Several interest groups seek to put a $15 per hour minimum wage amendment on the Florida ballot in 2020. Floridians voted successfully to increase the minimum wage back in 2004. While the measure passed by over 50% in every county, there were substantial differences. What explains variance in support for the 2004 Minimum Wage Amendment among Florida counties? Hypotheses were drawn from previous literature and theory and multiple regression models find several statistically significant results. The percentage of Hispanic residents and the percentage of residents with a high school education or less had a positive relationship with support for increasing the minimum wage, while the percentage of votes for President Bush had a negative relationship. Conclusions are drawn that suggest how these results may impact the expected upcoming vote to further increase the minimum wage in Florida.

What explains differences in the margin of victory in Florida legislative races? Data is collected for all 160 legislative races from 2016 (120 house contests and 40 senate elections) and two sets of analyses are conducted: all races and just competitive races. When looking at all races, five variables are statistically significant in the multivariate model. District party registration difference has a positive effect on margin of victory and the greatest relative impact. Races involving two major party candidates have a much smaller margin of victory, a contest with a major party versus a minor party (or No Party Affiliation candidate) has a somewhat smaller margin of victory, and a race involving only a write-in candidate as an opponent has a wider margin of victory. House races had somewhat smaller margins of victory compared to senate races. When examining just competitive races (contests that had at least two candidate names listed for an office) only two variables were statistically significant in the multivariate model. District party registration difference had a positive relationship with margin of victory and races involving a minor party candidate as the main challenger had higher margins than contests between two major party candidates.

The aim of this paper is to explore and explain the relationship between various cultural and societal factors on how immigrant women to the U.S. vote. There is a growing amount of research on the voting habits of both women, and immigrants. This paper seeks to understand the voting habits of individuals who identify with both categories. This thesis utilizes public opinion data from the 2018 General Social Survey to discover if there is a relationship between country of origin in addition to gender, and if the respondent voted for Trump or Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. My theory expects to see that different parts of an individual’s identity as a woman immigrant, such as generation, level of education, religious beliefs, and political ideology and affiliation, affect who they voted for in the 2016 presidential election.

No description available.

Native American communities are continually impacted by Federal Indian policy. Over one-half of all Native American nations function politically under the provisions of the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act (IRA). There are claims that many of these Native American communities experience intra-tribal conflict due to the lack of congruence between the tribal governments formed under the IRA and cultural traditions of governance. This claim was investigated via a comparative trend analysis of the Santa Clara Pueblo, operating politically under the IRA provisions, and the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa, operating under a constitutional form of governance outside of IRA provisions. After an historical analysis, an evaluation of tribal constitutions, and an examination of news media coverage for the period of 1991 – 2000, the project concluded that the legacies of the IRA are not the primary causal agent of intra-tribal conflict. / Master of Arts

Belief updating is a research area investigating how individuals refine or fail to refine their preexisting beliefs when confronted with corrective sources. Understanding the various drivers of poor belief updating in a political context is essential to maintaining an informed democracy, as the ideal voter in a democratic nation updates political misconceptions and false beliefs when presented with corrective sources. Despite the importance of this topic, the literature examining potential factors that could contribute to poor belief updating in a political context remains particularly limited. I aimed to address this limitation by recruiting undergraduates from the University of Central Florida’s Psychology Department via SONA to complete an online survey. This survey investigated misplaced certainty, right-wing authoritarianism, belief in a just world, Machiavellianism, subclinical narcissism, and external locus of control as novel predictors of belief updating in a political context. Regarding past literature examining these personality variables in general belief updating and general political contexts, I hypothesized that participants who scored higher on these various personality measures would be less likely to learn from corrective sources and revise their misconceptions and false beliefs in a politically centered feedback-learning task. Overall, the data did not support this hypothesis, as only misplaced certainty, right-wing authoritarianism, and subclinical narcissism significantly predicted poor belief updating. Further, right-wing authoritarianism was the only unique predictor when controlling all variables, and it had a particularly weak linear relationship with belief updating. These results indicate that the mechanisms contributing to belief updating in a political context are too complex to be adequately predicted by personality factors alone.

