This book examines the changing relationship between social class and voting behavior in contemporary America. At the end of the 20th century, working-class white voters were significantly more Democratic than their middle-class counterparts, as they had been since the 1930s. By the second decade of the 21st century, that long-standing relationship had reversed: Republicans now do better among working-class whites. While Trump accentuated this trend, the change began before 2016, something that has not been fully appreciated or understood. Charles Prysby analyzes this development in American politics in a way that is understandable to a wide audience, not just scholars in this field. Drawing on a wealth of survey data, this study describes and explains the underlying causes of the change that has taken place over the past two decades, identifying how social class is directly related to partisan choice. Attitudes on race and immigration, on social and moral issues, and on economic and social welfare policies are all part of the explanation of this 21st century development in American political trends. Rich Voter, Poor Voter, Red Voter, Blue Voter: Social Class and Voting Behavior in Contemporary America is essential reading for scholars, students, and all others with an interest in American elections and voting behavior.

This project offers an in-depth look at the three 2017 elections held in Western Europe: France, Germany, and the UK. With events like Brexit and a general rise in right-wing populism across highly industrialized nations, understanding the underlying causes of increasingly extreme electoral behavior is both valuable and prescient. A highly theoretically-focused and current project, it provides a consistent methodological and analytic approach that uses election study data and primary sources to offer a complete and cogent picture of this complex phenomenon as can only found by examining the attitudes and behaviors of the most powerful of democratic participants: the voters.

The Parliamentary Battle Over Brexit provides answers to those who want to understand the bitter arguments that occurred over Brexit, what might have been handled better, and the role that parliament played. Since the 2016 referendum, the hotly contested issue of Brexit has raised fundamental questions about the workings of British democracy. Nowhere was this more true than regarding the role of parliament. This book addresses important questions about parliament's role in the UK constitution, and the impact on this of the Brexit process. While initially intended to re-establish 'parliamentary sovereignty', Brexit wrought significant damage on the reputation of parliament, and the wider culture of UK democracy. Charting the full story of the parliamentary battle over Brexit, Meg Russell and Lisa James show that it wasn't always what it seemed. Based on careful documentary research and extensive interviews with key protagonists, the book explores multiple nail-biting moments, procedural innovations, and political 'what if's'. Drawing on insider accounts, alongside media and parliamentary debates, the book puts the events of Brexit into context and provides a clear and reliable document of record on a complex and disputed story. Ultimately, it argues that Brexit was largely a battle inside the Conservative Party, for which parliament got the blame. Insightful and comprehensive, the book is necessary reading to those with broader interests in British Politics, the culture of UK democracy, and the challenges of populism and democratic 'backsliding'.

Facebook, Twitter and Instagram create new ways to market political campaigns and new channels for candidates and voters to interact. This volume investigates the role and impact of social media in the 2016 U.S. election, focusing specifically on the presidential nominating contest. Through case studies, survey research and content analysis, the researchers employ both human and machine coding to analyse social media text and video content. Together, these illustrate the wide variety of methodological approaches and statistical techniques that can be used to probe the rich, vast stores of social media data now available. Individual chapters examine what different candidates posted about and which posts generated more of a response. The analyses shed light on what social media can reveal about campaign messaging strategies and explore the linkages between social media content and their audiences' perceptions, opinions and political participation. The findings highlight similarities and differences among candidates and consider how continuity and change are manifest in the 2016 election. Finally, taking a look forward, the contributors consider the implications of their work for political marketing research and practice. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Political Marketing.

In the run-up to a contentious 2020 presidential election, the much-maligned American voter may indeed be wondering, "How did we get here?" A Citizen's Guide to the Political Psychology of Voting offers a way of thinking about how voters make decisions that provides both hope and concern. In many ways, voters may be able to effectively process vast amounts of information in order to decide which candidates to vote for in concert with their ideas, values, and priorities. But human limitations in information processing must give us pause. While we all might think we want to be rational information processors, political psychologists recognize that most of the time we do not have the time or the motivation to do so. The question is, can voters do a "good enough" job even if they fail to account for everything during the campaign? Evidence suggests that they can, but it isn't easy. Here, Redlawsk and Habegger portray a wide variety of voter styles and approaches-from the most motivated and engaged to the farthest removed and disenchanted-in vignettes that connect the long tradition of voter survey research to real life voting challenges. They explore how voters search for political information and make use of it in evaluating candidates and their positions. Ultimately, they find that American voters are reasonably competent in making well-enough informed vote choices efficiently and responsibly. For citizen voters as well as students and scholars, these results should encourage regular turnout for elections now and in the future.

