Within the last decade, the amount and quality of research on the relationship between public opinion and policy making has taken a dramatic step forward. This research contributes to the development of democratic theory and to the (re)organization of political science as a profession. Further development of opinion-policy research, however, will require addressing several critical limitations.

What Has Been Done

Statistical analyses and interpretative case studies have reported (both in the United States and Western Europe) a systematic relationship between public opinion and decision making on a range of issues—from national security to social security (for a review see Shapiro and Jacobs 1989 and Shapiro and Young 1989). These results have emerged from several distinct research designs.

The first relies on in-depth investigations of public opinion's impact on formulating specific policies. These case studies rely on closely examining public opinion as gauged through polling results and policy decisions. Many of these studies offer cross-national studies; they discuss issues central to international relations, American politics, and comparative politics (Jacobs 1992a, 1992b, and 1993; Risse-Kappen 1991; Deese 1994 for essays by Shapiro and Page, Graham, and Bennett; Jasper 1990; Eichenberg 1989; Russett 1990; Graham 1989; Kusnitz 1984; Burstein 1985; Sobel 1993; Mattes 1993). For instance, Jacobs (1993) uses interviews and archival evidence to investigate the formulation of American and British health care policy.

Facebook constantly tracks the growth of each congressional candidate’s fan base and the number of people engaging with candidates online. These Facebook metrics comprise a rich dataset that theoretically may capture the effectiveness of campaigns in building participatory support as well as their potential to mobilize support. When added to electoral fundamentals similar to those used in national-election forecasting, can Facebook data be used to develop a reliable model for predicting vote-percentage outcomes of individual congressional contests? The results of an exploratory investigation reveal that fan participation and mobilization metrics tracked by Facebook produced surprisingly accurate election predictions in the 2012 US Senate races studied. The question remains, however, whether these results are a “flash in the 2012 pan” or an indication that using Facebook statistics to measure campaign effectiveness is a new tool that scholars can use to forecast the outcome of congressional campaigns.

The National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) of 1993 (P.L. 103-31) was designed to reduce the cost of voting by incorporating registration into a transaction with a public agency that citizens initiate for another purpose. The act took effect on January 1, 1995; between then and the 1996 election, 18,333,479 people registered in offices they had visited on other business (Federal Election Commission 1998, Table 2).Most of these were new registrations; the remainder were largely changes of address. (We are grateful to Brian Hancock of the Federal Election Commission for his help in interpreting this table.) They are 44% of the total of 41.1 million “registration applications or transactions” of any sort recorded in the 43 states subject to the NVRA in 1995–96. Six states are exempt from the NVRA; five—Idaho, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Wyoming—because they permit electionday registration at the polling place and North Dakota, which does not require voter registration. Vermont's constitutional provisions kept it from implementing the NVRA by 1996. Four years later, answers to even the most elementary questions about this first NVRA election have not been published. We narrow the data gap by describing people who used NVRA to register, and then comparing their participation to that of their fellow citizens who registered to vote using more traditional methods.

Many political science departments offer, and increasing numbers ofthem require, undergraduate research methods courses. At the sametime, studies cite high levels of student anxiety about suchcourses. Utilizing survey data from both students who take andfaculty who teach methods, we conduct an analysis that compares thebarriers students and faculty independently perceive. Next, we shareresults from our own exploratory assessment technique, whichevaluates our success in increasing student confidence with regardto conducting research. Finally, we present specific exercises andassignments which can serve as solutions to student barriers. Weargue that conscious reflection as to where students lack confidenceand assessment of our efforts allows instructors to approachteaching methods more effectively.

At a recent major political science conference, Tamara (not her real name) presented an in-depth qualitative study several years in the making, only to have the panelist speaking after her begin his remarks by saying, “And now back to the hard-core data.” By this, he meant quantitative, large-n data, which his work utilized. This moment highlights a series of tensions in our field relating to gender and methodology, and their effects, which this article explores and elucidates.

Service learning is typically distinguished from both community service and traditional civic education by the integration of study with hands-on activity outside the classroom, typically through a collaborative effort to address a community problem (Ehrlich 1999, 246). As such, service learning provides opportunities and challenges for increasing the efficacy of both the teaching and practice of democratic politics. To better understand these opportunities and challenges, it is necessary to make explicit the goals of service learning and to consider how these goals intersect those of more traditional approaches to teaching about government and politics. We believe that one place these sometimes competing models could find common ground is in the learning of factual knowledge about politics.

Underlying the pedagogy of service learning are the beliefs that a central mission of civic education is to produce active, engaged citizens and that this mission is more likely to be accomplished by allowing young Americans to directly experience “politics” as part of their education. As noted by Frantzich and Mann, this view is very compatible with the stated mission of the American Political Science Association:

The founding of the [APSA] in 1903 marked the evolution of political science as a distinct academic discipline in colleges and universities. At the time, two educational objectives were claimed for the emerging discipline: citizenship and training for careers in public service…. For the student, direct experience was recommended to supplement formal instruction in government and politics. (1997, 193)

This article provides a foundation for understanding the role of implicit biases in political behavior, particularly implicit racial attitudes and voting behavior. Although racial attitudes have rarely played a major direct role in American presidential politics until 2008, numerous local, state, and federal elections are held every year in the United States that involve minority candidates. As a result, the implications are considerable.

