The research has broad political implications in that it contradicts the so-called “God gap” theory that white religious Christians are conservative and more likely to vote Republican, said UF researcher Kenneth Wald. He and political scientists from two other universities presented the results to the American Political Science Association in September.

“We are able to uncover considerable evidence of a religious left among Christians, and the big news is that it matters electorally,” Wald said. “Having a strong communitarian view of faith is associated with voting for Democratic candidates. Because of favorable political circumstances, we’re in an age where we’re likely to see a flowering of the religious left.”

The religious left is likely to become more visible and influential with Barack Obama as president and the Democrats controlling Congress, Wald said. It was Obama’s experience as a Chicago community organizer that led him to discover the power of religion to change society, and he has taken steps to broaden the focus of the White House Office of Faith Based and Neighborhood Partnerships from religious right organizations to include a broader array of religious communities, he said.

“I have no doubt that broadly speaking the religious left feels welcome in Washington in ways they haven’t been since the Clinton administration,” he said.

American commentators, scholars and the public have assumed Republicans are more religious because studies have gauged devotion by such traditional measures as daily prayer, Scripture reading and regular church attendance, Wald said. Such individual acts of piety are important to evangelical Protestants, who tend to vote Republican, he said.

“We sensed there was a style of religious attachment that is less individualistic and more focused on the social and communal aspects of people’s lives,” Wald said. “This orientation is much more based on who one’s friends and family are and how involved one is with the life of the religious community.”

The researchers first proposed broadening the scope of questions about religious practices in the 2006 American National Election Studies Pilot Study survey of 675 people, and the ANES later incorporated them into its regular 2008 presidential election year survey of 2,100. Respondents who scored high on these newly included communal measures of religiosity were much more likely to vote for Democratic candidates for both Congress in 2006 and president in 2008, he said.

These Christians tend to place a high value on sacramental beliefs, social rituals, respecting the authority of church leaders and being active members of a religious community, Wald said. They generally believe that God reaches people through baptisms, the consecration of bread and wine at communion and other forms of collective worship, he said.

Roman Catholics and mainline Protestants, such as Episcopalians, Presbyterians, some Lutherans and members of the United Church of Christ, are more likely than evangelical Protestants to fit into this category, he said.

“In Protestant evangelical Christianity you commit to a doctrine, which is an act of individual will,” Wald said. “The idea is that every believer can read the Bible and have a relationship with God without the need for an intermediary.”

When asked whether “avoiding sin” or “helping others” was more important to being a good Christian, evangelical Protestants surveyed were more likely than mainline Protestants or Catholics to answer “avoiding sin,” Wald said. For Roman Catholics, about two-thirds selected “helping others” over “avoiding sin,” he said.

“Unlike evangelicals, the people who relate to the communal aspects don’t stand out on abortion and same-sex marriage,” he said. “What they really tend to care about are economic issues like unemployment and fair wages that have an immediate effect on human suffering.”

Wald did the study with Stephen Mockabee at the University of Cincinnati and David Leege at the University of Notre Dame.

“Our results suggest that religion may be even more important to electoral behavior,” Wald said. “When citizens mobilize on behalf of political causes, they shouldn’t give up on the churches and just assume that ‘more religious’ means ‘more conservative.’”

Georgetown University government professor Clyde Wilcox praised the study, saying the findings help “recast the entire discussion over the ‘God gap’ into one in which different religious world views and styles are mobilized into politics in different ways.”

Many pundits claimed that newly registered black voters inspired by Obama’s candidacy to flock to the polls resulted in states narrowly approving amendments that opposed legalizing gay unions, said Daniel Smith, a UF political science professor and the study’s co-author.

However, Smith’s study found that education levels were about five times as important as race in Florida counties’ approval of Amendment 2, which defined marriage as a legal bond strictly between a man and a woman in the state’s constitution. Smith is scheduled to present the findings to the American Political Science Association in Toronto on Thursday.

“Our research challenges the assumption that the surge of black voters who turned out in unusually large numbers in support of Obama were also in favor of banning gay marriage,” Smith said. “We found that it really wasn’t race that led to an increased support for a ban on gay marriage but whether or not someone was educated.”

Controlling for other socioeconomic and political factors, for each additional 1 percent of a county’s population with a bachelor of arts degree, there was nearly an equal 1 percent decrease in support for Amendment 2, Smith said. By comparison, every 1 percent increase in a county’s black population led to only two-tenths of a percentage point increase in support for Amendment 2, he said.

“Education is so important because it increases exposure to those who are different,” he said. “Studies show very clearly that the more educated people are the more tolerant they are of differences.”

Because blacks tend to be conservative on social issues and attend church in large numbers, blacks were expected to hurt prospects for legalizing gay marriage, Smith said. Dozens of post-election news stories and political blogs drew upon exit polls to blame the surge of black voters for the passage of anti-gay marriage measures in California and Florida, he said.

According to CNN exit polls in Florida, 71 percent of black voters cast ballots for Amendment 2, compared with 60 percent of white voters, Smith said. Even among young people between the ages of 18 and 29, who tend to be more supportive of same-sex marriage, 71 percent of blacks supported the measure, compared with 49 percent of whites, he said.

But respondents may feel pressured to give socially acceptable answers in exit polls, and the margin of error is high because of the small sample of blacks, Smith said.

“Our analysis suggests that these public opinion polls may have overstated the extent to which black and white voters differed on the issue of same-sex marriage,” he said. “We found that party identification, education and religiosity were much stronger predictors of a respondent’s attitude toward gay marriage than race was.”

