American Politics Commons^™

Political Participation Of Millennials In The United States And Western Europe, Jenny Bhatia

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Millennials are a very large generation, the second largest in the US history. More than half of the millennials are already of voting age adults, have graduated from schools or college, and are into careers. Millennials are often described with more than a bit of a sneer, as the new "me" generation and have always participated in politics at a lower rate due to a various reasons such as the generation’s size, demographics, and views on cultural, foreign policy, role of government, and economic issues which somehow, make them unique when compared to the older generation. This research will analyze …

Campaign Donations And Political Efficacy, Lauren Ewashko

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

With the marked increase in campaign spending and thus campaign fundraising we have seen an increase of Super PAC donations to political campaigns. The decline of political efficacy and political trust in the United States is sometimes linked to the increase of these kinds of big money donations in elections. It has been argued that the average civilian no longer feels like their donation counts towards achieving a win in political campaigns. There are those who say that the fact that politics is dominated by a small number of big donors has lead to a decline in individual contributions by …

Yo Soy Latino: Does My Vote Matter?, Jonathan Charres

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

It has been said by many political scientists that the Latino population in the United States has the potential to be a huge political player in political elections, especially with their steady growing population. However, population growth is not translating into an increase of political participation. Although many studies have been made to understand why Latino political participation is low, I will take a different approach and focus on Latino political efficacy, comparing different states. Using the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR) Latino National Survey, I will seek to answer whether Latinos feel more politically empowered in …

Perceptions Of Immigration In America, Manuel Cardoza

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Throughout history the United States as a nation saw many waves of immigrants who collectively shaped and helped build the America we see today. Today immigration has become a prevalent issue that is impeding progress and potentially facilitating the rise of new conflicts in a country plagued by civil injustices toward minority groups who are feeling marginalized and discriminated. Immigration desperately needs the attention of the U.S government in order to reach a solution and stop a community from being ostracized. Much of this great nation has been formed and built on the fundamental idea of immigrant forces coming together …

Judicial Activism’S Effect On Judicial Elections, Nick Fernandes

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

High profile Supreme Court cases have become increasingly commonplace, particularly with the Citizens United court decision granting unprecedented rights to corporations. Many in the media have decried these as examples of increasing “judicial activism”. This trend has trickled down to the state supreme courts as justices have increasingly played a more active role in developing policy. Gay marriage has become legalized in numerous states due to this trend. While public sentiment is unlikely to affect the appointed Supreme Court, it could have a substantial impact on state judicial elections.

This paper will specifically be looking at judicial elections in Kentucky. …

Voting Preference, Religion And Ethnicity’S Impact On Party Identification, Benjamin Gourley

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Voting in the Presidential election always comes down to the wire, which leads political scientists to contemplate the most efficient ways for candidates to target and seize voters. The study explores how ethnic and religious values affect a voter’s party identification. This study will identify theories of opinion formation and connect these theories to the values that religious and ethnic voters rely on when voting for a candidate. This study hypothesizes three things: first, religious groups will tend to vote for candidates that hold the same religious values. Second, Ethnic groups will tend to vote for candidates that share the …

Terrorism Through American Eyes, Jacob Blaznek

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The ‘War on Terror’ has been a highly debated topic since President Bush first said it after the attack to the United States on September 11th. Many articles and books have been written about the growing problem of terrorism and how the United States is handling it. Each article provides different ways that the United States has wrongly handled the situation and ways that they could improve their efforts to reduce terrorism. After the terrorist attack on World Trade Center and The Pentagon, the United States went to War against Al-Qaeda. Today, the US is still in a highly dangerous …

Bowling Online: Youth, Participatory Politics, And New Media, Kathryn Newburn

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Understanding the ways youth engage in politics is vital to the preservation of democracy, as they will eventually be its administrators. Young Americans are disconnecting from formal political participation; election turnout is weak and membership in political parties and organizations is declining. However, the turn away from traditional, institutional political participation has been accompanied by the rise of an alternative political tool: new media. Social networks, blogs, and other virtual communities now offer alternative, informal platforms through which youth have found a political voice. Research has largely been divided into examinations of waning institutional engagement and, separately, the rise of …

