In the 2008 election, Barack Obama's campaign brought many new voters to the polls. Were these new voters necessary for Obama's victory? In this study, I find that they were not. The basis of this finding is an examination of decisions made by people who voted for George W. Bush in 2004. I show that Bush voters' decisions not to vote or to support Obama were a sufficient condition for Obama's victory.

Congressional election forecasting has experienced steady growth. Currently fashionable models stress prediction over explanation. The independent variables do not offer a substantive account of the election outcome. Instead, these variables are tracking variables—that is, indicators that may trace the result but fail to explain it. The outstanding example is the generic ballot measure, which asks respondents for whom they plan to vote in the upcoming congressional race. While this variable correlates highly with presidential party House seat share, it is bereft of substance. The generic ballot measure is the archetypical tracking variable, and it holds pride of place in the Abramowitz (2010) model. Other examples of such tracking variables are exposed seats or lagged seats, features of the Campbell (2010) model. The difficulty with such tracking models is twofold. First, they are not based on a theory of the congressional vote. Second, because they are predictive models, they offer a suboptimal forecasting instrument when compared to models specified according to strong theory.

Historically, U.S. asylum policy has reflected both an effort to provide safe haven for deserving asylum seekers and the intent to promote national security and domestic policy priorities. A growing body of empirical evidence suggests that asylum outcomes, at least in the aggregate, have been weighted more heavily by foreign policy considerations than humanitarian concerns. Since the mid 1990s, the United States government has reformed the asylum system in response to concerns of abuse by economic migrants, burgeoning caseloads, and national security threats. Although, as Davergne (2008) points out, “the most reviled of asylum seekers of the global era is the ‘economic refugee,’ under suspicion of fleeing poverty and poor prospects in search of a better life” rather than fleeing because of the fear of persecution (65), in the wake of terrorist attacks on the United States in 1993 and 2001, the fears of economic opportunists abusing the system have combined with the broader fear of potential terrorists gaining legal entry into the country through an overburdened asylum system. Since 1995, Congress has passed two major acts to reform the asylum process in reaction to these fears. Both the 1996 Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act and the 2005 Real ID Act were passed to prevent economic migrants and individuals who may pose security risks from entering the country on false claims of asylum. Following September 11, the U.S. government has pursued prosecution for documents fraud among asylum applicants and aggressively enforced safe third country requirements. And, like our European counterparts, the United States has increasingly taken more deterrent and preventative actions to discourage asylum applicants from choosing it as a target for asylum and prevent potential applicants from reaching its ports of entry. Critics fear that the draconian measures adopted in response to these fears are overly broad and worry that worthy applicants have been turned away at the border or denied asylum with increasing frequency, thus leading them to face the real possibility of torture and other forms of persecution. In this article, we examine changes in U.S. asylum policy and whether the heightened security concerns after September 11 have significantly influenced the U.S. asylum process and outcomes in U.S. immigration courts.

Qualitative research dominates political science. In the field of international relations (IR), for example, about 70% of scholars primarily employ qualitative methods, compared to 21% favoring formal or quantitative analysis (Jordan et al. 2009). Since nearly all of the latter make secondary use of textual and historical methods, overall over 90% of IR scholars employ qualitative analysis, whereas 48% use any statistical and only 12% any formal methods. This understates the dominance of qualitative analysis, for many statistical data sets rest ultimately on historical work, and IR scholars, when polled, report that qualitative case studies are more relevant for policy than quantitative or formal work. Hardly any major IR debate—whether that over the end of the cold war, American unipolarity, Chinese foreign policy, the nature of European integration, compliance with international law, democratic peace, the causes of war, or the impact of human rights norms—remains untouched by important qualitative contributions.

Travel, stump speeches, and pressing-the-flesh make up a large part of any presidential electoral campaign. Obviously, candidates feel that their appearances are important, as they make hundreds of appearances between Labor Day and Election Day. But are they right? Well over 100 million people cast ballots in November, but only the tiniest fraction of voters meets or catches a glimpse of either of the candidates. Do candidate appearances and contact sway voters in some way? In this article, we use changes in weekly state tracking polls to determine the impact of candidate appearances in battleground and non-battleground states. Using polling data from the 2000, 2004, and 2008 elections, we find that campaign appearances can change a candidate's polling percentages, and that the impact varies by candidate and location (battleground state, safe Democratic state, or safe Republican state). We also find that the selection of a vice-presidential candidate is important, because of this candidate's ability to campaign effectively.