Gay rights groups have questioned whether the black community is worth engaging in their efforts to win approval for same-sex marriages, Smith said. States that have passed these measures, including Iowa, New Hampshire and Maine, are largely white, he said.

“A very vibrant debate is going on in the gay and lesbian community about whether there should be any outreach towards minorities, particularly African-Americans,” he said. “Our research shows that writing off the black community, especially these newly mobilized voters that Obama brought into the fold, is very short-sighted.”

Equality Florida, one of the two major organizations in the state to campaign against Amendment 2, targeted blacks in its efforts to oppose the measure, Smith said. In studying polling data before the election, the group’s leaders believed blacks, though socially conservative, could be persuaded to align themselves with the gay rights cause, he said.

“They were able to approach and engage the African-American community that this is an issue of importance to the black community by making arguments along civil rights lines,” he said. “Equality Florida just lacked the financial resources to make the case to Obama supporters.”

Smith collaborated with Stephanie Slade, a political science graduate student at American University who did the research while an honors undergraduate student at UF.

In a study to be published online Thursday in the journal Addiction, UF researchers report that the more alcohol costs, the less likely people are to drink it. And when they do drink, they drink less, a concrete association researchers documented after analyzing 112 studies spanning four decades.

“Results from over 100 separate studies reporting over 1,000 distinct statistical estimates are remarkably consistent, and show without doubt that alcohol taxes and prices affect drinking,” said Alexander C. Wagenaar, a professor of epidemiology and health policy research at the UF College of Medicine and the senior author of the study. “When prices go down, people drink more, and when prices go up, people drink less.”

The consistency of this association between cost and consumption indicates that using taxes to raise prices on alcohol could be among the most effective deterrents to drinking that researchers have discovered, better than law enforcement, media campaigns or school programs, said Wagenaar.

The study, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, also determined that tax or price increases affect the broad population of drinkers, including heavy drinkers as well as light drinkers, and teens as well as adults.

Many studies have analyzed how tax or price increases affect people’s drinking habits, but the UF study is the first to examine all of these findings as a whole, using a statistical procedure called
meta-analysis. This technique allows researchers to draw conclusions that are not limited to specific policy changes or a single state or country, said Wagenaar.

Researchers scoured through decades of studies examining links between price and alcohol use. The studies were all reported in English but not limited to any single country. The data resulting from these reports were compiled and analyzed to glean more precise answers than can be obtained from just one study, Wagenaar noted.

In a commentary in the same issue of Addiction, Frank Chaloupka, a professor of economics at the University of Illinois at Chicago, describes the research as a “true tour de force,” and adds, “these findings provide a strong rationale for using increases in alcoholic beverage taxes to promote public health by reducing drinking.”

“Florida is one of only a handful of states that allows voters to wear political insignia to the polls,” said Daniel Smith, interim director of the Political Campaigning Program at UF.

Florida law prohibits anyone from handing out campaign material or trying to petition for votes within 100 feet of a polling site. In other states, poll workers interpret campaign slogans on clothing as an attempt to solicit voters.

In Florida, though, McCain T-shirts and Obama stickers are considered strictly personal, “as long as you’re not a walking billboard actively soliciting support or opposition,” Smith said.

“Passive electioneering is protected under Florida law,” he said.

Earlier this month, Smith was quoted in a National Public Radio story about voters in South Carolina and other states who were turned away for wearing political clothing.

While polling places should be “safe harbors” where voters can express themselves without feeling inhibited or pressured, Smith said he thinks banning political clothing is a little excessive.

“A complete ban on campaign insignia is a rather strict infringement on a rather minor expression of free speech,” he said.

The first day of early voting in Florida began Monday when one potential voter wearing pro-Obama clothes was initially turned away from a polling place, according to media reports. The mistake was corrected quickly and the person was able to cast a vote. In New Mexico, a woman wasn’t allowed to vote on Saturday because she was wearing an Obama T-shirt.

“Our study challenges the dominant historical narrative of why citizen initiatives were adopted in some American states a century ago,” said Daniel Smith, a UF political science professor whose study appears in the current issue of American Political Science Review. “The phenomenon may bring to mind places like Oregon, California, Colorado and Washington — states with populist and progressive traditions — but we found that lawmakers in the West were no more likely than those from other states to accede broad powers to voters in this way.”

Smith, who collaborated on the study with Dustin Fridkin, a UF doctoral student in political science, said political considerations — the degree of competition between political parties in a state legislature, party organizational strength and the presence of a third party — are the strongest predictors of whether a legislature gave voters the power to make their own decisions through the initiative process.

In 1898 South Dakota voters became the first to approve a constitutional amendment granting residents the power to decide initiatives and by 1918 voters in 20 states had followed suit, he said.

Southern states were thought to be more apprehensive about the initiative process because of its potential to mobilize African Americans, but the facts do not bear this out, Smith said. The legislatures of Arkansas, Florida, Mississippi and Texas were among the early states to place referendums on the ballot-granting residents the opportunity to adopt direct democracy reforms, he said.

Minnesota and Wisconsin, two progressive states, have never implemented this form of direct democracy because voters ultimately did not approve it; and the supposed populist explanation does little to explain why Missouri adopted the initiative, Smith said, but not neighboring Kansas, a hotbed of populist sentiment a century ago.

