I have a comment or two on the article by David Leal et al., “The Latino Vote in 2004” (PS,January 2005, 41–49). First, the William C. Velazquez Institute exit poll was not a national exit poll. Their poll was done in only 14 states and in 56 precincts with high concentrations of Hispanics. The Bush vote is an artifact of their sample. A more comprehensive sample would give different results.

Saltman's comment (PS, July 2004, 383) simply ignores the bulk of my previous letter (PS, January 2004, 1–2) which dealt with Alabama. I gather that there he agrees with Russell and myself. Thus, there is no dispute on the question of whether Nixon or Kennedy had more popular votes in 1960. His criticism concerns my feeling, originally suggested by Russell, that with more political honesty on the part of the Chicago and Texas machines, Nixon might have taken the Electoral College, too. He doesn't specifically dispute my statement that the difference in Illinois was “smaller than the usual number of votes produced by the Chicago machine from graveyards and empty lots.”

The morning of November 3, 2004, was an extremely difficult time for gay and lesbian Americans. The reelection of President George W. Bush, and the simultaneous passage of anti-gay marriage amendments in 11 states, was as resounding a defeat as any social group is likely to experience in American politics. Worse, the emergence of the analytically vague phrase “moral values” from the exit polls and some arm-chair analysis by the pundits had already raised to the level of conventional wisdom the assertion that Senator John Kerry had lost because of the issue of same-sex marriage. Even Democrats, trying to extract some meaning and direction from the disappointing outcomes, appeared to conclude that the marriage issue had played an important and costly role. To gay and lesbian Americans, the headlines that morning might as well have read, “We lost. And it's your fault!”

Immediately after the 2004 election, with overwhelming majorities in 13 states voting to amend their constitutions to ban same-sex marriage and exit polls showing large numbers saying “moral values” were the most important determinant of their vote, many analysts emphasized religious and cultural divides in the electorate and the importance of the religious right and same-sex marriage in motivating President George W. Bush's base to get out and vote (e.g., Chinni 2004; Cooperman and Edsall 2004; Dao 2004; Manly 2004; McGough 2004; Testa 2004). With more analysis, the consensus seems to have shifted to an emphasis on incumbency, terrorism, and perceptions of character. Both voter turnout and support for Bush rose across a wide array of groups; evangelical Protestants and voters in states with same-sex marriage amendments on the ballot did not disproportionately increase their numbers or their preference for Bush; white women, married women, and Latinos may have played a bigger role in the shift toward Bush (e.g., Abramowitz 2004; Burden 2004; Freedman 2004; Nordhaus 2004; Sherrill 2004; Signorile 2004).

“President Bush's victory, the approval of every anti-gay marriage amendment on statewide ballots and an emphasis on ‘moral values’ among voters showed the power of churchgoing Americans in this election and threw the nation's religious divide into stark relief.” Associated Press, November 4, 2004

The idea for a Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA) did not suddenly dawn upon Senate Republicans in the summer of 2004, when debate on the amendment began in earnest on the floor of the U.S. Senate. Despite the passage of the federal Defense of Marriage Act in 1996, conservatives have long worried about what they believe are the threats to traditional heterosexual marriage posed by the courts. Their fears peaked in 2003, when the courts struck twice: the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Lawrence v. Texas that state homosexual sodomy laws are unconstitutional, while the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts in Goodridge v. Department of Public Health ordered state officials to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The great political philosopher John Stuart Mill once asked, “Was there any domination which did not appear natural to those that possessed it?” (Mill 1984, 269–270). For same-sex couples seeking access to the institution of marriage, the public sense that marriage is naturally and obviously meant only for opposite-sex couples has been a formidable barrier. The first state supreme courts to rule on same-sex marriage, in the early 1970s, simply relied upon dictionary definitions to hold that marriage was obviously a heterosexual institution. Politicians mostly ignored the issue altogether until the courts of Hawaii, Vermont, and Massachusetts forced public debate of the issue.

Healthy adult development commonly includes a desire and intent to form intimate, long-term relationships. For individuals attracted to members of the other sex, these relationships may be formed, socially affirmed, and, by mutual choice, legally recognized by government agencies in the U.S. For individuals attracted to members of the same sex, these relationships may be formed, but social affirmation and legal recognition are only sporadically available. Thus, the normative relational developmental processes for same-sex attracted individuals incur unique challenges that other-sex attracted individuals do not.

“Nobody listens to us. There is not a single person in Washington who will get us…anything but shit and more shit. I'm sorry. This is where we are now. Nowhere.”

“Be careful what you ask for,” goes the old adage. “You just might get it.” This advice is well-taken by interest groups that successfully press for policy goals at odds with the preferences of the broader population. Victory may be won, but at the expense of awakening widespread opposition and aggravating friend and foe alike.

Few would dispute that religion has played a fundamental role in shaping our understanding of human relationships, including marriage, and what types of relationships are permitted. However, science, especially biology, has also played an important role in government regulation of marriage (Bittles and Neel 1994; Ottenheimer 1990; Dupuis 2002; Ellison 2004; Strasser 2002). A cursory overview of government regulations of marriage reveals laws that establish age requirements, necessitate testing for diseases, ban nuptials between individuals with biological relations, set limits on the number of spouses, and ban interracial marriage (miscegenation), among other things (Barlow and Probert 2004; Bratt 1984; Cott 2000; Micklos and Carlson 2000; Moran 2001; Ottenheimer 1990; Scott 2000). Certainly some of these policies reflect a religious based morality, but some, such as those that ban marriages between individuals within a family, also reflect a biological understanding of potential problems associated with the offspring of these couples (Bratt 1984; Ottenheimer 1990; Cott 2000; Micklos and Carlson 2000; St. Jean 1998; Scott 2000; Stoddard 2003).

