Where Have All the Voters Gone?
The number of Americans who bother to vote has declined for  decades, to the point that the United States has the lowest  turnout rate in the industrialized world, save only Switzerland.  Why this is so is a question that Wattenberg (Univ. of  California, Irvine; The Decline of American Political Parties) studies from every available angle-sociological, psychological,  economic, and political. Much of what he finds is well known:  the poor are less likely to vote than the well off, the decline  of parties and rise of candidate-centered politics has adversely  affected turnout, and the young vote at an abysmally low rate.  His work is original, however, on such questions as the effect  of negative political advertising and on the difficulties in the  act of voting itself. Far more accessible than Warren E.  Miller's authoritative The New American Voter and with a wider  scope than Frances Fox Piven's Why Americans Still Don't Vote  and Why Politicians Want It That Way, Wattenberg's book is a lucid presentation of new and prior research on an important  problem. Recommended for all academic and many public  libraries.Robert F. Nardini, Chichester, NHCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.