I had interacted with professor Imari Obadele for quite some time at the National Conference of Black Political Scientists (NCOBPS). He is an elder scholar whom I knew had been politically active in the past but I was not aware of his specific affiliations or activities. At the time we first met, Obadele was only known to me as a political scientist at Prairie View. I had just begun my first job at the University of Houston a few years before. As there were not many elder black political scientists that I knew at the time, especially one interested in social movements and revolution, we immediately hit it off. It was not until a year or so after we first met and after I had published some research on the Black Panther Party (Davenport 1998a; Dahlerus and Davenport 1999; Davenport and Eads 2001), that we really started to interact.

Historically, statistical models for forecasting the outcome of midterm elections to the United States House of Representatives have not been particularly successful (Jones and Cuzán 2006). However, in what may have been a breakthrough, most models correctly predicted that the Democrats would re-emerge as the majority party in 2006 (Cuzán 2007). One successful model was estimated using 46 elections, beginning with 1914 (only the second time that 435 representatives, the present number, were elected). The model was relatively simple, making use of national-level variables only (Cuzán and Bundrick 2006). Using a similar model, I generated a forecast for the 2010 midterm election.

Many journalists and politicians believe that during the Bush administration, a majority of Americans supported torture if they were assured that it would prevent a terrorist attack. As Mark Danner wrote in the April 2009 New York Review of Books, “Polls tend to show that a majority of Americans are willing to support torture only when they are assured that it will ‘thwart a terrorist attack.’” This view was repeated frequently in both left- and right-leaning articles and blogs, as well as in European papers (Sharrock 2008; Judd 2008; Koppelman 2009; Liberation 2008). There was a consensus, in other words, that throughout the years of the Bush administration, public opinion surveys tended to show a pro-torture American majority.

This research examines the effect of disgruntlement among primary and caucus voters who supported U.S. presidential nomination losers—a potentially divisive nomination process. I analyze the general election voting behavior of primary and caucus voters in the 2008 presidential election to determine if differences exist between supporters of the winning nominee in each party and backers of other candidates who also sought the nomination. A multivariate analysis of the determinants of “loyal party vote” suggests that Clinton and Edwards supporters showed a significantly higher degree of defection in the general election, although this behavior did not occur among people who voted for Romney or Huckabee in their state's primary or caucus.

Political science as a discipline lacks any convention on the order in which authors should be listed in co-authored publications. As a result, the order of authors' surnames currently provides no information to other scholars, hiring and promotion committees, and other reviewers about the relative contributions of each collaborator. This lack of information impedes the allocation of proper credit for scholarly contributions. Moreover, in collaborations between junior and senior colleagues, or other asymmetric status hierarchies, the absence of both information and any convention tends to favor more established scholars; this makes it more difficult for graduate students, untenured professors, and other vulnerable co-authors to negotiate for and receive appropriate credit. Listing authors by relative contribution is both more informative and fair. In publications where one author provides the necessary research funding, or a faculty member is not only a co-author but also a dissertation or other academic advisor, it is also appropriate to designate that collaborator as “last” or “senior author.” In all cases, articles should carry a short statement indicating the division of labor between the co-authors, even or especially if the contributions are equal.

This article offers forecasts made on July 22, 2010, for the 2010 state legislative elections. Most work in the election forecasting field has been done on presidential and U.S. House elections. Less has been done for U.S. Senate elections, and almost none for gubernatorial or state legislative elections. This year will see much attention directed at the 43 state legislatures holding elections, because many will have the responsibility for drawing new district lines based on the 2010 census. Furthermore, of those chambers with elections scheduled in 2010, seven currently contain one party with less than a 5% margin of control. With so much at stake, these will clearly be contests to watch.

In recent years, the relationship between foreign military occupation and the increased likelihood of violent insurgency and terrorism has been asserted (Pape 2005) but is far from proven. The actual micro-level dynamics that make the correlation between the two sufficient to warrant extended discussion is even less understood and has led a variety of researchers to examine the micro-level foundations of how the presence of foreign military personnel might exacerbate conflict or provide motivation for the local population to mobilize against the foreign troops in their midst (e.g., Downes 2008; Edelstein 2008)

The article discusses the term “recursive,” which has multiple uses in the political science literature. The two principle uses are reviewed, with attention to precedent and technical meanings, and examples are provided of mathematical concepts and their application to political science literature. The problem of divergent meaning is addressed through a survey of potential for reconciliation or possible substitute terminology.