In the run-up to a contentious 2020 presidential election, the much-maligned American voter may indeed be wondering, "How did we get here?" A Citizen's Guide to the Political Psychology of Voting offers a way of thinking about how voters make decisions that provides both hope and concern. In many ways, voters may be able to effectively process vast amounts of information in order to decide which candidates to vote for in concert with their ideas, values, and priorities. But human limitations in information processing must give us pause. While we all might think we want to be rational information processors, political psychologists recognize that most of the time we do not have the time or the motivation to do so. The question is, can voters do a "good enough" job even if they fail to account for everything during the campaign? Evidence suggests that they can, but it isn't easy. Here, Redlawsk and Habegger portray a wide variety of voter styles and approaches-from the most motivated and engaged to the farthest removed and disenchanted-in vignettes that connect the long tradition of voter survey research to real life voting challenges. They explore how voters search for political information and make use of it in evaluating candidates and their positions. Ultimately, they find that American voters are reasonably competent in making well-enough informed vote choices efficiently and responsibly. For citizen voters as well as students and scholars, these results should encourage regular turnout for elections now and in the future.

This book presents a new democratic theory of election reform, using the tradition of political realism to interrogate and synthesize findings from global elections research and voting theory. In a world of democratic deficits and uncivil societies, political researchers and reformers should prioritize creating smarter ballots before smarter voters. Many democracies' electoral systems impose a dilemma of disempowerment which traps voters between the twin dangers of vote-splitting and "lesser evil" choices, restricting individual expression while degrading systemic accountability. The application of innovative conceptual tools to comparative empirical analysis and previous experimental results reveals that ballot structure is crucial, but often overlooked, in sustaining this dilemma. Multi-mark ballot structures can resolve the dilemma of disempowerment by allowing voters to rank or grade multiple parties or candidates per contest, thereby furnishing democratic citizens with a broader array of options, finer tools of expression, and stronger powers of accountability. Innovative proposals for ranking and grading ballots in both multi-winner and single-winner contests, including referendums, are offered to provoke further experimentation and reform-a process that may help the cause of democratic elections' relevance and survival.

The 2006 elections for the Palestinian Legislative Council, the first in which both Fatah and Hamas fielded candidates, resulted in a resounding victory for Hamas. Winning 74 out of the 132 seats (compared to Fatah s 45), Hamas election strategy had proved effective against Fatah s ineffectual campaign and failure to properly consider public opinion. Erika Schwarze offers here an in-depth examination of these two separate campaigns, and how Fatah s lack of responsiveness to the popular mood in the run-up to elections following Arafat s death and beyond, led to its defeat in spite of its considerable experience of electioneering. She analyses the conduct of Palestinian leadership during this critical period, exploring the reasons for Fatah s inability to prioritise responsiveness to public opinion, and providing insights into the movement s electoral prospects in the future and its chances of survival and revival."

This book explores the vital but neglected issue of elections in the French Revolution. Based on extensive research in different regions of France, it is the only general survey to examine the full range of local and national contests, from the Estates General to the advent of Napoleon. Focusing on electoral behaviour, it reveals a fascinating experiment with a quasi-universal suffrage, which established enduring features of French elections. The retention of the traditional practice of voting in assemblies, and a refusal to acknowledge candidates, canvassing and competing political parties, inhibited the emergence of a pluralistic electoral culture. Nonetheless, frequent polling offered unprecedented political opportunities to millions. This revolutionary apprenticeship in democracy left a lasting imprint on the development of modern French citizenship.

In the wake of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, the Christian Right expected major victories in the 1998 elections. Instead, many of its allies lost close contests, and the movement was seen as a liability in some high-profile campaigns. In the only in-depth study of the Christian Right's role in these races, leading scholars analyze the role of the movement in fourteen key states, from Maine to California, and address speculations that the movement is fading from the American political scene.

