CLASS-POLITICS AND POLITICAL-CHANGE IN THE UNITED-STATES, 1952-1992

Recent debates over the relationship between class and voting in democ ratic capitalist societies have focused primarily on the question of w hether levels of class voting have declined As a result, few studies h ave distinguished between ''class voting'' as an outcome versus class factors as causal mechanisms of vote choice. This distinction is criti cal to understanding what role class-related factors play in explainin g vote choice - and thus to advancing debates over the changing relati onship between class and political behavior in the U.S. and elsewhere. We use National Election Studies data to first investigate class-spec ific changes in voting behavior in presidential elections and then ana lyze the causal mechanisms explaining the three most significant class -specific trends;. We find that while the realignment of the self-empl oyed with the Republican Party is largely explained by class-related f actors, professionals' realignment with the Democratic Party is a prod uct of their increasingly liberal views of social issues. Also, prompt ed by higher levels of economic satisfaction and declining support for the welfare state, unskilled workers' historically high levels of sup port for Democratic candidates have eroded since the 1980 Presidential election Our analyses also show that while class politics increasingl y competes with other salient bases of voting behavior, the political impact of social issue attitudes has not displaced the class cleavage in recent presidential elections.