Social scientists in the United States have been reluctant to use ideological/demographic research to explain and predict voting behavior because of criticism from survey researchers that such an approach provides interpretations only of aggregate data, cannot establish a direct causal link between independent characteristics and voting behavior, and fails to adequately explain how individuals make their choices. In Europe, ideological/demographic research has been used to compare political systems in various nations and to assess how political parties develop. It has been a popular approach perhaps because European researchers prefer to develop macroscopic theories of political behavior and because European political parties tend to be homogeneous. However, a resurgence of interest in ideological/demographic research is occurring in the United States because researchers have found that individual level data have not provided a useful basis for theory construction, that survey research may obscure the ability to understand the political system, that computers allow the analysis of very small units, and that new methods of data analysis make it possible to assess the predictive power of several variables simultaneously. In addition, this research approach is potentially useful for communication research during political campaigns. (TJ)