Civics And Politics: Does Civic Education Affect Levels Of Political Knowledge?, Lauren Siaumau

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

In the midst of a rapid decline of an active youth in the political scene, it would seem appropriate that the causes of such a phenomenon would be researched in an effort to find an explanation and possibly a solution to this problem. Previous research on this issue has yielded various possible factors. I intend to focus on the education aspect, specifically a civic education and how that translates to our youth being more politically active. The question posed in regards to this issue is are civically educated individuals more inclined to be politically active? While other research has brought …

The Angry Electorate - Affect And Voting Decision Making, Negeen Amirieh

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Political scientists do not typically focus on the affect, but rather they focus exclusively on cognition. Relying on the 2012 ANES, the present study seeks to understand and analyze the importance of how a voter’s emotions specifically anger towards a political figure can effect the voter’s actions. In this paper, the factors that are essential in understanding emotions in politics are: effect of anger in comparison to other affects, distrust in media and reliance on party identification, and the role of cognition in relation to affect, the correlation between affect and cognition with voting behavior. The present research answers the …

Absentee Voting & Expanding Electoral Participation, Alyse Marie Frederick

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

If liberalization of absentee voting has the ability to increase voter turnout, then it is significant to distinguish what demographics an absentee voter is most likely to be a part of. In the United States an individuals’ right to vote absentee is regulated by the state. Therefore, not every state in the United States grants their residents the choice to vote absentee. Initially, absentee voting was established as a means to allow soldiers displaced by war to participate in voting. Over time disabled citizens were granted the right to apply to vote absentee. Eventually, many states began to liberalize eligibility …

Obama 2008: An Origin For Post-Racial America?, Calah Vargas

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This study explores the effects of the Obama elections on personal discrimination, voter turnout, and opinions of media coverage. This election was seen as a starting point to a more progressive America in 2008. Many thought this was the beginning of a new era in which any racial/gender group could start to make their mark on politics, and that the huge issue regarding race was behind us.

With many racial debacles arising in the last couple years I wondered if America’s idea of progressiveness was truly progressive enough to promote the thought of a post-racial society and even influence voters …

Factors That Shape U.S. Public Opinion On Foreign Policy, Julianne O'Connor

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Measuring public opinion is an undertaking requiring precise methods and a clear vision, and even then results can be inconclusive. Yet, understanding how and why a democratic public thinks the way it does, and to what extent those thoughts influence policymakers, is essential to a democracy. This paper will use data from the American National Election Survey to discuss the relationship between level of support for the war on terror and level of perceived effectiveness. Values, political sophistication, knowledge, and self-efficacy can each be used to predict the level of support an individual has for the war on terror, and …

Gender, War, And Politics, Madeline Robinson

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research explores the gender gap amongst female and male voters and its correlation with the Democratic Party’s platform on foreign policy. The political orientation of women during the 1980’s reversed and shifted towards the left, and this research will investigate if this was caused by female voters’ opinions of the parties on their foreign policy platforms. The theory of conflict avoidance states females are more likely than males to avoid conflict, and this theory can be used to determine whether females feel more represented by the Democratic Party compared to the Republican Party. The foreign policy platform of the …

The Highly Political Supreme Court, Riley Lane Munks

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper investigates whether Republicans or Democrats support a strong Supreme Court and why. Furthermore, by analyzing data from the 2012 American National Election Survey, I will study support of the court based on gender, age, and race. Since the early 1980’s the court has taken a strong conservative direction, to the dismay of many liberals. Republicans feel comfortable sending a congressional dispute to the courts while Democrats may feel disenfranchised with the judicial process. I also believe that younger people believe the court is an outdated method of making laws and interpreting the constitution. Originally the Supreme Court was …

