"Faith" is an interesting choice of words. I keep faith for things religious or mythological. I put scientific understanding that's supported by empirical evidence in a category complete separate from faith.
Where The American Voter is the seminal work in the field, it is by no means the only published research on the loyalty of party identification in youth voting. Plus, it was reprinted in the 80's with copious amounts of updated research. If you do a little research, both in the internet and libraries, you can find plenty of research that supports The American Voter's conclusions, and virtually none that disputes them.
Like I said, it's the primary source material for political sciences classes all over the country. To discount it because of it's age is like discounting Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica because it was printed the first time in the 17th century.
Political science is called a science because it's just that. Certain things can be predicted based upon observation and evidence gathered or compiled from previous similar events. Too often, especially here, people are so quick to discount well-respected, well-accepted political science principals because they don't conform to the world as you wish it to be. It's unbecoming to conservatives and educated people everywhere.
Excuse me, but you can shove your little lecture.
I have read criticism of The American Voter that points out the exact things I said, so don’t try and act like the political science community is all in agreement here. The point is that things change in politics. While F=ma may not change, countries and trends do. It is simply not the case that what holds for a relatively small period of time must hold for eternity. Such conclusions are based on too many assumptions to be treated as sacred. There’s a reason that the natural sciences look down on the social sciences. An appropriate response to my post would have been something like, “Here are some more recent studies that show and give more weight to the conclusions found in The American Voter.”
BTW, I used the word ‘faith’ intentionally. Your response to its use was exactly what I expected it to be.
“To discount it because of it’s age is like discounting Newton’s Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica because it was printed the first time in the 17th century.”
To be fair, who the heck reads the Principia anymore?