The book focuses on elections on the state and local levels, where the Christian Right is most influential, and it describes the movement's niche in some detail. Although each campaign described in the book had its unique characteristics, the editors have drawn some broad conclusions about the 1998 elections. While the movement was weak in the areas of candidate recruitment and fundraising, they say, the outcome may have also been related to external factors including a broader turnout of typically Democratic constituencies and the country's boredom with the scandal that conservatives had made the centerpiece of their campaign. Despite the setbacks of 1998, the contributors argue, the Christian Right continues to have an enormous influence on the political dialogue of the country.

Written from an unbiased, nonpartisan perspective, this volume sheds light on a topic that is too frequently mired in controversy.

Congressional debates are increasingly defined by gridlock and stalemate, with partisan showdowns that lead to government shutdowns. Compromise in Congress seems hard to reach, but do politicians deserve all the blame? Legislators who refuse to compromise might be doing just what their constituents want them to do. In Compromise in an Age of Party Polarization, Jennifer Wolak challenges this wisdom and demonstrates that Americans value compromise in politics. Citizens want more from elected officials than just ideological representation-they also care about the processes by which disagreements are settled. Using evidence from a variety of surveys and innovative experiments, she shows the persistence of people's support for compromise across a range of settings-even when it comes at the cost of partisan goals and policy objectives. While polarization levels are high in contemporary America, our partisan demands are checked by our principled views of how we believe politics should be practiced. By underscoring this basic yet mostly ignored fact, this book stands as an important first step toward trying to reduce the extreme polarization that plagues our politics.

This major new account of the politics of modern Ireland offers a rigorous analysis of the forces which shaped both how the Irish state governed itself from the period since 1987 and how it lost its economic sovereignty in 2010. This study comprehensively assess the last quarter century in Irish electoral politics from the time of the end of a deep recession in 1987 to the general election of 2011 where Ireland was ruled by the Troika and austerity was a by-word for both policy-making and how many Irish people lived their lives. It analyses why the political system in Ireland was unable to stop the country losing its economic sovereignty and why the Irish electorate kept returning to political alternatives which they had rejected in the past. Written in a lively and engaging style it offers rich insights into the politics of modern Ireland and how Irish citizens have lived through a period combining triumphant euphoria and deep despair. -- .

During the run-up to the 1888 presidential election, Americans flocked to party rallies, marched in endless parades, and otherwise participated zealously in the political process. Although they faced a choice between two uncharismatic candidates-Republican challenger Benjamin Harrison and Democratic incumbent Grover Cleveland-voters took intense interest in the issues they espoused. And though Harrison became one of only four candidates to win the presidency while losing the popular vote, the lasting significance of the election was its foreshadowing of both the modern campaign and the modern presidency.

Charles W. Calhoun shows how this presidential contest not only exemplified Gilded Age politics but also marked a major shift from divisive sectional rhetoric to an emphasis on voters' economic concerns. Calhoun first explores Cleveland's rise to the presidency and explains why he turned to economic issues, especially tariff reduction, in framing his bid for reelection. He then provides a detailed analysis of the raucous Republican national convention and describes Harrison's effective front porch campaign, in which he proclaimed his views almost daily to visiting voters and reporters. Calhoun also explores the role of party organizations, business interests, labor, women, African Americans, and third parties in the campaign; discusses alleged fraud in the election; and analyzes the Democrats' suppression of black votes in the South.

The 1888 campaign marked an important phase in the evolution of American political culture and augured significant innovations in American politics and governance. The Republicans' performance, in particular, reflected the party's future winning strategies: emphasis on economic development, personal participation by the presidential candidate, a well-financed organization, and coordination with beneficiaries of the party's agenda.

Harrison set important precedents for campaigning and then, once in office, fashioned new leadership strategies and governing techniques-emphasizing legislative intervention, extensive travel, and a focus on foreign affairs-that would become the stock-in-trade of later presidents. His Republican successors built upon these transformations, making the GOP the majority party for a generation and putting the presidency at the center of American governance-where it has remained ever since.

First published in 2003, Decentring the Indian Nation examines the various centrifugal forces apparent in recent Indian politics. After achieving independence in 1947 India's elite opted to build a modern nation-state. This idea was carefully nurtured during the fight for freedom from British rule by the dominant Congress movement. In recent years, the idea of a centralised state has been challenged from a number of directions. Strong regional political movements have questioned the assumption that India's federal system requires a dominant centre. The related trend of identity-based mobilisation has challenged settled notions of Indian national identity. The authors discuss the idea that as a nation, India is becoming 'decentred', and consider the implications of this idea for the development of the Indian polity. This book will be of interest to students of politics, geography and development.

