Over the course of American history, the vice presidency has evolved into a meaningful and influential part of the executive branch, and running mates have become an important part of presidential elections. But scholars, pundits, and political professionals continue to discuss and evaluate vice presidential selection in an outdated framework that now borders on superstition. Now that presidential nominees have sole authority to choose their running mates and the resources to take care in the process, voters demand that they do so. The modern presidential nominee should undertake a serious and methodical research and decision-making process, and should choose a running mate who 1) demonstrates unassailable competence, and 2) bolsters the ticket – not balances it – by extending presidential nominee’s narrative into uncovered territory.

This thesis seeks to predict the results of the presidential election in the United States, with a specific interest in swing states. I construct a methodology to predict the difference between the state and national two-party vote share for all 50 states plus D.C. using economic variables such as the change in the unemployment rate, the growth of real per capita Gross Domestic Product, Gallup poll ratings, and the ideology of the candidate. The methodology presented also allows the number of swing states to adjust between election years by giving each state its own coefficient on the difference between the state and national change in the unemployment rate. The resulting State-National Gap Model is then used to predict the two-party vote share for the Democrats using regression analysis with panel data for the elections from 1992-2008. My model is tested against the 2012 election and successfully predicts 49 out of 50 states as well as D.C.

The relationship between economic performance and support for the incumbent government varies across voters and electoral contexts. While some of this variation can be explained by factors that make it easier or harder to hold politicians accountable, an additional explanation is that the electoral importance of economic issues varies systematically across groups and contexts. Because issues that are personally important tend to be more easily accessible when voting, we prose that exposure to economic shocks generates higher incentives to place more weight on economic conditions when voting. We test this hypothesis using archived and original survey data from Argentina, Mexico, and Peru. The analysis demonstrates that economic vulnerability enhances the economy's salience. Specifically, poverty generates incentives to cast an egotropic vote while wealth, insecure employment, informal employment, and exclusion from governments welfare programs enhances sociotropic voting because these groups have greater stakes in the national economy. By implication, elections in developing countries with large numbers of vulnerable voters should be more strongly contested over economics despite the weak institutional environment that potentially undermines the ability of voters to hold politicians accountable. Aggregate elections returns and the CSES survey support this proposition and demonstrate that economic voting is substantially more common in Latin American than in Western Europe or North America. Thus variations in economic voting provide opportunities to not only learn about the conditions under which elections can serve as mechanisms of accountability but also a laboratory to model the process of preference formation and the demands voters place on their representatives. / Dissertation

The idea of ¡¥semi-presidential system¡¦ was proposed by Duverger (1980), and it aroused substantial following studies. Newly rising democratic countries have also adopted semi-presidential system. After 1990, Taiwan also adopted a semi-presidential systems right after the constitution revised. As the member of the system, the understanding and improvement of theoretical and practical for the system is necessary and timing. This study will plan to compare the constitutional frameworks and operational types of semi-presidential countries between France and Taiwan. We try to find the variables that influence the constitutional operation. We expect this study can provide a causal model for the further empirical research. After compare the constitutional statues and its operations difference between France and Taiwan, we have the constitutional statues boundary of semi-presidential system. We also have the constitutional operations basic rule by constitutional interpretation. To be a normative constitution, that is, its norms govern the political process or the power process adjusts itself to the norms, constitutional operations should be operate between the ¡§boundary¡¨ and the ¡§basic rule¡¨. We expect this study can provide a dialogue platform between political science and law and construct an operative standard for judicial review.

In recent years, methodology of new institutionalism has gradually been the crucial feature of the researches on constitutional system. By pointing out the political actors who affect constitutional operation, the context of institution that constructs constitutional rules, and the social structure accompanied with constitutional culture, etc., the new institutionalism even replaces the old institutionalism in constitutional analysis. However, due to incompatible roots in methodology, new institutionalism has raised more and more disputes. In addition, derived from the same origin that presented historically and methodically, new institutionalism and its old counterpart share some assumptions that make it difficult to divide on institutional approach. Therefore, by the comparative viewpoint of old and new institutionalism approaches, this thesis will integrate them into the analysis of institutional change, and apply to the constitutional change in R.O.C. (1947-2007). Through this way, this thesis will base on the design and operation of the constitutional system of R.O.C. and carry on cause and effect analysis according to the historical context. By several specific time sequences of the path of institutional change, include: crucial moments and changes of the system origin, institutional structure and crisis met, interactive actors¡¦ preferences and tactics, this thesis will also plan to observe the starting point, development of the path and assess its prospect. Moreover, abide by the old and new institutionalism approaches are derived from the same origin, meanwhile, the concepts of ¡§constitution¡¨ and ¡§constitutionalism¡¨ also do combine with them, the purpose of this thesis is to confirm the dimensions of ¡§constitutional law¡¨, ¡§constitutional operation¡¨ and ¡§spirit of constitutionalism¡¨ in Taiwan¡¦s semi-presidential system. Thus, by the comparative viewpoint of old and new institutionalism approaches, this thesis will analyze three main problems of Taiwan¡¦s constitutional operations revealed by the president-premier-Legislative Yuan interactions through the perspectives of ¡§constitutional law¡¨, ¡§constitutional operation¡¨ and ¡§spirit of constitutionalism.¡¨ The concern of this thesis is to establish a new analytical framework which could find out constitutional problems effectively, and propose the solutions.

