About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

100 Pol. Sci. Q. 1 (1985-1986)

handle is hein.journals/pclscceqry100 and id is 1 raw text is: On Mandates, Realignments, and the 1984 Presidential Election EVERETT CARLL LADD After almost every presidential election, politicians and pundits try to discern what voters really intended to say. Of course, the most important thing about an election is its actual outcome, who got elected. But next come the competing efforts to interpret the outcome in a way favorable to one side or the other. This is neither surprising nor disturbing. Various groups and interests have stakes in the long-term course of American public policy; naturally, they choose to relate election outcomes to what they want that course to be. This con- tinuing policy struggle gets expressed by the idea of a mandate. Who got a mandate from the voters to do what? In the pages of this journal four years ago, I discussed the Reagan-Carter elec- tion against the backdrop of the argument about what kind of a mandate the new president had won.I Rejecting both the view that Ronald Reagan's victory was the culmination of a coherent swing to the right and the view that it was nothing more than the rejection of Jimmy Carter, an unpopular incumbent, I maintained that Reagan had received a positive mandate to take the country in a new direction-but that the mandate was necessarily brittle. Its lack of firmness had three related sources: First, a more highly educated electorate, in the personality-emphasizing world of TV-centered electioneering, I Everett Ladd, The Brittle Mandate: Electoral Dealignment and the 1980 Presidential Election, Political Science Quarterly, (Spring 1981): 1. EVERETT CARLL LADD is professor of political science and director of the Institute for Social Inquiry at the University of Connecticut and executive director of The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research. He is the author of numerous books and articles on American political parties and elections, including Where HaveAll the Voters Gone? The Fracturing ofAmerica's PoliticalPar- ties, 2nd. ed., rev., and The American Polity: The People and Their Government. Political Sciencse Quairterly Volume Too) Nurnber I 5pring 1985

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most