Should we trust the results of our statistical computations? Closely following the development of the mainframe computer, Longley (1967) criticized the accuracy of the first regression programs. Approximately every 10 years thereafter, similar comments echoed for each new generation of statistical software. In a recent criticism, McCullough and Vinod (1999) argue that commonly used statistical packages may give “horrendously inaccurate” results, which have gone largely unnoticed (635–37). Moreover, they argue that in consequence of these inaccuracies, past inferences are in question, and future work must document and archive statistical software alongside statistical models (660–62). When political scientists discuss accuracy in computer-intensive quantitative analysis, however, we are relatively sanguine. Numerical accuracy is almost never discussed in articles or even in textbooks geared toward the most sophisticated and computationally intensive techniques (e.g., King 1989; Mooney 1997). Notable exceptions are a forthcoming APSR controversy that depends on the meaning and evaluation of numerical accuracy in ecological inference (King 2001; Tam Cho and Gaines 2001) and a study of numerical accuracy issues in replication (Altman and McDonald 2001).

On January 5, 1975, Ronald Reagan completed two terms as governor of California, and soon thereafter he began taping his nationally syndicated radio program. Between January 1975 and October 1979, with the exception of a brief interlude to compete for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976, the former governor delivered three-minute commentaries that were broadcast every week by approximately 300 U.S. radio stations, reaching an audience of between 20–30 million listeners.

The relationship between scholars and practitioners is a continuing source of concern to both communities. Each side complains about the insularity of the other and routinely points to gaps that separate them. Alexander George and other scholars found weak interest and lackluster capacity on the part of academy-based social scientists to contribute knowledge deemed useful to the policy community (George 1993; Nincic and Lepgold 2000). For their part, leading policy practitioners have bitterly complained about what they see as the growing irrelevance of scholarly work to the design and conduct of statecraft (Newsom 1995–1996).

Women earn 40% of new PhDs in political science; however, once they enter the profession, they have strikingly different experiences than their male counterparts—particularly in the small but influential field of political methodology. For several years, the Society for Political Methodology, with support from the National Science Foundation, has attempted to address this gender gap through the Visions in Methodology (VIM) program. VIM features an annual conference that brings women together to present and discuss their research and to participate in professional-development sessions. Do programs like VIM have the desired impact? Using an original survey of political scientists, this study provides insights into the ways that bringing women together in small-group settings like VIM might facilitate networking and enhance productivity. In particular, the study finds that women who attend the VIM conference are better networked and more productive in terms of publication.

Many instructors face challenges in engaging students in lecture courses. In the fall of 2004, we incorporated innovative, real-time polling technology into an upper-division political science course on Public Opinion. The polling technology channeled students' technological savvy in the service of several pedagogical goals. The technology increased student engagement and reinforced the substance of the course material. It also provided students with topically relevant experiences in answering survey questions and allowed students to feel more comfortable in expressing their opinions during discussions.We thank Victoria Cross, James Fowler, Ethan Scheiner, Walter Stone, and Elizabeth Zechmeister for helpful suggestions. Funding for the technology was generously provided by the Undergraduate Instructional Improvement Program, supported by the vice provost–undergraduate studies at the University of California, Davis.

Why does one federation succeed while another fails? Federations may fail for exogenous reasons: foreign invasion, collapse of its currency, or global market forces. If we focus on endogenous factors, the possible reasons for failure include diversity, where populations drift apart or clash too often, or jealousy from redistributive asymmetry, with unequal shouldering of costs or dispersion of benefits, and, of course, corruption and insurrection. While potentially significant, these problems are not particular to federalism; they threaten all democracies. There is, however, one threat that afflicts federations in particular. It is the one that perplexed and animated James Madison in the American context: opportunistic authority migration between levels of government.

