The 2010 midterm elections are consequential not only in terms of the candidates who were elected to office, but also in terms of the government policies that they will enact. High on the list of important policies is the decennial practice of drawing new redistricting plans for legislative offices. A new census reveals population shifts that will result in a reallocation of congressional seats among the states through apportionment and—following U.S. Supreme Court rulings in the 1960s—a re-balancing of congressional and state legislative district populations within states that aims to give fast-growing areas more representation and slow-growing areas less. Of course, much more than an innocuous administrative adjustment occurs during the process of redistricting. The individuals who draw districts are keenly aware that district lines may affect the fortunes of incumbents, political parties, and minority voters' candidates of choice.

This article investigates the variables that affect the award of tenure in political science departments in the United States. We examined two dependent variables: (1) whether a department has denied tenure in the past five years, and (2) whether a positive departmental tenure recommendation has been reversed by higher college or university authorities during the same period of time. Five clusters of independent variables were evaluated: (1) college/university and departmental characteristics, (2) the procedures employed to evaluate tenure cases, (3) the instruments used to assess teaching, (4) service expectations, and (5) research and publication standards. We found that the most important factors affecting departmental decisions to deny tenure were whether teaching and substantive publications were treated as equally valuable qualifications, the number of articles a candidate published, and the candidate's level of commitment to advising. Interestingly, reversal decisions by higher authorities were not strongly affected by any of the variables in the analysis.

Existing measures of article and journal impact count citations that articles receive in other articles. Such metrics ignore citations that articles receive in monographs and edited-volume chapters. Counting article citations in books reveals that popular measures of article and journal impact discriminate against articles and journals that receive citations in books rather than (or in addition to) citations in other articles, thereby discriminating against the research contributions of scholars who publish such articles. Analysis of citation patterns over 25 years reveals that citations in books have declined in American politics research while citations in articles have increased; citations in both books and articles remain important in the other subfields. Findings suggest that political scientists should supplement indicators of journal impact based on citations in peer-reviewed articles with measures that account for the citations that published articles receive in books.

Some of the most fundamental concerns about democratic politics involve information—who has access to it, how do individuals get it, and of what quality and type is it? The answers to each of these questions invariably involve other people, and it is for this reason that modern democracy is unthinkable save in terms of social networks.

Publication in scholarly journals is a key to scholarly success. However, previous studies have shown that across many disciplines, including political science, women publish significantly less than men and prefer to use qualitative methodology. In this article, we explore the accuracy of these trends by examining a decade's worth (2000–09) of women's publications in four top political science journals (the American Political Science Review, the American Journal of Political Science, the Journal of Politics, and PS: Political Science and Politics). Using a systematic content analysis, we determine the gender ratio of the authors, funding sources, methods, and the ratio of qualitative and quantitative studies. We find that while women publish less than men in each of these venues, their publication rates resemble their representation in the field.

Against the backdrop of the 2008 presidential election, a watershed event in terms of electoral participation, many speculated that renewed interest in voting would spill over into the 2010 cycle, resulting in a meaningful uptick in voter turnout in the midterm elections overall. Turnout was expected to be especially robust among Republicans eager to regain their numbers in 2010, capitalizing on Democratic withdrawal fueled by voters' frustration with President Obama, congressional Democrats, and the struggling economy. In 2008, an electorate energized around an historic contest and unprecedented levels of voter mobilization helped to drive more citizens to the polls on Election Day than ever before (Panagopoulos and Francia 2009). An estimated 131.1 million Americans voted for president, representing 61.6% of the eligible voting population (McDonald 2009). Voter turnout among eligible voters in 2008 was 1.5 percentage points higher than in 2004, when 122.3 million voters participated in the presidential election (Bergan et al. 2005). The 2008 election thus marked the third consecutive presidential election cycle in which voter turnout increased, reversing a trend of declining participation that began in the 1960s (McDonald 2009). In fact, national turnout in recent presidential elections has rivaled modern highs in the level of electoral participation that occurred in the 1950s and 1960s.

