"Thurston Clarke, author of The Last Campaign: Robert F. Kennedy and 82 Days That Inspired America, said a direct line could be drawn between Kennedy’s assassination and the social breakdown of August 1968. “What happened at the Democratic convention, which was terribly wounding for years to come — I can’t believe there would have been that kind of protest and that kind of violence if Kennedy had been the presumptive or actual nominee,” he said. As one segment of a disillusioned populace turned to violence, another retreated from politics altogether. Kennedy’s death "really did persuade many people to seek private solutions, to retreat, to achieve a kind of personal redemption, and that had a very, very long-lasting effect on American life," Dr. Baker said, pointing to the Back to the Land movement and cult phenomena like Jonestown. "People just turned away from the public square and said that any kind of national reconciliation and progress was hopeless through the political process." Voter turnout in 1968 was only slightly lower than in previous elections: 60.7 percent of the voting-age population that year, compared with 61.4 percent in 1964 and 62.8 percent in 1960, according to the Census Bureau. But moving forward, it fell off a cliff, into the mid- and low 50s, and didn’t rebound for decades. When Mr. Clarke was promoting his book in 2008, he said, he spoke with many readers who told him that Kennedy’s death "still haunted them.""