New Approach to the Study of Ticket-Splitting PDF Download

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Languages : en
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This dataset contains presidential and congressional election totals at the state and congressional district level for 1988. Using a new solution to the ecological inference problem developed by Gary King, the investigators used these data to estimate the proportion of voters splitting their ballots in each electoral unit. The variation in ticket-splitting across electoral units was then examined. The investigators found that, contrary to balancing arguments, voters were not intentionally splitting their tickets to produce divided government and moderate policies. In most cases split outcomes were a byproduct of lopsided congressional campaigns that featured well-funded, high-quality candidates versus unknown competitors, and split-ticket voting was largely unintentional.

Author: Barry C. Burden
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472023063
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Why do some voters split their ballots, selecting a Republican for one office and a Democrat for another? Why do voters often choose one party to control the White House while the other controls the Congress? Barry Burden and David Kimball address these fundamental puzzles of American elections by explaining the causes of divided government and debunking the myth that voters prefer the division of power over one-party control. Why Americans Split Their Tickets links recent declines in ticket-splitting to sharpening policy differences between parties and demonstrates why candidates' ideological positions still matter in American elections. "Burden and Kimball have given us the most careful and thorough analysis of split-ticket voting yet. It won't settle all of the arguments about the origins of ticket splitting and divided government, but these arguments will now be much better informed. Why Americans Split Their Tickets is essential reading for anyone interested in understanding the major trends in U.S. electoral politics of the past several decades." -Gary Jacobson, University of California, San Diego "When voters split their tickets or produce divided government, it is common to attribute the outcome as a strategic verdict or a demand for partisan balance. Burden and Kimball strongly challenge such claims. With a thorough and deft use of statistics, they portray ticket-splitting as a by-product of the separate circumstances that drive the outcomes of the different electoral contests. This will be the book to be reckoned with on the matter of ticket splitting." -Robert Erikson, Columbia University "[Burden and Kimball] offset the expansive statistical analysis by delving into the historical circumstances and results of recent campaigns and elections. ... [They] make a scholarly and informative contribution to the understanding of the voting habits of the American electorate-and the resulting composition of American government." -Shant Mesrobian, NationalJournal.com

Author: Carolina Plescia
Publisher: ECPR Press
ISBN: 1785521829
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Why do voters support different parties at elections when given the opportunity of casting two votes to elect the same representative body? This book relaxes common assumptions in the voting behaviour literature to provide an in-depth study of split-ticket voting across ten established and non-established democracies. It proposes an original framework and combines a theoretical investigation with a purely methodological analysis to test the reliability of the predictive models. The broader picture that emerges is the one of a 'simple' voter with 'sophisticated' preferences. Parties still function as the principal cue for voting, but voters appear sophisticated in that they often like more than one party or choose candidates regardless of their party affiliation. Despite mixed-member systems being one of the most complicated electoral systems of all, there is no evidence supporting the conclusion that voters are not able to cope with the complexity of the electoral rules.

Author: Mark Tushnet
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400825555
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 277

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In his 1996 State of the Union Address, President Bill Clinton announced that the "age of big government is over." Some Republicans accused him of cynically appropriating their themes, while many Democrats thought he was betraying the principles of the New Deal and the Great Society. Mark Tushnet argues that Clinton was stating an observed fact: the emergence of a new constitutional order in which the aspiration to achieve justice directly through law has been substantially chastened. Tushnet argues that the constitutional arrangements that prevailed in the United States from the 1930s to the 1990s have ended. We are now in a new constitutional order--one characterized by divided government, ideologically organized parties, and subdued constitutional ambition. Contrary to arguments that describe a threatened return to a pre-New Deal constitutional order, however, this book presents evidence that our current regime's animating principle is not the old belief that government cannot solve any problems but rather that government cannot solve any more problems. Tushnet examines the institutional arrangements that support the new constitutional order as well as Supreme Court decisions that reflect it. He also considers recent developments in constitutional scholarship, focusing on the idea of minimalism as appropriate to a regime with chastened ambitions. Tushnet discusses what we know so far about the impact of globalization on domestic constitutional law, particularly in the areas of international human rights and federalism. He concludes with predictions about the type of regulation we can expect from the new order. This is a major new analysis of the constitutional arrangements in the United States. Though it will not be received without controversy, it offers real explanatory and predictive power and provides important insights to both legal theorists and political scientists.

Author: Daniel J. Hopkins
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022653040X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 307

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In a campaign for state or local office these days, you’re as likely today to hear accusations that an opponent advanced Obamacare or supported Donald Trump as you are to hear about issues affecting the state or local community. This is because American political behavior has become substantially more nationalized. American voters are far more engaged with and knowledgeable about what’s happening in Washington, DC, than in similar messages whether they are in the South, the Northeast, or the Midwest. Gone are the days when all politics was local. With The Increasingly United States, Daniel J. Hopkins explores this trend and its implications for the American political system. The change is significant in part because it works against a key rationale of America’s federalist system, which was built on the assumption that citizens would be more strongly attached to their states and localities. It also has profound implications for how voters are represented. If voters are well informed about state politics, for example, the governor has an incentive to deliver what voters—or at least a pivotal segment of them—want. But if voters are likely to back the same party in gubernatorial as in presidential elections irrespective of the governor’s actions in office, governors may instead come to see their ambitions as tethered more closely to their status in the national party.