In the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Osama bin Laden quickly became America's leading enemy. But as the Bush administration prepared its case for war against Iraq in the first half of 2002, officials began to avoid mentioning Osama bin Laden's name in public. At the same time, administration officials increasingly linked Saddam Hussein with the threat of terrorism in an effort to build public support for war. By the first anniversary of the 9/11 attacks it appeared that this public relations effort had produced results beyond all expectations: several polls released around the time of the anniversary revealed that majorities of Americans believed Saddam Hussein was personally responsible for 9/11.

Why did Obama defeat McCain in 2008? As with any national election outcome, the immediate culprit that comes to mind is economic performance. When the U.S. is prosperous, the electorate votes the incumbent presidential party back into office. When the U.S. economy sours, the incumbent (or incumbent party) loses. In 2008, the application of this rule led to a correct prediction once again. Economy up, Republicans out. It is difficult to challenge this conventional wisdom that the economy contributed to the transfer of the White House from the Republicans to Democrat Obama.

This paper applies the forecasting models of Klarner and Buchanan (2006a) for the U.S. Senate and Klarner and Buchanan (2006b) for the U.S. House of Representatives to the upcoming 2008 elections. Forecasts are also conducted for the 2008 presidential race at the state level. The forecasts presented in this article, made July 28, 2008 (99 days before the election), predicted an 11-seat gain for the Democrats in the House of Representatives, a three-seat gain for the Democrats in the Senate, and that Barack Obama would obtain 53.0% of the popular vote and 346 electoral votes. Furthermore, Obama was forecast to have an 83.6% chance of winning the White House and an 85.9% chance of winning the popular vote.

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.

In this article, I discuss an alternative way of conceptualizing and structuring essay assignments in political science courses. Generally, political science teachers have tried to encourage critical thinking about political issues by assigning essays that ask for argumentative writing. An argumentative essay format asks students to present several positions or concepts covered in a course, analyze them, and argue for their own position on the issues at hand. A better format, I suggest, is to ask students to engage in reflective writing. Reflective writing has four basic stages. First, students are asked to explain course materials. Next, they are challenged to reflect explicitly on how this material calls into question their preconceptions about the topic. Third, they analyze the conflicts, confusions, or questions that arise from engaging their preconceptions. And finally, they formulate plans to use the knowledge gained by the reflective process. In short, reflective writing invites students to search for the truth rather than develop rhetorical skills. My case for reflective writing is made here in the form of a reflective essay, so readers can take from this essay both a demonstration of the reflective process as well as an explanation. Thus, I will explore my pedagogical preconceptions and experiences with student writing, explain my initial understanding of reflective writing and my first attempt at using reflective writing in an introduction to American government course, and, finally, refine my pedagogy by analyzing the success of the assignment in light of a deeper reading of John Dewey and other theorists of reflective reasoning.

The number of people conducting scientific analyses and the number of topics being studied are higher than ever. At the same time, there are questions about the public value of social scientific endeavors, particularly of federally funded quantitative research (Prewitt 2013). In this article, we contend that data access and research transparency are essential to the public value of the enterprise as a whole and to the credibility of the growing number of individuals who conduct such research (also see Esterling 2013).

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.

Most political scientists conduct and publish qualitative research, but what training in qualitative methods do political science doctoral programs offer? Do scholarly views converge on the proper content of such training? Analysis of methods curricula and syllabi from 25 leading US political science doctoral programs reveals a troubling gap: only 60% of top departments offer any dedicated graduate training in qualitative methods. Departments can remedy this disjuncture between scholarship and training by enhancing their basic qualitative methods curricula. Our research shows that scholars agree broadly on the content of such training, effective pedagogical practices, major alternatives for curriculum design, and a menu of focused topics. Graduate programs that aspire to train professionally competent qualitative and multi-method researchers now can orient their reform efforts on shared disciplinary standards for qualitative methods training.

The results of the 2010 congressional elections were indeed historic. The loss of 63 seats by the Democrats was the biggest electoral loss by any party since 1948, making the more recent 1994 and 2006 turnovers pale by comparison. The question that political scientists naturally ask after an event of this magnitude is—why? This article addresses this question by analyzing the role played by the public's attitudes toward Congress.