FIRST TUESDAY

by David Wallace ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 3, 1964

First Tuesday is a study of voting behavior in an exceptional town, Westport, Connecticut, throughout a variety of elections from 1944 to 1959 -- presidential, gubernatorial and local. Contrary to William Whyte's observations in The Organization Man, the author feels that election returns from the suburbs during the Eisenhower years gave rise to the misleading notion that suburbs breed Republicans. Wallace finds that though Westport is clearly Republican, there is no indication that it is any more Republican in the '50's than it was in the '20's. He provides a brief history of the settlement of the area and goes on to discuss the current population of Westport in terms of age, education, jobs, income, religion and political background. Party partisanship has more meaning, he observes, at the national level. Locally, party loyalty is a more complicated matter (for example, the election of Ribicoff as governor in 1958). Furthermore, Wallace and his associates found few distinctions between Republicans and Democrats in terms of their occupations, etc. which would account for their voting habits. He concludes that political attitudes are largely associated with the views of one's parents and with those who share common religions and is therefore more a product of culture than of intellect. This is certainly valuable to the student of sociology and from the tone of the writing it is no doubt also aimed at a general readership. The author's obvious deference toward the locale, however, proves distracting from time to time.

Pub Date: July 3, 1964

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Doubleday

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1964

Categories: NONFICTION