Eric Rauchway reminds us that public opinion isn't the only thing that swings elections--voter turnout matters too and is an important part of political strategy, whether it be Karl Rove turning out the evangelical vote, Barack Obama inspiring ethnic minority voters to come out to the polls, or maybe, as commenter TGGP suggests, getting convicted felons to vote. Also there's voter suppression, negative ads, and all the rest.

Regarding the question of how electoral politics would change if turnout were to be increased, I'd like to refer youall to some research by Baldassare, Highton and Wolfinger, and Leighly and Nagler. Really too much for me to summarize here; you can read about it in detail if you're interested.

I'd also like to take this opportunity to address the issue that's come up a couple times so far, of the connection between political science and political activism.

Several of the participants in this forum are political activists of one sort or another: Aaron Swartz has made activism part of his career, Matthew Yglesias and Steve Sailer are activist-journalists, writing for organizations with strong political agendas. As for the rest of us, we're not doing all this research and writing all these books for fun--and there's no way we're in it for the money--certainly we have political goals too, even if these goals aren't so central to our professional lives.

So I resist any temptation to watch Aaron Swartz and Steve Sailer argue and to try to place myself above it all, presenting myself as some sort of genial nonpartisan wise man who stands above the partisan squabbling. Partisan squabbling is important--of course, when people disagree about important issues, it makes sense that they'll get angry. And one of the themes of our book is that the Democratic and Republican parties really are farther apart now than they were forty years ago.