Networks, contexts, and the process of political influence 1

A significant body of evidence demonstrates that voters are politically interdependent. They talk, they quarrel, they display yard signs and bumper stickers, and at times they persuade one another to adopt new and different opinions regarding parties, issues, and candidates. The modern origins of this research date to the pre-survey era (Tingsten 1932; Key 1949), but the dawn of survey research led to some signal accomplishments in locating the behavior of voters within a variety of spatially defined social and political contexts.