Here is a benchmark study of voter attitudes in a Latin American country. This volume is based on extensive survey research conducted during the Venezuelan elections of 1973. The methods employed by Baloyra and Martz to poll an "unpollable" society successfully challenge previously established paradigms.

The authors interviewed a representative sample of over 1,500 voters to determine relationships between class, status, community, context, religion, ideology, and partisanship on the one hand and political attitudes and preferences on the other. They found that the Venezuelan electorate is defined by a series of contradictory tendencies, and they place their conclusions in the context of contemporary political science literature regarding class and party, ideology and party, and inequality and participation.

• Preface
• 1. Political Attitudes in Venezuela: Problems and Prospects
  • Introduction
  • The Emphasis on Dependence
  • A Search for Roots
  • Analytic Perspectives
  • An Encapsulated Review
• 2. The Social Context of Political Opinion
  • Introduction
  • The Political Role of Classes
  • Social Class and Social Status
  • Class Identification
  • Social Stratification
  • Patterns of Class Consciousness
  • A Typology of Social Stratification
• 3. The Social Context of Political Experience
  • Introduction
  • Evaluating the Regime
  • Evaluating Political Institutions
  • The Social Context of Criticism
  • Social Inequality and Policy Preferences
  • Social Inequality, Ideology, and Authoritarianism
  • Social Inequality and Political Participation
  • Stratification and Political Party Preference
• 4. Cultural Diversity and Political Cleavages, I: The Community Context
  • Introduction
  • Cultural Diversity in Venezuela
  • Cultural Diversity and Political Cleavages
  • Cultural Cleavages and Community Context
  • A Theoretical Blemish: Community Context and Participation
  • Community Context and Political Cleavages
  • Religion: A Change of Skin
  • Demographic Characteristics of Venezuelan Catholics
• 5. Cultural Diversity and Political Cleavages, II: The Ideological Connection
  • Introduction
  • A First Approximation: Self-Placements
  • Ideological Position
  • Ideological Attitudes and Ideological Position
  • The Left-Right Continuum in Venezuela
  • Sources of Ideological Orientation
  • The Scope of Ideological Constraint
• 6. Partisanship in Venezuelan Politics
  • Some Assumptions
  • General Partisanship
  • Specific Partisanship
  • Party Oppositions: Adecos and Copeyanos
  • Party Oppositions: Establishment and Antiestablishment
  • Conclusion
• 7. Summary and Conclusions
  • Opinions and Contradictions
  • Societal Cleavages and Political Opinion in Venezuela
• Appendix A. The Research Design
• Appendix B. The Questionnaire
• Appendix C. Estimation of Social Class Status
• Appendix D. Note on the Use of Regression Analysis
• Appendix E. Note on Inference Making from Multiple-Range (one-way analysis of variance) Tests
• Appendix F. Scales and Indices
• Appendix G. Note on the Use of Multidimensional Scaling
• Notes
• Subject Index
• Author Index