“Lawmakers inherently don’t like the initiative process because it takes power away from them, so it raises the question of why they would give up their institutional authority in order to allow citizens to pass laws,” Smith said.

The study found that legislative competition between political parties played a key role in lawmakers’ decision to give citizens a direct role in shaping public policy. On average, the majority party’s surplus of seats was 22.5 percent among the 20 early state legislatures that referred the initiative process to the ballot compared with 26.7 percent for those state legislatures that did not, Smith said.

“A minority party might be willing to sell out the institutional powers of the legislature and allowing citizens to gain political power, in order to curry favor with the people and hopefully become the majority party,” he said. “And the majority party is put in the position of not wanting to be anti-populist.”

Also more receptive to citizen initiatives were states with weaker political parties — possibly because they achieved statehood later and had fewer established political traditions — and states with third parties, which further diluted majority power, he said.

In place in 24 states today, the initiative process is arguably the most important political institution available to citizens, but it has repercussions, Smith said. By allowing citizens to pass laws and constitutional amendments that can impinge upon the legislature’s ability to raise money, restrict certain taxes or direct types of expenditures, state legislatures become inherently weaker, he said.

“I think there are some aspects to it that are clearly troubling when you have votes taking place that are not fully informed and there’s no iterative decision-making — it’s a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ vote on a particular policy with no chance to amend it,” he said. “On the flip side, there are a lot of positive ‘educative effects’ about the initiative process.”

States with initiatives over time have higher turnout in midterm and presidential elections, drawing voters to ballot measures and presenting candidates with substantive issues that can help set the campaign agenda, Smith said.

“People who live in initiative states are more likely to talk about politics and contribute money to interest group,” he said. “It makes sense because they are more engaged in the process, which is something the Progressives argued in its favor back in the early 1900s.”

The University of Florida’s Digital Worlds Institute in cooperation with King’s alma mater Morehouse College in Atlanta kicked off the first of the webcasts at 10 a.m. EDT on April 4, when experts from UF and Morehouse, along with institutions in China, India, Kenya and South Africa, discussed in real-time King’s meaning for the 21st century, said James Oliverio, director of UF’s Digital Worlds Institute. The other three programs are also scheduled at 10 a.m. on successive Fridays in April, and all can be viewed on the Internet at www.worldhouse.morehouse.edu.

In his “World House” speech upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize, King said “modern man has brought this whole world to an awe-inspiring threshold of the future. He has reached new and astonishing peaks of scientific success. He has produced machines that think. Yet, in spite of these spectacular strides in science and technology, and still unlimited ones to come, something basic is missing. There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance.”

The outreach developed from a collaboration between UF and Morehouse College, the recipient of about 10,000 pieces of Martin Luther King Jr.’s personal writings in 2006. Terry Mills, a former UF dean who moved to Morehouse last year to become the Margaret Mitchell Marsh Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, said the idea came in discussions he had with Oliverio about how the two institutions might use the acquisition in educational programming.

The innovativeness of the technology at Digital Worlds Institute, which Mills called the “Imac Theater of Videoconferencing” for its ability to allow multiple partners around the globe to engage in an interactive, unified virtual space, made UF the natural choice to help produce the program, he said. “There are also geographic and historical reasons for the connection, notably Gainesville’s close proximity to St. Augustine where Dr. King had led freedom marches as well as its location near the site of the Rosewood massacre,” Mills said.

The purpose of the global discussions is not only to remind the world of King’s legacy but to keep his vision alive, as his message continues to have relevance today, Oliverio said.

“This is a memorial to Dr. King, not just in the sense of looking backward to some academic papers in a museum, but honoring his life’s work in the hopes that students of today at Morehouse, UF and the other participating institutions will reassess their involvement with their own societies in the same way that Dr. King took a stand against oppression of African Americans in the United States,” he said. “Even at the beginning of the 21st century human kind is still butchering each other in tribal conflicts over economic materialism and resources.”

Although King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is well-known among college students, many are not familiar with the “World House” concept mentioned in his 1964 Nobel Peace Prize speech and his writings where he discusses the need to fight racism, war and poverty, he said.

Now, University of Florida history professor William Link hopes to offer a more complete, less polarized portrayal of the controversial right-wing politician. His new book is “Righteous Warrior: Jesse Helms and the Rise of Modern Conservatism,” to be released Tuesday by St. Martin’s Press.

Helms, who spent 30 years as one of North Carolina’s U.S. senators, is mostly known for his enduring opposition to the civil rights movement and vitriolic condemnation of gay people and what he called sexual immorality, Link said. But Helms’ lasting impact on American politics cannot be understood without going beyond those labels, he said.

“He’s so important to the rise of the new conservatism, and if you want to understand politics today, you have to understand that,” Link said. “He was much more than a Southern racist.”

In many ways, the modern style of politics characterized by heavy use of media and television advertising can be traced directly back to Helms’ early campaigns in North Carolina, Link said.

At the end of his career, Helms had a profound impact on U.S. foreign policy during his time as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which coincided with the presidency of Bill Clinton, Link said. He was strongly opposed to multilateral organizations such as the United Nations, and he helped to defeat American involvement in international arms proliferation agreements such as the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

If these positions sound familiar, Link said, it’s probably because many of them are alive today in the policies of George W. Bush. In fact, many of Helms’ previous staffers hold positions in the current administration.

Though many of Helms’ opinions and contributions are highly controversial, the book tries to avoid making value judgments, Link said.

