Unconventional Wisdom: Facts and Myths About American Voters
A user-friendly and thought-provoking book that will be valuable to journalists, bloggers, and others who care about American electionsELAn important contribution that deserves a wide audience."--Political Science Quarterly"This provocative book explains why a lot of what you--and most Americans--think they know about voters, elections, and campaigns is wrong. It is a thoughtful, straightforward volume by some of the most interesting minds in political science today. If you want to understand U.S. politics in the 21st century, read this book now."--Karl Rove"Unconventional Wisdommakes a significant contribution to our understanding of elections and performs a major public service, challenging the myths and false assumptions embedded in contemporary media analyses and in public discussion of campaigns."--Thomas B. Edsall, Political Editor,TheHuffington Post; and Joseph Pulitzer II and Edith Pulitzer Moore Professor, Columbia University"Kaufmann, Petrocik, and Shaw take on--successfully--a very difficult project: to show that systematic, quantitative analysis about voting behavior can yield genuine insight, more so than observation, anecdote, and gut feeling. I hope they repeat this for more topics, because their message is not only interesting but insightful."--John Aldrich, Pfizer-Pratt University Professor of Political Science, Duke University"Campaigners will find this book even better than garlic for repulsing media vampires trying to fob off unsubstantiated urban legends on the public. The authors have done an enlightening job of demonstrating that conventional wisdom is an oxymoron."--Sam Popkin, Professor of Politics, University of California at San Diego