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Chilean parties have shown a remarkable capacity for survival after years of turbulent ideological polarization followed by a prolonged period of clandestine activity during the Pinochet dictatorship 1973-1990. This chapter argues that this is due to the deep historical and social roots of the parties; their capacity to represent most major social groups; and their efficiency as agents of government. A remarkable characteristic since the return to democracy in 1990 is the electoral success of the same coalition in every Presidential, Congressional, and Municipal election. This is explained because the centre-left coalition encompasses the majority of the electorate, because it is seen as the agent of democracy in the long struggle against dictatorship, and because of its sustained and impressive economic performance.

This chapter chronicles the efforts to re-create the Delta District, a geographically defined U.S. House district that was dissolved by the state government to prevent the election of a black representative. When the Voting Rights Act of 1982 helped re-create the district, efforts to elect a black congressman followed. Yet the efforts of Robert Clark, the state's first modern black state legislator, to become the congressman were stymied by his own background and history. It was not until 1986 that Mike Espy, a young post-civil rights black attorney who lacked Clark's political baggage, won election in the district and integrated the state's house delegation.

Beyond voting, can state convenience voting methods and election administration quality impact voter turnout by shaping the voter recruitment strategies of political campaigns? Using 2010, 2012, and 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Studies surveys that include information on whether an individual was contacted by a campaign preceding an election, this study provides a direct test of how state election law and administration variation affects voter mobilization. Statistical models analyze how the laws and election administration impact mobilization, and then evaluate whether individuals who were contacted by a campaign (versus not contacted) are more likely to vote. The results show that convenience voting laws (no-excuse absentee/mail voting and same day registration) and an increase in the quality of state election administration encourage political campaigns to contact more individuals in general, in addition to the poor, and that being contacted by a campaign through these factors increases the probability of voting.

This chapter uses data from the 2006–2009 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) to test our expectation that cultural traditionalists (and especially evangelical Christians) tend to prefer trustee-style representation more instinctively than do other types of Americans. The chapter describes the results from a series of multiple regression analyses, each one predicting preferences for either instructed delegates or trustees from, in turn, measures of the value orientations which were described in Chapter 3, measures of traditionalistic Christian religiosity, which we have argued bring these value priorities together, and party identification. This chapter finds that the values of liberal popular democracy predict citizen preferences for instructed delegate-style representation, whereas Christian traditionalism predicts preferences for trustee-style representation. All of this ultimately translates into Democrats preferring the instructed delegate style more consistently than Republicans do.

Once the delegates agreed to the Connecticut Compromise, supporters of proportional representation fought to strengthen the powers of the House, and opponents fought to strengthen the Senate's powers. This conflict shaped the prolonged battle over House control of the national budget and surfaced again when the Convention debated whether to prohibit national legislators from holding multiple national offices. The delegates also disagreed about voter eligibility, who could serve in the House, how long they would serve, and who would pay them. The delegates' compromises ensured the independent, coequal power of the House and Senate; they allowed each house to make its own rules, and members of Congress to serve for as long as they could be reelected. These compromises also increased the isolation, defensive powers, and complexity of Congress.

This chapter begins with a discussion of the existing literature as it pertains to the instructed delegate versus trustee question. Then this chapter introduces our survey data and consider how, generally speaking, citizens tend to think about this question. The chapter shows that citizens tend to prefer instructed delegates, but not overwhelmingly so. The chapter then examines how the distribution of opinion changes according to (a) the types of issues being considered (e.g., foreign vs. domestic, and “hard” vs. “easy”) and (b) the institution doing the representing (the president vs. Congress). The chapter observes that citizens expect more trustee-style representation out of the president than they do of Congress, and slightly more trustee-style representation when the issues in question are cultural rather than economic.

In the previous chapter, we outlined a series of newly developed, theory-driven measures aimed to capture contemporary expressions of racial animus and attitudes; rather than simply focus on what Blacks have failed to do, these measures engage respondents’ attitudes and knowledge on institutional and structural racism, racial privilege, whiteness as well as feelings of racial guilt and empathy. These are some of the major components we noticed percolate in the way that Whites are talking about race matters these days. Though these newer scales and batteries were created independently, we believe that we can gain more traction in understanding contemporary racial attitudes by putting all of them-new and old-in conversation with each other. We do three sets of analyses in this chapter to gain a better understanding of the structure, nature, and role of Whites’ racial attitudes in the 21st Century, and do so by employing a sample of 743 Whites from the 2014 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES).

In this last substantive chapter, we introduce a more holistic, nuanced, and useful measure of White Americans’ contemporary racial attitudes that taps into these two dimensions. We call this measure FIRE because it measures a combination of Fear that Whites may have towards people of color, an awareness of Institutional Racism, and racial Empathy. The first goal of this chapter is to outline a short form, parsimonious battery that taps into in the two dimensions of Whites’ racial attitudes. Along with parsimony, we argue that any measure that aims to capture modern racial attitudes would meet four tests for validity: face validity, convergent validity, predictive validity, and discriminant validity. After we describe the questions that compose the FIRE battery, we discuss how the measures should be used, execute several tests in efforts to ascertain whether this new measure meets these four criteria, and illustrate the battery’s added value with the help data from the 2016 Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES) Common Content.

Chapter 4 examines cross-racial mobilization in contemporary U.S. politics. Employing a similar design as that employed in chapter 3, chapter 4 presents data gathered from all 2010–2012 general election U.S. Senate candidate websites. By focusing on both policy and valence cross-racial mobilization, the chapter then analyzes why some candidates conduct more (or less) cross-racial mobilization. The chapter finds strong support for the cross-racial mobilization framework, particularly among Democratic candidates: (1) Democratic candidates who had previously engaged in cross-racial mobilization (incumbents) are more likely to conduct cross-ethnic appeals; (2) when the Latino population is larger Anglo Democratic candidates are more likely to conduct cross-racial mobilization; (3) more cross-racial mobilization is observed when the election is considered competitive; and (4) Democratic candidates are less likely to make cross-racial appeals in states where whites are most hostile. Finally, Democratic candidates perform better when they conduct extensive cross-racial mobilization, whereas the converse is the case for GOP candidates.

This chapter describes several events including the trial of Burr on charges of treason; the loss of Claiborne’s opponents in the elections for the territorial delegate to Congress in 1809; increased American immigration to Louisiana; Louisiana’s statehood on April 2, 1812; and Claiborne’s election as governor.