“It’s not at all a politically motivated book,” he said. “It’s a full and fair biographic portrayal.”

Link said he struggled most to stay impartial when discussing Helms’ positions on race and homosexuality, which he does not agree with.

“I think there’s an inherent difficulty as a biographer writing about things you don’t like,” he said.

Link spoke to more than 60 people in the course of writing the book, including colleagues, subordinates, friends and enemies. He also had access to speeches, newspaper coverage, and all of Helms’ correspondence since 1953. Helms himself was unavailable due to his failing health.

The book impressively captures the multiple, diverse facets of Helms and his career, said Donald Critchlow, history professor at St. Louis University.

“Nearly every page seems to bring new insight and revelation,” he said.

Critchlow will speak at UF on Tuesday about the ascendancy of the modern Republican right. His speech starts at 7 p.m. in the Ocora Room in Pugh Hall. The event is free.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Restrictions to keep illegal immigrants from entering the United States are having the perverse effect of encouraging those who are already here to stay by any means necessary, a new University of Florida study finds.

The culprit is tightened post 9-ll security, which has prompted immigrants to skip visits to their homelands because of the risk of not being allowed back into the U.S., said UF anthropology professor Maxine L. Margolis.

“These draconian measures do not deter undocumented immigrants from trying to enter the country so much as discourage those who are already here from returning home,” said Margolis, whose research is scheduled to be published in the January issue of the journal Human Organization. “The restrictions are doing exactly the opposite of what they intend to do by locking these people in place.”

The research is based on interviews with Brazilian immigrants and applies to other nationalities as well, Margolis said. “Whether they are Peruvians, Ecuadorians, Dominicans or any other group with a large undocumented population, they are experiencing the same problems,” she said.

Unlike in the past, when most illegal immigrants made a single, permanent move to the United States, in the last few decades they have tended to move back and forth between their home and host countries for a variety of economic and social reasons, Margolis said. Many foreigners come here temporarily for jobs paying anywhere from four to 10 times as much money as they would earn in their native countries in order to support their families, but they may return home briefly to see a sick relative or to attend a family wedding or funeral, she said.

It has become increasingly difficult, however, for immigrants to leave the United States and return since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, when the government tightened restrictions for tourist visas, increased deportation of undocumented foreigners, strengthened border patrols and made it harder for immigrants to obtain driver’s licenses and other legal documents, she said.

Many of these people have children, investments, jobs and apartments in this country and don’t want to risk being unable to return, Margolis said. Even with valid passports and visas, they can be denied re-entry if they previously overstayed the limit on their visa, she said.

One Brazilian immigrant, who owned a floor tile company in New York and had lived in the state for several years with his wife and American-born daughter, flew to Brazil when he learned his elderly father was seriously ill, Margolis said. On his return, he was stopped at JFK International Airport and was deported to Brazil for having previously overstayed his tourist visa, she said.

Some undocumented immigrants have found creative ways to get around the regulations and avoid detection, often at considerable expense, she said.

One Brazilian woman living in North Carolina who was desperate to visit her family returned to the U.S. through the Caribbean islands where she boarded a cruise ship bound for Puerto Rico, a U.S. territory, Margolis said. Correctly assuming authorities were unlikely to search for illegal immigrants aboard cruise ships, she got through with her Brazilian passport and flew back to the states, she said.

Margolis’ study also revealed immigrants developing schemes to circumvent the requirements for driver’s licenses. Typically, Brazilian immigrants in the Northeast load up in minivans and drive to states such as Delaware, Virginia and North Carolina, which do not require a green card or valid Social Security card for a license, but some have traveled as far as the West Coast, she said.

So far none of the proposed federal, state or local immigration bills has included a provision that would allow immigrants to travel home to visit family and friends and be assured re-entry into the United States, she said.

Conrad Kottak, a University of Michigan anthropology professor, said Margolis “provides a valuable case study of how one group of transnational migrants — Brazilians in the United States — have been affected by changes in American border policies since the 9/11 attacks. Many of her findings no doubt apply as well to other new immigrant communities.”

“Ethnic and national distinctions between Jews and Arabs blur in the soccer arena,” said Tamir Sorek, a UF professor in sociology and Jewish studies who is author of the new book “Arab Soccer in a Jewish State,” published by Cambridge University Press. “Arabs who are spectators in the stadium are much more integrated into Israeli society.”

Sorek found that Arab soccer fans are more likely than non-soccer fans to vote for Zionist political candidates, a vote that is incompatible with their own interests. For example, among those who attended at least one soccer game, 64 percent said they intended to vote for the Zionist candidate in the 1999 election for Israeli prime minister compared with 27 percent who did not go to soccer games at all, he said.

Sorek’s book is based on research he began in 1998 while a graduate student at Hebrew University. He surveyed 173 males between the ages of 16 and 40 and interviewed a separate set of 448 men aged 18 to 50 who make up a representative sample of Israel’s Arab population. Participants were asked about their sports preferences, degree of involvement in soccer and their voting intentions regarding political candidates.

His research involved Arab citizens of Israel, not Palestinians in the occupied territories.

“Despite these surprising findings, there is no evidence yet that integration in soccer contributes to the Arabs’ acceptance by the Jewish majority as citizens with equal rights,” Sorek said. “Arabs face discrimination in matters of government budgets, employment opportunities and prospects for development of their towns and villages. Deep involvement in the soccer arena, however, seems to dull their feelings of discrimination.”

