PS360 Syllabus
PS360 Links
Renka's Home Page

PS360 - Political Parties and Voting Behavior
Monday, 30 August 1999 - Professor Renka
rdrenka@semovm.semo.edu

Assignment (20 points) for Friday, 10 September 1999

(our next meeting once I’m back in town)

Refer to Beck, chapter 2, Table 2.1 on p. 34 showing the Democratic and Republican vote shares in presidential and U.S. House elections dating from 1932 through 1994. You can use a copy of this web page as a template for pencilling out answers and preparing the final hand-in version. For source material, don’t forget that Professor Lyon does a guest presentation on non-American party systems this coming Friday, September 3, while I’m at the APSA meeting. The assignment is as follows:

1. Show the correct figures for the 1996 presidential election and the 1996 House elections to this table. There will be four entries, two for each election. Formally cite the specific source or sources you used to acquire this data, in the manner done by Beck under his Sources on Table 2.1.

2. Address what this data tells us about the extent of dominance of the two-party system in U.S. national elections.

3. Address which party, if either, gets the better outcome in national elections. Be careful not to look only at earliest or most recent results in isolation. Look at the full set of data.

4. Address whether one party is on the rise or decline. Justify your conclusion.

5. Assume for the moment you are from New Zealand and know no particulars about American politics and parties. Considering Professor Lyon’s discussion of SMDP and PR election systems in a comparative context, do you expect the two American parties to be centrist parties? If so, why? If not, why not?