Wow, what a mouthful. I am a bit sick of StackOverflow's policy for today.
So here it is : I want a dropdown list to cause submission of my Ajax form to retrieve some JSON formatted results for use elsewhere in the page.
@{using (Ajax.BeginForm("SelectState", "Census", new AjaxOptions() { HttpMethod = "Post", OnSuccess = "SelectComplete", OnFailure = "Fail" })) { @Html.DropDownList("ddlState", (SelectList)ViewData["StateList"], new { onchange = "$('#bSetName').click()" }); <input id="bSetName" name="bSetName" style="display: block;" type="submit" /> } }