Direct democracy has become an increasingly common feature of European politics with important implications for policy making in the European Union. The no-votes in referendums in France and the Netherlands put an end to the Constitutional Treaty, and the Irish electorate has caused another political crisis in Europe by rejecting the Lisbon Treaty. Europe in Question explains how voters decide in referendums on European integration. It presents a comprehensive theoretical framework for understanding voting behavior in referendums and a thorough comparative analysis of EU referendums from 1972 to 2008. To examine why people vote the way they do, the role of political elites and the impact of the campaign dynamics, this books relies on a variety of sources including survey data, content analysis of media coverage, experimental studies, and elite interviews. The book illustrates the importance of campaign dynamics and elite endorsements in shaping public opinion, electoral mobilization and vote choices. Referendums are often criticized for presenting citizens with choices that are too complex and thereby generating outcomes that have little or no connection with the ballot proposal. Importantly this book shows that voters are smarter than they are often given credit for. They may not be fully informed about European politics, but they do consider the issues at stake before they go to the ballot box and they make use of the information provided by parties and the campaign environment. Direct democracy may not always produce the outcomes that are desired by politicians. But voters are far more competent than commonly perceived.

A widespread perception exists among political commentators, campaign operatives and presidential candidates that vice presidential (VP) running mates can deliver their home state's electoral votes in a presidential election. In recent elections, presidential campaigns have even changed their strategy in response to the perceived VP home state advantage. But is the advantage real? And could it decide a presidential election? In the most comprehensive analysis to date, Devine and Kopko demonstrate that the VP home state advantage is actually highly conditional and rarely decisive in the Electoral College. However, it could change the outcome of a presidential election under narrow but plausible conditions. Sophisticated in its methodology and rich in historical as well as contemporary insight, The VP Advantage is essential and accessible reading for anyone interested in understanding how running mates influence presidential elections. -- .

Historically, segments of white Americans have let racist paranoia supersede judicious reasoning throughout our history. The 2016 Presidential election in the United States brought the Know-Nothing's back from the hidden depths of our history books. This book provides a historical account of the Know-Nothing Party in the 1850s through their reemergence in the 21st century with the election of Donald Trump. Analyzing the anti-immigration and anti-Catholic rhetoric of the Know-Nothing movement and tracing that same rhetoric in George Wallace's American Independent Party in the '60s, up into its appearance in the Trump movement, this book provides a guide for understanding the 2016 Republican Party agenda through its inheritance from the Know-Nothing Movement.

The "secret garden of politics", where some win and others lose their candidate selection bids, and why some aspirant candidates are successful while others fail have been enduring puzzles within political science. This book solves this puzzle by proposing and applying a universally applicable multistage approach to discover the relationship between selection rules, selectors' biases, aspirants' attributes, and selection outcomes. Rare party and survey data on winning and losing candidates and insider views on what it takes to win a selection contest at multiple selection stages are compared and used to reveal the inner workings of the secret garden. With a primary focus on the British Labour party over several elections, the findings challenge many long-held assumptions about why some aspirant candidate types are successful over others and provides real-world and controversial solutions to addressing women's and other marginalised groups' descriptive underrepresentation. As such, it provides a much-needed fresh look at party selection processes and draws new conclusions as to why political underrepresentation occurs and should inform policies to remedy it. This text will be of key interest to scholars and students of gender and ethnicity in politics, political parties and candidate selection, and more broadly to the study of political elites, comparative politics, sociology, labour studies, gender, race, and disability studies, and to practitioners.