Author: Erik J. Engstrom
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1316165132
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 245

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This book explores the fascinating and puzzling world of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American elections. It examines the strategic behavior of nineteenth-century party politicians and shows how their search for electoral victory led them to invent a number of remarkable campaign practices. Why were parties dedicated to massive voter mobilization? Why did presidential nominees wage front-porch campaigns? Why did officeholders across the country tie their electoral fortunes to the popularity of presidential candidates at the top of the ticket? Erik J. Engstrom and Samuel Kernell demonstrate that the defining features of nineteenth-century electoral politics were the product of institutions in the states that prescribed how votes were cast and how those votes were converted into political offices. Relying on a century's worth of original data, this book uncovers the forces propelling the nineteenth-century electoral system, its transformation at the end of the nineteenth century, and the implications of that transformation for modern American politics.

Author: Richard L. Clark
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 780

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This work provides an authoritative overview of the composition of public opinion in America, the methodologies by which public opinion is measured, and the importance of polling to U.S. politics, policy, and culture. This revised edition is a comprehensive resource for understanding all aspects of public opinion polling in the United States, including major and emerging theories and concepts; historical and current methodologies; political, journalistic, and corporate uses; landmark events and developments in the history of polling; and influential people and organizations. The encyclopedia also illuminates how public opinion polling has become important in shaping the trajectory of American society and the views that Americans have about themselves and their fellow citizens. Specific big-picture topics explored include how data mining of internet and social media usage trends has shaped modern political and business advertising campaigns; the impact of politically partisan media outlets on public opinion; and attitudes of various sectors of the American electorate about diverse topics including gun control, abortion, immigration, marijuana legalization, and the nation's two main political parties.

Author: Orit Kedar
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521764572
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 239

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This book develops an institutionally embedded framework for analyzing voter choice, examining three electoral arenas: parliamentary, presidential, and federal.

Author: Dario Moreno
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000216632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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A Divided Union delves deep into ten pressing political challenges that former US Representatives Patrick Murphy (D) and David Jolly (R) have identified over their multiple terms in Congress and that continue to plague the American electorate today. In an introduction describing their unique paths to Congress, Murphy and Jolly focus in detail on key institutional barriers they faced in Washington in attempting to do the job voters elected them to do. They introduce us to geographic challenges, demographic change, a polarized media, gerrymandering, the role of money in politics, the structure of primary elections, and several other aspects of political life on Capitol Hill. The core of the book is original analysis by experts who tackle these topics in a manner relevant to both the seasoned political science student as well as the general reader. From the commercials we see on TV to the city council districts in which we live, these concerns shape every facet of our public lives and are distilled here in a careful synthesis of years of experience and research. Contributors include former federal elected officials, political science professors, members of the press, and scholars immersed in their fields of study. While other textbooks may examine similar issues, few have been edited by former members of the U.S. House who have walked the halls of Congress and directly experienced political dysfunction at so many levels – and are willing to address it. A Divided Union is appropriate for all political science students as well as the general public frustrated and alarmed by political gridlock.

Author: Marcella Ridlen Ray
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351529501
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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"Ray has written a book that should be read by anyone interested in the current debates about the general health of civil society in the United States.--American Journal of Sociology The formation, maintenance, and well being of American civil society is a topic of intense debate in the social sciences. Until now, this debate has lacked rigor, with the term ""civil society"" commonly used interchangeably and imprecisely with other terms such as civic engagement. Today's discourse also lacks methodological discipline and relies too heavily on narrowly selected evidence in support of a particular argument. In this invaluable contribution to the debate, Marcella Ridlen Ray supplies an empirical study based on a theoretical model of democratic civil society, one that posits high levels of communication, diversity, autonomy, mediation, and voluntary association. In Ray's account, the emergent story of U.S. civil society is that of a dynamic institution, not necessarily one that is linear in its progression. It is a tale of flux, resilience, and stability over the long term that is consistent with subtexts on political equilibrium she notes in the work of early political analysts such as Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Burke, and, later, Tocqueville. Ray dispels the widely accepted myth that Americans are increasingly apathetic and withdrawn from common interests. The evidence reveals a persistence of long-standing public spiritedness, despite the fact that individuals use wider discretion in deciding if and how to attach to community and despite a historical lack of enthusiasm for performing civic duties in lieu of more pleasurable leisure activity. This public-spiritedness continues to reflect embedded religious-cultural values that disproportionately influence how and when people dedicate time and money to associational life. U. S. civil society has grown more inclusive and democratic as Americans venture, at growing rates, across differences in perspective, "