Doctoral programs take great care in assuring that students are prepared to enter the job market and become effective teachers and researchers. However, once faced with the daunting task of landing their first position, students are oftentimes left on their own. Given the current state of the job market—more applicants for fewer jobs—it is essential that students understand the process and what they should expect as they work to receive their first academic position. In this article, we walk students through the hiring process from deciding which jobs to apply for to handling contract negotiations.

What are the relational dimensions of politics? Does the way that people and organizations are connected to each other matter? Are our opinions affected by the people with whom we talk? Are legislators affected by lobbyists? Is the capacity of social movements to mobilize affected by the structure of societal networks? Powerful evidence in the literature answers each of these questions in the affirmative. However, compared to other paradigmatic foci, political science has invested tiny amounts of capacity in the study of the relevance of networks to political phenomena. Far more attention has been paid to the psychology of how people process information individually as opposed to collectively, and to the role that institutions play in structuring politics as opposed to the relational undergirdings of politics. A review of the flagship journals in political science reveals a dearth of articles on networks. Few, if any, doctoral programs include courses for which the primary focus is network-related ideas, and even the notion of a relational dependence in data is rarely mentioned in discussions of the assumptions embedded in the statistical methods that dominate political science.

A number of indicators signal a growing interest in the study of political phenomena from a network perspective in the United States, such as the growing number of published articles with a network focus in the discipline's top-tier journals and the creation of a new Political Networks section of the APSA in 2008. Yet another notable indicator is the organization of a new annual conference financially supported by the National Science Foundation—the Political Networks conference. The meeting not only brings together scholars who study networks in political science, but also fosters collaboration across disciplines by encouraging participation of non–political scientists with the goal of achieving more comprehensive answers to questions that cannot be properly answered within the confines of individual disciplines.

We provide advice to presenters at political science conferences. Our advice is based on the idea that the goal of a professional presentation is to provide an audience with information it can understand, discuss, and remember. We argue that current presentational norms in our discipline are counterproductive, and we encourage presenters to make their presentations more constrained, less technical, and more connected to the political world outside of political science.

Although the overall representation of women in the field of political science has increased gradually over the last several decades, most gains are being achieved at junior levels. When considering the status of women in the profession, it is instructive to incorporate information on the presence of women in editorial positions at top-ranked political science journals. Our 2010 snapshot of women editors in the top 50 journals in the field finds that on average, women are reasonably well represented in editorial positions in proportion to the ranks they hold in the profession overall and at PhD-granting institutions; however, substantial variation exists across journals. Our discussion of the role-model effect and the gatekeeping power of editors suggests that greater inclusion of women and others who bring different perspectives to research could result in a more vibrant range of research topics and methodological approaches published in a journal.

The 2008 congressional elections produced a House in which 84 members came from split-outcome districts. Forty-nine Democrats won in districts that Barack Obama lost, and 35 Republicans won in districts that Obama won. To protect their majority, the Democrats needed to retain these 49 members. Given the party's 257 seats, these split members constituted the difference between being in the majority and the minority. The 49 Democrats faced the dilemma of whether to vote with their party, given that their district voted for the presidential candidate of the other party. The focus here is on these split Democrats: their electoral situation, their votes, and their fate in 2010.

One of the concerns that has plagued research on the biological and genetic underpinnings of social behaviors and individual differences is the fear that such information can be used for ill. This fear rests on a foundation of good reason. Early abuses involving the use of selective phrenology and other purportedly “scientific” methods to establish moral hierarchies among races or between sexes have exerted profound and lasting damage on society, as well as affecting later attempts to more productively examine the biological bases of individual difference. And yet, many policies that have focused exclusively on social factors have created equal pain and suffering, although these approaches have rarely fostered as much discussion. However, despite these negative outcomes, biological research can also attack diseases, alleviate suffering, and dispel social myths that wrongfully assign blame to the victim or otherwise oversimplify behavior. Here, we argue for a similar positive valuation of such an approach in political and social research. We concentrate not on the ethics of conducting this research, but rather the ethical need for this research to be conducted.

