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Conflicting views have been advanced about racial voting patterns in the South. One contention is that blacks can most easily align with affluent whites rather than with middle or low income whites. A second argument maintains the opposite—that southern blacks' natural allies are more likely to be working class and poor whites. A third view is that one should expect to find shifting electoral coalitions across racial lines. The authors test these hypotheses with data from 109 major electoral contests in five large southern cities. Findings indicate no consistent pattern of biracial voting exists because several factors influence voting alignments in given elections. These include the traditional patterns of racial politics in given localities; the type of election that is being contested; and the race of the candidates themselves. With regard to the latter two points: it is clear, for example, that in partisan contests black-backed candidates do best with low income whites, unless the candidates are black, in which case it is most difficult to get poor whites to vote for any black office seeker. In light of these findings, the simple models of racial voting are deficient because they fail to specify the factors that influence voting patterns in particular contexts.

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There have been significant changes in journalistic practices in various countries over the years. Yet little is known about the nature of changes in journalism in transitional developing countries following military rule. Drawing on email surveys of journalists in Nigeria and Fiji, two countries with recent histories of military dictatorship that are rarely examined in the research literature, this comparative study investigates journalistic practices in the two countries. Results show that in Nigeria, the transition from military rule to democratic system of government in May 1999 and the enactment of the Freedom of Information Act in 2011 have ushered in significant changes in the way journalism is practised. However, there remains an adversarial relationship between the government and journalists. In Fiji, the 2006 coup, the fourth in the country’s history, led to a more restrictive environment for journalists, despite democratic elections in 2014. Under pressure, journalists are rethinking their roles, with some now considering ‘development journalism’ as a legitimate journalistic genre. These findings contribute to our understanding of journalistic practices in non-Western cultures following transition from military rule to democracy.

The ability of the mass public to recall the name of the incumbent congressional repre sentative is compared to the ability to recognize their congressman's name. Name recog nition is substantially higher than name recall. The implications for the study of congres sional elections are discussed.