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Setting The Stage For Representation: Women Candidates And Moderators' Impact On The Prevalence Of Women's Issues In Presidential Primary Debates, Hannah Groetsch Jan 2022

Setting The Stage For Representation: Women Candidates And Moderators' Impact On The Prevalence Of Women's Issues In Presidential Primary Debates, Hannah Groetsch

Senior Independent Study Theses

This Independent Study explores how women’s increased presence in presidential primary debates impacts the extent to which women’s issues are discussed in the debates. Prior research on political representation and critical mass theory indicates that women politicians can turn their identity as women (descriptive representation) into action that benefits their women constituents (substantive representation) by adding women’s voices and lived experiences into the political conversation. I capitalize on the 2020 election being the first where multiple women presidential candidates ran against each other, allowing me to see whether the increase in the number of women participating in the Democratic primary …


From The Parks To The Polls: National Parks, Place Attachment, And Environmental Voting Behavior, Rebecca Larue Jan 2022

From The Parks To The Polls: National Parks, Place Attachment, And Environmental Voting Behavior, Rebecca Larue

Senior Independent Study Theses

This study examines the relationship between National Park visitation, place attachment, and levels of support for pro-environmental ballot measures. The theoretical argument for this relationship is that increased visitation to National Parks will lead to increased place attachment, or connection, to the National Parks. This increased connection to a place of natural beauty could cause people to be more inclined to support ballot measures that protect the environment. A survey, administered through Amazon’s Mechanical Turk, was used to collect the data, and a mediation analysis was used to analyze it. The results of this study show that visitation to National …


Desperate Democrats In The Reagan Revolution: A Party Determined To Win The White House, Matthew Maxwell Akins Jan 2022

Desperate Democrats In The Reagan Revolution: A Party Determined To Win The White House, Matthew Maxwell Akins

Senior Independent Study Theses

Bill Clinton’s 1992 election to the presidency as a Democrat ended a series of defeats for that party on the presidential level. Clinton may have won the White House, but he did not do it alone. In the decade before his victory, the “New Democrats” worked to moderate the Democratic Party from within, responding to the presidential losses of 1980, 1984, and 1988. Scholars have explored this topic from many angles, but none have explored it from the perspective of these “New Democrats” in a way that traces their story from Al From and Gillis Long to the DLC and …