Elections were once dismissed as lowbrow sport by elite scholars

Evidence

Before the 1930s depression political elections had been regarded as a great American game (Farley, 1938), an interesting, uncouth spectator sport like prizefighting and baseball. Upper class scholars, both in the academy (e.g., Frederick Jackson Turner) and outside it (e.g., Henry Adams), were willing to leave its practice to the upwardly mobile hinterland provincials and immigrant urban proletarians. As some of these outsiders shouldered or sidled their way into academic halls (Orren, 1985), and as the Great Depression and the prospect of international socialism and the terrors of National Socialism riveted scholars’ attention on politics, the study of political attitudes and voting behavior became respectable in the relatively democratic nations. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 362