Arab fans in the bleachers show solidarity with Jews by cursing and cheering their team in Hebrew, Sorek said. They also demonstrate their team spirit by wearing scarves printed in Hebrew and buying bumper stickers in the language, he said.

Sorek said he would have expected Arab-Palestinian displays of national identity in the stadium based on the experience of other minorities. At the very least, these groups bring their flags to soccer games and in extreme cases turn stadiums into sites of political protest, as with the Athletic Bilbao team representing Spain’s Basque minority and the Sporting Youth of Kabylia Club in Algeria serving as a rallying point for the Amazigh ethno-nationalist cultural movement, he said.

“Surprisingly, despite the significance Arab men in Israel give to sports and especially to soccer, the soccer field is far from being a site for political resistance or explicit national identification,” he said.

Even at games played while there were nationalist tensions, the fans refrained from waving their flags, Sorek said. “They know the Jewish Israeli interpret the Palestinian flag as a defiant act of political protest and as something directed against them,” he said.

His research also showed that Arab municipalities were much more likely than their Jewish counterparts to give money to soccer clubs. Sorek said he believes the main reason for Arab municipalities’ strong support is their aspiration for further integration in Israeli society.

“In the soccer sphere they have the opportunity to feel as equal citizens because they are not judged by their ethnicity, religion or national identity as Palestinians,” he said. “They even represent Israel in international competitions.”

Sorek, who grew up Jewish in Israel playing soccer with Arab teams, said the idea for the study came from observing the large number of soccer players who were Arab. Although Arabs represent only 16 percent of the country’s population, they make up 36 percent of the Israeli Football Association, he said.

“Although soccer provides excellent opportunities to reduce the social distance between Jews and Arabs in Israel, it is far from being a cure for their troubled relationship,” he said. “For that to happen, the Israeli state should first change its policy toward its Arab citizens.”

Paul Silverstein, a Reed College anthropology professor, called the book “essential reading for anyone interested in everyday life in the Middle East.”

Fifty-eight percent of Florida voters said they would vote for the new “super exemption” measure, two percentage points shy of the 60 percent super majority needed to make the change to Florida’s constitution, said David Denslow, a UF economics professor who led the research.

“Whether the amendment will pass remains a wide-open question,” he said. “Besides the statistical insignificance of the difference between 58 and 60 percent, there is half a year remaining before the vote.”

The referendum, which goes to voters Jan. 29, would allow homeowners to choose between keeping the 3 percent property tax cap already available under the Save Our Homes provision or a new provision that would increase their homestead exemptions. If the amendment goes into effect, homes bought after that date would not qualify for the Save our Homes cap.

The survey indicates that nearly two-thirds, 65 percent, are inclined to stay with Save our Homes even if the referendum gives them a choice, Denslow said. And few respondents who report owning less expensive homes — a group that would benefit from the new super exemption — said they would switch, he said.

UF’s Survey Research Center added questions about the proposed property tax amendment to its monthly consumer confidence telephone survey in July. Of the 287 Florida homeowners who responded, 277 said they had formed an opinion. They were also asked the selling price of their homes. The survey had an error rate of between 3 and 4 percent.

The tax-cutting measure the Legislature is sending to voters allows homeowners to stay with the terms of the current Save Our Homes Amendment, which restricts the increases in their property tax bills to the rate of inflation or 3 percent of the assessment for the prior year, whichever is lower. Or they could take the new super exemption that knocks 75 percent off of the first $200,000 of a home’s value and 15 percent off the next $300,000.

Most likely to benefit in the near term would be people planning to buy expensive homes, Denslow said. “Anyone who moves into a new house that is worth $500,000, for instance, would be better off immediately because they would get a $195,000 exemption compared to a $25,000 exemption under the existing system,” he said.

However, if house prices were to rise as rapidly over the next five years as they did between 2000 and 2006, homeowners might be better off with Save Our Homes, which would limit annual increases in their assessment, he said.

Another group to gain by making the switch would be those with houses worth less than $200,000 because the taxable value of their house would be no more than 25 percent of its market value, Denslow said. Yet 71 percent of homeowners surveyed who said their houses were worth $200,000 or less said they would remain with Save Our Homes, he said.

Denslow believes they may be reluctant to make the change because it is irrevocable.

“Once you go with the super exemption, you have given up the Save Our Homes exemption forever,” he said.

Survey respondents were more likely to say they would remain with Save Our Homes if they had lived in their current houses for several years and expected to remain there for a long time, Denslow said.

Sixty-four percent of Republicans favored the proposed amendment, as did 58 percent of Independents and 54 percent of Democrats.

Denslow predicts the impact of the proposal would be “substantial” and vary widely by county. Rich, rapidly growing counties, such as Palm Beach, won’t be hurt too badly because a large proportion of its housing stock is worth more than the $200,000 exemption line, while counties such as Levy and Dixie, where growth is much slower and most new homes are much cheaper, will suffer, he said.

The loose coalition of groups opposed to American involvement in the Iraq war, which helped defeat Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections, is considerably less sympathetic to the Democrats and plans massive protests at the party’s national convention next summer in Denver, said Michael T. Heaney, a political science professor.

“We see a very clear shift in the anti-war movement against the Democratic Party just in the last couple of months,” said Heaney, who has written an article on anti-war activists that appears in the July edition of American Politics Research journal. “And the basic reason for that is the anti-war forces are very disappointed that the Democrats have not kept their promise to bring the troops home, which was their mandate after the 2006 election.”