In increasing numbers, political scientists are engaging in collaborative research. It is useful to consider the advantages of such efforts and to suggest strategies for finding optimal collaborators. In addition, there are issues and challenges that arise in the face of increased collaboration, particularly interdisciplinary collaboration across the life and social sciences. Inevitably, as the discipline has moved from a dominant solo-author model to a wider array of authorship possibilities, whether those teams encompass two-person partnerships, large research teams, or something in between, new administrative and cultural questions have already begun to surface as the discipline works to assimilate these changes. Consonant with previous efforts by the American Political Science Association (Biggs 2008; Chandra et al. 2006), we seek here to continue a broader disciplinary conversation surrounding the opportunities and challenges posed by more diverse patterns of teamwork. In so doing, we hope to help continue to encourage transparent, predictable, and openly collaborative intellectual partnerships wherein individuals receive the institutional credit and merit they deserve.

The six essays of this symposium address different aspects of the meaning and legacy of the Magna Carta—“the Great Charter” in Latin. Although social scientists and legal scholars routinely describe the Magna Carta as foundational for concepts of justice and liberty, the charter itself is rarely assigned in political science classes or scrutinized by political theorists. The aim of the symposium is twofold: first, to affirm the document's historical rootedness and intellectual richness, and, second, to explore the ways in which the Magna Carta's text and reputation have informed the development of common law and modern politics. The Magna Carta was the product of times very different from our own, yet it continues to be cited by jurists and human rights activists around the globe. This symposium makes the case for why political scientists should take an interest in the Magna Carta, not just as a cultural icon, but as a durable political text.

The public relevance of political science research has of late figured prominently in discussions within the profession. The Association's commitment to “public scholarship” has given rise to task forces examining what political science research has to say to policymakers about inequality and American democracy; inequality and difference in the developing world; political violence and terror; religion and American democracy; government indicators; and, most recently, democracy, economic security, and social justice in a volatile world.

Scholars generally agree that the Magna Carta of 1215 was a watershed in Western (and, more specifically, English) legal and political history and thought. Beyond this simple statement, however, there is little consensus concerning the nature and significance of the Magna Carta's achievement. One central unresolved issue centers on whether the charter represents a principled defense of human liberty or instead reflects a pragmatic statement of baronial liberties. The dispute over this question is nontrivial and reflects much more than a matter of language. If one subscribes to the former belief, which received its classic articulation in the seventeenth century (Turner 2003, 145–82) and retains powerful resonance today (Linebaugh 2008), then the Magna Carta deserves to be accorded a foundational role in the intellectual and political history of the liberal-democratic constitutional tradition, in which the rule of law is deemed the basis for the protection of individual freedom. If, however, one adopts the viewpoint of “the modern historian” that the charter “is a statement of [specific] liberties rather than an assertion of [general] liberty,” then the document should be read narrowly as an interesting artifact stipulating elite “privileges” that were “devised mainly in the interests of the aristocracy” (Holt 1965, 4). In other words, either the Magna Carta reflects deeper philosophical doctrines and commitments that enjoy purchase beyond their specific time and place, or it represents an expression of the immediate demands and grievances of a specific class displeased with the conduct of King John's government.

The question of the role of normative or historical political theory within the broader discipline of political science has been controversial at least since the founding of the American Political Science Association (see Gunnell 2006 for a brief overview). Perhaps it goes without saying that during that same period people who think of themselves as engaged in political theory have disagreed among themselves about the core concerns of the field, the appropriate kinds of graduate training, the relative value of various authors and texts, and, of course, about theory's role within political science.

At least once a month, I receive an e-mail, phone call, or question from one of my colleagues—how do you get an op-ed into the New York Times? It seems that a great number of my colleagues have at least one public intellectual (PI) bone in their body that they are keen to display. They hold, often for good reason, that they have something to say that will serve the president, the American people, or even the world. Although I have no answer to the immediate question—it is easier to win a lottery than to get into the New York Times—I do have a few thoughts about the greater question: how can an academic, especially a political scientist, gain a public voice? Here, then, follow the lessons of fifty years of trying to speak in that voice, drawing on both my experiences and those of my colleagues.

In recent years, many political science articles have changed the traditional and correct method for flagging statistically significant coefficients in tables. They now add extra asterisks at each significance level. This article describes the shift and why it should be reversed.