This research attempts to find out the possible reasons which affect to the polling supports of pan-blue and pan-green¡¦s presidential candidates by first-order autoregressive model since May 20th 2000 to March 22nd 2008. We explore the effect of these factors and how the factors to affect the degree of both candidates¡¦ supports. We try to explain the fluctuating of both sides¡¦ degree. To exploring the change of the polling supports and degree, this research collects many significant events during the said period. We view the degree of each category¡¦s effect by sorting out government¡¦s policy, economy, ideologies of independence and unification, the personal issues of candidates, parties¡¦ issue and others to explain the reasons of polling supports¡¦ change in addition I add the effect of media organ, candidates nominating or not, the difference of each election, and the time effect. From the results of this research, the effect of media positions for polling outcomes is not significant, but the candidates nominating or not and the difference of each election affect to pan-blue¡¦s supports and both sides¡¦ degree. Besides, the issue of ideologies of independence and unification influences to pan-blue and pan-green¡¦s candidates, but the candidates personal issues affects the change of the both sides¡¦ degree. When the events of government policy and ideologies of independence and unification are happened more nearly at the polling time, the effect to the change of the polling supports will be greater.

Thesis (M.A.)--Bowling Green State University, 2009. / Document formatted into pages; contains viii, 102 p. Includes bibliographical references.

In this dissertation was examined the hydraulic pattern of media-priming effects by looking into Granger causality (a statistical test to determine if one time series is useful in forecasting another) between media coverage and the importance of issues people perceive. The hydraulic pattern hypothesis, an argument that increase in the importance of an issue is accompanied by decrease in a similar amount of importance, is embedded in most media-effect theories but has rarely been tested. To test the causality with media coverage, time series of six issues and six candidate variables were created. This research is distinct from previous studies of priming in that it tests aggregate-level influence of media coverage on popular evaluation of political-campaign candidate in a long-term setting. In the findings, media coverage of issues induced changes in the Granger-caused issue-weight of the issue that it covered, confirming the main effects of priming. The hydraulic pattern was also confirmed. Active media coverage of an issue, induced Granger-caused changes in five other issue-weights. It was found that it takes 7–8 days after the media coverage to establish a causal relationship of priming effects. vii In another finding, the result showed that the time-lag of the hydraulic pattern preceded the main priming effects. As regards the debated relationship of priming effects with political knowledge, this research found that high knowledge groups are more susceptible to the main priming effects. However, the impact of political knowledge on the hydraulic pattern was the opposite. This means that less knowledgeable people may be more vulnerable; that is, they are more likely to lose sight of other issues when the media primes a certain issue. In the test of attribute priming, the causality of the hydraulic pattern was also established to a lesser degree. Especially, personality-related candidate attributes like trustworthiness were robust regarding the hydraulic-pattern effects. In all of these analyses, the measurement of optimal time-lag was utilized instead of the durability concept used in previous studies. With this study design and new measurements, this research contributes to the literature by providing new insight into the theoretical conundrums related to priming theory. One of such insight is that the priming effects that matter at the poll, are relatively slow and deliberative processes, and are differentiated from the temperamental daily effects of news. / text

This comparative research looks at intermedia agenda-setting effects between Internet bulletin boards and traditional news media, such as daily newspapers and broadcasting, in both the United States and Korea. By examining this intermedia relationship and the flow of influence by Internet bulletin boards on traditional media during presidential campaigns in the two countries, this dissertation study attempts to extend our knowledge of intermedia agenda-setting research. In addition, it also investigates, in reverse, the effects of daily newspapers and broadcasting on Internet bulletin boards. Finally, attention is given to different types of discussion cultures in the two countries. Results of this dissertation research indicated that there are intermedia relationships between Internet bulletin boards and traditional news media, such as newspapers and broadcasting, at the first and second levels of agenda setting using cross-lagged correlation comparisons. More specifically, at the first level of agenda setting in the United States, the results explained only the influence of newspapers on Netizen opinions posted on Internet bulletin boards. In summary, the results concerning issue agenda in the United States indicate that the U.S. Netizen concentrates more on the issue agenda of newspapers than of broadcasting. In the second level of agenda setting in the United States, cross-lagged correlation comparisons not only indicated the influence of both newspapers and broadcasting on opinions posted on Internet bulletin boards, but they also clarified it in this research. Formerly, there was no attempt to examine attributes of the intermedia agenda-setting functions of the U.S. media. This research now provides an explanation of the apparent relationship between traditional media and the Internet. At the first level of agenda setting in Korea, the result of the cross-lagged correlation suggested that Korean newspaper and broadcasting issue agenda influenced Netizen opinions on Internet bulletin boards. As the result of second-level agenda setting in Korea showed earlier, cross-lagged correlation comparisons presented intermedia agenda-setting functions between both newspapers and broadcasting, and Internet bulletin boards with each other. These findings contrast with results in the United States. / text

The question of whether or not campaigns have an impact on vote choice and mobilization has been debated by a number of scholars. In this dissertation, I explore this question using data from presidential nomination elections, as I argue this setting allows us to better understand campaign effects than the general election. Due to the intra-party nature of nomination contests, voters are not able to rely on partisanship in making their decision among candidates. Instead voters need to use some other source of information in making their decisions about 1) whether or not to vote and 2) which candidate to vote for. I explore these two decisions in depth in my dissertation, focusing mainly on the effect visits have on both. I have compiled data on both the timing and location of all of the candidate visits throughout the presidential nominating contests of 2008, across both the invisible primary and election year campaigns. Using this unique dataset, I explore the different ways in which state visits affect presidential nomination outcomes. Specifically, I investigate the strategy behind the visits, whether or not visits increase turnout, and how visits affect vote choice. By examining these different aspects of nominating campaigns, I am able to address a number of different literatures and theories, including those focused on candidate strategy, presidential nominations, political communication, and whether or not campaigns matter.