The year 2012 will mark a full century in which the size of the House of Representatives has held constant at 435. The 1910 census determined the population of the United States to be 92,228,496, which amounted to an average of one representative for every 212,000 persons. Following the 1910 census, Congress passed Public Law 62-5, which fixed the House size at 435. The law has never been repealed. In 2000, the census showed the population of the United States to be 298,757,310, or about 300 million. Consequently, in 2000, there was one representative for every 687,000 persons counted in the census, a more than threefold increase in district size since 1910. The average district size today is already greater than the populations of the four least populous states. According to population estimates, this average will further increase to 712,000 in 2010 and over 1 million by the middle of the twenty-first century. The 2010 census offers a great opportunity to renew debate about an increase in the size of the House.

We critique the typical use of visual aids at political science conferences and make suggestions about more effective ways to incorporate them into presentations. Our main suggestions are that political scientists should use fewer and simpler slides, and that those slides should contain visually rich information that illustrates a speaker's point without distracting the audience from his or her words.

When student presentations are offered in the classroom, instructors are most likely to be concerned about the extent to which students pay attention and learn from the experience of not only giving a presentation, but about what students learn as an audience. After devising a peer-evaluation instrument for students to evaluate their classmates' presentations, over the course of two years and 10 courses, we surveyed students to determine the effectiveness and usefulness of peer evaluations. We found that students are more likely to pay attention, gain a different perspective on the presentation experience, and be more engaged in the presentation when they evaluate one another.

There may be no greater concern in political science than the state of the job market. Particularly for newly minted Ph.D.s, the number and type of jobs available and their possibility of success on the market are sources of great anxiety. Similarly, department chairs, graduate directors, and dissertation chairs struggle as they make choices about recruiting faculty and students and determine how to advise their students as they progress toward their degrees. These concerns are common in most years, but they have been especially salient in the last several years, when the economic downturn has affected nearly every aspect of higher education. The purpose of this report is to present data that will assist faculty and students in navigating the political science employment landscape.

In close, disputed elections, outcomes can depend on determinations of voter intent for ballots that have been filled out improperly. We surveyed 899 adult Minnesotans during a time when the state's U.S. Senate election was still disputed and presented them with ambiguous ballots similar to ballots under dispute in the same election. We randomized participants to three experimental groups, across which we varied the names on the ballot. We found that participants' judgments of voter intent were strongly biased by their voting preferences (p < .002 in all four ballots).

How polarized are American political parties? Recently, Kidd used an automated content analysis program to demonstrate that American party platforms reveal only minor policy differences. In contrast to his conclusions, this analysis produces three main findings. First, at the state level, state party platforms reveal considerable ideological differences between the parties. Second, differences in state public opinion do not account for these differences; rather, they are more closely correlated with activist opinions and increases in state party competition. Finally, the conflict is not simply ideological but applies to specific issues in the platforms. As such, American state parties are highly polarized on different measures. Automated content analysis programs clearly represent an important methodological advance in coding political texts, but the results here call attention to the importance of policy and agenda content in party platforms. Moreover, studies of American politics, particularly research focusing on parties and ideological polarization, need to take into account the diversity of agendas that is inherent in a federal party system.

This article presents three classroom demonstrations designed to help instructors who would like to include some political psychology in their classes. All three demonstrations involve student participation and give the students direct experience with psychological processes relevant to political science. Specifically, I describe how I present the Stroop task, a priming task, and Tversky and Kahneman's Asian disease experiment in my own teaching. For each of the demonstrations, I give practical advice for classroom use, a short description of the psychological processes the demonstration illustrates, and a brief discussion of how those processes have been applied in political science.