The battle over lesbian and gay rights has gained increased prominence in the political arena. Discrimination against homosexuals may have been widely accepted in the past, but today such discrimination is strongly debated. In 2004, the presidential candidates as well as members of Congress squared off on whether to enshrine a ban on gay marriage into the Constitution. Analyzing the 106th–108th Congresses reveals that member and district characteristics greatly influence the level of support for gay and lesbian rights. Democrats are far more supportive of pro-gay and -lesbian initiatives than Republicans. Region similarly plays a key role. Southerners are more tepid in their support for gay and lesbian rights than their northern colleagues. At the same time, New England representatives are even more liberal than other northerners. Despite strong opposition to gay marriage within the churches of their communities, African-American and Latino representatives are especially likely to support gay and lesbian rights. Church membership also guides representative behavior, though not always as conventional wisdom might indicate. Catholic representatives are not more hostile to gay and lesbian rights than other representatives. Moreover, the influence of religious affiliation on congressional voting behavior is declining. Constituency characteristics, such as urbanicity and education, also shape representative behavior but play a secondary role.

Canada's June 28th, 2004, federal election was an exciting and, in several respects a surprising contest. One major surprise was the election campaign itself. Rather than being the predictable, boring event many commentators had anticipated, the campaign was a closely fought battle between a longtime governing party and a new opposition party that had been formed only six months before the election was called. A second surprise, at least for some observers, was turnout, with participation in a national election falling to the lowest level in Canadian history. A third, potentially very significant, surprise was the success of the separatist Bloc Québécois, accompanied by a resurgence of support for Quebec sovereignty. After the election, the future of Canada's national party system, indeed, the future of Canadian democracy, appeared more problematic than had been the case only a few months earlier.

In this paper we compare the August 1st forecast of the 2004 presidential election generated with the fiscal model with those made with the seven models of what we call the “Campbell Collection,” after James E. Campbell, the editor or co-editor of several forecasting symposia that have appeared in the American Politics Quarterly (October, 1996) and in successive issues of PS: Political Science and Politics (October, 2004 and January, 2005). For reasons that will become evident, Ray Fair's “presidential vote equation” (Fair 2002a, 2002b) is also included in the comparison. First, given space constraints, we present only a brief summary of the theoretical model. (For a more extended discussion, interested readers are encouraged to pursue the relevant references.) Then, as we did pursuant to issuing a forecast for the 2004 election, we estimate the model over the 22 elections held between 1916 and 2000, showing the out-of-sample results. Finally, we evaluate the model relative to the Campbell Collection on operational and substantive criteria.

Rapidly changing technology has created countless new opportunities for political scientists in teaching and research. One such innovation is the development of web surveys. Web surveys are accessed online by respondents and the data can be downloaded directly into a statistical program such as SPSS. While web surveys require respondents to have Internet access, which precludes conducting general population surveys via the web, in fact many of the populations of interest to political scientists such as interest groups, elected officials, and bureaucrats have near universal access to the web. The purpose of this article is to review the advantages and disadvantages of this technique and to outline important design and implementation considerations relevant to political science.

I am a strong believer in using praxis as an educational tool (Jentleson 1990, 435–6). Even though I have taught college political science most of my adult life, I had always been periodically directly involved with politics. In 1997, I received an opportunity to deepen my commitment to praxis when I accepted a position as a policy analyst with the Democratic caucus of the Michigan State Senate. The following is a brief account of my experiences from November 1997 until August 2001.

Over the last 10 years in the discipline of political science, there has been a flourishing discussion about the role of departmental assessment. Clearly, one fear has been that these external mandates are infringements on academic freedom at worst, and make extra work for faculty at best. In an early article published in PS: Political Science and Politics, a survey of political science departments discovered that frequently the response to assessment was one of ignorance and often animosity.

I am not going to talk a lot about my career (I have written about it.) I started working at the age of 16 and retired early at the age of 58. So I worked for 42 years, including several years as a secretary in academia before I was able to go to school and get a graduate education; I got my Ph.D. at the age of 34. I taught for 25 years at Georgia State University.

The WCPS of the APSA recognized and publicly honored, very early, the debt that we all owe to our mentors. In part in response to the activities of members of the WCPS and those of the APSA's Committee on the Status of Women, currently chaired by Kristen Monroe, the Association, in turn, has come to value and support a more formal structure of mentoring.

My philosophy is to love everyone you meet and treat everything as an adventure. I am a political activist and by a political activist I mean that I am committed to social justice in this world now. That is what I do and have done most of my life. At the moment I am involved with four different international groups. Diverse Women for Diversity has its headquarters in India and Women For Life on Earth has its headquarters in Germany. People's Global Actions has no headquarters because we don't believe in it; it operates on the basis of a manifesto that whoever meets and calls themselves PGA gets to add to or rewrite within our hallmarks. Locally I work with Western Massachusetts Global Action Coalition. I have also worked closely with a number of local groups, Western Mass Coalition against Domestic Violence, Stop the War Coalition, Arise for Social Justice, and other groups of similar ilk.