The upshot is that instead of focusing their energies on demonstrating at next year’s Republican Party convention in Minneapolis-St. Paul as they did at the party’s 2004 convention in New York, the key players in the anti-war movement have decided to shift their emphasis to the Democratic gathering in Denver, Heaney said.

“We’re going to see tens of thousands of people protesting outside the Democratic National Convention,” he said.

The danger for the Democrats is that the news media will seize upon the disunity and project an image of the party not having its act together, which will ultimately create public uneasiness with the idea of a Democratic candidacy, he said.

“It definitely has the risk of costing the Democrats the election,” he said. “And this should be an election that the Democrats walk away with just based on the fact that the American public is so dissatisfied with the war in Iraq.”

Contrary to conventional wisdom that anti-war groups are aligned with the Democratic Party, Heaney and Fabio Rojas, a sociologist at Indiana University, found divisions within the movement. Roughly 40 percent of these activists support the Democrats, 20 percent a third party such as the Green Party and 2 percent the Republicans. Another 39 percent identified themselves as independents. (Percentages total 101 percent due to rounding).

The anti-war movement is split between those who believe working with the Democrats is the best way to bring about change, an approach that prevailed in the past, and those who think the Democrats are too pro-war and should be shunned, a position favored now, he said.

“In our article we develop this concept that we call the ‘party in the street,’ which is a network of activists and organizations that have joint loyalty to both the Democratic Party and to social movements,” he said. “And this ‘party in the street’ is highly unstable, which we will be seeing the political implications of in 2008.”

To complicate matters, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is a lightning rod for anti-war activists because of her past support for the war, Heaney said.

“I’ve heard nothing positive about her from the anti-war movement,” he said. “From their point of view, she’s taken too much of a hawkish stance and they’re worried that she will continue the occupation of Iraq.”

The Democrats could find their party as divided in 2008 as it was in 1968, with many of its natural supporters on the left camped outside the convention hall, Heaney said.

The Republicans, for their part, have an opportunity to appear strong against a divided Democratic Party by nominating someone who played no part in the war, such as Rudy Giuliani, Heaney said. The Republican Party could even take a “we’re going to fix Iraq” kind of position much like Richard Nixon took in 1968 by promising ‘peace with honor,’ he said.

If the Democrats in Congress were to strongly back a safe and orderly withdrawal from Iraq, that would help appease the anti-war constituency, he said.

Heaney and Rojas studied anti-war protests at the 2004 Republican convention in New York City as well as demonstrations in seven other cities during 2005 and 2007. They found that most demonstrators were between the ages of either 18 and 27 or 48 and 68, with about half having been involved in other social movements. The article is available at http://apr.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/35/4/431.

“The antiwar movement is the largest social movement in the United States today, with tens of thousands of activists and millions of supporters,” Heaney said.

James Gimpel, a University of Maryland government professor, praised the study. “This is an important paper because it is not the product of the ivory tower,” he said. “This research is based on real-world field observations of anti-war activists in action.”

The difference lies in the “raunch” factor.

Proof that true love never dies shows up in the song lyrics of today’s generation, which match the romantic pantings from the songs of their baby boomer parents’ youth, said Chad Swiatowicz, who did the study for his master’s thesis in sociology at UF.

“American culture is in love with love,” he said. “War may be a national concern today as it was three decades ago, but in both eras it’s the subject of love and relationships that dominates pop music.”

The most notable difference between the song lyrics of the two eras was the prevalence of bad language in today’s songs, Swiatowicz said. Many of the words, particularly in rap songs, are blatantly sexual and would have been considered obscene in the 1960s, he said.

“The tolerance for offensive language in pop music has drastically increased in the last 30 years,” he said. “Older songs like ‘Honky Tonk Woman’ and ‘Hot Fun in the Summertime’ are G-rated compared to today’s lyrics.”

Exactly what the raw verbiage reveals about today’s generation is difficult to ascertain, Swiatowicz said. “It’s often the case that young people want to distinguish themselves from their parents’ generation and the use of language is one way to do so,” he said.

Swiatowicz analyzed the lyrics of the year’s 10 most popular songs listed in Billboard’s online archives for two eras, 2002-2005 and 1968-1971. He found that 24 of the 40 songs in the modern era — 60 percent — and half the songs of the classic era were devoted to the subject of love and relationships.

From “Sunshine of Your Love” in 1968 to “Crazy in Love” in 2003, and “I Can’t Get Next to You” to “I’m With You” from 1969 and 2003, the songs are variations on similar themes.

Some were cheerful and celebratory of love, while others sounded a more pessimistic tone, addressing the temptation of infidelity or the insecurities of being at a lover’s beck and call, Swiatowicz said. The subject of infidelity came up far more frequently in the modern era, perhaps because younger people were more likely to grow up in families where parents had divorced, he said.

Despite wars marking both eras – the conflict in Vietnam in the late ’60s and early ’70s and the confrontation in Iraq more recently – few of the most popular songs of either era protested American involvement in these conflicts

“For as much unrest taking place during the Vietnam era, only one top 10 song of the four-year span was explicitly detracting of the war,” he said.

This 1970 song, “War,” protests sending young men to fight and possibly die, Swiatowicz said. “War has shattered many a young man’s dream, made him disabled, bitter and mean,” bemoan the lyrics.

“This doesn’t deny that other anti-war songs achieved popularity; they just weren’t big enough to reach the top 10,” he said.