Why Youth Voters Have Lower Participation, Christine Lathrop, Shaia Araghi

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The turnout rate for young adults in elections succeeding 1964 has significantly diminished. This derives as a result of the methods that the candidates use to reach out to young voters, the agenda being debated or the political climate at the time accompanied by the feeling of political efficacy. This research project delves into the major reasons behind why there has been a low voter turnout rate, that being under fifty percent of those in this age category, for young adults, those being 18 – 24, in presidential elections. This particularly investigates the reasoning for the 2012 election being such …

The Effects Of Social Media And The Internet On Political Participation, Leslie Orozco

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The 21st century has been a century of many changes and technological advancements. Arguably the most important and influential technological advancement of this century has been the internet. With the internet came other branches of the internet such as social media that have now become extremely prominent in American daily life and culture. In the last few Presidential elections, candidates have used the internet and social media as an important part of their political campaigns.

This research project looks at the effects that social media and the internet has had on political participation during the most recent Presidential elections using …

Challenging Conventional Campaign Wisdom, Bradley Joyner

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The common wisdom in political campaigns is that the most effective way to get people to vote is by sending people out into neighborhoods and going to people’s doors, personally encouraging them to vote. This method, canvassing, is undoubtedly effective in getting people to feel like their vote matters, and then getting them to actually vote. It is also incredibly expensive. While other methods may be less effective by percentage, they maybe more cost-effective and allow campaigns to reach a broader base. Further, the ineffectiveness of these campaign strategies may be mitigated by multiple means of voter outreach, such as …

American Identity And Party Affiliation, Erika Aranda

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

The face of the United States is changing. In a nation where the majority of the population belongs to a minority group, defining the national American identify has become a complex task. This essay focuses on the correlation between the degree of attachment to the American identity and how it plays a large role in dictating party affiliation. Political culture (defined here as the shared beliefs and values as to how citizens and the government relate to one another) in the United States is extremely varied throughout the nation due to demographic diversity. A person’s identity is socially and politically …

Duverger’S Law And Strategic Voting In Large Scale Elections, Caleb Sturges

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

After Felsenthal DS, Rapoport A, Maoz Z (1988) experimental research on Duverger’s Law and Strategic Voting has become commonplace, but the research lacks saliency on one particular metric: Voter Number. We test both of these hypotheses in an environments with “large” numbers of simulated voting participants starting from the standard 24 human subject election and going to the average number of voters in the US 2014 election- 230,000. To protect against the effects of priming the subject’s strategies with the votes of the machine, the behavior of the simulated voters (represented by the voting behavior’s Sincere, Strategic or Dominated) is …

Post Obama: Discrimination Toward African Americans Remains A Major Problem In America, Mackenzie Carl

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper explores the issue of racial views within the United States, particularly after the election and reelection of Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. The goal of this project is to determine if racial tension and resentment has either increased or decreased due to the election of a black President as well as determining if party identification is a predictor of racial resentment. By delving into the scholarly literature as well as looking into the public’s opinion, it is revealed that racial tension and resentment has actually increased within America, especially within the white population. Different forms of racism …

The Relationship Between The American Government And Society: Congressman John O’Connor And New York’S 16th District During The Great Depression, Kristine Avena

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This research focuses on the interaction between a Congressman and his constituents and how this interaction reflects the larger conversation between the American government and its people. By examining the interrelationship between a political representative and New York’s 16th District between 1931 and 1951, I clarify the role and efforts policy makers made in response to urban societies’ concerns. The two decades studied in this dissertation consists of the post-Prohibition phase, Great Depression, and New Deal programming. The collection I analyze is the “John J. O’Connor Collection” from the Frank Mt. Pleasant Library of Special Collections at Chapman University, which …

Who Do You Trust?: An Analysis Of Public Perception Towards Government, Pilar Fabregas

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

This paper will discuss how the American people’s trust in their government can vary depending on different sociopolitical factors, and how the government could take advantage of this information. Through extensive research of literature reviews on previous findings as well as analysis of 2012 ANES data, I discover that the American public responds negatively to their government with an increased perception of corruption and overall disregard to the needs of the people. I will also add to the common literature by utilizing other scholarly works that demonstrate how these explanations behind distrust in government can be used to potentially improve …