One of the interesting puzzles in state politics is why some one party dominant
states become two-party competitive states and others remain one party dominant
states. The purpose of this assignment is to 1.
empirically assess how competitive the states in your region are; 2. empirically
examine how they have changed over time; and 3. theorize about why these changes
have happened.
Democratic Control of State Government
Using Excel, create a line chart that indicates the percentage of the 3 branches (Assembly, Senate, and Governorship) that were under Democratic party control from 1952 to the present for your region’s states. The values will either be 0, 33%, 66% or 100%. (Download the excel data here)
Democratic Control of State
Assembly and Senate
The aggregate measure of partisan control of state government may mask underlying
partisan trends, trends that are better measured using the percent of the Assembly
and Senate that is controlled by Democrats. Dowload
the excel data here and create a line chart for each of your states that
shows the percentage of the Assembly and or Senate controlled by Democrats from
1952 to the present.
The datasets have something called
auto-filter on. It looks like a little downward arrow. Click on it and click
on the state you want. Then only the data for that state will be there. You
can copy and paste the data into another excel file and make your charts there.
Data on partisan balance in state legislatures is from Carl Klarner 1959-2000
dataset, "Measurement of Partisan Balance of State Government." http://www.ipsr.ku.edu/SPPQ/journal_datasets.shtml
National Partisan Trends
States partisan allegiances in national elections often vary dramatically from state level partisanship. For your third sets of charts, create a line chart that indicates the percentage of voters in your state that supported the Democratic presidential candidate in the 1952 elections to the present. You can either collect the data manually from the Vital Statistics on American Politics, (Reference Collection -- 1st floor Call Number: JK274 .V582 2003-04) or you can go on line to Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections http://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/ choose your state, click on the Compare State Data by Year (Table), and either cut and paste the data into excel or type it in manually.
In order for this number to make sense, you need to calculate the Democrats share of the 2 party vote (=Democrat % / (Democrat % + GOP%), or else those presidential elections with 3rd party candidates (1992 with Ross Perot getting 20%, will make your states seem less Democratic than they really are). Here is a sample formula in Excel to do this for you. Just replace the Virginia Democratic and Republican %s with those of your state.
State Government and Citizen
Liberalism
A group of state scholars frustrated with the obvious differences between a
New York democrat and a Mississippi democrat have developed a set of statistical
measures of how liberal each state government is and its citizens are. (100
is the most liberal, 0 most conservative). (Download
the excel data here) (The Berry et al measure of state ideology measures
the relative policy liberalism among states that may be masked by simpler measures
of the degree of Democratic control of state government. It uses roll-call votes
of each state’s congressional delegation to quantify state government
liberalism and the outcomes of Congressional elections to measure citizens’
ideology. Their measure also takes into account the partisan division of the
state legislature and the party of the governor, reflecting the relative partisan
balance of power within each state. The measure also changes annually and thus
captures the ideological fluctuations among the states, as opposed to static
measures such as how the state voted in a presidential election.) Use the data
to make a chart showing how liberal the state government official are and how
liberal the citizens are over time. Data is from Berry, Ringquest, et al, Measuring
Citizen and State Government Ideology, American Journal of Political Science,
January 1998.
Qualitative Research
Go to Andrew Appleton and Daniel Ward, State Party Profiles: A 50 State Guide
To Development, Organization, and Resource (Location: Reference Collection --
1st floor Call Number: JK2261 .S83 1997) in the reference section of the library.
It provides a highly detailed analysis of each of the 50 states’ political
parties. Make a copy of the couple of pages on your states and make sure
to put the book back since everyone in the class needs to use the book.
Read about the Republican and Democratic state parties in your state.
Explaining Partisan Trends
and Changes
Please prepare an 8-12 minute presentation on the extent and causes
of inter-party competitiveness in your states that presents your argument about
how politically competitive they are, why it has changed over time or not; and
what is the role of national and internal forces politics.
Thoughts on how to fashion an effective presentation
1. Tell us a story. Not like Goldilocks and Three Democrats, but rather a story of what is happening in these states. We can all read the charts. Your presentation needs to provide something additional. The qualitative research may help here. How competitive are the states? Have the states shifted towards more two party competition, or is there a dominant one party? Are there many period of unified democratic or republic government, or lots of divided government?
2. Create visually clear and effective charts. You have a lot of data to present, and not a lot of time. Examine previous groups' slides to determine which format works best. You are free to experiment and present the data as you see fit. Ultimately, your presentation is only as good as your analysis about what is driving the changes in partisan competition.
3. Creative Thought Matters- Feel free to innovate and add whatever supports your argument about what is happening to affect partisan competition in these states. For example, the Election Atlas web site http://uselectionatlas.org/ has county level maps of how states voted in presidential elections. You may want to show us the county level maps of the 1960 and 2004 elections (both very close national elections) to see how the partisan alignment has changed geographically and illustrate the regional dimension of change. Does the nature of partisan competition in these states follows from urban rural split? If there is a political figure who changed the party dynamics in the state, it may make sense to show us that picture.
4. Are the states in your region liberal or conservative? The presidential election data is good in this regard.
5. Which states are the most liberal or democratic compared to each other? Give us a sense of their relative ideology
Here is a presentation with some sample charts so you can get a sense of what works and what doesn't. Also see the previous class's powerpoints and web pags.