The rise of American electoral research: Paul F. Lazarsfeld and “The People’s Choice”

Abstract

This article examines the history of a certain scientific project called “The People’s Choice”, which is one of the classic American studies of voters’ behavior initiated by Paul F. Lazarsfeld, conducted during the presidential campaign of 1940 and published four years later. This study was the first large-scale application for the panel questionnaire developed by Lazarsfeld, and its conclusions about the social nature of voting and the two- stage nature ofpolitical communication largely defined the modern guise ofelectoral studies. The introductory part of the article notes that the history of this project is mainly considered within the framework ofa “philosophical” analytical perspective, aimed at reconstructing the logical structure of hypotheses and the theoretical conclusions of the study. The author, in turn, relies on the “historical” and “sociological” perspectives, and focuses on the historical and biographical context and social aspects ofthe project. With support from a wide range of sources, including archives, the intellectual and socio-institutional prerequisites for research have been reconstructed. Additionally the first attempts to approbate the panel methodology during the local electoral campaigns of 1937 and 1938 have been described in detail, and the circumstances ofpreparing and conducting the fieldwork ofthe study from May to November 1940 have been carefully evaluated, together with efforts to analyze the obtained data and write the final text ofthe book. Shown is the conceptual evolution ofthe proj ect, arising from the ambiguity of the obtained empirical data. Special attention is paid to the peculiarities of shaping the historiography discourse of modern electoral studies.