The Influence of the Social Factor upon the Voting Behavior of South Carolina Urban Negroes

Abstract

Sampling within five wards in five cities, the authors find striking relations between organizational membership and political behavior: voting participation increases as organizational membership increases and, in the group studied, the more organizations to which the respondent belonged, the more likely he was to be a Republican or independent voter. The most general conclusion is that the conflict of opinion encourages the voter to question conformity and adopt a new diversity - a conclusion that requires further research in other environments.