results, and conclusions from this impressive work are surely worth highlighting. Appropriately, the volume begins by establishing a profound fact (note that the word “facts” juxtaposes itself to “myths” in the book title): almost all American voters decide for their party. In a presidential contest, those attached to the Democratic Party overwhelmingly vote for the Democratic candidate, and those attached to the Republican Party overwhelmingly vote for the Republican candidate. Even among self-declared Independents, most actually admit to leaning Democratic or Republican, leaving only about ten percent of the electorate who are truly independent. This fact, first demonstrated by The American Voter (Campbell, Converse, Miller, and Stokes, 1960), has girded the electorate for a half-century. The authors fully acknowledge this provenance and observe that, while the force of party identification does not make for lively commentary on the nightly news, it nevertheless provides the most important political news story of any presidential campaign.

In recent elections, the media have been fascinated with the red state-blue state controversy, reporting with relish this apparently deep political division within America. But, according to the evidence, voters themselves do not actually exhibit such polarization. While there are some issue differences between self-identified Democrats and Republicans, these differences are relatively modest. Instead, noteworthy is the degree to which their opinions overlap. In fact, most Americans, most of the time, occupy the center of the ideological spectrum, rather than the left or the right. They are not polarized, in the sense of two dominant political groups holding opposing positions. Such polarization does take place, but at the elite level, and especially in Congress. In the mass electorate, the only sign of polarization appears symbolic rather than real, with members of one party tending to feel negatively towards candidates of the other party. This affective assessment, however, is empty of any policy content.

In the presidential horserace, the pivotal role of swing voters regularly receives attention by the pundits. The idea is that these voters are free to “swing” to candidates of any party, if the appeal is right. Usually, the swing voters come to be identified as members of a demographically demarcated group. The designations may be colorful (soccer moms, NASCAR dads) or prosaic (Hispanics, rural voters). Assuming membership in such groups can be measured—not always easy given available data—proof they are swing voters is lacking. They seem no more likely than other groups to switch their vote from one party to another across elections. Suppose, though, that swing voters are defined by their psychological characteristics, rather than their sociological ones. In particular, label “undecided” voters as “swing” voters. Here again, the undecideds are not found more likely to defect from their past party vote. In sum, swing voters, to the extent that they can be distinguished, do not appear different in their behavior from non-swing voters.

Commentators do pay attention to polling data, which comes conveniently packaged with the standard demographic breakdown of group preferences. Two groups routinely receive considerable attention during a campaign—women and youth. With respect to women and politics, much is made of the gender gap. The received argument is that women, because of issue differences with men, have become more and more Democratic. Such is not the case. First, the issue differences between men and women are generally quite small. Further, these differences are stable over time, which means they themselves could not account for an increasing gender gap. In fact, this greater gap in Democratic voting between men and women has come about from the movement of men into the Republican Party. For example, from 1952 to 2004, Democratic identifiers among women dropped five percentage points, while over the same period for men, the drop was sixteen percentage points. This differential drop accounts, in itself, for the current wider gender gap.

With regard to youth, two claims are regularly made. One is that “in this election, the young will be mobilized.” The other is that “once mobilized, they will be liberal Democrats.” On the first, the data show that the 18–24 year olds vote less than any other age cohort, and do so consistently, with an average negative difference of 20 percentage points in presidential contests. Even in 2004, heralded as something of an exception, the deficit was still seventeen percentage points. On the second point, the young do not really distinguish themselves ideologically either. In a breakdown of four generations–war generation (before 1946), baby boomers (1946–1992), generation X (1963–1977), and Generation Y (1978–1993)—ideological differences, in the words of the authors, are “muted” (p. 124).

Another enduring myth is that increased turnout benefits Democratic candidates. Politicians, pundits, and the public, regardless of stripe, accept this proposition. But, it is flatly not true. There exists no consistent bias in favor of one party or the other across the 1948–2004 presidential elections. Increased turnout does make a difference, but it simply magnifies the short-term forces operating in that election. For example, if the economy is favoring the incumbent Republicans, then the Republicans will benefit from increased turnout, because these marginal voters will be economic voters, like those who regularly turn out.

Political consultants, especially, believe that campaigns have a decisive impact on the election outcome. Candidate X, won, they may say, because he or she campaigned better. At the other extreme, some political scientists offer that campaigns have no effect on the outcome. Kaufmann, Petrocik and Shaw show, in multiple ways, that campaigning does matter, but the overall effect is small, about three percent of the popular vote in presidential elections. Within that small effects constraint, big events such as presidential debates and party conventions have some influence, while little events, such as mass mailings or random telephone calls, have little influence. Given these realities, the political talking heads exaggerate the impact of campaign moments. For instance, they often over-interpret shifts in support registered by the polls. It is simply not very easy to manipulate voters by various marketing appeals. Campaigns remind voters of who they are and what they are supposed to do. But, campaigns do not change the fundamentals of the presidential voting act. We are brought back, full circle, to the book's beginning and the magnetic power of party identification.

All in all, this insightful work highlights the irrelevance of most election analyses provided daily by media commentators. At the same time, it exposes the relevance of careful political science research on elections and campaigns. Unconventional Wisdom lends itself to graduate school seminars in voting behavior, alongside other recent books such as: Larry Bartels' Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (2008); Michael S. Lewis-Beck, William G. Jacoby, Helmut Norpoth, and Herbert F. Weisberg's The American Voter Revisited (2008); and Richard R. Lau and David P. Redlawsk's How Voters Decide: Information Processing During Election Campaigns (2006), not to mention the founding work of The American Voter by Campbell, Converse, Miller and Stokes (1960). The current text would also serve well in undergraduate seminars on the same topic. By its straightforward but lively writing, with the statistical component accessible yet unobtrusive, the book actually commends itself to every student of politics, practical or academic. The book makes for a classic now, and is likely to remain one in the years to come.