Essay
Using only the sources above, our class discussions, and your own reasoning and logic, please write an essay in which you wrestle with the question of how people’s voting and party identification are related to their policy attitudes and beliefs, and how this has changed over time. A central question of this essay is the question of realignment: when, how, and why did people change their patterns of voting and party identification, and what did this have to do with their issue attitudes or beliefs? Explain in detail in your own words what the authors claim, including the causal mechanisms they say were at work, explain the evidence they bring to support their claims, compare their positions to each other, and weigh in with your own evaluations of the logic and evidence their adherents bring to support their claims. In the process or at the end, give your evaluation of which of these descriptions and explanations are compatible with each other and which are not. Throughout, please be sure that when you use the authors’ terms, you always explain them thoroughly in your own words so as to demonstrate your own complete understanding. Note that this will require you to wrestle with the question of what the racial resentment scale is really measuring.
