Why did Americans vote for Donald Trump in the 2016 Presidential election? Social scientists have proposed a variety of explanations, including economic dissatisfaction, sexism, racism, Islamophobia, and xenophobia. The current study establishes that, independent of these influences, voting for Trump was, at least for many Americans, a symbolic defense of the United States’ perceived Christian heritage. Data from a national probability sample of Americans surveyed soon after the 2016 election shows that greater adherence to Christian nationalist ideology was a robust predictor of voting for Trump, even after controlling for economic dissatisfaction, sexism, anti-black prejudice, anti-Muslim refugee attitudes, and anti-immigrant sentiment, as well as measures of religion, sociodemographics, and political identity more generally. These findings indicate that Christian nationalist ideology—although correlated with a variety of class-based, sexist, racist, and ethnocentric views—is not synonymous with, reducible to, or strictly epiphenomenal of such views. Rather, Christian nationalism operates as a unique and independent ideology that can influence political actions by calling forth a defense of mythological narratives about America’s distinctively Christian heritage and future.

In 2002, the North Carolina General Assembly made several changes to the system of popular elections for the state\'s appellate courts, including the removal of partisan labels from the ballot, starting with the 2004 elections. This particular change presents an opportunity for a natural experiment in which to observe any differences that may have appeared between how the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled before and after the reform, contributing to a line of literature on the impact of institutional arrangements (including selection systems) on judicial decision-making. The thesis examines whether any detectable differences appeared between judicial behavior and the decisional output of the North Carolina Supreme Court in its partisan era (1995-2004) and in its nonpartisan era (2005-2011). Based on analysis of several different characteristics of the Court\'s decisions and individual justices\' votes in these eras, I find no evidence to suggest that the nonpartisan system was associated with justices behaving in more "nonpartisan" ways. If there was any change, it was that during the nonpartisan era, the behavior of the justices was more in line with what would be expected of partisans than it had been in the partisan era. At least in North Carolina, changing the selection method of state supreme court justices from partisan to nonpartisan elections was not followed by less partisan behavior. / Master of Arts

Electoral violence can have dire consequences for a society, but remains a strategy employed by incumbents to secure electoral victory. This thesis search to explore if electoral violence instigated by progovernment side actually do increase the incumbent’s probability of electoral victory. The novelty of the question derives from taking into account a differentiation between the instigating side as progovernment or anti-government, which previous studies have not done. The argument is that as the opposition is likely to have other motives and resources available than the incumbent, anti-government violence should target other spectrums of the population and thus have a different effect on the electoral outcome than progovernment violence.  The findings give consistent statistical significance to a positive relationship between progovernment instigated violence and probability of incumbent electoral victory when controlling for electoral fraud and anti-government violence. This supports the hypothesis and suggests that incumbents do benefit, at least in the short term, from applying electoral violence. However, long-term backlash may still occur and the consequences for the society is dire. The relationship between anti-government violence and electoral outcome did not achieve statistical significance. Further research are needed to improve the nuance of the findings in this thesis and better understand electoral violence from different actors perspective.

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No description available.

Often mischaracterized as a sedate, muddled, and issueless personality contest, the U.S. presidential election of 1824 actually proved an important transitional contest between the First and Second American Party Systems. The five very active candidates involved in the contest created dynamic organizations, sponsored energetic newspaper networks, staged congressional legislative battles, and spread vicious personal attacks against each other, presaging the tactics of the more-celebrated succeeding 1828 election. Four key developments determined the outcome of the 1824 contest. One, the decline of the opposition Federalists encouraged the Republican Party to fracture into five competing candidacies. Two, Secretary of War John C. Calhoun's vicious political attacks fatally undermined the campaign of frontrunner Treasury Secretary William H. Crawford. Three, political outsider General Andrew Jackson successfully equated the practice of politics with corruption, capturing a plurality of the popular vote by running against Washington politicians. Four, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams' superb insider deal-making ability undergirded his successful effort to win the required House election once no candidate received a majority of electoral votes from the popular election. While adversely affecting the political careers of all the participants except Jackson, the election of 1824 accelerated the ongoing trend toward democratized presidential elections and helped give birth to the Second American Party System. / History