This thesis provides a comprehensive history of Supreme Court Free Exercise Clause jurisprudence from 1879 until the present day. It describes how a jurisdictional approach to free exercise dominated the Court’s rulings from its first Free Exercise Clause case in 1879 until Sherbert v. Verner in 1963, and how Sherbert introduced an accommodationist precedent which was ineffectively, incompletely, and inconsistently defined by the Court. This thesis shows how proponents of accommodationism furthered a false narrative overstating the scope and consistency of Sherbert’s precedent following the Court’s repudiation of accommodationism and return to full jurisdictionalism with Employment Division v. Smith (1990). It then shows how this narrative inspired a massive bipartisan coalition in favor of codifying accommodationism, and how this coalition succeeded in passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) in 1993. The RFRA coalition eventually fractured, as RFRA’s implications began to conflict with principles and objectives of liberal interest groups and the Democratic Party. This thesis posits that the fracture of the RFRA coalition can be traced back directly to confusions over Sherbert’s precedent.

In one of the most controversial and interesting election cycles in American history, Republican nominee, Donald Trump prevailed over his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. To many, his victory was shocking, if not completely unexpected, yet the circumstances that catalyzed such a defeat lie in the characteristics of his supporters, made up of several classes, races, and identities. Among them are the multifaceted Asian American population – diverse ethnically and politically. This thesis aims to unravel the reasons for which many Asian Americans gave their vote to Trump on November 8, 2016 through distinctions between their ethnic groups and demographics. It also suggests that Asian Americans who supported Trump believe that they are different from other minorities – the “model minority,” and highlights the importance of nonprofit research that has disaggregated the Asian subgroups. With these observations and analysis in mind, the American public and politic can no longer reduce the voting behavior of Asian Americans to a monolithic entity.

Researchers have suggested that Blacks who express linked racial fate are ideologically liberal. Given the prominence of Black philosophical thought and salience of race, I suggest that linked racial fate results in conservative ideology, which exists on a separate ideological dimension than the traditional conservative ideological dimension. This new ideological dimension, referred to as conservatism among Blacks, is vital to understanding Black political thought in the 21st century. Using data from the 1996 National Black Election Study, 2008 National Annenberg Election Study, and focus group data I argue that the conservative ideas espoused by Blacks, specifically members of the Talented Tenth, actually support Black advancement in the same way that Blacks express support for Democratic candidates or ideals as a result of linked racial fate. Moreover, conservatism among Blacks does not result in a specific partisan identification or support for certain candidates; instead, conservatism results in explicit support for policies and ideas that align with the ideas and philosophies of Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Marcus M. Garvey. This dissertation fills the gap in the literature that does not utilize Black philosophers, Black political leaders, or college educated Blacks to explain Black political thought and behavior. The study of members of the Talented Tenth provides a framework for understanding how Blacks negotiate various political philosophies, challenging traditional Black American political thought while remaining racially linked to the Black community

<p>This thesis seeks to explain the way in which assisted housing and health policies evolved in Canada and the United States during four watershed periods: the mid-1940s, the late 1960s, the late 1970s, and the mid-1980s. To achieve this objective, it discusses the concepts of health, the broader determinants of health, disease prevention, and health promotion; it reviews documents which urge that greater attention be paid to the broader determinants of health during policy formulation; and it examines recent studies which stress the value of linking assisted housing and health policies.</p> <p>After an overview of assisted housing and health policy development in Europe, the thesis explores the evolution of these policy fields in Canada and the United States up to the mid-1940s, and investigates the reasons why these nations followed the policy paths they did.</p> <p>Using the neo-institutional approach to explain the complex interplay among the various institutions, actors, and events that affect the public policy process, the thesis discusses eight major institutional and behavioral variables that contribute to the shaping of policy over time. It then studies the influence which these variables had on assisted housing and health policies during the four watershed periods.</p> <p>Examination of postwar Canadian and US policy trends shows that although housing was treated in both countries mainly as an economic issue and only secondarily as a determinant of well-being, Canada dealt with healthcare essentially as a social issue and adopted a public system, while the US treated it as a socioeconomic issue and relied heavily on the private sector. Despite these policy differences, a potential for linking assisted housing and health policy manifested itself in both countries during the mid-1940s and late 1960s, but declined after the late 1970s.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)