There also was only one hit song from the modern era that was clearly anti-war, but that’s not surprising since the draft no longer exists, Swiatowicz said.

Another difference between the two eras is that songs from the classic period address broader social issues, as with “People Got to Be Free,” “Indian Reservation” and “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” Swiatowicz said. These older songs convey the importance of it being in everyone’s interest to get along peacefully and live a life free of hatred and oppression, as in “Joy to the World” and “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In,” while only one song from the recent era was more global in addressing current events, he said.

“In the modern era, a lot of these songs were more individualistic, treating subjects like self-esteem and personal issues, such as depression or anxiety,” he said.

Deena Weinstein, a De Paul University sociology professor and author of the book “Heavy Metal,” said she is not sure “love” is the operative word with pop music. “Most pop and popular rock songs have been focused on sex and romance,” she said. “In 1967 the Rolling Stones agreed to change the words to ‘Let’s Spend the Night Together’ to ‘Let’s spend some time together’ because Ed Sullivan’s TV show demanded it; it was the same year as the summer of love.”

“Determining a specific dollar value for quality of life is a challenging undertaking,” said project co-director Timothy McLendon, staff attorney at the Center for Governmental Responsibility at UF’s Levin College of Law, which conducted the study along with UF’s Department of Urban and Regional Planning. “Therefore, we offered local decision makers a number of options for protecting historically valuable assets that contribute to the community.”

Florida residents also recognize the importance of historic preservation, according to a survey commissioned as part of the overall study. Based on surveys of more than 1,500 Floridians during November and December 2005, and January 2006, the most threatened historic resources in Florida include historic and scenic landscapes; old homes and neighborhoods; and old downtowns. Respondents, likewise, saw a need to preserve Florida’s historic resources for future generations, scenic reasons and education. The survey was conducted by UF’s Bureau of Economic & Business Research as part of its monthly statewide consumer confidence survey.

The report includes models and tools available to further historic preservation in Florida and to measure the impact of historical structures, events and related activities on the enhancement of the quality of life in Florida.

Specifically, the use of community indicators is described as a tool for decision-makers to measure their success in improving the quality of life in their communities. Community indicators are bits of information that are combined to provide a picture of what is happening in a community. For historic preservation purposes, these may include items like the number or type of local ordinances; the number of projects qualifying for historic tax credits or exemptions; changes in property values; numbers of historic districts; and visitors to and support for local historic museums. Other tools included in the report are preservation laws and policies, tourist-related tax revenues, and creative solutions to conflicts of gentrification, sustainability and rehabilitation.

“We’re excited to have this wonderful study to confirm that along with the economic impacts that result from historic preservation, the quality of life is indeed improved as well,” said Caroline Tharpe Weiss, executive director of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation, which provided key support for the study.

Sprinkled throughout the report are examples of model communities and projects that have succeeded in using the tools to enhance quality of life. DeFuniak Springs and Fernandina Beach are described as communities whose historic roots lure tourists and improve the economies of their regions. The St. Augustine Lighthouse and Museum; the Fort Christmas Historical Park in Central Florida; and the Riley House museum near Tallahassee are provided as case studies of how history museums can be important community resources.

Also described in the report are conservation districts in Tampa, Sarasota and Zephyrhills that offer ways for local governments to balance historic preservation through protection, rehabilitation and revitalization, all contributing to a neighborhood’s culture. Other incentive programs, including tax credits and exemptions and grants have been key to preserving and improving Florida communities.

The 18-month study was funded with historic preservation grant assistance provided by the Bureau of Historic Preservation, Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State, assisted by the Florida Historical Commission. The study was a collaborative effort involving multiple UF partners: the Center for Governmental Responsibility; the Department of Urban and Regional Planning; the Center for Building Better Communities; the Graduate Program in Museum Studies; and the Center for Tourism Research and Development.

The Quality of Life study complements an earlier study on the Economic Impacts of Historic Preservation in Florida released in 2002. The full Quality of Life report is available at: www.law.ufl.edu/cgr, or copies may be obtained from the Division of Historical Resources, Florida Department of State 850-245-6333.

Fifty-seven percent of those surveyed said they considered high-rises to be vulnerable to terrorist attacks, but an even larger number, 60 percent, reported feeling safe in these buildings, the UF study found. The findings were from interviews with 384 people walking into one of the seven tallest structures in Tampa, Fla., on Aug. 14, a month before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“People may still believe skyscrapers are terrorist (targets) but so are subways, stadiums and airplanes and that doesn’t stop people from riding to work, going to football games or flying across the country to see their family,” said Brandon Moore, who did the research for his master’s thesis in building construction at UF.

If anything, the skyscraper has become even more popular since Sept. 11, with the number under construction nearly doubling, Moore said. Between 2002 and 2006, 1,334 skyscrapers in the United States were built or scheduled to be completed, compared with 593 from 1996 to 2000, he said.

“Skyscrapers are the biggest man-made achievement we see on a day-to-day basis,” Moore said. “They have too much symbolic value to be toppled by terrorists.”

The stature of these buildings in America’s cultural and physical landscape was recognized by survey respondents. Sixty-five percent said they were proud of the nation’s skyscrapers, and 56 percent said they could identify cities by their skylines.

Moore said the findings could apply elsewhere because Tampa is a typical mid- to large-sized American city, which, like other parts of the South and West, is booming. Tampa has 57 skyscrapers, the tallest being the 579-foot AmSouth Building. Sixteen high-rises are under construction.

