The Impact of Ethnicity and Ethnic Media on Presidential Voting Patterns

Traditional influences on Americans'political involvement have declined in recent years while the position of mass media and other influences have grown in election campaigns. Although declines have been found for the family, schools, and other socialization agents such as ethnic and religious groups, ethnic voting may be with us for a long time, as Wolfinger (1965) noted. These ethnic patterns of political involvement may be imbedded within the political system itself and continue into the second and third generations despite social changes that have reduced the political significance of national origin (Busch, 1976; Dahl, 1961; Fuchs, 1968; Levy and Kramer, 1973). Buenker (1981, p. 45-46) says that ethnic minorities have been integrated into the American political system so readily because politics accepts the existence of diversity and provides mechanisms for interest groups to compromise their differences without surrendering much of their uniqueness. Bourgoyne (1985, p. 5) notes that the past twenty years have seen the "growth of ethnic voting blocs in which differences among various groups - in occupation, educational opportunity and voting registration - have become the basis of political power." Noting that social scientists usually focus on the impact of politics on ethnicity and nationalism, Smith (1996) stresses the need for reversing that relationship and studying the impact of ethnicity on politics. Ethnic politics may survive both assimilation and acculturation, the latter defined as the acquisition of the native culture, the former as the integration of ethnics at the primary level - kinship, neighbors, and close friends (Abramson, 1973; Alba, 1976; Gallo, 1974; Gordon, 1964). Even this earlier view of assimilation as a one-way, linear street is being questioned (D'Innocenzo & Sirefman, 1992; Heisler, 1977; Horowitz, 1977; Nash, 1989). Once many scholars tended to associate ethnicity with premodern stages of development, and, thus, ethnic conflicts and the intensity of ethnic identification were expected to fade with modernization. However, this notion has been questioned in more recent years by scholars noting that ethnic group activities seem to be rational strategies for dealing with contemporary problems in modern societies (Heisler, 1977; Jones, 1997; Tricarico, 1989; also see Thompson, 1989). Retaining one's ethnicity also fits in with notions of cultural pluralism, a challenger to the long dominant notion of assimilation (Kivisto, 1989).' Furthermore, people may return to their ethnic roots for security and meaning in times of conflict and rapid change. Preservation of ethnicity and the "right to be different" often requires political activity (Rubin, 1976).' Ethnic Politics: An Overview: The history of ethnic politics in the United States includes contributions by its many different groups, but the disproportionate significance of IrishAmericans has been noted by many scholars. Sowell (1981, p. 30-31) points out that block voting by Irish in the big cities assured them political influence as early as the 1830s. Irish political machines were built on loyalty to individuals and to the organization (see Cochran, 1995-1996), with a guiding principle to be elected, not to introduce some ideological program. The Irish transformed American municipal politics by changing the class composition of municipal government, putting the power in the hands of men that came from the working class and often the slums. Only after many years did the Irish find it necessary to admit Italians and Jews to their political organizations (Sowell, 1981, p. 32) .3 After the mid-1920s, politics offered ethnic and foreign-born Americans an increasingly important opportunity to participate in the broader society by forging ties with other nationalities, but not seriously risking cultural contamination or the loss of identity (Archdeacon, 1983, p. 189). In New York City, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia, son of a Catholic Italian father and a Jewish mother, rejected the Irish dominated Democratic Tammany hall to join the Republican Party and win election as the first Republican congressman from the Lower East Side since the Civil War. …