1973/12/01 by David W. Moore, C. Richard Hofstetter
Social Sciences · #Electoral Systems and Political Participation
paper · doi:10.2307/3234007
openalex publication_date 1973/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/06/11
Moore and Hofstetter carry further the discussion of the representativeness of direct primary voters, commenting on the Wisconsin studies and the Amsterdam studies published in Polity in 1972. Are those who vote in primary elections of a higher social stratum than those who do not? Are primary voters considerably more involved in politics than nonvoters? Do candidate and issue preferences differ among the two groups? Are the results parallel for the two parties? In this Columbus, Ohio study some significant differences between the primary voters and nonvoters were found in the Democratic party, a result that differs somewhat from earlier studies and from the Republican findings, leading to questions of the conditions in which such "misrepresentation" is likely to occur. The livelier the election, the more likely misrepresentation may be, the authors suggest. Interestingly, by checking actual voting records it was determined that thirty percent of those who claimed to have voted (in interviews) actually had not voted, reclassifying the voters on the basis of these records increased the misrepresentation found in the primary.