During the 2016 presidential election, public opinion polls consistently showed a lead in the popular vote and Electoral College for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. Following Trump's surprise victory, the political pundits and public at large began to question the accuracy of modern public opinion polling. Fielding a representative sample, convoluted and opaque methodologies, the sheer amount of polls, and both the media's and general public's inability to interpret poll results are among the flaws of the polling industry. An alternative or supplement to traditional polling practices is necessary. This thesis seeks to investigate whether Google Trends can be effectively used as a measure of public opinion during presidential elections. This study gathers polling data from the 2016 presidential election from states that were considered swing states. Specifically, this study examines six total polls, three from states that swung in the way the polls predicted they would – Nevada and Virginia – and three from states that swung against the prediction – Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania. Answers to the "Most Important Issue" question in each poll are compared to their corresponding topics in Google Trends by calculating Pearson product moment correlations for each pair. Results indicated that in states that swung as predicted, Google Trends was an effective supplement to traditional public opinion polls. In states that did not swing as predicted, Google Trends was not an effective supplement. Implications of these results and future considerations for the polling industry and Google are discussed. / Master of Arts

The 2016 U.S. presidential election results surprised many, after several groups many believed to be surefire voters for Democrats based on previous elections voted for Republican Donald Trump (Bump, 2016). Whenever a change takes place in voter patterns, one begins to hear phrases like “critical election” and “political realignment.” A critical election is an election where there is a change of at least 10 percent in partisan alignment, but it does not persist in the next election. A partisan realignment is similar to a critical election, but the change is more durable. This research explores whether the 2016 election can be classified as a critical election and whether and how key groupings of Democratic voters voted in the election compared to their votes in the 2012 election. Using data aggregated at the county level, regression analyses suggest that voters’ education, access to health care, union membership, racial/ethnic diversity, and income level all had statistically significant relationships with votes in both elections and with the change in vote between 2016 and 2012, all were substantively significant or in directions consistent with the presence of a critical election when viewed either from the national or even regional viewpoint. Evidence suggests that 2016 was a critical election. / M.A. / If 2016 proved anything about elections, it is that at times they can be difficult to predict. Predicting voter behavior based on past elections is not straightforward, in part because at times voters can make sharp changes in their party alliance over the course of four years. Sometimes those changes are lasting, but they also can fade by the next election cycle. This study examined whether the 2016 U.S. presidential election constituted such a sharp and sudden change from the 2012 election, an event social scientists term a “critical election.” Conducted at the county level, the study examined whether and how voter groupings (based on education, access to health care, union membership, income, and race/ethnicity) changed notably between 2012 and 2016. What was found was that as expected Democrats experienced a negative change in support among union, white, and impoverished voters. What was not expected was the negative change in Black votes for Democrats between 2012 and 2016. Another unexpected, though smaller, change was a drop in Democratic support by the college educated. No significant change in Democratic support was found among Hispanics or those with access to healthcare. Based on these findings 2016 can be considered to have been a critical election for Blacks.

Whig campaign strategists in the presidential election of 1840 developed new campaign tactics that included widespread use of campaign songs. They used these songs to sing the praises of their own candidate and policies while at the same time attacking the opposing party's candidate and policies. As early as 1842 these songwriters began writing songs in anticipation of the campaign in 1844. Prior to the nomination of candidates in May, 1844, the Whigs had published several songbooks including hundreds of song titles. In addition to supporting the candidacy of Henry Clay as the Whig candidate, the songs ridiculed several potential Democratic candidates including Martin Van Buren, John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, and others. Whigs also used imagery to support their candidate and attack the foe. Despite extensive efforts to influence the election with campaign songs, no hard evidence exists that documents the effect of campaign songs, either positively or negatively.

This thesis presents a spatial analysis of electoral results of the ANO (Alliance of Dissatisfied Citizens) political platform in the 2013 parliamentary elections in the Czech Republic. The study aims to identify spatial patterns of their electoral support and to uncover underlying factors which steered voters towards supporting this party. Furthermore, the thesis attempts to determine whether ANO is a new right-wing party poised to displace previously established right-wing parties (especially ODS); whether its support reached highest levels of support in areas where traditional right-wing parties lost the most votes, and whether significant regional differences exist in voter support for ANO.As explanatory variables, the study uses socio- demographic and economic characteristics reflecting the population structure and the nature of local contexts. Furthermore, the thesis further intends to analyse possible ways through which the pattern of ANO voter support may have been influenced by the activities of the Agrofertagricultural company owned by the platform's leader Andrej Babis. Methodically, the study is grounded in an analysis of aggregate data on electoral results in municipalities, as well as an analysis of sociological surveys of individual voter behaviour. The thesis processed the data via...