Originating in the late nineteenth century, the editorial cartoon began as a mutually beneficial partnership between cartoonists and publishers. Publishers hoped to capitalize on the cartoon's popularity to increase revenue while cartoonists received job security and access to broad audiences. Recently, the future of the editorial cartoon in the United States has been a topic of much debate. Monitoring the decline of employment opportunities, growing editorial controls, and the greater use of syndication gives the impression of a medium in decline. Matt Davies, the head of the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC), recently stated that in any given interview he is “invariably asked about the demise of the editorial cartoonist” (Nieman 2004, 6).

Debates over whether to require voters to provide proof of identityat the polls, and just how that can be accomplished, are takingplace in legislative chambers and courtrooms across the nation. Atthe heart of these debates is the balancing act of ballot securityversus access to voting. Opponents of voter-identificationrequirements argue that they place a disproportionate burden onethnic and racial minorities, the poor, the less educated, the veryyoung, and the very old. Supporters of identification requirementsargue the standards are no higher than those required for boarding aplane or cashing a check, and the requirements are needed to preventvoter fraud.

American politics is dominated by two major parties and has been for a century. The duopoly enjoyed by the Democrats and Republicans is largely the result of Duverger's Law: the tendency of a single-member district system to produce two-party competition (Duverger 1963). Minor parties ultimately fail in a single-member district system because (1) the winner-take-all approach does not reward candidates who finish third and (2) citizens vote strategically to avoid “wasting” their votes on hopeless candidates and spoiling the election (Cox 1997; Riker 1982). Because the U.S. two-party system is so dependent on its majoritarian electoral rules, one might suspect that other election regulations would have little effect on the number of parties.A longer version of this paper was presented at the conference, “2008 and Beyond: The Future of Election and Ethics Reform in the States,” Columbus, OH, January 16–17, 2007. I thank Richard Winger of Ballot Access News for comments and information.

Both statistical and qualitative interview data confirm the on-going existence of gender inequality within American academia, with women both underrepresented and underpaid compared to their male counterparts. Surprisingly, what is needed to remedy this situation is not a secret. Most of the policies outlined in this article as good workable solutions are programs that have been tested and described in more than one study. Indeed, evidence suggests that when the nine strategies we identify here are fully implemented, as they have been at a few colleges and universities, the number of women on the faculty increases dramatically. The fact that we do not adopt these policies more widely in academia suggests not a lack of knowledge so much as apathy, prejudice, gender stereotypes, and cultural cues that end by depriving society of some of its best talent and energy.

The 2016 Trump campaign held more than 300 rallies. Our research examines whether these rallies and Trump’s rhetoric served as opportunities for the spread of hate. We measured the number of reported white-supremacist propaganda, anti-Semitic incidents, and extremist behaviors that occurred both leading up to and directly following these campaign events. We contend that Trump’s rhetoric and rallies increased the perceived threat facing white Americans, heightening their white identity, all while justifying violence and extralegal methods to address their grievances and thereby increasing reported bias incidents. We find that counties that hosted a Trump rally experienced an increase in hate-motivated events. We systematically show that Trump political rallies were associated with a limited size but significant rise in the likelihood of reported hate and bias incidents.

Introduction: The Emerging Political Status of Asian-American Elected Officials

Research on Asian-American elected officials is scarce, but Asian-American officeholders are not. The National Asian Pacific American Political Almanac (Lai and Nakanishi 2001) lists hundreds of Asian Americans who hold elected offices in national, state, and local governments, in addition to a number of appointed officials and judges. Furthermore, increasing numbers of Asian-American, political candidates run for national and state-level offices (Cho 2000a; Lien forthcoming), and there have been periodic Asian-American political movements (Wei 1993). Nevertheless, Asian-America political leadership and Asian-Americans' roles in campaigns have often been overlooked in the discussion of minority politics, in part due to the community's relatively young and largely foreign-born population (Brackman and Erie 1995).

Recent events have led to a renewed conversation surrounding the relevance and potential removal of Confederate monuments around the country, and several monuments have already been removed. However, we have little insight to explain why some monuments have been removed while others remain. This article seeks to understand the social and political determinants that can better explain the recent removal of Confederate monuments throughout the United States. Analyzing results from an original dataset of Confederate monuments, we identify which local government structures and racial and civic characteristics best predict the removal of these monuments. Ultimately, although we find that other factors contribute to monument removal, the size of the black population, the presence of a National Association for the Advancement of Colored People chapter, and the percentage of Democrats in a county in which a monument exists—as well as whether the monument exists in a state that constrains removal by legislative decree—best predict whether a Confederate monument will be taken down. This project elucidates the interplay of race, partisanship, and local and statewide politics as it relates to the dismantling of Confederate monuments.

The challenges of teaching introductory-level U.S. politics to reluctant audiences are well known and widely lamented. This article investigates the pedagogical potential of political satire, specifically The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, in engaging students in this tough-to-teach course. Based on a review of available literature and student survey data from the fall 2008 term, I argue that using this popular program in the classroom can enhance an introductory U.S. politics course. A review of both these survey data and student papers based on the program suggests promising possibilities for encouraging students' political engagement and critical-thinking skills. This preliminary examination demonstrates that further study on the program's potential both for student engagement and student learning outcomes is warranted.