Social Cleavages and Political Norms

The Introduction to Partisan Hearts and Minds highlights the relationship between partisan affiliation and the likelihood to vote for your party’s representative candidate. This connection is similar to the claims made in the excerpt from American Sociological Review of the impact of social cleavages on modern voting. These cleavages include: race, religion, class, and gender. Each author chooses to focus on the individual and the components that influence voting. Each article produced very similar outcomes: that divisions between major social groups–whether that be political party or a social cleavage—remain as large as they were prior to the pivotal shifts of the 1960’s.

The research of Clem Brooks and Jeff Manza on social cleavages discovered interesting results. However, they didn’t support their original thesis of the declining presence of social cleavages in today’s voting world. Instead, the study supported the notion that class-related factors are responsible for a gap in voting behaviors between men and women. The gap between genders is comparable to the unmistakable divide between Republicans and Democrats, as mentioned in Donald Green’s Partisan Hearts and Minds.

November’s election raises the question of whether the gender gap in American voting could reach an all-time high. Historically, a higher percentage of women than man have voted in presidential elections. With Hillary Clinton being the first woman representative of a major political party, women are most likely going to feel more inclined to vote in the presidential elections, further solidifying the presence of social cleavages in today’s society and adding validity to a perpetual occurrence in national politics.