Although Tampa may not be considered a major terrorist target like Manhattan, a highly publicized incident involving a small private plane crashing into the 42-story Bank of America building occurred on Jan. 5, he said.

Besides symbolic value, economics and conservation may also explain the skyscraper’s growing popularity; it allows the maximum amount of people in the smallest amount of space, Moore said.

“Suburbia is losing its appeal with strip mall after strip mall, subdivision after subdivision and the hassle of having to drive everywhere with the cost of fuel,” he said. “People are starting to want to live in the city, where they can walk to work or walk to the gym.”

Building vertically instead of horizontally makes sense because a building that takes up the space of one city block can house an entire community, with medical offices, pharmacies, grocery stores and apartments that house hundreds of residents, Moore said.

“With the world’s growing population and diminishing supply of land, the skyscraper is the building of the future, even though it’s been around for more than a century,” he said.

The skyscraper was invented after the Great Chicago Fire destroyed most of the downtown’s wooden-framed, low-level buildings, Moore said. Steel was used to rebuild downtown because it was more fire resistant, and one of its unforeseen physical properties was that it allowed buildings to be taller, he said.

The world’s first skyscraper was Chicago’s 10-story Home Insurance Building built in 1885, but once New York approved skeleton steel construction in its building code at the turn of the century it quickly became the nation’s skyscraper capital. It was not until 1974 that Chicago regained distinction with construction of the Sears Tower, the world’s tallest building at 1,451 feet until the 1,483-foot twin Petronas Towers were built in Malaysia in 1998.

Today the skyscraper is something of an “Asian Tiger” because of its stronghold in China, Japan, Malaysia and Taiwan, Moore said. Eight of the world’s 10 highest buildings are in Asia, including the tallest, the 1,671-foot Taipei 101 in Taipei, Taiwan. The other two on the list are the Sears Tower, fourth, and the Empire State Building in New York City, ninth.

“With scarce land, booming populations and thriving economies, it is no wonder that many Asian nations are taking the lead in skyscraper construction,” Moore said. “As pagodas and shrines disappear, the skyscraper is taking their place.”

GAINESVILLE, Fla. — Next week’s elections may change the country’s political landscape, but residents of some states will have a much easier time than those of others if they want to examine the results for themselves, according to new University of Florida research.

Laws in Montana and Florida provide access to the most election information, while Rhode Island’s and North Dakota’s laws provide access to the least, UF researchers say.

Survey results, released this week from the Marion Brechner Center Citizen Access Project at UF’s College of Journalism and Communications, show that overall, Montana’s laws ranked the highest. Montana requires that “all records” pertaining to elections and voter registration are public records” unless “designated otherwise.”

In Florida, election boards must post at poll sites the results of the vote for each office or item on the ballots. A certificate of the results must be delivered to the supervisor of elections for immediate publication. Each county canvassing board must file a public report with the state Division of Elections on the conduct of the election, including information on equipment malfunctions or other difficulties or unusual circumstances.

“Many people laughed at Florida’s hanging chads six years ago,” said Bill Chamberlin, an eminent scholar of mass communications in UF’s College of Journalism and Communications, “but what many Floridians knew was that we could at least by law see the ballots. That’s not true in many states.”

Rounding out the top five states in public access to election-related records are Delaware, New York and Ohio.

Montana, even with its high score, didn’t receive a perfect from the project’s Sunshine Review Board. The state scored “5” on the Citizen Access Project Sunshine Index of 1 (being the lowest) to 7 for elections records access. Chamberlin said states didn’t receive higher scores primarily because no state performs high across the multiple categories rated – voting registration records, ballots, vote tallies and other records associated with elections such as poll books and inspection reports.

“In an era when the public questions voters’ access, new voting equipment and revised voting systems, it only makes sense that by law the public has a way to check up on the voting process,” said Joel Campbell, Freedom of Information Committee chairman for the Society of Professional Journalists. “Transparency only helps build more confidence in the fairness of elections. Clearly, some states need to update their laws to allow better public oversight.”

Rhode Island, one of the least accessible states, has no law allowing, or prohibiting, the public inspection of election records other than election tallies and voter registration lists. North Dakota ranked low because it has no law governing access to election records and the state’s voter registration list is available only to political parties and candidates.

Other low-ranked states include Hawaii, Nebraska and Arkansas, all of which received slightly more than 3 on the Citizen Access Project Sunshine Index.

Statutes in Maine, Indiana, and New Hampshire declare that ballots are not public records. At least 19 other states restrict access to ballots except under special authority, usually through a court order. They are: Alaska, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Iowa, Mississippi, Missouri, Nebraska, New Jersey, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.

The Citizen Access Project’s Sunshine Review Board members who participated in ratings of election records included Shannon Martin, Charles Tobin, Harry Hammitt, Frosty Landon, Ian Marquand, Linda Lightfoot, Kevin Goldberg, Eric Turner, Patrice McDermott, Suzanne Piotrowski, Sandy Davidson, Joe Davis and Susan Ross. They specialize in access to government information as public officials, university professors, journalists or lawyers.

The Marion Brechner Citizen Access Project is building a database of open meetings and open records law summaries from the 50 states and the District of Columbia. It ranks state laws and then posts the comparisons online with appropriate summaries and citations. The project is funded by Marion Brechner, an Orlando, Fla., broadcast executive.

For more information about the project, visit www.citizenaccess.org.