This carefully chosen sample of 2018 congressional campaigns provides readers with an account of the campaign battles that took place across the nation. Although Democrats seemed to be poised for a big blue wave of victory following Donald Trump's historic and divisive 2016 election, the Midterms yielded instead a split decision. Looking at issues ranging from the Kavanaugh confirmation, health care, the economy, and the impact of President Trump, this book traces the dynamics at work in the 2018 Midterm elections. The editors open with an explanation of the trends in this election cycle, followed by eight in-depth case studies of House and Senate toss-up races involving seats held by endangered Republican incumbents. The book shows how 2018 fits into the context of precursor midterm campaigns and what the analysis of competitive states and districts holds for 2020. Aimed at a wide variety of college courses as well as general interest readers, this book tells the story of the 2018 Midterms in fascinating detail. NEW TO THE 3rd EDITION Goes beyond the conventional wisdom to analyze Republican incumbents' win/loss records, Democratic challengers, the role of Trump and other factors, explicating a Midterm election year with no simple story line on either side. Explores common themes and structures across all chapters, allowing students to compare disparate election races more easily. Looks at issues ranging from the Kavanaugh confirmation, health care, the economy, and the impact of President Trump, putting campaign dynamics into context with the challenge of governing.

This collection of essays presents the work on Germany's stormy and problematic encounter with mass politics from the time of Bismarck to the Nazi era. The authors - sixteen scholars from the United States, Canada, Great Britain and Germany - consider this problem from novel and sometimes surprising viewpoints. The history of elections, narrowly conceived, is abandoned in favor of a broader inquiry into roots of German political loyalties and their relationship to the historic cleavages of class, gender, language, religion, generation and locality. The essays not only present archival findings, but they also pursue more theoretical or conjectural paradigms, and raise questions. Collectively, the authors explore the twin problems of electoral politics and social dislocation with language that is intentionally familiar, inventive, and allusive all at once - in a sense reflecting the Germans' own unfinished search for political consensus and social stability.

The 2018 Malaysian General Election will stand as a major defining event in Malaysian history, when the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition unexpectedly lost power in the country they had ruled for over half a century. This volume brings together scholars who assess one fundamental factor that brought about this game-changing event in Malaysian politics: intra-elite feuding in the leading Malay-based political parties. This study provides an analysis of individual state politics as well as national trends shaped by the actions of leaders in government and the opposition. An indispensable guide for scholars studying the politics of Malaysia and of Southeast Asia more broadly, it will be of great interest for all readers with an interest in Malaysian politics.

With the passage of the Voting Rights Act in 1965, the right of minorities to register and vote was largely secured. It was soon discovered, however, that minority voting did not guarantee the election of minorities or minority-preferred candidates. Indeed, efforts by states and localities in the second half of the 1960s were aimed at denying any substantial minority representation to go along with the ability to cast ballots. Eventually congressional amendments to the Act along with the Supreme Court opinion in Thornburg v. Gingles (1986) have led to efforts to eliminate electoral laws that have the effect of diluting the minority vote, whether or not they were enacted with discriminatory intent. Controversy still surrounds the matter of minority representation, however, because of the ambiguity of certain aspects of the law and because of problems in applying it to the largely single-member district context of the 1990s. This book is the most up-to-date treatment of voting rights law and the numerous controversies surrounding minority representation. The authors have extensive, firsthand experience in both the legal battles and the scholarly examination of these issues. Based on this wealth of experience, they describe the development of the law after 1965, discuss in detail the prevailing Supreme Court interpretation of the Voting Rights Act, and examine discrepancies in federal court interpretations of subsequent actions. They also introduce the reader to technical procedures for establishing standards of representation and measuring discrimination. In the final two chapters, they consider the application of voting rights law to districting in the 1990s along with the implicationsof recent developments for the future of representation in America.

This volume examines how religion is intrinsically related to politics in India. Based on studies from states across the length and breadth of India, it looks at political formations that inform political discourse on the national level and maps the trajectory of religion in politics. The chapters in this volume: discuss contemporary trends in Indian politics, including Hindutva, citizenship bills and mob violence; draw on fieldwork conducted across states and regions in India on critical themes, including the role of religion in electoral process, political campaigns and voting behaviour, political and ideological mobilization, and state politics vis-a-vis religion, among minorities; focus on the emerging politics of the 21st century. The book will be a key reference text for scholars and researchers of politics, religion, sociology, media and culture studies, and South Asian studies.

This book explores the relationship between the personality of political leaders, its interaction with top leadership positions and its impact on the respective parties' electoral performance and organization. It focuses on the less-investigated region of Eastern Europe and includes chapters on Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Georgia, Hungary, Poland, Montenegro, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia. Each chapter compares and contrasts two party leaders with at least two terms in office between 1991 and 2019. The book applies systematically a common theoretical and methodological framework across leaders and countries, thus providing rich empirical evidence.